Oecusse, a rugged, remote district of Timor-Leste in south-east Asia, is usually a pretty sleepy place. It’s located on the western side of Timor island, part of Indonesia, and is isolated geographically from the rest of Timor-Leste, which has governed the eastern side of the island since 2002.
But in August, Oecusse was rocked by a large police raid on a suspected scam centre, later linked by a UN report to organised crime networks running scamming operations across south-east Asia. Dozens of foreign nationals were arrested.
All this came at a bad time for Timor-Leste, shortly before its admission into the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in October.
And then in early September, a Facebook post by one of Timor-Leste’s highest political officials made some explosive allegations about a murky criminal underworld trying to get a foothold in the country.
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Michael Rose, an anthropologist and adjunct lecturer at the University of Adelaide who has lived and worked in Timor-Leste, about how Asia’s scamming gangs set their sights on Timor-Leste as their next frontier – and the movement to keep them out.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Katie Flood and Gemma Ware, with production assistance from Mend Mariwany. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Gemma Ware is the executive producer.
Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feedor find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.
Michael Rose 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jolanta Burke, Associate Professor, Centre for Positive Health Sciences, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences
Dick Van Dyke, the legendary American actor and comedian who starred in classics such as Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, turns 100 on December 13. The beloved actor credits his remarkable longevity to his positive outlook and never getting angry.
While longevity of course comes down to many factors – including genetics and lifestyle – there is some truth to Van Dyke’s claims. Numerous studies have shown that keeping stress levels low and maintaining a positive, optimistic outlook are correlated with longevity.
For instance, in the early 1930s researchers asked a group of 678 novice nuns – most of whom were around 22 years of age – to write an autobiography when they joined a convent.
Six decades later, researchers analysed their works. They also compared their analyses with the women’s long-term health outcomes.
The researchers found that women who expressed more positive emotion early in life (such as saying they felt grateful, instead of resentful) lived an average of ten years longer than those whose writing tended to be more negative.
A UK study also found that people who were more optimistic lived between 11% and 15% longer than their pessimistic counterparts.
And, in 2022, a study which looked at around 160,000 women from a range of ethnic backgrounds found that those who reported being more optimistic were more likely to live into their 90s compared to pessimists.
One potential explanation for these outcomes is related to the effects anger has on our heart.
People who tend to have a more positive or optimistic outlook on life appear to be better at managing or controlling their anger. This is important, as anger can have a number of significant effects on the body.
The added strain that chronic stress and anger put on the cardiovascular system has been linked to increased risk of developing conditions such as heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. These diseases account for roughly 75% of early deaths. While stress and anger aren’t the only causes of these diseases, they contribute to them significantly.
So when Dick Van Dyke says he doesn’t get angry, it may well be one of the reasons for his longevity.
There’s also a deeper, cellular explanation behind stress’s influence on longevity, which relates to our telomeres. These are protective caps found on the ends of our chromosomes (the packages of DNA information found in our cells).
In young, healthy cells, telomeres remain long and sturdy. But as we age, telomeres gradually shorten and fray. Once they become too worn, cells struggle to divide and repair themselves. This is one reason ageing accelerates over time.
Stress has been linked to faster telomere shortening, which makes it harder for cells to communicate and renew. In other words, stress-inducing emotions such as uncontrolled anger may speed up the ageing process.
One study also found that meditation, which can help reduce stress, is positively associated with telomere length. So better anger management might just help support a longer life.
Added to this is the fact optimists appear to be more likely to engage in healthy habits, such as regular exercise or healthy eating, which can further support health and longevity by lowering risk of cardiovascular disease. Even Dick Van Dyke himself still tries to exercise at least three times a week.
Improving longevity
If you want to live as long as Dick Van Dyke, there are things you can do to manage your stress and anger levels.
Contrary to popular belief, trying to “let out” anger by punching a bag, shouting into a pillow or running until the feeling passes doesn’t actually help. These actions keep the body in a heightened state which impacts the cardiovascular system and can prolong the stress response.
A calmer approach works better. Slowing down your breath, counting them or using other relaxation techniques (such as yoga) can help calm the cardiovascular system rather than overstimulate it. Over time, this reduces strain on the heart, which can help you live longer. It’s important you aim to do this anytime you’re feeling particularly stressed or angry.
You can also boost positive emotions by trying to be more present in your daily life. By staying present, you become more aware of what’s happening around you and within you.
For instance, if you’re planning to go out for dinner with your partner, try to be more intentional in how you go about it. This could include booking a restaurant you both truly like, or asking to eat in a quieter spot in the restaurant so you have more time to catch up. Slow down and try to pay attention to the moment, taking in all the senses you’re experiencing as much as you can.
You can also boost positive emotions by making time for play. For adults, play means doing something simply because it’s enjoyable – not because it has any specific purpose. Play will give you a boost of positive emotions, which may in turn benefit your health.
Dick Van Dyke’s advice may be correct. While we can’t control everything that has an impact on our health, learning to manage anger and make room for a more positive outlook in life can help support both wellbeing and longevity.
