Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Donald Amuah, Lecturer in Accounting and Finance, University of South Wales

When the global financial crisis hit in 2008, banks around the world collapsed or came close to it. Governments were forced to step in with billions of pounds of public money to stop the system imploding.

In response, regulators promised change. In the UK, these reforms were reinforced by ring-fencing, which separated everyday retail banking from riskier investment activities. The aim was simple: protect the public.

Our latest research looks at what actually happened next. Using more than 20 years of data, we studied how these post-crisis rules affected the UK’s four largest retail banks: HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and NatWest Group. In a system dominated by a handful of large institutions, there is a deeper question. If regulation made banks both safer and richer, who really benefited?

After 2008, regulators cracked down on excessive risk-taking. Capital rules were tightened, forcing banks to rely more on their own funds. Liquidity rules required them to hold enough cash and safe assets to survive sudden shocks.

These changes worked. The system is now far more resilient than it was before the crash. But this came at a cost to competition in the banking market – and so to consumers.

Higher capital levels consistently improved profitability at the largest banks. In plain terms, being forced to hold more of their own money made them look safer to investors and lenders. That reduced their funding costs and boosted returns.

Liquidity rules had a weaker effect on overall profits, but they did increase interest margins, which is the gap between what banks pay savers and what they charge borrowers. In other words, regulation didn’t just stabilise the big banks. It strengthened them.

We also found that productivity barely improved over time. When efficiency did fall – during the financial crisis and again during the COVID pandemic – it was mainly due to operational problems, not a lack of technology. Recovery depended on internal management fixes rather than innovation.

Our findings matter because the UK banking market is already highly concentrated. Large institutions can spread the cost of compliance across enormous balance sheets. They have diversified income streams and access to global funding. But smaller banks and building societies don’t.

For challengers, the fixed costs of regulation bite much harder. Higher reporting requirements, capital buffers and liquidity rules limit their ability to grow, invest or compete on price. The result is that reforms designed to make the system safer also raised barriers to entry.

So, post-crisis regulation reinforced the dominance of the biggest players. The market power of HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds and NatWest became more entrenched, not weakened. Stability came at the price of competition.

What this means for customers

You can see the effects on the high street. A small number of large banks now dominate everyday banking. Mortgage rates, savings products and current accounts look strikingly similar across providers. Branch closures have accelerated, while access to in-person services has shrunk, especially outside major cities.

Despite rising profits at the biggest banks, service has not noticeably improved for many customers. With less competitive pressure, there is little incentive to cut fees, raise savings rates or innovate. In this sense, consumers may have paid indirectly for stability, through fewer choices and less diversity, particularly in smaller communities.

Post-crisis reforms have delivered a safer banking system, and that does matter. Deposits are better protected. Essential services are more secure. But our research highlights a difficult trade-off.

Capital rules improved resilience without lasting damage to profitability or efficiency. Liquidity rules remain essential, but may need careful calibration to avoid unnecessarily constraining lending.

More broadly, regulation alone cannot deliver a healthy banking sector. Long-term performance depends on better cost control, stronger risk management and improved lending standards.

---

Read more:
Mandelson and the financial crash: why the Epstein allegations are so shocking

---

These issues sit at the heart of today’s policy debate, including the Bank of England’s recent decision to cut capital requirements. While intended to boost lending and growth, some critics argue it is more likely to fuel shareholder payouts than increased credit supply. Our findings support those concerns.

The UK appears to have traded diversity for stability. But weakening bank resilience is not the answer. If policymakers want stronger lending and better outcomes for customers, they should focus on encouraging reinvestment, improving efficiency and strengthening competition, not simply making it easier for already dominant banks to return cash to investors.

The lesson of the past 15 years is clear. Regulation can make banks safer. But unless it is designed with market power in mind, it can also make the biggest players even bigger.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How post-2008 financial reforms quietly strengthened Britain’s banking giants – https://theconversation.com/how-post-2008-financial-reforms-quietly-strengthened-britains-banking-giants-276303

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Elke Schwarz, Professor of Political Theory, Queen Mary University of London

The very public feud between the US Department of Defense (also known these days as the Department of War) and its AI technology supplier Anthropic is unusual for pitting state might against corporate power. In the military space, at least, these are usually cosy bedfellows.

The origin of this disagreement dates back months, amid repeated criticisms from Donald Trump’s AI and crypto “czar”, David Sacks, about the company’s supposedly woke policy stances.

But tensions ramped up following media reports that Anthropic technology had been used in the violent abduction of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro by the US military in January 2026. It was alleged this caused discontent inside the San Francisco-based company.

Anthropic has denied this, with company insiders suggesting it did not find or raise any violations of its policies in the wake of the Maduro operation.

Nonetheless, the US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has issued Anthropic with an ultimatum. Unless the company relaxes its ethical limits policy by 5.01pm Washington time on Friday, February 27, the US government has suggested it could invoke the 1950 Defense Production Act. This would allow the Department of Defense (DoD) to appropriate the use of this technology as it wishes.

At the same time, Anthropic could be designated a supply chain risk, putting its government contracts in danger. These extraordinary measures may appear contradictory, but they are consistent with the current US administration’s approach, which favours big gestures and policy ambiguity.

At the heart of the dispute is the question of how Anthropic’s large language model (LLM) Claude is used in a military context. Across many sectors of industry, Claude does a range of automated tasks including writing, coding, reasoning and analysis.

In July 2024, US data analytics company Palantir announced it was partnering with Anthropic to “bring Claude AI models … into US Government intelligence and defense operations”. Anthropic then signed a US$200 million (£150 million) contract with the DoD in July 2025, stipulating certain terms via its “acceptable use policy”.

