Category: Evening Report

Analysis by Keith Rankin, 19 February 2026

The RNZ news bulletin of 10pm on 18 February stated: “New Zealand and Australia are outliers in having three-year parliamentary terms, with four or five year terms far more common … politicians have over the years expressed frustration at how much can be achieved in a three-year cycle.”

This is a common but not really valid belief. This year the world’s second largest democracy – United States of America – is holding its election for its House of Representatives. That country has – and has had – a stable two-year term. For some reason it is never mentioned in these discussions.

Below is a table showing average term lengths for comparator countries. We note that in countries with flexible electoral terms, which is all of these except United States, it is commonly only the more unpopular governments which go full-term.

Country	Average	Average
	since 2010	since 1950
India	5.0	4.2
Italy	4.5	4.1
Ireland	4.3	3.7
France	4.0	4.1
Germany	4.0	3.8
Sweden	4.0	3.4
UK	3.5	3.7
Canada	3.5	3.1
New Zealand	3.0	3.0
Australia	3.0	2.6
Japan	2.8	2.8
USA	2.0	2.0

We note in particular that elections in the United Kingdom have been on average 3.7 years apart, despite that country having a five-year term limit. And that that country presently has a governing party for which popular support, as consistently measured by opinion polls, has so far registered below 20% for much of the so far short life of its rule. The fact that the likely date for the next election is more than three years away is a major source of political instability there.

Most importantly, in the table above, New Zealand is not an outlier.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/28/keith-rankin-analysis-parliamentary-term-length-is-new-zealand-really-an-outlier/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Toby Walsh, Professor of AI, Research Group Leader, UNSW Sydney

The Commonwealth Bank reportedly suspects around A$1 billion in home loans were obtained fraudulently, including through AI-generated documents. The Australian Financial Review says the bank has reported itself to police and the corporate watchdog to investigate.

According to sources quoted in the newspaper, Australia’s largest bank discovered the suspected fraud last year, partly thanks to two whistleblowers. After rival bank NAB was allegedly defrauded of around $150 million, the Commonwealth Bank also reportedly began investigating its own loans. Its Australian home loans alone are worth around $634 billion.

While the bank is yet to make any detailed comment on the case, a Commonwealth Bank spokesman said the industry faced “sustained and increasing levels of attempted fraud, driven by criminals who actively evolve their methods”.

This is an industry-wide challenge, with fraud being attempted through mortgage broking and referral channels.

Even though I’ve been warning about the need to make AI companies do more to stop facilitating crime, the sheer scale of this suspected fraud still surprised me.

We should assume criminals won’t only have been targeting the Commonwealth Bank and NAB, but that they’re trying all the banks.

This case has implications for all of us: from individuals to business owners wanting to avoid being fooled by fake AI invoices, to the banks, our government regulators and the AI companies themselves.

Don’t panic – but expect tighter security

First of all, given the Commonwealth Bank has 17 million customers, let’s be clear: this won’t be a $1 billion loss for the bank.

From what we’ve heard so far, the bank should be able to recover a significant amount of this money. These loans are reportedly being paid off, and there are bricks-and-mortar properties involved to sell if needed too.

But even for a bank as big as the Commonwealth, $1 billion is no loose change. After suspected fraud on this scale, I suspect we are going to see all banks ramp up their security.

[embedded content]

As customers, we should expect to be asked to do more to secure our accounts and secure our transactions. We’re also increasingly likely to need to use biometric authentication (such as facial recognition), as well as two-factor authentication.

I also think it’s likely to mean that, in future, we’ll need go into the bank to show ourselves along with our original documents – to a real person. That will be a lot less convenient than just providing certified copies to a mortgage broker. However, it’s also a lot more secure.

That way, the bank can see the real, physical passport, with its holograms and stamps, which are hard to reproduce.

Faking financial or identification documents with AI is now free and easy. For example, only last year we heard how ChatGPT could be used to forge passports.