Jolanta Burke 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lisa Slominski, PhD with the Department of Historical and Critical Studies, Kingston University
The 2025 Turner prize has been won by Nnena Kalu. It’s a historic win and a groundbreaking moment in the prestigious prize’s history.
Kalu is the first learning-disabled artist, the first artist with limited verbal communication, and the first artist whose practice is facilitated through a specialised studio (ActionSpace, established to support artists with learning disabilities) to win the prize. Her win is both extraordinary and overdue – a pivotal moment for inclusivity in British art and for the visibility of learning-disabled artists.
Kalu’s practice is defined by repetition, rhythm, and layering. She builds sculptural forms by tightly wrapping materials into pulsing, tactile structures, and her drawings accumulate depth through swirling, vortex-like motions.
She also presented to wide acclaim at Barcelona’s Manifesta 15 gallery in 2024 and Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery in 2024 to 2025. These accomplishments have all contributed towards her Turner prize win.
I first met Kalu in 2018 when I curated her work in a group exhibition in North London. I worked with her longtime ActionSpace facilitator, Charlotte Hollinshead who helped Kalu to develop her individual arts practice and deliver an extensive range of commissions, projects, events and exhibitions.
Learning of Kalu’s interest in responding to existing architecture, we set aside a structural pillar in the gallery. When they arrived on site, Kalu began wrapping it with tape, film and string. I watched as the form accumulated colour, tension and movement. I was completely hooked.
Over the years, I continued to curate her work – including her first American exhibition in 2020 – and wrote about her practice in my book Nonconformers: A New History of Self-Taught Artists. As I spent more time with her, one question began to preoccupy me: how should curators address Kalu’s position as a learning-disabled artist when she cannot narrate her practice or its relationship to her identity in conventional communication terms?
This question has since become the centre of my PhD research at Kingston University. I now work closely with Kalu and ActionSpace to explore new, more expansive forms of curatorial and interpretive practice – including approaches that acknowledge facilitation, and support structures without diminishing artistic agency.
Kalu’s nomination in April unexpectedly became a critical case study for my research. Watching how the prize, its partners, and the media represented her offered a rare and highly visible window into how institutions handle practices that do not fit standard models of authorship or communication.
Some of the most promising work came from Tate’s Body in Rhythm, Line in Motion film – a short artist video that accompanies each Turner nominee. What stood out was how clearly and transparently it acknowledged the supportive ecosystem around Kalu.
Named contributors spoke from their specific positions – facilitators, curators, and long-time supporters – describing what they observe in her process rather than speculating about intention. The video foregrounded the sounds of her making, the rhythm of her gestures, and the material build-up of the work as legitimate ways of understanding her practice.
If the Tate film offered examples of progress, excerpts of wider media responses revealed how much work remains. Some commentary simply misunderstood the context. A high-profile columnist dismissed the shortlist as “the soppiest ever” and described Kalu’s work as “academic” – an odd accusation for an artist who works entirely through processes developed instinctively at ActionSpace, which were not informed by an art historical discourse.
More troubling were moments when journalists framed Kalu’s disability as a reason to lower artistic expectations. One critic, speaking on BBC Front Row, remarked: “As an art critic, I found it very disappointing; as a human being, I feel I have to support it.”
This kind of response strips learning-disabled artists of agency. It assumes they cannot be both disabled and ambitious, disabled and professional, disabled and excellent. It conflates access with charity, facilitation with compromise, and disability with lack.
Kalu’s career, and now her Turner Prize success, demonstrate precisely the opposite.
Her win is an extraordinary milestone, but it is not an endpoint. The structures surrounding learning-disabled artists remain precarious. Supported studios like ActionSpace are essential cultural infrastructures, yet they operate with limited resources. Curators and institutions are still learning how to communicate about practices that do not fit familiar narratives of artistic intention or authorship.
The Turner Prize has cracked something open. It has made visible what many of us working in this field have long argued: that excellence emerges in many forms, that facilitation can be a creative engine rather than an obstacle, and that disabled artists are central, not peripheral, to contemporary art.
What comes next, how we talk about this win, how institutions respond, and which structures are resourced, will determine whether this moment becomes symbolic or genuinely transformative.
This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.
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Lisa Slominski 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.
Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January, many European observers have been in a state of wilful denial. They have been hopeful that Trump 2.0 would be largely the same as his first administration where the rhetoric was worse than the reality.
Their approach has been based on the assumption that a mixture of calculated deference, avoidance of a full-on trade war and increased commitments to Nato defence spending would keep Washington engaged in the defence of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. And, crucially, it would preserve the American nuclear umbrella that has protected Europe since the end of the second world war.
But the US national security strategy for 2025, published on December 4, has blown those assumptions out of the water and forced America’s allies, particularly those in Europe, to confront a harsh new reality. Not only can they not count on the United States to be in their corner when the chips are down. They will have to allow for US indifference – even outright hostility – for the foreseeable future.