These would, for example, disallow the use of Claude in mass surveillance of US citizens or fully autonomous weapon systems which, once activated, can select and engage targets with no human involvement.

According to Anthropic, either would violate its definition of “responsible AI”. Hegseth and the DoD have pushed back, characterising such limits as unduly restrictive in a geopolitical environment marked by uncertainty, instability and blurred lines.

Responsible AI should, they insist, encompass “any lawful use” of AI models by the US military. A memorandum issued by Hegseth on January 9 2026 stated:

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and social ideology have no place in the Department of War, so we must not employ AI models which incorporate ideological ‘tuning’ that interferes with their ability to provide objectively truthful responses to user prompts.

The memo instructed that the term “any lawful use” should be incorporated in future DoD contracts for AI services within 180 days.

Anthropic’s competitors are lining up

Anthropic’s red lines do not rule out the mass surveillance of human communities at large – only American citizens. And while it draws the line at fully autonomous weapons, the multitude of evolving uses of AI to inform, accelerate or scale up violence in ways that severely limit opportunities for moral restraint are not mentioned in its acceptable use policy.

At present, Anthropic has a competitive advantage. Its LLM model is integrated into US government interfaces with sufficient levels of clearance to offer a superior product. But Anthropic’s competitors are lining up.

Palantir has expanded its business with the Pentagon significantly in recent months, giving rise to more AI models.

Meanwhile, Google recently updated its ethical guidelines, dropping its pledge not to use AI for weapons development and surveillance. OpenAI has likewise modified its mission statement, removing “safety” as a core value, and Elon Musk’s xAI (creator of the Grok chatbot) has agreed to the Pentagon’s “any lawful use” standard.

A testing point for military AI

For C.S. Lewis, courage was the master virtue, since it represents “the form of every virtue at the testing point”. Anthropic now faces such a testing point.

On February 24, the company announced the latest update to its responsible scaling policy – “the voluntary framework we use to mitigate catastrophic risks from AI systems”. According to Time magazine, the changes include “scrapping the promise to not release AI models if Anthropic can’t guarantee proper risk mitigations in advance”.

Anthropic’s chief science officer, Jared Kaplan, told Time: “We didn’t really feel, with the rapid advance of AI, that it made sense for us to make unilateral commitments … if competitors are blazing ahead.”

Ethical language saturates the press releases of Silicon Valley companies eager to distinguish themselves from “bad actors” in Russia, China and elsewhere. But ethical words and actions are not the same, because the latter often entails a real-world cost.

That such a highly public spectacle is happening at this time is perhaps no accident. In early February, representatives of many countries – but not the US – came together for the third time to find ways to agree on “responsible AI” in the military domain. And on March 2-6, the UN will convene its latest conference discussing how best to limit the use of emerging technologies for lethal autonomous weapons systems.

Such legal and ethical debates about the role of AI technology in the future of warfare are critical, and overdue. Anthropic deserves credit for apparently resisting the US military’s efforts to undercut its ethical guidelines. But AI’s role is likely to be tested in many more conflict situations before agreement is reached.

Elke Schwarz is affiliated with the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC)

Neil Renic is affiliated with the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC)

– ref. Anthropic v the US military: what this public feud says about the use of AI in warfare – https://theconversation.com/anthropic-v-the-us-military-what-this-public-feud-says-about-the-use-of-ai-in-warfare-276999

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Libby John, Professor of Sustainability, University of Lincoln

A yellow disc with rays of white – an icon of childhood drawings and a flower with healing properties. We have picnics on it, play football on it and make daisy chains out of it.

The common or lawn daisy, Bellis perennis, is probably familiar to most people living in temperate climates. But there may be few things you do not know about this fascinating and perhaps under estimated flower.

A flower made of little flowers

Each daisy is actually an inflorescence – a multitude of tiny flowers called florets working together to set out a buffet for pollinators. There are two types of florets. The tube florets form the yellow centre of the inflorescence, about 100 in a typical daisy. You can see them open in sequence over several days from the outside inwards, revealing their treasures of nectar and pollen.

The ray florets have the long white petals. They are female, whereas each tiny tube floret has a set of male and female floral attributes. Every tube floret produces pollen and nectar as well as having an ovary which can make a tiny fruit at the bottom.

---

Many people think of plants as nice-looking greens. Essential for clean air, yes, but simple organisms. A step change in research is shaking up the way scientists think about plants: they are far more complex and more like us than you might imagine. This blossoming field of science is too delightful to do it justice in one or two stories.
This article is part of a series, Plant Curious, exploring scientific studies that challenge the way you view plantlife.

---

The white and yellow contrast between the two types of florets is probably attractive to pollinators. Watch a pollinating insect land on a daisy and it will probe each open floret for a sip of nectar. The florets all sit on a capitulum (a cone-shaped platform), which is surrounded by green phyllaries (or bracts). The capitulum also bears the miniature fruits called achenes which are one-seeded fruits.

Unlike some members of the same family, such as the dandelion, the little seeds have no hairy parachute or pappus to help them disperse. This means that most probably drop close to the parent plant, although they can also be dispersed on muddy paws or shoes, and by worms, ants and birds.

Intrepid explorers

The formal name of the daisy – Bellis perennis – was chosen in the 18th century by biologist Carl Linnaeus, who invented the system by which botanists still name species. Bellis is probably from the Latin for beautiful and perennis for perennial or long-lasting. The word daisy is thought to come from “day’s eye”, a reflection of the fact that the flowers close at night.

