Author: MIL OSI Publisher

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Gawthorpe, Lecturer in History and International Studies, Leiden University

As the US continues to assemble military assets in the Middle East and Europe ahead of a possible strike against Iran, Donald Trump is running up against two problems that have plagued American presidents before him.

The first is civilian misunderstanding of war. Fresh from what he sees as quick and easy victories against Iran last June and Venezuela this January, Trump wants military options which allow him to damage Iran at little risk or cost. But unfortunately for the president, no such option exists. And there are reports – which Trump denies – that his top general has warned him about the risks involved.

Despite the damage it has sustained in recent conflicts with the US and Israel, Iran maintains formidable capabilities. It has the ability to harass and perhaps close key shipping lanes, launch missile strikes against US forces and allies across the region, and perhaps carry out terrorist attacks throughout the world.

Trump’s repeated threats to overthrow the Iranian government make it much more likely Tehran will use these capabilities rather than exercising restraint as it did when the US attacked it last year.

According to several media outlets, Trump’s military advisors have informed him of these risks. The president is reportedly not taking the news well. CBS News reports that Trump is “frustrated with what aides describe as the limits of military leverage against Iran” and is pushing for options that will give him a painless victory.

These exchanges between the military and its civilian masters are reminiscent of the interventions of the 1990s. During the Clinton administration, the White House repeatedly pushed the Pentagon to come up with low-risk plans for engagement in Somalia and the Balkans. The president and his staff wanted to be seen as doing something about urgent humanitarian tragedies, but they also didn’t want to risk a political upset by getting American soldiers killed.

Top military officers, particularly the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Colin Powell, pushed back against the civilians. War entails risk, they told the White House, and American soldiers could die if risks were not weighed appropriately.

In his memoirs, Powell recalled his response to a question from Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright: “‘What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?’ I thought I would have an aneurysm.”

As so often with Trump, he is pushing this dynamic of civilian ignorance meeting military expertise to extremes. The current build-up against Iran started not with a clear strategy or objective, but a presidential social media message promising Iranian protesters that “help is on the way”. His current frustration stems from the difficulty of translating that vague promise into an actionable military plan.

Pushing at the limits of action

The second theme that is shaping and limiting Trump’s options is imperial overstretch. However powerful the US military is, it has limits – and in recent years, it has been pushing against them.

In particular, the US has a critical shortage of key missile defence munitions such as Thaad interceptors and Patriots. These platforms would be vital in defending against Iranian retaliation, but the US has been burning through them in recent years by providing them to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. The navy has also run down its own stocks of SM-2, SM-3 and SM-6 missiles, which are vital for defending the fleet and other American forces.

The result is that the US lacks the munitions to sustain a long, high-intensity conflict with Iran. If it gets into one, it will have to draw missiles from elsewhere, leaving its forces in Europe and the Indo-Pacific even more understocked than they already are. And because the country has a limited production capacity of these missiles, it could be literally years until the US can replenish its stocks and be ready for contingencies in places like Taiwan.

For a president who promised to avoid unnecessary overseas entanglements and put “America First”, this risk of overstretch is particularly ironic. But it is a function of Trump’s lack of serious strategic vision.

‘Strategic incontinence’

One name for it might be “strategic incontinence”. Rather than focusing on a few vital national interests and assigning capabilities accordingly, Trump seems to pinball between different regions of the globe without regard for whether the US has the capabilities to achieve his goals. He seems to tweet his way into commitments – too many of them – without asking basic questions about military capabilities or missile stocks.

Trump may still attack Iran. He has already put himself in a difficult position, engaging in a massive military build-up and threats of action before he knew whether he could follow through, or at what risk. For a president who is particularly concerned with avoiding looking weak, backing down now might be out of the question.

If Trump does attack Iran despite the warnings of his military advisers, it will be one of the riskiest military decisions that a US president has taken in a very long time. The geopolitical consequences and political price will be his to bear, but could affect us all.

– ref. Trump’s plan for strikes on Iran carries major risks – and the US military knows it – https://theconversation.com/trumps-plan-for-strikes-on-iran-carries-major-risks-and-the-us-military-knows-it-276775

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/25/trumps-plan-for-strikes-on-iran-carries-major-risks-and-the-us-military-knows-it-276775/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Swartwood House, Associate Professor of Art History, University of South Carolina

When a 5-inch-by-4-inch red chalk drawing of a woman’s foot by Michelangelo sold at auction for US$27.2 million on Feb. 5, 2026, it blew past the $1.5 million to $2 million it was expected to receive.

Experts believe it to be a study for the figure of the Libyan Sibyl, a female prophet who appears on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Michelangelo painted the iconic frescoes from 1508 to 1512, but he first sketched out the overall composition and details in a series of preparatory drawings. Only around 50 of these drawings survive today.