---

Read more: Can you spot a financial fake? How AI is raising our risks of billing fraud

---

Given the Commonwealth Bank is reportedly investigating the role of mortgage brokers and others in this suspected fraud, it’s likely we’ll see banks make mortgage brokers go through more hoops too.

And the Commonwealth isn’t the only bank offering loans. So people should be asking questions of their own bank: have you uncovered fraud like this in your own loan book? And what are you doing about it?

What regulators and governments need to do

As well as being used for fraud, AI is also being used by the banks to try to detect and catch scammers.

AI can be very helpful in looking for strange patterns – for instance, why a mortgage broker is suddenly submitting three times as many home loan applications?

But fraud on this scale, affecting Australia’s biggest bank, does show the federal government needs to stop saying we don’t need any new AI regulation. We just don’t have adequate safeguards in place.

Rethinking how we pay bills and do business

Whether you’re a business owner or an individual, if someone sends you a large invoice to pay, don’t pay it until you’re sure it’s real.

It’s just so easy to “spoof” (mimic) someone’s web address, email or invoice, especially the first time you’re paying someone.

We’ve seen too many cases of “middle men” attacks, where criminals get between a person and the company they’re trying to pay, then change the bank details.

There are some terrible stories about how people have transferred their deposit to buy a house to what they thought was the solicitor’s account. But it was changed – and they lost their whole deposit.

My rule of thumb is that any time it’s a first-time payment, or sum of money large enough to really hurt you, call whoever you’re paying over the phone and confirm their bank details are correct.

– ref. Why Commonwealth Bank’s $1 billion suspected loan fraud should change how we bank and do business – https://theconversation.com/why-commonwealth-banks-1billion-suspected-loan-fraud-should-change-how-we-bank-and-do-business-277083

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/28/why-commonwealth-banks-1billion-suspected-loan-fraud-should-change-how-we-bank-and-do-business-277083/

Novara Media

In a spectacular triumph, Britain’s Green Party has won the Gorton and Denton byelection in Greater Manchester.

Local plumber Hannah Spencer has now become the party’s fifth MP — a historic victory for the ascendent Greens, who ran a campaign of national hope and international solidarity against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The byelection result is also a huge upset in Britain’s political status quo.

The Labour party, which won the seat with more than 50 percent of the vote in 2024 and held the seat for many years, was pushed into third place behind Reform UK. No more.

After coming third behind the Greens and Reform, questions over the future of the party’s leader, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, now grow increasingly urgent.

Meanwhile, Reform UK came second. On their own terms, a result.

Clear defeat by Left
And yet, a clear defeat by the Left. Its candidate, Matt Goodwin, along with the party as a whole, will now be taking stock, disappointed that a major target constituency has rejected them.

The Greens stormed the seat and Spencer won a majority of more than 4000 despite a race sullied by dirty tricks and cynicism from a Labour Party that appeared desperate at every turn.

Tactics included an invented electoral organisation and misinformation over polling. A last ditch effort to transport Starmer to the constituency may have amounted to a final and fatal backfire.

This is the second byelection loss to the Green Party since Labour’s general election victory in 2024.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/28/local-plumber-hannah-spencer-beats-both-reform-and-labour-to-win-uk-byelection/

Amnesty International

Amnesty International has condemned Israeli authorities over unleashing a series of unlawful measures deliberately designed to dispossess Palestinians in the occupied West Bank — including East Jerusalem — and to make the annexation of the territory an irreversible reality.

These decisions since December 2025 represent an unprecedented escalation – in scale and speed – in Israel’s project to expand illegal settlements.

They facilitate the takeover of more Palestinian land, authorise a record number of new settlements, expanding existing ones, and formalise registration of land in the West Bank as Israeli state property.

While successive Israeli governments have pursued policies aimed at expanding settlements and entrenching occupation and apartheid, the latest measures underscore how the current Israeli government has turbocharged these efforts, in the shadow of the genocide in Gaza.