However, the word daisy is applied to many other species with similar inflorescences and is used to describe a whole family of plants, the Asteraceae. This is the largest family of flowering plants, incorporating species from thistles to sunflowers, almost all of which have the same inflorescence structure of smaller florets collected on a capitulum. There are over 32,000 species in this family, from tiny daisies to large tropical trees. They are found in most ecosystems on earth, except Antarctica.

This indicates they have a successful evolutionary strategy that has allowed them to adapt and spread. The little lawn daisy has travelled around the world from its native distribution in Europe to be ubiquitous in temperate climates from New Zealand to the US.

Circadian strategy

Most flowers stay open all the time but some, like daisies, open towards the sun in the morning to maximise warmth. This may make them more attractive to insect pollinators who need heat to regulate their body temperatures.

The ray florets do the opening and closing, covering the inner disc florets when closed. On cloudy cool days the daisies might not open at all. The movement of the petals is likely to be as a result of cell growth on either side of the long white ligule of the ray floret, with the cells on both sides of the petals growing at different rates.

Resourceful

Gardeners who want the perfect lawn may see daisies as a nuisance. But a 2021 study showed that lawn daisies provided up to 11% of the nectar available to pollinators in some urban environments, making them important food for our urban bees, butterflies, hoverflies and other pollinating insects. These insects are, in turn, food for so many other animals along the food chain.

Daisies can self-pollinate. They can also clone themselves – sending stolons (runners) sideways to colonise a patch of ground. Bellis perennis seems to be well adapted to human-made habitats, with its short sward or dense mat. Daisies with longer swards tend to get outcompeted as they only produce leaves in a rosette near the ground. Its natural habitats include areas of low or disturbed vegetation such as trampled ground, stream edges and lake margins.

Bellis perennis, in common with most flowering plants, forms associations with fungi in its roots. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi have been co-evolving with plants for the last 400 million years, allowing the colonisation of land by early plants. The plant feeds the fungi with carbohydrates and in turn, the fungi reach out into the soil and supports the plant with nutrients. This ancient partnership between plants and soil fungi still mediates plant interactions with other soil microbes, and regulates plant-plant interactions.

Human connection

The Asteraceae is probably the most popular plant family in popular medicine containing a wide range of active plant chemicals or phytochemicals with antioxidant, anti-inflamatory, antimicrobial, diuretic and wound-healing properties. Bellis perennis itself has had many common names over the centuries including gardener’s friend, bruisewort and poor-man’s arnica.

It feels like daisies have always been part of our lives in the temperate parts of the world and always will be. Daisies have long featured in literature and poetry, mentioned by Chaucer (The Good Woman), Shakespeare (Ophelia’s flowers in Hamlet) and the 19th century poet John Clare.

But the species that are thriving today are not necessarily assured a future. For example, many once common species of birds, like swifts and skylarks, are in decline now in the UK. Arable weeds such as common corncockle (Agrostemma githago) or cornflower (Centaurea cyanus) that were once a nuisance in crops are now rare species that need intervention to prevent their extinction.

So, we must treasure and monitor these flowers, to ensure they are part of our future as well as our past.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The wonders of daisies: the buffet we walk on – https://theconversation.com/the-wonders-of-daisies-the-buffet-we-walk-on-241396

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

South Korea’s very low birth rate and ageing population have long served as a cautionary tale for other governments worried that they’ll see similar demographic challenges.

But now, for the second year running, more people in South Korea are having children, according to new preliminary data published by the ministry for data and statistics.

The 6.8% rise in births in 2025 is the largest rise since 2007, and has taken the country’s total fertility rate to 0.80, up from 0.75 in 2024. The news is being cautiously celebrated, but with South Korea’s overall population still shrinking, it is yet to reverse its demographic fortunes.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Stuart Gietel-Basten, a demographer and professor of social science and public policy at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, about how South Korea has got to this point. Part of the reason is that a generation of so-called “echo-boomers”, born in the 1990s after a relaxation of the coutry’s strict anti-natalist policies, are now starting to have children.

But Gietel-Basten says many of the issues stopping people in South Korea from having children remain, despite huge sums spent by the government on tax incentives, housing benefit and childcare support. “ Unless you change underlying structural issues around gender roles, around work, culture, and so on, then even well-meaning policies are not necessarily going to have the impact that they should,” he says.

Listen to the interview with Stuart Gietel-Basten on The Conversation Weekly podcast. This episode was written and produced by Gemma Ware and Katie Flood. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Gemma Ware is the executive producer.

Newsclips in this episode from WION.

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. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

Stuart Gietel-Basten is a also guest professor at Osaka University and an adjunct professor at Khalifa University.

– ref. South Korea’s birth rate is rising – but the population is still shrinking – https://theconversation.com/south-koreas-birth-rate-is-rising-but-the-population-is-still-shrinking-276924

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Victor (Vik) Pérez, Associate Professor of Practice, Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Hub, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

For most of human existence, listening was closely tied to moments that carried meaning, emotion or survival. Nature supplied the backdrop – wind, water, animals – and music surfaced in hunting rituals, healing ceremonies and communal celebrations.

That balance began to shift with the industrial revolution, and the arrival of many loud, unnatural sounds. Today, many people move through the day with a near-constant stream of sounds: playlists for work, ambient study tracks, noise-cancelling headphones on commutes, podcasts on walks, background music for comfort.

Sound is no longer occasional or, for much of the time, collective. It is personal, portable and continuous.

What has changed is not only how we listen, but what listening is for. Many people use sound to manage how they feel and perform – to drown out distractions, stay motivated, reduce stress or make demanding tasks feel easier. Streaming platforms use music labels such as “deep focus” or “workflow” – signalling that these sounds are designed to do something for your mind.