This was an exciting sale for reasons outside that eye-popping sum. Held in private collections for centuries, the drawing only came to light after the owner sent an unsolicited photo to Christie’s auction house. There, a drawings expert recognized it as one of the relatively few remaining studies for the Sistine frescoes.

As an art historian who specializes in the Italian Renaissance, I’m excited about the sale not because of the money it fetched, but because of the attention it has brought to Michelangelo’s lifelong devotion to drawing, a medium he prized over painting.

‘Not my art’

Art historians know a lot about Michelangelo through the letters and poems he penned, along with two biographies written in his lifetime by intimates Giorgio Vasari and Ascanio Condivi.

In 1506, Pope Julius II put Michelangelo’s sculpting work on a papal tomb at St. Peter’s Basilica on hold, redirecting the funds intended for the tomb to the renovation of the basilica itself.

Michelangelo responded by closing his studio. He ordered his workshop assistants to sell off its contents, abandoned 90 wagonloads’ worth of marble and left Rome in disgust.

In 1508, Julius and his intermediary, Cardinal Francesco Alidosi, were able to lure Michelangelo back to Rome with the promise of a 500-ducat payment and a contract to paint the Sistine. Despite accepting, the artist went on to complain relentlessly about his new commission. He wrote to his father that painting “is not my profession” and told the pope that painting “is not my art.”

Sculpture, not painting, was central to Michelangelo’s identity.

In the Condivi biography, which Michelangelo approved and helped shape, the artist is said to have abandoned painter Domenico Ghirlandaio’s workshop around 1490 to train in the Florence sculpture garden of powerful arts patron Lorenzo de’ Medici. Michelangelo would later joke that he became a sculptor as an infant, thanks to the breast milk of his wet nurse, who was the daughter of stonemasons.

Beyond his enthusiastic embrace of sculpture and resentment over the Sistine – what he called the “tragedy of the tomb” – Michelangelo found painting in fresco to be backbreaking work.

“I’ve grown a goiter from this torture,” he wrote to his friend Giovanni da Pistoia in an illustrated poem. “My stomach’s squashed under my chin, my beard’s pointing at heaven, my brain’s crushed in a casket, my breast twists like a harpy’s. My brush, above me all the time, dribbles paint so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!”

“My painting is dead,” he concludes. “I am not in the right place – I am not a painter.”

A grand design

The caricature that accompanies Michelangelo’s poem shows not only a cantankerous and restless mind, but also his use of drawing to reflect its inner workings.

The early 16th century witnessed a rise of drawing, with Michelangelo leading the way. Rather than simply copying or providing models for painting, drawing became understood as an important intellectual, exploratory and creative exercise

Michelangelo’s biographer Vasari famously used the term “disegno” to mean both a physical drawing and a work’s overall “design” or concept, giving the artist an almost godlike creative power.

This double meaning is reflected in the title of the hugely popular 2017 exhibition of Michelangelo’s drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York”: “Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer.”

Michelangelo created many drawings for the Sistine that reflected the different meanings of “disegno.” There were his sketches of models, along with his architectural renderings and schemes to organize the huge space. Then there were the full-size “cartoons” he drew to transfer his designs directly onto the ceiling itself.

The good foot

Michelangelo also made many studies of individual body parts and gestures for the Sistine, including eyes, hands and feet.

In a drawing for the Sistine ceiling that’s now in the British Museum, various hands – perhaps modeled after his own – repeat across the right side of the page. Feet were especially important to the overall design of the human figure, and they stand at the intersection of Michelangelo’s interests in Classical art and human anatomy.

Contrapposto, or the Classical “counter-poise,” was the iconic stance for standing figures in paintings and sculptures. It features the trunk of the body centered over one leg with its foot planted, and the other bent with the foot perched on the toe. Michelangelo’s “David” stands in contrapposto, and even doctors today are impressed by the anatomical precision of the muscles and veins of each foot.

The Christie’s red chalk drawing of the foot was likely done from a live model, with Michelangelo showing the elegance of the Libyan Sibyl prophetess through her dramatically arched foot.

In the finished fresco, Sibyl’s body is a kind of elegant machine. The musculature of her extended arms, her coiled torso and her pointed toe all work in concert. This small drawing shows how the charged energy of a single body part could contribute to the overall “disegno” of the massive fresco.

While the process of painting the ceiling was arduous, the process of conceiving it through drawing was obviously rewarding for Michelangelo.

Drawing as the linchpin

Despite the popularity of the Sistine frescoes, Michelangelo rarely returned to painting after completing them. In 1534, Pope Clement VII commissioned him to paint the “The Last Judgment” on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. But only after Clement died later that year – and Clement’s successor, Pope Paul III, gave Michelangelo the extraordinary title of Chief Architect, Sculptor, and Painter to the Vatican Palace – did the artist begin work on the altar wall.

While many people today may think of the Sistine frescoes or Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” when they think of the Italian Renaissance, those artists did not think of themselves primarily as painters.