Since he came to power in January vowing to end the war in Ukraine “in 24 hours”, the US president’s frequent pivots between Russia on the one hand and the status quo US policy towards Ukraine and its European allies on the other delayed the inevitable insight in major European capitals that Trump’s national security strategy provides. Now it’s clear: the transatlantic alliance that was the cornerstone of European security and underpinned the liberal international order has ceased to exist.
What has been revealed is a narrow view of American commercial interests. It’s a parochial 19th-century focus on the western hemisphere which avoids any recognition of the threat posed by Russia. The US under Trump has abdicated American leadership and rejects the idea of standing up to geopolitical challenges unless they are in America’s backyard or threaten US commercial interests.
Washington has turned its back on a longstanding alignment with its democratic allies in Europe and elsewhere. Rooted in the enlightenment tradition, this anchored the US and its erstwhile allies firmly in the rule of law in domestic and international affairs.
The ethno-nationalist, white supremacist and evangelical ideology of Trumpism articulated in the national security strategy only stands in sharp contrast to this past consensus and actively seeks to undermine it when it comes to Europe. The threat to European security is therefore not merely one emanating from the rupture of the transatlantic alliance. It also has the potential to accelerate further fragmentation inside Europe.
Trump’s comments in a recent interview with Politico that he would continue to back like-minded candidates leaves little doubt about the intentions of the Trump administration to interfere in European elections in favour of populist candidates that supposedly share Trumpist worldviews.
Wrecking ball
The Ukraine war is a perfect illustration of the volatility of US foreign policy under Trump. The US president has pursued an amateurish and egocentric negotiation process peppered with threats to walk away from the most severe challenge to international security in a generation.
Far from aiming to ensure security and the rule of law, Trump’s approach has clearly been driven by a desire for a plan that will enable the resumption of commercial relations with Russia and, he clearly hopes, involve some lucrative business deals – such as a possible revival of plans for a Trump tower in Moscow, something that was reportedly discussed by the Kremlin earlier this year as a way of cementing relations between the two countries.
Trump and his team fail to appreciate that the war in Ukraine is not simply an inconvenience. It is a profound long-term challenge to US interests. If Russia wins in Ukraine – on the battlefield or through a US-imposed peace deal – the Kremlin will have the opportunity to regroup and rearm. This would mean the continuation of an already intensifying hybrid war against Europe.
More likely than not, it would also embolden Putin to turn his sights on other parts of the former Soviet empire, for example by redoubling his efforts to destabilise Moldova.
Coalition of the willing
Trump has now openly turned against America’s erstwhile allies. The pretence that the US still backstops Nato’s security guarantee has become a fiction that, since the release of the national security strategy, is harder to maintain.
This leaves Europe in a difficult place. Both Nato and the EU struggle to speak with a single voice on existential issues. Governments in key European states – France, Germany, Italy and the UK, among others – are under pressure on multiple fronts. They are struggling to manage domestic crises from immigration to welfare reform at a time of rising populism. The bitter conflict in Ukraine, right on the doorsteps of Nato and the EU, adds considerably to this burden.
Efforts undertaken so far to strengthen Europe’s military and strategic autonomy can only go so far and so fast if they continue to depend on unanimity among member states. Finding the smallest common denominator to avoid dissenting states using their veto power often delays or waters down key decisions. This approach is unfit to deal simultaneously with a crisis of the current magnitude and the deliberate paralysis of the institutions that Trump and his allies are promoting.
A new “coalition of the willing” has gradually emerged from what might soon be the ruins of the European and transatlantic projects. If Nato founders, which is not now inconceivable, it may be Europe’s best hope of surviving in a world where it is no longer one of, or aligned with, the dominant great powers of the day. But for that to become a reality, the coalition of the willing needs to become a coalition of the able. And this is a test it has yet to pass.
Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.
David Hastings Dunn has previously received funding from the ESRC, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Open Democracy Foundation and has previously been both a NATO and a Fulbright Fellow.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lorna Stevens, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Strategic Marketing, University of Bath
In the dark months of winter, the warm glow of Christmas fairy lights and flickering candles brings some welcome atmospheric respite. And that atmosphere is something many retailers try to capture as they tempt shoppers with their festive marketing campaigns.
The John Lewis Christmas advert for example, has become a seasonal staple, while rival Marks and Spencer has found success with its “Magic and Sparkle” campaign, which plays on the company’s brand name.
There are many more. Christmas is a vital period in the retail calendar, and the amount of festive advertising can seem overwhelming.
Many of those adverts will feature beautifully wrapped presents, happy faces and snowy streets. But there’s another marketing strategy which is widely employed at this time of year, and involves brands seeking to be associated with the idea of glamour.
Glamour can mean different things to different people. It’s a subjective term, with Scottish roots, and defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as something possessing “magic” and “enchantment” or “bewitching beauty and charm”. Others may associate glamour with luxury or celebrity.
For the author Nigel Thrift, glamour is an aesthetic that creates a more magical world. He notes that the appeal of sparkling surfaces, one of glamour’s most visible markers, goes far back in human history.
So glamour is a perfect match for Christmas – and a perfect tool for brands trying to enchant consumers.