“What we are witnessing is a state, led by a Prime Minister wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, openly gloating about its defiance of international law,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns.

“Despite hundreds of UN resolutions, Advisory Opinions from the International Court of Justice and global condemnation, Israel continues to brazenly expand illegal settlements, entrenching its cruel system of apartheid and destroying Palestinian lives and livelihoods.

“The unconditional support of the USA government, combined with the pervasive lack of international accountability for Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, decades of crimes under international law linked to its unlawful occupation and its system of apartheid, has further emboldened Israel to escalate its illegal actions.

‘Formalising land grabs’
“This includes formalising land grabs with full confidence that it will face no consequences.

“The accelerating expansion of unlawful settlements and the rise in state-backed settler violence and crimes across the occupied West Bank are a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action.”

— Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns.

“The accelerating expansion of unlawful settlements and the rise in state-backed settler violence and crimes across the occupied West Bank are a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action.

“Third states have failed to respect their own legal obligations, refusing to use the tools at their disposal, such as suspension of the EU Israel Association Agreement, to deter Israel from pursuing its unlawful agenda.”

On 10 December 2025, the Israel Land Authority published a tender for 3401 housing units in the E1 area, east of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.

The plan seeks to expand the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and create a continuum with occupied East Jerusalem.

This would sever the West Bank in two, permanently rupturing urban Palestinian contiguity between Ramallah, occupied East Jerusalem, and Bethlehem.

Forced transfer of Palestinians
Together with the construction of a bypass road which was set to begin this month, this plan will also lead to the forcible transfer of the Palestinian communities living in the area.

While since the 1990s successive Israeli governments have attempted to implement the E1 plan, it remained largely dormant for decades due to international pressure.

Its current advancement with such speed signifies a government that is brazenly pursuing its settlement expansion agenda amidst insufficient international pushback.

Since its occupation of Palestinian territory in 1967, Israel has introduced and developed an oppressive administrative and legal architecture of dispossession and control against Palestinians.

The current government has been relentlessly accelerating this project by fast-tracking settlement expansion and land seizures.

On 11 December 2025, Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to establish 19 new settlements, bringing the total number approved by the current coalition government to 68 in just three years and the total number of official settlements to about 210.

About 750,000 Israeli settlers currently live illegally in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Retroactive ‘legalisation’
The new settlements include the retroactive “legalisation” of outposts built in violation of even Israel’s own domestic laws.

Credible media reports indicate at least three of these sites sit upon land from which Palestinian communities, such as Ein Samia and Ras Ein al-Ouja, were recently forcibly transferred following state-backed settler violence.

According to Peace Now, an Israeli organisation monitoring settlement expansion, in 2025 alone, a record 86 outposts were established, primarily “herding” or “farming” outposts” which have significantly contributed to the spike in state-backed settler violence and forcible transfer of Palestinian communities.

Protected by the Israeli military and funded by the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture, the outposts have turned the lives of Palestinian farmers and shepherds, particularly in Area C, into a “living hell”.

Settlers in the outposts aggressively prevent Palestinian shepherds from accessing their grazing land, depriving them of their main livelihood, as well as seizing land by force, vandalizing property, stealing livestock and attacking Palestinians and their homes.

According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, 21 Palestinian communities were fully or partially uprooted in 2025 as a result of state-backed settler violence.

A mother of three from Ras Ein al-Ouja, near Jericho, told Amnesty International: “The fear of attacks forced us to put our children to bed with their shoes on, because we might have to flee at any moment.”

Freezing cold
In January 2026, she and her family were driven out in the freezing cold along with another 122 families — in total more than 600 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from this community.

A declaration by the Israeli civil administration on 5 January 2026 designating 694 dunams of land belonging to the Palestinian towns of Deir Istiya, Bidya and Kafr Thulth in the northern West Bank as “state land”.