In a famous letter of introduction to the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo elaborates on his many skills in creating fortifications, infrastructure and weaponry. He boasts about his ability to build bridges, canals, tunnels and catapults. Only after 10 paragraphs does he include a single sentence admitting that he, in addition, “can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and in painting can do any kind of work as well as any man.”

Like Michelangelo’s, Leonardo’s drawings show a voracious mind at work. They explore, rather than simply observe, everything from military machines to human anatomy. In 1563, Michelangelo would go on to be named master of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence, which aimed to teach drawing and design as the underlying skills necessary for sculpture, architecture and painting.

Drawing, it turns out, was the art that unified the many pursuits of the “Renaissance Man.”

– ref. Michelangelo hated painting the Sistine Chapel – and never aspired to be a painter to begin with – https://theconversation.com/michelangelo-hated-painting-the-sistine-chapel-and-never-aspired-to-be-a-painter-to-begin-with-275788

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/25/michelangelo-hated-painting-the-sistine-chapel-and-never-aspired-to-be-a-painter-to-begin-with-275788/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ali Mamouri, Research Fellow, Middle East Studies, Deakin University

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson made headlines last week following an interview with Sky News in which she suggested there are no “good” Muslims.

The comment was outrageous by any measure, but the response relatively muted, reflecting a broader shift in political discourse.

Hanson’s comments have been reported to police – whether anything comes of this remains to be seen. But this broader shift allows for sweeping generalisations about an entire faith community to be voiced without triggering the same level of backlash or the invocation of hate speech laws that similar remarks about other minorities would likely provoke.

For Australian Muslims, the political atmosphere in the wake of the Bondi terrorist attack is febrile. Mosques are receiving threats during Ramadan. Muslim men performing their prayers, during a protest, are being roughly handled by NSW police in public without serious consequences.

Islamophobic incidents routinely spike in response to events thousands of kilometres away.

The question is no longer whether Islamophobia exists in Australia. The question is whether it has become normalised, tolerated in ways other forms of discrimination are not, and what this means for the country’s commitment to multiculturalism and liberal democracy.

From rhetoric to reality

The anti-Muslim rhetoric present within political discourse does not exist in a vacuum.

In the past month alone, close to or during the holy month of Ramadan, three threatening letters were sent to the Lakemba Mosque. During protests following events in Iran, extremist chants against Islam and Muslims circulated in Australian streets, such as calling for all Muslim clerics to be buried.

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After the October 7 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, reported Islamophobic incidents rose sharply in Australia — doubling compared to previous years. Palestinians were particularly targeted.

The normalisation becomes even clearer when placed alongside the special envoy’s Plan to Combat Antisemitism proposed last year.

The framework was criticised by some legal scholars and even Jewish groups for conflating antisemitism with legitimate criticism of the State of Israel. That same framework underpinned legislative changes expanding penalties around certain forms of political expression.

Yet a statement implying there are no “good” Muslims resulted in little more than a heavily qualified partial apology.

Taken together, these developments point to a troubling pattern.

They reflect a logic of dehumanisation, homogenisation and collective blame. This involves treating a diverse religious community as monolithic and holding them responsible for incidents or international conflicts over which they have no control.

When rhetoric shifts, reality often follows.

Institutional gaps and structural concerns

Beyond individual incidents, there have been deeper institutional warning signs.

The Australian Human Rights Commission’s February 2026 report identified systemic racism within universities.

It found more than 75% of surveyed Muslim students and staff, more than 90% of Palestinian respondents, and more than 80% of Middle Eastern respondents reported they had witnessed racism directed at their communities. These figures point not to isolated prejudice, but to patterns embedded within everyday institutional life.

Data from 2025 show a further increase in Islamophobic incidents following October 2023. This shows anti-Muslim hostility in Australia is no longer simply connected to a lack of cultural and religious literacy. Rather, it has become politicised, often intensifying in response to international developments and domestic political rhetoric.

The appointment of a national Islamophobia envoy was an important acknowledgement of the problem. Yet beyond a broadly framed action plan, there has been little visible, sustained effort to build public awareness, shape policy, or strengthen protections for Muslim Australians.

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Addressing Islamophobia, or any other form of racism, requires more than symbolic appointments. It demands consistent institutional commitment to protecting minority communities and reinforcing the principles of Australia’s multicultural democracy.

Islamophobia damages us all

Beyond isolated incidents, the deeper question remains: why does Islamophobia appear to be treated differently from other forms of racism?

Why can sweeping claims about an entire religious community enter mainstream discourse with comparatively limited consequence?

Why are Australian Muslims in particular so often held accountable for events by individuals taking place here in Australia or even thousands of kilometres away? Why are they repeatedly required to explain themselves, issue statements, or confirm their loyalty in order to be accepted as fellow citizens?

Few, if any, other communities are asked to collectively answer in the same way.