The high street chain Oliver Bonas, for example, currently has a homeware range that offers “a hint of glamour and a touch of luxe” while its social media posts promote clothing with “daytime glamour”.
The fashion store Whistles hailed a recent winter collection which featured plenty of sequins and velvet as “new wave glamour”. Similarly, Mint Velvet uses the strapline “relaxed glamour” for a range of clothing which it calls “high-low dressing”.
And research I conducted with colleagues into retail branding suggests some rules that companies should follow if they want to persuade customers of their glamorous status.
First on the list is not appearing to be trying too hard. Effortless glamour – even if the lack of effort is an illusion – is a vital part of appearing glamorous. It also feeds into what we call glamour’s “affective force” – the idea that glamour is about not just visual aesthetics, but also about how it makes us feel.
We found that The White Company for example, creates a sense of transformation and escape, which is at the emotional core of glamour. To do this, the brand uses expert techniques to make their products seem more alluring, aspirational and appealing.
Its imagery is extremely subtle, benefiting from a monochromatic palate and simplicity, which creates an aura of effortlessness, but it also adds a touch of glamour which serves to elevate the brand.
Shiny things
Other brands seeking to use a glamour aesthetic should also avoid being too heavy-handed, in case their efforts start to veer towards brashness and bling. This removes the sense of mystery and intrigue that is essential for glamour to work as an affective force.
But there are certain familiar props which can help to instil some glamour into a brand. We call these glamour “markers”, and they include things like glass, mirrors, shiny surfaces and luxurious fabrics.
Sparkling light is also particularly evocative of glamour. A crystal chandelier is the most obvious example, but carefully placed candles and table lamps and the addition of sparkling elements can render an object or a setting glamorous.
Then there is the promise of transformation and escape. Aspirational scenes and settings on websites and social media can stimulate customers’ imaginations and escapist fantasies, which heightens their emotional engagement with a brand.
But it’s also important to convey a sense that the lifestyle the brand promises is accessible. By striking a careful balance between the achievable and the aspirational, customers are more likely to believe in the brand offering.
Not everyone is a believer, of course. Some may feel that the magic and sparkle of Christmas is at best illusory, and at worst an excuse for crass commercialism and excessive materialism.
Others will embrace Christmas time as a sparkling light amid the bleak midwinter. And part of that might be lifestyle brands putting on a glamorous show.
They will do their best to attract attention, feed aspirational longing and lift spirits. And ideally, they will make us believe that our lives and the lives of our loved ones can magically be enhanced and transformed – if we just buy a little of the glamour they offer.
Lorna Stevens 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.
In the UK, schools are reporting a surge in young people struggling with dependence, including cases of students needing medical attention after vaping in class. In the Netherlands, researchers have found that many teenagers wake up at night specifically to vape, a sign of growing nicotine addiction in adolescents.
And in New Zealand, a widely shared image of a teenager’s blackened, shrivelled lung after three years of vaping renewed fears about the speed at which harm can develop.
These stories show how far vaping has drifted from its original purpose. Once introduced as a safer alternative to cigarettes, it is now embedded in youth culture, driven as much by social influence as by nicotine itself.
E-cigarettes have now become a lifestyle accessory: sleek, flavoured and often perceived as harmless. But behind the clouds of “strawberry ice” and “blueberry burst” vapour lies a powerful lesson in how misinformation shapes behaviour, based less on chemistry than on psychology.
Understanding why vaping feels safe, appealing and difficult to quit requires looking not only at the device but at how our minds process risk, reward and social cues.
Psychology shows that people rarely process health information in nuanced ways. Faced with complex or uncertain evidence, including emerging research on vaping, our brains reduce it to simple categories, such as safe or unsafe.
This mental shortcut helps us make quick decisions without examining every detail. When people hear that vaping is less harmful than cigarettes, many take it to mean harmless, because judging relative risk feels complicated. Brightly coloured devices, sweet flavours and wellness-focused marketing reinforce the perception that vaping is good or safe, even without long-term evidence.
This simplification helps explain why misinformation spreads easily. Once a behaviour is mentally categorised as safe or desirable, people are less likely to question it or seek contradicting evidence. Our natural tendency to think in binaries leaves complex health messages open to distortion, strengthening the influence of marketing and social cues.
Social influence then amplifies the effect. When friends, peers and influencers post vaping content online, the behaviour becomes not just visible but celebrated, making it feel socially normal and desirable. Social proof encourages experimentation and reinforces the idea that quitting would mean losing belonging, identity or enjoyment.
Social media platforms magnify these cues, circulating anecdotes, trends and endorsements. The result is one million people in England vaping despite never having smoked regularly, under the illusion of safety.
Vaping took off not only because people were misinformed, but because their brains had reasons to keep believing it was safe. Loss aversion, the tendency to feel losses more intensely than gains, explains part of this.
When vaping seems harmless, the perceived losses of quitting, such as stress relief, enjoyable flavours, social connection and identity, feel immediate and real, while the long-term risks seem distant or unlikely. People hold on to vaping not just because they underestimate the dangers, but because stopping feels like giving up something valuable.