There are upsides to this modern soundscape. In busy workplaces or homes, shaping the auditory environment can restore a sense of control and reduce disturbance – especially from intelligible speech. What we listen to can be a key tool for emotional self-regulation.

But there are downsides too. Continuous audio can crowd out silence, which supports recovery and reflection. What often disappears in a continuous soundscape is not just silence but the space to think. This daily exposure to non-stop music, chat and other sounds may be shaping how you think, decide and cope without you even noticing.

The always-on effect

Neuroscience points not to a dramatic rewiring of our brains through this changing audio experience, but a gradual adaptation. Repeated sound environments shape how attention is allocated, how effort is experienced and how mental states stabilise over time.

Those effects vary, though, depending on the context. Music can support repetitive or low-complexity tasks by increasing engagement and reducing boredom. But when tasks rely on language, problem-solving or new learning, the same music can compete for attention, making sustained thinking feel more effortful.

How listening shapes thinking:

Reviews consistently find that music with lyrics is more likely to interfere with reading, writing and verbal reasoning, and that harder tasks are generally more vulnerable to interference. When sound competes with task demands, it can increase mental effort and fatigue, even if outward performance remains unchanged.

Experimental work suggests higher background sound levels can impair auditory working-memory performance — the capacity to hold and rehearse spoken information while filtering competing sounds. In other words, sound can reshape how thinking is experienced from the inside, long before measurable performance changes become visible.

Because these shifts accumulate gradually, they rarely announce themselves as effects. Instead, they shape mental defaults – how patiently you think, how quickly you judge and how you cope when answers aren’t clear.

Here are some ideas, based partly on my work exploring sound-based cognitive environments and learning readiness, for how to redesign your soundscape before it designs you.

Three principles of audio happiness

A simple principle is to match the sound environment to the kind of thinking you’re doing. Some types of louder sound can support repetitive work, while quieter conditions are often better for reading, writing or analytical reasoning.

While lyrical music is more likely to disrupt reading, writing and analytical work, simpler sound is often safer for language-heavy tasks. By contrast, for repetitive or low-complexity work, self-selected or familiar music may support engagement for some listeners by tuning arousal into a more workable range.

Familiar or self-selected music can sometimes support repetitive work because the brain spends less effort processing novelty. Instead of continuously analysing new sounds, attention can remain anchored on the task itself, helping stabilise alertness during routine activities.

A second principle is self-monitoring. Generic “focus playlist” advice is less useful than paying attention to your own signals: rising distraction, mental fatigue, irritability or the feeling that you are working harder than you should. Audio that boosts energy or enjoyment does not always improve sustained concentration.

When these signals appear, pausing your soundtrack and shifting to a simpler sound environment can help reset your attention balance. Reducing linguistic content, lowering volume or introducing short periods of silence may ease the cognitive load before performance begins to suffer.

Which brings me on to the third principle: protect silence. Quiet time supports neural recovery and internally directed thought – functions linked to default-mode brain activity, when regions linked to reflection, memory integration and future planning become more active.

But valuing silence does not mean removing sound altogether. Beginning complex tasks in quieter settings, introducing short sound-free intervals between activities, or ending the day without continuous background audio can give the brain space to reset attention and recover from sustained input.

Environmental noise can also influence sleep quality by increasing micro-awakenings and reducing deeper restorative stages, even when people do not fully wake up. Many people use sound to help them sleep, but evidence shows it can have a disruptive effect on sleep quality.

Day or night, the sounds we live with do more than just fill the background. They help shape the mental conditions under which we learn, decide and live.

And that is the perhaps uncomfortable point. If you don’t actively choose your soundscape, someone or something will choose it for you – and your mind may start adapting before you realise it.

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

– ref. What the constant sound of modern life is doing to our minds – https://theconversation.com/what-the-constant-sound-of-modern-life-is-doing-to-our-minds-276486

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adriana Marin, Lecturer in International Relations, Coventry University

The death of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the leader of the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), on February 22 was immediately framed as the fall of a narco kingpin. Images of gun battles, torched vehicles and retaliatory violence dominated headlines. Commentators spoke of a power vacuum, of fragmentation, of the possible weakening of one of Mexico’s biggest cartels.

It was presented as the removal of a singular, hyper-violent male figure at the apex of a criminal empire. But this framing tells us more about how we imagine organised crime than about how it actually works.

The obsession with kingpins rests on a dramatic understanding of cartel power: a gun in one hand, territory in the other, masculinity performed through brutality. El Mencho embodied that image.

Yet cartels are not sustained by spectacle alone. They endure because someone moves the money, launders the profits, manages the assets, cultivates legitimate fronts and binds networks of loyalty through family. In the case of CJNG, that figure was not only El Mencho. It was also, allegedly, his wife Rosalinda González Valencia.

González has often been described as “La Jefa” (the Spanish feminine form of “the boss”). It’s a label that gestures toward authority while still situating her in relation to her husband. But she was not simply the spouse of a drug lord. She came from the Valencia family, historically linked to Los Cuinis, a network deeply embedded in CJNG’s financial operations.

Authorities have alleged that she oversaw dozens of businesses, property holdings and shell companies tied to the cartel’s laundering apparatus. Arrested multiple times and jailed for five year for money laundering in 2021 (she was released last yearfor good behaviour), she occupied the grey zone where criminal capital bleeds into the legal economy. If El Mencho represented the cartel’s violent face, González represented its economic spine.

This is where gender matters. Organised crime is routinely portrayed as an arena of exaggerated masculinity. Women appear in these stories as victims, girlfriends, trafficked bodies or glamorous accessories.

Even when they are prosecuted, they are often framed as appendages: “the wife of”, “the daughter of”, “the partner of”. Such language, while often difficult to avoid, obscures the structural reality that many cartels operate through kinship capitalism, where family is not sentimental but strategic.