These questions matter because social cohesion depends on treating all citizens and groups with the same level of respect.

Australian multicultural democracy cannot selectively defend some communities while leaving others to navigate hate and hostility on their own.

When anti-Muslim rhetoric becomes normalised, it does more than harm one group. It erodes trust in institutions, weakens the credibility of anti-racism frameworks, and signals that equality before the law is unevenly applied.

Sustaining social cohesion requires more than a mere celebration of diversity. It demands vigilance in practice, ensuring all forms of discrimination are addressed with equal commitment, and political debate does not drift into the dehumanisation of entire communities.

The health of Australia’s multicultural democracy should be measured not by how it protects the majority, but by how consistently it protects all its minorities.

– ref. Pauline Hanson’s no ‘good’ Muslims comment shows how normalised Islamophobia has become in Australia – https://theconversation.com/pauline-hansons-no-good-muslims-comment-shows-how-normalised-islamophobia-has-become-in-australia-276639

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/25/pauline-hansons-no-good-muslims-comment-shows-how-normalised-islamophobia-has-become-in-australia-276639/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nial Wheate, Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

Ivermectin was originally celebrated as a revolutionary treatment for parasitic disease in humans and animals. It has since evolved into a focal point of misinformation and heated debate.

During the early part of the COVID pandemic, it was touted on social media as a miracle cure for the virus, despite a lack of robust evidence.

Now the United States National Cancer Institute is looking into the drug as a potential cancer treatment, with early human clinical studies underway.

But what can it successfully treat?

What is ivermectin?

The drug is a small organic chemical that can be extracted from the bacterium Streptomyces avermitilis. This bacterium grows in the soil, and was first found near the grounds of a Japanese golf course.

Ivermectin’s discovery in the 1970s was considered so important its discoverers were awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

It was first approved for use in animals in 1981 and in humans in 1987. It’s now available in various brands as tablets and creams you apply to the skin.

Assessing the evidence

Governments use human clinical trials to decide whether to approve a medicine for sale.

But clinical trials aren’t the highest level of evidence to inform best practice and guide decisions. For that, there are Cochrane reviews.

A Cochrane review brings together a panel of experts who collate and assess all the relevant evidence on a medication. It takes data from multiple clinical trials, and other studies, and evaluates it following clear and structured steps. It’s able to examine and critique study designs to identify bias and reject bad data.

Cochrane reviews are also regularly updated to take into account new information. The result is a summary that is considered the highest level of evidence to guide decision-making.

So what do Cochrane reviews say about ivermectin for different conditions?

Gut and lymphatic worms

Ivermectin is used to treat a variety of parasitic worm infections. These include the round worms Ascaris lumbricoides, Strongyloides stercoralis, Wuchereria bancrofti, and Brugia malayi.

The latter two worms cause the disease lymphatic filariasis (or elephantiasis) which causes severe swelling in the arms, legs, breasts and genitals.

When ivermectin is used to treat Strongyloides stercoralis, the Cochrane panel found it is better than albendazole and had fewer side effects than thiabendazole.

For Ascaris lumbricoides, the panel concluded ivermectin was as good as albendazole and mebendazole.

For treating lymphatic filariasis, a Cochrane review found ivermectin or diethylcarbamazine should be standard treatment in combination with albendazole.

Rosacea

The Cochrane review for rosacea evaluated 22 different treatments for this skin condition, including a variety of drugs, as well as light therapy, cosmetics and reducing the intake of spicy food.

It concluded that ivermectin applied to the skin was more effective than a placebo, and a bit better than the other standard medication, metronidazole.

Scabies

Cochrane has two reviews on the use of ivermectin for scabies. One specifically evaluated ivermectin and permethrin as treatments. The other evaluated all available treatments for scabies.

The first review concluded both permethrin and ivermectin were just as effective, regardless of whether the ivermectin was administered orally or directly onto the skin.

In contrast, the second review concluded ivermectin does work but topical permethrin appeared to be the most effective treatment.

Malaria

The Cochrane panel looked specifically at whether ivermectin could reduce transmission of the malaria parasite, rather than as a treatment.

Unfortunately there was just a single clinical trial to use as evidence. In that trial, residents of eight villages were given ivermectin and albendazole together, with follow up doses of just ivermectin. The researchers then looked at the rates of child infection over 18 weeks.

Even though the trial didn’t show ivermectin prevented infection, due to the high risk of bias in it, the Cochrane panel couldn’t conclude either way whether ivermectin worked or not.

River blindness

River blindness is caused by another parasitic worm called Onchocerca volvulus.

The Cochrane review concluded there was a lack of evidence either way to know whether it works to prevent infection-based visual impairment and blindness.

It evaluated the data from four clinical trials and two large community-based studies.

One of the reasons the panel was unable to make a firm conclusion was because it thought the drug may work differently against different strains of the parasite and in people of different ethnicity.