Together, these forces create a self-reinforcing cycle. Binary thinking simplifies risk, social proof builds desirability and loss aversion makes quitting feel costly. Misinformation does not just mislead. It reshapes how people think, turning a harm-reduction tool into a socially embedded, hard-to-quit habit.
The rise of vaping reveals a deeper issue in how health information spreads. In the digital age, public understanding changes faster than scientific consensus. Online trends and anecdotes often outrun the slow, careful process of research, and young people are particularly susceptible. Once misinformation takes hold, it is difficult to reverse. One in ten UK secondary school pupils currently vape, even though the NHS warns that long-term effects remain uncertain.
If misinformation helped drive the vaping boom by exaggerating its benefits, reversing the trend requires changing what people believe they stand to gain. Improving media literacy is a start, helping people spot when relatable content is actually advertising, when trends are engineered or when claims are overstated.
Public health messages also need to meet people where they are, using short, engaging content that feels native to social media. When influencers and peers highlight the real costs of vaping, such as money, energy and lung capacity, and expose the marketing behind its appeal, perceptions can shift. This taps into loss aversion by making continued vaping feel like the bigger loss.
Combining media literacy with relatable, well-targeted content can change vaping perceptions, make psychological biases work in favour of health and help people resist misleading narratives.
Ultimately, addressing the vaping boom requires understanding the minds and social environments of those caught up in it, not just the science behind the device.
Andy Levy 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.
The Trump administration’s push to label drug traffickers as “narcoterrorists” and kill them at sea has generated global outrage. But the controversy risks missing the larger story.
Experts, non-governmental organisations and the UN have condemned the strikes as unlawful assassinations and Washington’s claim that it is acting in self-defence does not appear to hold up to legal analysis.
Yet these attacks are not a dramatic break. They extend a decades-long pattern of US “targeted killings”, from Yemen to Somalia to Syria. These attacks are almost always justified through controversial legal interpretations and have often been met with muted international opposition.
There’s a chance that the current narrative doesn’t address the deeper, more meaningful criticisms of the thinking behind it.
Recent escalations by the Trump administration in targeting what the White House describe as narcoterrorists in the Caribbean have sparked significant debate. The attacks against accused drug traffickers have been extensively reported and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called on the US government to halt the “extrajudicial killing of people aboard these boats, whatever the criminal conduct alleged against them”.
The Trump administration has vaguely justified the attacks through the right to self-defence in an armed conflict against narcoterrorists. But that claim has been refuted by UN experts, who have pointed out that “international law does not permit the unilateral use of force abroad to fight terrorism or drug trafficking”.
Under international law, the use of force in self-defence can only be justified if an armed attack against a state has occurred first or is imminent. For a situation to be classed as an armed conflict, certain threshold requirements need to be reached. Simply declaring that you are in an armed conflict with a group does not make it so.
Furthermore, criminals are not combatants, no matter how politically and socially problematic they may be. As such, lethal actions against them infringe upon fundamental human rights obligations – such as the right to life and the right to a fair trial.
‘War on terror’
The assaults and their justifications undoubtedly represent a troubling new development in US military practices. Yet the focus on attacks against drug criminals in the Caribbean obscures the similarities to current military operations conducted by the US against people they have designated as terrorists in the Middle East and Africa.
These have received barely any attention in public debates even though hundreds of people have recently been killed in Yemen, as well as in attacks in Syria, Iraq and Somalia.
The current campaign in the Caribbean is part of a broader pattern. For more than two decades, successive US administrations have carried out targeted killings overseas under contested definitions of what combatants are and what constitutes an armed conflict during the so-called “war on terror”.
The US-led campaign against Islamic State killed thousands of people, with civilian deaths estimated between 8,000 and 13,000 between 2014 and 2019. US airstrikes in Somalia and Yemen continue. Strikes at the port of Ras Isa and Sadaa’s remand migration detention centre a few months ago appear to have killed at least 150 civilians and injuring 200 more.
A witness, interviewed by Amnesty International described the attack on the migration centre: “They said they woke up to find dismembered bodies around them. You could see the shock and horror on their faces.”
The first attack on a so-called ‘drug boat’ in the Caribbean, close to Venezuela, September 2 2025.
Many countries have been fearful of directly confronting the US and objecting to these infringements of international law. As I have showed elsewhere, the legality of targeted killing strikes of terrorists outside of armed conflict has been consistently rejected by the overwhelming majority of countries.
States have characterised such practices by Israel as extrajudicial executions and have indicated concern over US practices – but they have often stopped short of openly opposing a global superpower.
So the strikes in Venezuela follow a pattern used regularly by the US and others. The Trump administration may have justified its strikes by coming up with the new and deeply problematic category of narcoterrorists. But the underlying logic remains unchanged. The US claims the authority to execute any individual it deems a threat – wherever and whenever it chooses.
Normalising murder
The consequences of this pattern are hardly unforeseeable. Experts have long warned that normalising such practices risks undermining the prohibition on the use of force and of extrajudicial killings. This potentially sets a precedent for powerful states to use lethal force against anyone they deem inconvenient.