Within these systems, wives are not incidental. They help keep the business secrets in environments where betrayal is fatal. In patriarchal criminal orders, loyalty is policed through blood ties.

A spouse managing accounts is not a deviation from power but an extension of it. Gender does not exclude women from authority, but rather reshapes how that authority is exercised and perceived.

The sensational truth is this: violence may conquer territory, but finance governs it. And, as the International Crisis Group – a western non-government organisation which aims to prevent conflict – spelled out in a 2023 report, finance in many cartels is deeply gendered.

This does not mean romanticising women’s roles within organised crime. Nor does it suggest emancipation through criminality.

The power reportedly exercised by figures like González tends to be situated within male-dominated hierarchies and violent systems that are also responsible for extreme forms of violence against women, including femicide and sexual exploitation. The same structures that allow elite women to wield financial authority simultaneously reproduce brutal patriarchal control elsewhere. That contradiction is not accidental – it is the way things work.

El Mencho’s death exposes that contradiction. When the state removes a male leader, the assumption is that the organisation will collapse or descend into chaos. But cartels are not merely built around a single dominant figure. They are hybrid enterprises combining coercion, corporate structures and family governance. The removal of the public face does not automatically dismantle the private architecture.

Hidden power structure

The question, then, is not simply who will pick up the gun, but who keeps the books. Who maintains the corporate fronts? Who sustains cross-border financial channels? Who negotiates the transformation of illicit profits into legitimate capital? These are not secondary concerns. They determine whether an organisation fragments or adapts to a leader’s death or imprisonment.

By centring El Mencho alone, media narratives are perpetuating a blindness to the role of women in cartels. They equate power with violence and masculinity with control, leaving the economic and relational dimensions of authority under-analysed.

Yet organised crime studies increasingly demonstrate that durability lies in governance, not gunfire. Governance depends on management, financial oversight, logistical coordination, and embedded social networks. These functions are often feminised – not because women are naturally suited to them, but because patriarchal systems allocate them in ways that render them less conspicuous and therefore less targeted.

There is something unsettling about recognising the strategic authority of cartel wives. It complicates comfortable binaries of victim and perpetrator. It challenges the idea that women in violent systems are either coerced or just marginal figures.

But in Italy, Rafaella D’Alterio reportedly maintained the operational and financial coherence of her Camorra clan following her husband’s death. She did this – not through spectacular violence – but through administrative control, alliance-building, and family networks. Her case, as many others, underscores that durability often lies in governance rather than gunfire.

Decapitation strategies – killing a cartel’s leader – are politically dramatic and symbolically powerful. But they rest on the assumption that criminal organisations are vertically dependent on a single male. If financial governance and kinship networks remain intact, the system may regenerate.

El Mencho’s death is therefore both a rupture and a revelation. It is a rupture in the sense that the figurehead of one of the world’s most powerful cartels has fallen. But it is also a revelation of how narrow our understanding of organised crime remains.

We fixate on the spectacle of masculine violence while overlooking the quieter, gendered infrastructures that sustain it. To understand cartels solely through their kingpins is to misunderstand them. Power in organised crime does not reside only in the man with the gun, but also in the women who, whether publicly acknowledged or not, often stand at the centre of that architecture.

Adriana Marin 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. La Jefa: the wife of slain drug kingpin El Mencho and the women at the heart of the cartels – https://theconversation.com/la-jefa-the-wife-of-slain-drug-kingpin-el-mencho-and-the-women-at-the-heart-of-the-cartels-276912

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alexander Titov, Lecturer in Modern European History, Queen’s University Belfast

As Ukrainian officials meet with US negotiators in Geneva with the possibility of full three-way talks involving Moscow, Kyiv and Washington in early March, there’s a glimmer of hope that an end to the conflict may be in sight. But the fact that after four years this remains a glimmer speaks volumes about the difficulties in ending the war.

Even Donald Trump, who promised to end the war in one day, has now stopped issuing ultimatums and deadlines to the warring parties.

In what has become a war of attrition, discussions about vulnerabilities and losses are only meaningful when compared with those of the opposing side. Reflecting on how each side’s theories of victory changed over the four years helps to grasp the war’s overall trajectory.

Russia’s initial plan for a swift knockout of Ukraine was foiled within the first few days of the invasion. Instead, it settled into a conflict of grinding the enemy down through slow advances on the battlefield and debilitating attacks on the energy infrastructure in the rear, with the expectation in Moscow that at some point Ukraine would throw in the towel.

But the question is whether Russia has enough manpower and economic resources for this strategy.

Russia is finally experiencing economic difficulties due to a combination of western sanctions and falling oil prices, which fell from over US$100 (£74) per barrel in 2022 to approximately $60 in 2025. In 2026, the Kremlin had to raise taxes and reduce its reliance on oil, whose share of Russia’s budget fell from 40% in 2019 to 25% in 2025. Perhaps the Kremlin is beginning to realise that this cannot continue forever.

But Russia’s weakness is relative to that of Ukraine. This applies to war losses: Putin believes that Ukraine’s manpower losses are higher than Russia’s (which flies in the face of what some western researchers estimate) and that Ukraine, with a much smaller population than Russia, has much less staying power.

Ukraine’s theory of victory, meanwhile, has evolved from a belief in an outright military victory in 2022–23, to just trying to exhaust Russia’s military in 2025 by using the “wall of drones”. But as the Russian army had captured some key strongholds, such as Siversk, Pokrovsk and Hulyaipole, Kyiv’s new defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov (the fourth since the start of the war), declared that Ukraine’s path to victory now was to kill 50,000 Russian soldiers per month. That’s more than most estimates of Russia’s recruitment, which is believed to be around 30,000 per month.