Cancer

There are no Cochrane reviews on ivermectin’s use for cancer because clinical interest in the drug for this condition is just starting.

There is a current clinical trial that is evaluating ivermectin in combination with antibody-based drugs for breast cancer.

Early results showed the combination of antibody drugs with ivermectin was safe to patients, but no efficacy data has been published.

COVID

The Cochrane panel rejected the data for seven clinical trials and included 11 other trials. Rejected trials included those which compared ivermectin against other drugs which were known to not be effective against COVID, such as hydroxychloroquine.

The review concluded there was no evidence to support the use of ivermectin for the treatment or prevention of COVID. In making that conclusion, it evaluated treatments that used invermectin or placebo in combination with standard care and whether treatment reduced death, illness, or the length of the infection.

– ref. Ivermectin was touted as a cure for COVID, now it’s being tested for cancer. But what can it actually treat? – https://theconversation.com/ivermectin-was-touted-as-a-cure-for-covid-now-its-being-tested-for-cancer-but-what-can-it-actually-treat-276180

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/25/ivermectin-was-touted-as-a-cure-for-covid-now-its-being-tested-for-cancer-but-what-can-it-actually-treat-276180/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Avril Horne, Research fellow, Department of Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne

If you stand beside Seven Creeks in Victoria or Spring Creek in Queensland, they might seem small and unremarkable. But these creeks flow into the mighty Goulburn and Condamine Rivers, and punch far above their weight.

Small headwater creeks, at the beginning of a river network, act as the first source of water for bigger rivers. Headwaters deliver the first cool winter flows and the large seasonal pulses of water that trigger fish migration, setting the river’s rhythm. But they’re also the first to suffer from drought, heatwaves and water captured by thousands of small farm dams.

As the rivers of Australia’s largest system, the Murray-Darling Basin, experience a hotter and more variable climate, their headwaters are at the forefront of change.

This year, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority is reviewing the basin plan. The plan sets sustainable, legally enforceable limits on water usage, and rightly identifies climate change as a central challenge. Yet its new discussion paper pays surprisingly little attention to the vast network of smaller tributaries that feed the basin’s larger rivers.

We need attention on these “forgotten” rivers and streams, which are increasingly central to the survival of the Murray-Darling Basin as a whole.

The Basin’s blind spot under climate change

The discussion paper focuses on the big-name river systems in the basin, such as the Darling (Baaka) River in the north and heavily regulated rivers in the south such as the Murray, where big dams, barrages and diversions shape almost every drop of water.

This omission reflects how the original plan was conceived, and then in released 2012. Environmental priorities were defined around “priority assets”, such as major river reaches, internationally protected wetlands and refuges for wildlife where environmental flows were expected to deliver measurable ecological benefits.

This made sense when pressure from agricultural water extraction was the major threat. But this leaves out a huge part of the basin’s story.

Threading through the Basin are thousands of kilometres of small, so-called “unregulated” rivers and headwater streams. Historically, they were assumed to be relatively healthy because big dams were absent. But climate change is overturning that assumption. With declining rainfall and hotter temperatures, even small reductions in runoff can dramatically affect their flow.

Worse still, thousands of small farm dams scattered across the landscape are reducing how much water flows through these waterways. More of these streams are now ceasing to flow for the first time, or remaining dry for longer. Climate change is amplifying every existing stress on smaller rivers.

If we are serious about preparing the basin for climate change, we can no longer overlook the springs and creeks which feed the system. These rivers are not peripheral – they’re central to its resilience.

How the warming climate is changing streams

Headwater streams may be small, but they form the ecological backbone of the basin’s rivers. These upper tributaries are biodiversity hotspots, supporting insects, frogs, fish and riverbank species dependent on regular flushes of water and cool, shaded habitats.

When these streams dry out, warm up or fragment into pools, these delicate ecological processes are disrupted. The effects stretch far downstream. Climate change is pushing these streams into more extreme boom–bust cycles, with longer, hotter dry periods punctuated by short bursts of intense rainfall. In small catchments, these shifts affect the entire flow regime: low flows become lower, and flooding becomes less reliable or arrives at the wrong time of year.

Headwater streams are known to be highly sensitive to changes in flow. Under a drier climate these disruptions will intensify.

Can these changes be managed?

We can adapt to some degree. Rules limiting pumping from rivers during low flow periods, and better oversight of farm dams, can help keep water moving during crucial dry periods.

But when rivers are high, it’s a different picture. When river are full or even break their banks, it’s great for aquatic life. Fish move and breed, habitat is refreshed, nutrients moved downstream and wetlands rejoin the system.

Unregulated rivers lack the infrastructure, such as dams or barrages, to create or shape the big replenishing flows that ecosystems rely on, and climate change means these may simply happen less often.

If smaller rivers stop sending these floods downstream, larger rivers lose an essential part of their ecological rhythm.