The risk is that the monstrosity of this logic becomes obscured and the idea of targeting non-combatant narcoterrorists is eventually normalised once the initial surge of outrage fades. Already, the discussion in some quarters is beginning to shift from whether such strikes should occur to how they should be conducted, focusing on issues like target identification.
And while the attacks on drug traffickers rightly attract scrutiny, comparatively little attention is paid to the continuing, systemic use of lethal operations in parts of Africa or the Middle East, which often takes place under similar legal rationales.
This relative silence is significant. As I argue in my forthcoming book Silent War, this lack of protest and media attention – and the silence in public debates – not only reflects orientalist assumptions and power asymmetries. It also effectively enables and legitimises such political aggression.
Elisabeth Schweiger 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.
This year, fans of the tiny marmalade-loving bear from Peru can catch him on stage at London’s Savoy Theatre in the West End, in Paddington The Musical.
This is a stage adaptation of the first film in the most recent Paddington franchise, which began in 2014. While it features more than 18 new songs by Tom Fletcher (of the band McFly), it follows the film’s plot quite closely. It also shares its values of home, family and tolerance of difference – particularly relevant to current debates on immigration.
As an expert in ancient Greek culture, what struck me most was how this theatrical re-imagining casts Paddington as a hero in the tradition of Homeric epic.
Although there have been several iterations of the Paddington story since he was first introduced by Michael Bond in A Bear Called Paddington (1958), his journey has always been prompted by the destruction of his Peruvian home by an earthquake. His only surviving relative, Aunt Lucy, is too old to look after him, so he must find a new home. And so Paddington makes his way to London and to his new adopted family, the Browns.
This quest can be compared to Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid. In this tale Aeneas flees the fall of Troy and wanders the Mediterranean until he eventually settles at the site of the future Rome. Arguably, both stories conform with American writer Joseph Campbell’s theory of the monomyth, or the “hero’s journey”, in which a quest is precipitated by a crisis. In this, the hero must overcome various challenges, often with the help of a mentor and some form of talisman or supernatural aid. In the end, he is victorious and reaches home transformed.
The quest for home and belonging is a popular theme in 21st-century film but it goes right back to Homer’s Odyssey. There the hero Odysseus has to overcome monsters, gods and men before finally achieving his nostos, his return home, with the help of the goddess Athene.
Such divine assistance may not be available to Paddington, but Aunt Lucy serves as his spiritual guide. In the musical, we never see her but her guidance is communicated by letter. As her words are read out, a bear-shaped constellation appears on the wall behind, giving her an almost magical quality.
Adversaries and talismans
Ancient and modern heroes alike must face monsters of one sort or another. Paddington’s adversaries are primarily human.
Opposition is briefly offered in act one by the splendidly bombastic Lady Sloane (Amy Booth-Steel) who is the leader of the Geographers’ Guild.
This institution originally sent the explorer Montgomery Clyde to Peru to collect dead animal specimens, but expelled him when came back empty handed, having instead befriended Paddington’s bear family. Lady Sloane is easily vanquished by Paddington’s superpower – his famous hard stare.
Paddington turns this withering look on people he thinks are behaving badly, making them feel hot under the collar and forcing them to realise the error of their ways. A whole musical number is dedicated to this small but mighty gesture.
In act two, the geographers reappear in pursuit of Paddington. Their song, The Geographer’s Guild, pays musical homage to Gilbert and Sullivan for whose light operas the Savoy Theatre was originally built. Its lyrics joke about the imperialist acquisitiveness of the geographers, who have already “collected” the Elgin marbles and now have their eye on the Statue of Liberty.
Foremost of his adversaries, however, is Millicent Clyde (Victoria Hamilton-Barritt), evil daughter of the sympathetic explorer Montgomery. She introduces herself with the magnificent number Pretty Little Dead Things in which she lists the animals she has subjected to taxidermy – many of which can be seen as part of the stage set.
Millicent is on a mission to complete what her father could not, and in the climactic scene, Millicent has taken Paddington to be stuffed at the Natural History Museum. These scenes wonderfully feature the distinct hind quarters of Dippy, the dinosaur skeleton-cast that, until recently, stood in the museum’s entrance, Hintze Hall.
If the hard stare is his superpower, Paddington’s talisman is undoubtedly that orange sticky substance. Act two opens with the ridiculously catchy song Marmalade, an extravagant fantasy in which the Brown’s cantankerous neighbour Mr Curry is won over by the taste of a marmalade sandwich, a fantasy into which the audience are drawn as they join in with the “ma-ma-ma-ma-marmalade” refrain.
While the marmalade sandwich kept in Paddington’s hat is a fundamental part of Michael Bond’s original character, it is pressed into service in the film as the secret weapon with which he escapes the clutches of Millicent Clyde. In the musical, it is likewise used to enlist the aid of Hank the Pigeon (voice/puppeteer Ben Redfern) and his fellow birds.