Western politicians and analysts have embraced this theory, arguing that Russia’s unsustainable losses justify Ukraine continuing with the war with their support.

But after four years, Kyiv’s position is hampered by the loss of the full support of what was once its key ally: Washington. The Ukraine frontline is being slowly but steadily forced back and in 2025 for the first time in the war there was no major Ukrainian offensive.

Kyiv’s best hope is to freeze the conflict along the current line of contact, get security guarantees from the west, join the EU, and maintain pressure on Russia through western sanctions. Unfortunately for Ukraine, there are issues with every item on this list.

The situation at home is challenging and funding from the west is declining, thanks to the US. Meanwhile, its energy infrastructure has been severely damaged, there are ongoing issues with unpopular mobilisations, and the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has suffered a significant blow from a major corruption scandal involving his closest aides.

However, crucially, Ukraine is still fighting and its best hope now is an economic collapse in Russia. Attacks on Russia’s oil industry were intended to hasten that collapse, but Moscow’s destruction of Ukraine’s energy grid has demonstrated its greater capacity for escalation. This year will not be easy for Ukraine.

Europe’s position

Since the start of the invasion, Europe’s ideal plan for helping Ukraine win has not changed. It is believed that a combination of economic sanctions and military aid to Ukraine will eventually cause Russia’s economic collapse and military defeat.

Other than this there is no European plan to end the war, except to try to prevent Trump from striking a deal which would favour Russia and gut Ukraine. For the best part of a year, the so-called coalition of the willing (Kyiv’s European allies led by France, the UK and Germany) has been talking about post-war plans with itself.

But the irony is that – despite being Ukraine’s biggest donor – coalition countries have been excluded from negotiating with Russia, whose consent to any western military deployment as a security guarantee for Kyiv will be essential.

Whatever happens, the EU will have to pay Ukraine’s bills, either to continue the war or to cover its post-war reconstruction. The EU’s promise to accept Ukraine as a member would also require increased funding over an indefinite period.

Whose side is the US on?

Under the Biden presidency, the US and Europe had the same theory of victory. However, since returning to power in January 2025, Trump has forced Europe to finance the supply of US military equipment to Ukraine. Meanwhile, it has opened negotiations with Russia to end the war.

The US push for peace remains a mystery. After all, if the Ukrainians are willing to fight and the Europeans are willing to pay for it, it is unclear why the US is so eager to end a war that is exhausting one of its geopolitical rivals in Russia.

Perhaps Trump genuinely wants to stop the killing. Or perhaps he believes that if the war is not stopped now, the eventual peace deal will be much worse for Ukraine and the west. Or maybe it’s simply a matter of stopping “Biden’s war”. A war that Trump has no interest in and that he clearly feels is hampering his plans to do business with Putin.

As with Gaza, a deal can be reached only when the parties involved in the conflict are exhausted and ready to stop fighting. In these circumstances, Trump’s mediation could succeed. For now, however, each side is still clinging to its vision of victory.

On its fourth anniversary, there is hope that this may be the last year of the war. While all sides are growing increasingly exhausted, it will be the “last mile” that matters most — who can muster the willpower and resources in the final stretch to end the war on their terms.

Alexander Titov 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. Ukraine: after four years of war, exhaustion on both sides is the main hope for peace – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-after-four-years-of-war-exhaustion-on-both-sides-is-the-main-hope-for-peace-276783

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrea Loux Jarman, Senior Lecturer in Law, Bournemouth University

The US Supreme Court told Donald Trump on February 20 that the tariffs he has used to try and bend the world to his will are unlawful. Tariffs are taxes and it is not for the president to impose them. According to the US constitution, Congress holds the power of the purse.

Trump relied on the terms of a 1977 law designed to address national emergencies, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, to impose the majority of his tariffs. The court held that this law did not provide Trump with the legal authority to impose them.

In a post on social media following the court’s decision, Trump called the justices who ruled against him a “Disgrace to our Nation”. And he has subsequently announced that he will rely on another law, section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, to impose worldwide tariffs of 15%.

But even if Trump’s use of that law survives legal challenge, these tariffs would be time limited. The act says that after 150 days the tariffs would continue only if Congress says so. Trump disagrees, saying in his State of the Union address on February 25 that “congressional action will not be necessary”.

Trump is a would-be “strongman” leader. Like all strongmen, his aim is to concentrate political power in himself and those closest to him. Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump has preferred to rule by way of executive order rather than through the legislative process. He has done so despite his Republican party controlling both houses of Congress.

Strongmen want to rule without the interference or oversight of legislatures and courts. But Trump has discovered that, in a constitutional democracy that is governed by the rule of law, the Supreme Court will not allow that to happen.

Resisting strongman rule

Trump is not the only western leader to experience push back from a top court when seeking to bypass the legislature. In 2019, Britain’s then-prime minister Boris Johnson wanted to fulfil his political promise to “get Brexit done” unfettered by parliament.

He advised the queen to suspend parliament for five weeks in the lead up to the UK’s “exit day” from the EU. The UK’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously that this advice was unlawful because, in the UK, parliament is sovereign. Parliament has two constitutional roles: to pass legislation and to hold the government to account.

The court held that Johnson and his ministers were constitutionally required to explain and justify their policies, decisions and actions to parliament and to answer parliament’s questions. Parliament must be free to exercise its constitutional functions, the court said, especially in times of great change.

The UK and the US have vastly different constitutions. But when faced with strongmen tactics, the supreme courts in both countries have stepped in to uphold the constitutional role of the legislature.