This was declared along with a series of measures to expand control over the West Bank announced by Israel’s security cabinet on February 8 to mark a further escalation in Israel’s land grabs.

These measures include repealing Jordanian legislation still in force to allow Israeli settlers to purchase Palestinian land without oversight increasing Israeli civil administrative control over planning and construction in Hebron City and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, as well as granting Israeli authorities new enforcement powers in archaeological sites and in issues related to water and environment in Areas A and B.

On 15 February 2026, the Israeli cabinet issued a decision that amounts to annexation under Israeli law.

It allocated more than 244 million NIS (Israeli shekels) for the establishment of a government mechanism to facilitate land registration in Area C, transferring the powers of land registration from the civil administration to Israel’s Ministry of Justice.

Currently, nearly 58 percent of the land in Area C of the occupied West Bank is unregistered, according to Peace Now.

Seized Palestinian land
Israel has already seized more than half of that area through state land designations.

Palestinians face almost insurmountable hurdles to prove land ownership due to Israel’s archaic interpretation of Ottoman land laws which require Palestinians to provide an array of documents, maps and other records that most Palestinians do not have access to.

“Make no mistake: full annexation is the goal, and Israel has already laid much of the groundwork for achieving it. Ministers in the current Israeli government no longer feel any need to conceal their intentions.”

— Erika Guevara-Rosas

“Land registration is yet another Israeli euphemism for land grabs and dispossession. Make no mistake: full annexation is the goal, and Israel has already laid much of the groundwork for achieving it,” Erika Guevara-Rosas said.

“Ministers in the current Israeli government no longer feel any need to conceal their intentions.

“Israel has totally disregarded its obligations as an Occupying Power towards Palestinian civilians and instead has deliberately and consistently advanced its aggressive annexation agenda, in blatant violation of international law, which categorically prohibits annexation and establishment of settlements in occupied territory.

“These measures are in brazen defiance of the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinions of 2004 and 2024, the latter of which unequivocally found Israel’s presence in the OPT to be unlawful.

“A subsequent UN General Assembly resolution set September 2025 as the deadline to end Israel’s unlawful occupation.

“Yet instead of complying, Israel has simply invented new ways to violate international law, further entrenching its unlawful occupation and apartheid — while the international community continues, at best, to pay lip service to Palestinians’ rights and taken no effective action.”

Republished from Amnesty International.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/amnesty-slams-global-impunity-fueling-israels-illegal-west-bank-annexation-measures/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Uri Gal, Professor in Business Information Systems, University of Sydney

Recently some Australian shoppers got more than they bargained for when they chatted with Woolworths’ artificial intelligence (AI) assistant, Olive.

Instead of sticking to groceries, recipes and basket suggestions, Olive reportedly produced strange, overly human-like responses. It talked about its “mother” and offered other personal-sounding details.

Further testing revealed pricing errors for basic items. And when I asked about the price of a specific product, Olive didn’t provide a clear answer. Instead, it checked whether the item was in stock and explained pickup fees.

So what exactly is going on here? And what lessons might these incidents hold for businesses and consumers alike?

What actually happened?

Olive is powered by a large language model (LLM). These models don’t “know” things the way humans do, nor do they have mothers. Using elaborate statistical analyses, they generate language that sounds plausible.

Comments from a Woolworths spokesperson to the Australian Financial Review suggest that in Olive’s case, the references to its supposed mother appear to have been pre-written scripts dating back several years.

When users entered something that looked like a birthdate, the system likely triggered a matching “fun fact” from an old decision tree with pre-programmed responses.

Woolworths says it has now removed this particular scripting “as a result of customer feedback”.

The pricing errors point to a different problem.

Because LLMs generate responses based on learned patterns rather than real-time data, they do not automatically know today’s prices unless they are explicitly connected to a live database.

If that grounding step is weak, the system can produce outdated prices.

Not a new problem

Woolworths is not the first company to discover, after the fact, that its customer-facing AI had unexpectedly “misbehaved”.