So Paddington is a hero, in the classical sense of the word. He is on a journey to find home after his was destroyed and is guided from afar by his Aunt Lucy. Along the way he must overcome evil and other obstacles. But with the help of his hard stare as his weapon and his trusty talisman, a marmalade sandwich, he triumphs.
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Emma Stafford 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gulnaz Anjum, Assistant Professor of Climate Psychology, Centre for Social Issues Research, Department of Psychology, University of Limerick
Commuters make their way along a road amid smoggy conditions in Lahore, Pakistan.Murtaza.Ali/Shutterstock
In November 2025, Lahore, the second-largest city in Pakistan, registered a “hazardous” air quality index of 509, according to IQAir, a global air quality monitoring organisation. The number speaks for itself. Eyes sting, throats burn and headlights blur into halos. In winter, the city feels as though it has slipped beneath a toxic sea.
Across Pakistan’s major cities, the shift into colder months no longer brings relief from heat or flooding. Winter has become smog season.
For weeks at a time, the sky turns grey-brown and the air tastes metallic before noon, a result of fine particles and acidic gases accumulating in the air and irritating the mouth and throat. These are not abstract environmental problems but daily, sensory realities. Smog now shapes routines, moods and the way people move through their day.
Lahore’s smog crisis is not new, but the numbers are becoming more alarming. The World Health Organization recommends that annual average levels of fine particulate matter should remain below five micrograms per cubic metre. According to a recent IQAir report, Lahore’s 2024 average was 102.
For residents of Pakistan’s cities, these statistics translate into physical and emotional strain. People describe waking with headaches after nights of coughing. Parents say the school run feels like walking through exhaust fumes.
Outdoor workers such as drivers, street vendors and construction labourers often report tasting metal in the air by late afternoon. Emerging research links smog episodes with spikes in respiratory illness, cardiovascular stress and hospital visits, especially among children and people with existing health conditions.
Winter in Lahore is sometimes described as “a lockdown without staying at home”. Public health advice on very polluted days often includes avoiding outdoor exercise, keeping windows closed and wearing masks when outside. Air quality apps now send real-time alerts to hundreds of thousands of users across the city.
But staying indoors is a luxury for many. Street vendors cannot sell food from their kitchens. Transport workers cannot drive rickshaws or buses from behind sealed windows. Families living in cramped, poorly ventilated housing do not breathe clean indoor air either; they breathe a mixture of outdoor pollution and indoor smoke from cooking or heating.
The causes of this toxic winter mix are well documented. Older diesel trucks and buses emit large quantities of fine particles and nitrogen dioxide. Industrial zones and poorly regulated brick kilns burn low-quality fuel. Construction activity increases the amount of dust in the air. Seasonal burning of crop residues left behind after harvesting, such as stalks and straw, in Punjab and neighbouring regions worsens pollution even further.
Cold winter temperatures trap pollutants close to the ground. With little wind or rain to disperse them, a dense brown haze settles over Lahore and other urban areas. Recent analyses show that Lahore’s emissions remain high throughout the year, but peak during winter when weather conditions are least favourable.
Smog affects more than the lungs. It influences how people feel, behave and cope with daily life. Residents frequently report a sense of heaviness or irritability on high pollution days, difficulty concentrating or a “claustrophobic” feeling when visibility drops and the city seems to close in. Studies show that air pollution has negative effects on mental health. For families already dealing with crowded housing, unstable work and unreliable transport, smog adds another layer of psychological strain.
Smog’s uneven toll
These effects are not shared equally. Low-income communities in cities like Lahore and Karachi often live closer to industrial corridors, busy roads or burning waste sites, and have far less control over their exposure.
People who work outdoors breathe in more polluted air than those who can work remotely or retreat indoors. Women managing unpaid care work describe feeling exhausted by the constant monitoring of children’s coughs, many of whom also miss school.
For many households in Pakistan, air pollution interacts with other environmental threats such as extreme heat, flooding and water shortages. It is a pattern seen across developing countries, where climate change and pollution intensify existing inequalities and resilience depends not only on people’s physical wellbeing but also on collective capacity to support one another and withstand overlapping crises.
Recognising these psychological and social dimensions is essential for designing effective public health and environmental responses. When smog becomes seasonal – a regular feature of winter rather than an occasional occurrence – people adapt in ways that affect social life, work patterns, schooling and mental wellbeing.
Persistent exposure can lead to hopelessness, a sense that nothing can be done, which undermines motivation to participate in civic discussions or environmental initiatives. Others experience heightened worry about their children’s health, education and future, a form of “pollution anxiety”.
These emotional responses matter because they shape how communities understand risk, respond to public messaging and engage with policy measures.
No one can solve city-wide smog alone, yet waiting only for national reforms can feel too slow and too distant. Community-level action occupies the space in between. Neighbourhood clean-air campaigns, school-based monitoring, local tree planting, reporting of illegal burning and collaborations between residents, health workers and municipal staff can increase awareness and create political pressure for broader systemic change.
These efforts do not replace national policy; they make it more likely to succeed. And they give people a sense of agency in a context where pollution can otherwise feel overwhelming.