The function of legislatures in a democracy, US Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch declared on February 21 after invalidating Trump’s tariffs, is “to tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man”.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (another would-be strongman leader) and his justice minister, Yariv Levin, have embarked on a programme of judicial reform in recent years to strengthen the power of the executive in relation to the judiciary.

The Israeli parliament passed amendments to the country’s quasi-constitutional Basic Laws in 2023, which aimed to limit the power of the courts to review ministerial decisions. These reforms have caused a constitutional crisis.

Protests were staged against the reforms across Israel in 2023, and military reservists threatened to not report for service. The protests ended abruptly with the October 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel later that year.

Israel’s Supreme Court struck down one amendment to the Basic Laws in early 2024, with all 15 justices convening for the first time in Israeli history. The court held that it had the power to review the Basic Laws and declared an amendment – that would have limited the court’s ability to review ministerial decisions – unlawful.

However, the ruling has not derailed Netanyahu’s plans to reform the Israeli legal system. In 2025, the Israeli parliament passed a law that introduces more political control over judicial appointments. A case challenging this law will be heard by the full bench of the Israeli Supreme Court in summer 2026.

Meanwhile, Levin is refusing to cooperate with the president of the supreme court, Yitzhak Amit, to make judicial appointments. The Israeli government is also seeking to dismiss the independent attorney-general, Gali Baharav-Miara, who has argued against the reform.

In his response to the recent decision in the US to strike down Trump’s tariffs, French president Emmanuel Macron said: “It is not bad to have a supreme court and, therefore, the rule of law. It is good to have power and counterweights to power in democracies.”

At a time when strongman tactics appear to be on the rise, the courts are providing the last line of defence against authoritarian rule.

Andrea Loux Jarman 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 tariff ruling shows top courts serve as last line of defence against strongman rule – https://theconversation.com/trump-tariff-ruling-shows-top-courts-serve-as-last-line-of-defence-against-strongman-rule-276571

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Fredrik NG Andersson, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Lund University

Sweden has been part of the European Union for 30 years, yet it is one of the few EU countries that has kept its own currency, the krona. Legally, Sweden is expected to join the euro one day but in reality, that day keeps being pushed into the future.

This makes Sweden something of an outlier in Europe. In a referendum in 2003, 56% of voters said no to the euro, and no government since then has felt confident enough to revisit the question.

Now however, as Europe faces new economic and geopolitical pressures, there have been reports that the mood in Sweden is beginning to shift. The country’s central bank (Riksbank) recently acknowledged that the economic uncertainty caused by US president Donald Trump’s erratic tariff policies had “widened the range of potential outcomes”. But despite the headlines, any move would represent a major change in direction for Swedes.

Sweden’s relationship with European integration has always been pragmatic. Cooperation has been viewed primarily through an economic lens rather than as a political project.

During the cold war, the country’s policy of neutrality kept it outside the European Economic Community (the original European free trade area). When Sweden finally joined the EU in 1995, it did so largely because the creation of the single market in 1993 had reshaped trade across Europe. For a small, export-orientated economy, access to that market was essential.

---

Read more:
How Canada and Sweden are redefining northern security and co-operation

---

From the beginning, Swedish debate about EU membership centred on growth, jobs and stability rather than on questions of shared political identity. That economic focus would later shape attitudes towards the euro as well.

A second formative experience came from Sweden’s own financial and currency crisis in the early 1990s. After a period of currency turmoil, the Riksbank hiked interest rates to an astonishing 500% in a bid to prevent devaluation.

When this failed, the krona was allowed to float (meaning it could be traded on currency markets, which would determine its value) after being pegged to other currencies for more than half a century. Sweden then entered a deep recession.

The crisis marked a turning point. Sweden had moved to a floating exchange rate, the Riksbank was granted independence, and strict rules to prevent unsustainable budget deficits were introduced.

Over time these reforms restored credibility and stability. They also left a lasting imprint on public opinion: monetary independence and flexible exchange rates came to be seen by citizens as beneficial.

When the euro was being designed in the 1990s, Sweden was still recovering from its economic crisis. Public finances were strained and unemployment was high. A government-appointed commission concluded in 1996 that Sweden was not yet ready to join a monetary union. As a result, the country stayed out when the euro was launched in 1999.

Stronger on the outside?

When the 2003 referendum was called, memories of the 1990s crisis and the risks associated with fixed exchange rates were still vivid. So voters chose to remain outside.

Since then, Sweden’s economic performance has often been better than that of the euro area. Output has grown at a consistently faster pace, and the economy has weathered major shocks, including the global financial crisis, the European sovereign debt crisis and the COVID pandemic, with relative resilience.

Stronger growth has bolstered the public finances, and Sweden’s public debt ratio today stands at less than half the average level in the euro area.

As Swedish public opinion tends to evaluate European cooperation in economic terms, these comparisons matter. Support for the euro fell sharply during the euro debt crisis. Although it has recovered in recent years, roughly half of Swedes say they would vote no to joining while around one third would vote yes.

At the political level, the picture remains divided. Some parties continue to favour eventual membership, while others oppose it. The Social Democrats, Sweden’s largest party, are open to discussion but have made no commitment. The Moderate party is traditionally more pro-European and has signalled interest in reviewing the issue. The Sweden Democrats are firmly against adopting the euro.

But rising geopolitical tensions have nudged the tone of the debate. Sweden’s swift decision to join Nato in 2024 demonstrated that long-standing positions can change quickly. Some argue that deeper integration within the EU, including euro membership, would strengthen Sweden’s influence and reduce vulnerability in a more uncertain world.