Why this matters for the whole basin

What happens in the smaller creeks and rivers has a big impact. These small streams set the baseline conditions for the entire Murray–Darling system – from water quality and temperature to the timing of flows. When they falter, the effects are felt downstream.

The 2026 Basin Plan Review offers us a chance to revisit its original assumptions. Focusing on major rivers once addressed the dominant sources of environmental decline, but under climate change, risk is no longer confined to those places.

If the basin loses its headwaters, no amount of downstream engineering can compensate. Bringing these “forgotten rivers” into climate planning isn’t optional — it underpins our environmental, cultural and economic future. Give me two

– ref. Climate change is drying out the ‘forgotten rivers’ that keep the Murray-Darling alive. We need a new plan – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-drying-out-the-forgotten-rivers-that-keep-the-murray-darling-alive-we-need-a-new-plan-275562

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/25/climate-change-is-drying-out-the-forgotten-rivers-that-keep-the-murray-darling-alive-we-need-a-new-plan-275562/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona Longmuir, Senior Lecturer – Co-leader Education Workforce for the Future Impact Lab, Monash University

When we think about jobs you can do from home, you may not immediately picture a school teacher. But as Victoria debates a new right to work from home, the state’s teachers are asking what this might mean for them.

The Victorian teachers’ union wants the state government to trial a four-day work week for teachers and work-from-home provisions. Last week, Australian Education Union Victoria branch president Justin Mullaly told 9 News:

[a trial] would provide some real flexibility for staff in our public schools so that they might attend on site for less and be able to have access to some work from home.

So how would this work?

What’s the current situation?

Teachers obviously need to spend a lot of time face-to-face with students. Currently, Victorian teachers spend about 55% of their 38-hour working week on face-to-face teaching activities, with slight variations across different school contexts.

However, their job also involves a significant amount of work away from the classroom. This is called “non-contact time” when teachers do administration tasks. This could include planning lessons, assessing student work, communicating with parents/carers, and meeting with colleagues. Many of these tasks could be done from home.

Victorian government school teachers are generally required to be at school for the whole 38-hour work week, even during non-contact time.

In high schools, non-contact time is allocated through timetabling. For example, a teacher may have third period on Tuesdays off for administration work. In primary schools, non-contact time typically occurs when their students attend specialist classes such as physical education, art and music with other teachers. These could be combined into a whole day, to give teachers an entire day away from the classroom.

In both primary and high schools, non-contact time can be scheduled, so different teachers are off at different times during the week.

What does a 4-day week look like?

A four-day week for teachers could involve timetabling non-contact time, so that on one day of the week teachers are not required to be on-site at the school.

The current suggestion is for a trial, so there might be several ways this could be tested. It might be that on the fifth day, teachers work from home for all or part of the usual working hours. Or it could be that they work extended hours on other days and then have all or part of the fifth day off.

This is not unprecedented. In the United States, a reported 2,100 schools across 26 states were running some form of a four-day program in 2025. There are already schools running four-day programs here in Australia, including a NSW private school where some students do four days of face-to-face learning, and one day remotely.

What could this mean for teachers?

Research shows teachers face increasing workloads and stress. We know there are significant challenges in attracting and retaining teachers.

But research suggests access to flexible work options can help retention and recruitment and improve staff wellbeing.

There has been little research into the impacts of a four-day week on teachers. But one US district claimed a strong improvement in attracting teachers with applications for positions increasing by 360% after the introduction of a four-day teaching week.

What might be the impact on students?

Research on four-day weeks is largely based on US studies, where students usually attend the school for four days. However, some studies suggest student achievement (or academic results) remains stable when overall teaching time is maintained, which appears to be what is proposed for Victoria.

If teachers were working from home, students would still attend school for five days and teachers would still engage with families in similar ways.

In 2024, we surveyed more than 8,000 members of the Victorian teachers’ union. We found 65% believed a four-day working week would support them to better deliver high-quality education.

But in our survey comments, some teachers expressed caution around how a four-day week would be implemented. Their concerns included logistical issues (including timetabling), and the potential of further pressure on students and staff, if current curriculum requirements were compressed into four days. This shows why a trial of flexible arrangements is needed.

As all workplaces modernise, more flexibility could work for teachers – and symbolise greater trust in the profession. But we need more work and research to inform how it can work best in Australian schools.

– ref. Victorian public school teachers want a 4-day week trial. What could this mean for schools? – https://theconversation.com/victorian-public-school-teachers-want-a-4-day-week-trial-what-could-this-mean-for-schools-276281

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/25/victorian-public-school-teachers-want-a-4-day-week-trial-what-could-this-mean-for-schools-276281/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marina Yue Zhang, Associate Professor, Technology and Innovation, University of Technology Sydney

Chinese state television rang in the Year of the Horse with humanoid robots doing kung fu, comedy sketches and mass choreography. They made complex martial arts choreography look easy. Social media was flooded with memes about “machines replacing humans”.