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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Night-time view of Derry city centre in Northern Ireland, where the Safest Way app is promoted in pubs to advise on safer walking routes.Irina WS/Shutterstock
In the historic walled city of Derry (also known as Londonderry) in Northern Ireland, the night-time economy is vibrant. But like many urban centres, it presents safety challenges for those trying to get home. At night, a volunteer group known as the Inner City Assistance Team (iCat) often patrols the streets, intervening when people feel vulnerable – whether due to intoxication, a mental health issue, or simply being alone in unlit or unfamiliar areas.
Recently in the city, iCat introduced Safest Way, a pedestrian navigation app I co-developed during my PhD research at UCL. The app employs AI technology to show users not just faster but safer routes when walking to and from a destination – for example, the safest way home after a night out.
The necessity for such interventions is rooted in a stark disparity in how urban safety is experienced by women and men.
A survey by Plan International UK in 2024 found that nearly three-quarters of girls and young women (ages 14-21) sometimes choose longer routes home to avoid potential danger, and almost two-thirds take taxis home at least once a month because of the risks associated with public transport or walking.
Such fears are a direct response to the built environment, with research showing that factors such as street lighting and conditions of pavements are key aspects of how safe women feel . Lighting is often the deciding factor: 60% of women who feel unsafe walking to and from public transport cite poor lighting as the primary reason.
For decades, urban walkers have been treated like vehicles, with mapping tools optimising routes for a single metric – travel time – while treating a dark alley and a high street as identical, if the distance is the same. The question of feeling safe has been largely overlooked by this technology.
Part of the reason for this has been a lack of unified data. While local authorities and police forces collect vast amounts of information regarding street lighting, CCTV locations and crime incidents, this data is typically fragmented, incompatible or locked in static PDFs.
To bridge this gap, my team and I developed a data pipeline to aggregate these and other sources. In London, this required issuing dozens of freedom of information requests to borough councils to obtain precise geospatial data on over half a million street lights and thousands of public CCTV cameras. Our lighting map was awarded first prize in the 2025 UCL data visualisation competition.
We then combined this information with official police crime datasets, urban features such as the location of parks, industrial areas and run-down buildings, plus open-source Mapillary and OpenStreetMap data to “safety score” individual street segments.
Even then, objective data is only half the picture. Perceived safety – how safe a street feels to someone walking it – is critical to the route choices they make. To model this at scale, we turned to Artificial Intelligence: specifically, OpenAI’s vision-language model Clip (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-Training).
Unlike traditional computer vision that detects discrete objects such as street lamps, Clip (and similar vision-language models) encodes the semantic meaning of an entire scene – converting both visual data and user-provided text prompts into mathematical vectors.
Classifying subjective viewpoints such as “feels safe” or “quite risky” is an ongoing area of research. But in our 2025 study, we found a high correlation between the way AI and our human testers perceived safety, based on 500 photographs of London street segments.
While we now hope to scale this approach to modelling urban safety to millions of streets in the UK and beyond, we are realistic about the limitations. Past crime and urban design data can inform safer choices, but they cannot predict individual incidents. Our model is designed to support decision-making not guarantee safety, and it should sit alongside wider efforts by venues, councils and police to make night-time streets safer.
Derry’s early adoption
Since launching its beta version, the Safest Way app has been adopted by approximately 1,000 users, primarily in London and Derry, where most of the safety infrastructure is fully mapped.
Coordinating the Derry launch from afar was a challenge. A Safest Way team member visited the city early in 2025 to learn about the city’s complex political landscape firsthand. But the pilot’s success was made possible largely thanks to our partners, iCat.
The volunteer group’s co-founder, Stephen Henry, told the Irish News that the idea to bring the app to the city had come about following some attacks on women there in 2024.
The group now distributes beer mats with Safest Way logos and QR codes in local pubs. “We encourage staff to download the app too,” Henry points out, “as they often don’t leave the premises until 3am or later”.
Having recently showcased our technology at the Prototypes for Humanity conference in Dubai, we are now scaling the app’s data coverage – from street lighting to AI-modelled perception of safety – to cover all of England and then the rest of the UK. We aim to close the information gap that currently forces vulnerable groups to pay a safety tax.
In Derry, the technology already provides a digital layer of protection that complements the physical presence of volunteers. By including this tech in their vulnerability training for security staff and using it during their patrols, iCat is moving beyond reactive assistance to proactive risk reduction.
This article was commissioned in conjunction with Prototypes for Humanity, a global initiative that showcases and accelerates academic innovation to solve social and environmental challenges. The Conversation is the media partner of Prototypes for Humanity 2025.
Ilya Ilyankou receives PhD funding from the UKRI’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Ordnance Survey. He is a co-founder and chief technology officer of Safest Way, a startup supported by the Ordnance Survey’s Geovation accelerator programme. This article was commissioned in conjunction with Prototypes for Humanity, a global initiative that showcases and accelerates academic innovation to solve social and environmental challenges. The Conversation is the media partner of Prototypes for Humanity 2025.