If Sweden were to join, the formal process is relatively clear. It would need to participate in the EU’s exchange rate mechanism, align its legislation with euro area rules and meet the convergence criteria, such as limits on inflation and government deficits. It largely already satisfies these. In political terms, however, a new referendum would almost certainly be required.

For now, continuity appears more likely than change. Political parties remain divided. The updated review of the 1996 euro commission, chaired by the same economist, Lars Calmfors, did not agree on whether the benefits of adopting the euro would outweigh the costs.

Sweden’s approach to European integration has long been cautious and grounded in economic analysis. Unless Swedes become convinced that membership would clearly strengthen stability and long-term prosperity, the krona will probably remain as their national currency.

Fredrik NG Andersson 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. Could global tensions finally see Sweden warming towards the euro? – https://theconversation.com/could-global-tensions-finally-see-sweden-warming-towards-the-euro-276906

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Christopher Wiley, Head of Music and Media; School of Arts, Humanities and Creative Industries, University of Surrey

Like a voice from the grave, an important part of Surrey’s cultural heritage has sounded again. It is a short ceremonial brass fanfare by Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944).

Fanfares are short, rousing pieces for brass instruments. Late last year I was asked to find one to open the installation ceremony for the University of Surrey’s new vice chancellor, Professor Stephen Jarvis. As this was going to be a high-profile public event attended by hundreds of people in Guildford Cathedral, I knew I needed a unique piece of music.

Rather than commission a new work, I revived a forgotten piece instead: Smyth’s Hot Potatoes fanfare. I chose this composer because she had strong local ties and links to university research.

In 1930, eight of the most prominent British composers of the day were commissioned to write short fanfares for the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund. Each lasted about a minute.

The last of the set was written by Smyth. She based it on a military bugle call, formally titled the Men’s Meal (2nd call). The call signalled that the troops could collect their rations. It is colloquially known as Hot Potatoes. Soldiers added comic words to help remember its meaning: “Oh, pick ’em up, pick ’em up, hot potatoes …”

Three months ago, the university’s department of music and media presented a major orchestral concert for the annual nationwide Being Human Festival. Several of Smyth’s works received their modern UK premiere.

One year prior, the university installed a maquette of Smyth outside its main music performance space on campus. It is a smaller replica of the lifesize-plus statue unveiled in 2022 a few miles away in the centre of her home town, Woking. My research revealed it to be one of few statues to women composers in the world.

At the pinnacle of Smyth’s impressive musical output lies her six operas, several of which are available in modern recordings. Her other compositions include a Mass (a musical setting of the Christian liturgy), a concerto for violin and horn and a symphony-cum-oratorio. Smyth is widely known in Britain and internationally as one of the greatest women composers in classical music history. She was also an influential suffragette and a much-published author of autobiographical and other prose writings.

Yet little is known of her Hot Potatoes fanfare, possibly the last piece she ever wrote, other than its original instrumentation: four trumpets, four trombones and percussion. It is rarely even mentioned in literature on Smyth.

Composed when she was in her 70s, experiencing profound hearing difficulties and with the greatest achievements of her career behind her, its manuscript has long been lost and for many years it seems to have been generally assumed that it could never be performed again.

The piece would have held particular significance for Smyth. She was familiar with military fanfares from childhood, since her father had attained the rank of Major-General in the British Army. She quoted such bugle calls in her own music, Hot Potatoes having previously appeared in the overture to her final opera, Entente Cordiale, the centenary of the first performance of which fell last year.

While the use of Hot Potatoes is not explicitly identified in the opera’s published vocal score, an archival copy now held in the Beecham Collection at the University of Sheffield is annotated in Smyth’s own hand to indicate its origin.

Smyth’s fanfare from past to present

Smyth’s Hot Potatoes and the other fanfares in the set were first performed by students from the Royal Military School of Music (Kneller Hall Musicians) under Captain H.E. Adkins. The occasion was the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund Annual Dinner held in London’s Savoy Hotel on May 8 1930 (coincidentally the same date on which Smyth died 14 years later), from where the performance was relayed for broadcast on the BBC National Programme.

The fanfares were reprised at this annual event a couple more times, including on St Cecilia’s Day, November 22 1932. The previous June, it had also been recorded by the same ensemble for release by His Master’s Voice (HMV) toward the end of that year. But thereafter the trail runs cold.

However, the HMV recording of the fanfares yielded sufficient information for me to transcribe and arrange Smyth’s piece for students of the University of Surrey Brass Ensemble. I based this work on my wider knowledge of the composer’s output, which proved invaluable in identifying and replicating her musical idiosyncracies.

The idea came to me during research undertaken for my most recent journal article, which takes one of Smyth’s early piano pieces as a case study for exploring questions of performance and interpretation in the rediscovery of “lost” music by historically marginalised composers.

Instead of a faithful transcription, I changed the scoring (though in a nod to the original, I retained four separate trumpet parts) as well as the key of the piece. I even recomposed one bar in its entirety.

Certain details were simply too difficult to make out on the recording, while others naturally lent themselves to being enhanced (and I was convinced that there was at least one wrong note). Nonetheless, this project demonstrates the creative possibilities for bringing back music assumed to be lost to history, and for celebrating diversity by resurrecting works by neglected artists.

Fittingly, since Professor Jarvis’s installation ceremony was an official university event, I conducted the Brass Ensemble from the Cathedral’s South Balcony while wearing my doctoral robes, as had been Smyth’s own practice when wielding the baton. I hope this recovery of Smyth’s Hot Potatoes fanfare will now lead to repeat performances.

---

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

---

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

– ref. How I brought a lost fanfare by Ethel Smyth back to life – https://theconversation.com/how-i-brought-a-lost-fanfare-by-ethel-smyth-back-to-life-276479