But the show was more than theatre. It was a prime-time industrial signal.

Beijing has long used the annual Chinese new year gala to showcase its technological ambitions, with previous shows highlighting drones, robotics and the space program.

This year, the gala put robots front and centre as part of an “AI plus” push.

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The timing was important too. China’s “Two Sessions”, the annual parliamentary and advisory meetings, are due in early March. At the meetings, China is expected to approve the 15th five-year plan (2026–30), a policy blueprint that sets strategic targets and steers funding and policy support.

The display also raised some urgent questions for China’s trading partners, including Australian policymakers.

AI that can move in the real world

China’s Lunar new year gala is a reminder the artificial intelligence (AI) contest is moving toward embodied intelligence. Embodied intelligence refers to AI-powered robotics, or AI systems built into machines that can move and react in the real world. A robot must balance, manage its power, work safely near people, and recover when something fails.

The Chinese government sees robotics and embodied intelligence as tools to help offset an ageing population and build “new quality productive forces” — its term for productivity gains driven by AI.

China’s strategy is based on engineering efficiency and building at industrial scale, using fast prototyping, reliable hardware, abundant training data covering different scenarios, and factories that can build at volume and speed.

The gala routines were designed to test that. The robots performed coordinated martial arts close to children and human performers, stressing precise movement and safety.

China has built an AI industrial ecosystem

One of the most important details of the night was not the choreography — it was the industrial breadth. Four leading humanoid robotics firms — Unitree, Galbot, Noetix and MagicLab — were showcased.

That points to competition inside a growing ecosystem: more than 150 humanoid robot companies have emerged in China, backed by billions in venture capital and government funding. Official reports say China had a total of 451,700 smart robotics firms in late 2024.

China’s robotics firms are pushing motion control to a new level of precision and agility, and the gap between lab demos and engineered products is narrowing.

But the robots still have limitations. Stage performances can be pre-programmed and rehearsed, but more complex settings require reliability, safety and cost-efficiency.

The founder of Unitree, Wang Xingxing, has been blunt about the gap. He said it is hard to build one “brain” that works in every household because homes vary so much. He expects earlier use in more fixed settings, such as factories and guided tours.

This matters for Australia

In contrast with the robotic might on display in China, Australia’s AI debate is much further behind, still centring on cloud-based large language models such as copilots and chatbots.

Australia already has an edge in using humanoid robots under special conditions. Mining technology companies such as Perth-based IMDEX and Adelaide’s Chrysos Corporation show that special-purpose robots can be used in harsh environments.

Australia should, nevertheless, notice that China is turning robotics into an industrialisation project —and doing so at speed and scale.

For Australia, this matters. Productivity growth has been weak for a decade. It also faces labour shortages in sectors where robots could be most useful: aged care, remote mining and agriculture.

The federal government is working on it. It has published a National AI Plan and a National Robotics Strategy. These are necessary policy foundations, but they are not, on their own, a strategy to build and deploy embodied AI and robotics.

China’s robots expose gaps in Australia’s policy settings

China’s fast move from robot demos to factory-ready machines exposes three policy gaps that now look urgent.

Standards: if Chinese-made robots enter the Australian market at attractive prices, Australia will need clearer rules for autonomous systems in workplaces, homes and public spaces.

Autonomous literally means the machine can act without a person directing every step. That raises basic questions: what counts as safe; who is responsible when something goes wrong; and how do you test systems before they enter industrial and home settings?

Procurement: Australia needs to consider screening guidelines for sensitive suppliers where robots touch data, critical infrastructure or vulnerable people. Screening means checking cyber risk, data practices and supply chain risks before any autonomous machines can be deployed in hospitals, ports or aged care.

Supply chain resilience: Australia has labs that have developed prototypes of advanced humanoid robots, but building them is slow and costly. Heavy reliance on imported parts means long lead times and less control. Australia can reduce risk by diversifying suppliers and building more local capability in key parts and services.

Playing to our strengths

Finally, Australia should choose its battles carefully. Rather than debating whether AI will replace jobs, a smarter strategy is to back specialised robots for tasks where Australia has an edge and clear application scenarios: mining, agriculture, aged care and remote operations.

The stakes are high not only for Australia’s productivity, but also for Australia–China trade relations in the AI age. Safety standards, data rules and supplier screening will become trade issues, not just security issues.

To build robots with embodied intelligence at scale, the scarcest resource is not lithium or computing power. It is time.

– ref. China’s dancing robots are a wake-up call for Australia on policy and productivity – https://theconversation.com/chinas-dancing-robots-are-a-wake-up-call-for-australia-on-policy-and-productivity-276529

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/25/chinas-dancing-robots-are-a-wake-up-call-for-australia-on-policy-and-productivity-276529/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ellie Crookes, Lecturer in English Literatures, University of Wollongong

The race of Heathcliff, the brooding antihero of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights, is a much-discussed element of the classic tale.

Brontë variously describes him as “a little lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway”; “that gipsy brat,” not “a regular black,” the offspring of the “Emperor of China,” and the son to an “Indian queen”.

But in her recent film adaptation, director Emerald Fennell has cast white Australian actor Jacob Elordi in the role. What does this mean for our understanding of the story?

Is Heathcliff white?

Scholars, especially since the late 20th century, have debated Heathcliff’s racial identity without forming a consensus. They continue to examine the text for evidence.

He has been variously identified as Irish, a migrant fleeing famine; African, found at the Liverpool docks (then England’s largest slave trading port); or Romani, often shorthand for a racially ambiguous and “threatening” outsider.

I do not feel the novel invites us to identify Heathcliff with a fixed racial identity. The book’s strange, otherworldly and almost hallucinogenic nature resists clear interpretation.

In 19th century Britain, post-Enlightenment Europe and the United States, the concept of race was categorised and studied, and exerted a strong influence on government policies and popular culture.

People were placed into hierarchies of humanity to justify slavery, colonialism and genocide. This system of “scientific racism”, as it has come to be known, placed “whiteness” at the top.

But this notion of whiteness was different to the one we hold today, which explains Heathcliff’s racial “otherness” as being associated with Irishness.

Brontë’s novel, and Gothic fiction of the age more broadly, depicts race as something more malleable and fantastical.

In the case of Brontë’s Heathcliff, his racial identity seems to shift and morph, sometimes rendered supernatural and demonic in the eyes of other characters. His darkness and inhumanity is emphasised and seems to intensify in moments of brooding anger and villainy.

His complexion darkens and his eyes become, in the words of the maid Nelly, “black fiends” that glint and lurk “like the devil’s spies” with “a half-civilised ferocity”.

Heathcliff’s inhumanity, as tied to his non-whiteness, seemingly rises to the surface, as if the stain of his moral degradation seeps through his soul to appear on his face.

Critics of the casting

The casting of Elordi as Heathcliff has come under scrutiny.

Some readers and critics have interpreted Brontë’s book as a critique of British institutional racism in the late 18th century, when the novel is set, and the Victorian era (1837–1901), when it was written.

One such reading is that the novel links the oppression of white women to that of non-white subjects of the British Empire to critique social structures of violence, cruelty and inequality.

This reading sees the novel’s representation of female subjugation as a mirror image to the oppression that people of colour faced at the time.

Many critics of the film have said it isn’t an accurate adaptation, and misunderstands what Brontë’s text is really about. But an argument around “intent” is hard to make, since we can never really know what a novel “is about”. We can only guess.

And there are limitless interpretations of a text, especially one as strange and enigmatic as this one. As such, though race is a part of the original Wuthering Heights, assigning a singular, definitive meaning to the novel’s representation of race is complicated.

In Brontë’s novel, nothing is as it seems. The ever-shifting image of Heathcliff – at once appearing to be a lascar, a Native American, Spanish and Black – would be difficult to depict effectively on film.

Film lacks the imaginative malleability as the reader’s mind’s eye, which can hold all these descriptions of Heathcliff’s image at once, allowing this Gothic strangeness to occur.

Race in Fennell’s film

While Heathcliff is cast as white, Fennell casts people of colour in other roles.

Fennell’s film is not interested in the racial commentary many critics have found in Brontë’s novel. The characters in Fennel’s created world do not appear to engage with race the same way people do in our world.

American-Vietnamese actor Hong Chau plays Nelly Dean (a housemaid in the novel, but an illegitimate daughter to a nobleman in the film), and English/Scottish–Pakistani actor Shazad Latif portrays Edgar Linton, Cathy’s wealthy and respected husband.

The casting of Edgar, a man of wealth and status, as a person of colour undermines the intersections of oppression and race that existed at the time.

I think Fennell’s decision to ignore race is a missed opportunity to foster a more nuanced discussion of race in the late 18th century and Victorian Britain.

Victorian Britain was shaped by its participation in the transatlantic slave trade, the presence of Black peoples on its soil (in some instances, enslaved), and its colonies in Asia and the Middle East.

While it would not have been common to find people of colour in the Yorkshire moors in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Britain (including Yorkshire) wasn’t as white as is widely believed. Fennell had an opportunity to highlight this fact.

Instead, in the film’s casting of Elordi as Heathcliff and Latif as Linton, we see a reticence to engage with the question of racial oppression at all. While this doesn’t make the adaptation “wrong”, it adds to the film’s almost complete lack of depth.

– ref. Brontë’s Heathcliff wasn’t white. Jacob Elordi is. Is that a problem? – https://theconversation.com/brontes-heathcliff-wasnt-white-jacob-elordi-is-is-that-a-problem-276183

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/25/brontes-heathcliff-wasnt-white-jacob-elordi-is-is-that-a-problem-276183/