In 2022, Air Canada’s chatbot incorrectly told a passenger, Jake Moffatt, that he could purchase tickets at full price and later apply for a bereavement fare refund. No such policy existed.

When Air Canada refused to honour the chatbot’s advice, Moffatt sued the airline and won.

Air Canada’s defence was striking. It argued the chatbot was a separate legal entity, responsible for its own actions and therefore beyond the airline’s liability. The tribunal rejected this outright. It ruled that a chatbot is part of a company’s website, and that the company owns its outputs.

In January 2024, UK parcel delivery firm DPD faced a different kind of embarrassment. A frustrated customer who could not get help to locate a missing parcel asked DPD’s chatbot to write a poem that criticised the company. It did. He then asked it to swear. It did that too. The exchange went viral on social media. DPD disabled the chatbot shortly after.

Both cases point to the same underlying failure: companies launched customer-facing AI without adequate oversight and were caught off-guard by the consequences.

What is Woolworths’ responsibility?

Woolworths operates the largest supermarket chain in Australia. It has promoted Olive as a trusted, convenient interface for its customers, who are reasonable to expect that the information Olive provides is accurate.

Admitting that Olive may make mistakes, as Woolworths does when a user opens the chatbot, does not sit easily with that expectation.

There is also a broader ethical dimension. Woolworths serves customers who, in many cases, are making careful decisions about household budgets.

The ACCC has already commenced proceedings against Woolworths over allegedly misleading discount pricing practices.

That context makes the Olive pricing errors harder to dismiss as an isolated technical glitch.

Companies that deploy AI in customer-facing roles take on a duty of care to ensure those systems are accurate and honestly presented. That duty does not diminish because the technology is new.

Why do companies keep making chatbots that pretend to be your friend?

The logic behind Olive’s programmed personality is not without basis.

Research on human-computer interaction consistently finds that people respond positively to interfaces that feel conversational and warm. Human-like chatbots that have a name and personality tend to generate higher customer engagement, satisfaction, and trust.

For companies, the commercial appeal is straightforward: a customer who feels at ease with a chatbot is more likely to complete a transaction and return.

However, this comes with a significant risk. When an anthropomorphised chatbot fails to meet the expectations its personality has created, customers tend to be more dissatisfied than they would have been with a plainly mechanical system.

This “expectation violation” means that the warmer the persona, the harder the fall.

The larger stakes

The Olive episode is a reminder that deploying AI in customer-facing roles is not a set-and-forget exercise.

A chatbot that quotes wrong prices and rambles about its family is not a quirky inconvenience but a sign that something in the development and oversight process has broken down.

For Woolworths, and for the many other companies now rushing to put AI in front of their customers, the lesson is clear: accountability cannot be outsourced to an algorithm. When a business puts a system in front of the public, it owns what that system says and does.

There is a lesson for consumers, too.

AI assistants may feel confident and conversational, but they are still tools, not authorities. If something seems unclear, inconsistent or too good to be true, it is worth double-checking.

As AI becomes a routine part of everyday transactions, a small measure of healthy scepticism may prove just as important as technological innovation.

– ref. Woolworths’ AI agent rambled about its ‘mother’. It’s a sign of deeper problems with the tech rollout – https://theconversation.com/woolworths-ai-agent-rambled-about-its-mother-its-a-sign-of-deeper-problems-with-the-tech-rollout-277072

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/woolworths-ai-agent-rambled-about-its-mother-its-a-sign-of-deeper-problems-with-the-tech-rollout-277072/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Toby Walsh, Professor of AI, Research Group Leader, UNSW Sydney

The Commonwealth Bank reportedly suspects around A$1 billion in home loans were obtained fraudulently, including through AI-generated documents. The Australian Financial Review says the bank has reported itself to police and the corporate watchdog to investigate.

According to sources quoted in the newspaper, Australia’s largest bank discovered the suspected fraud last year, partly thanks to two whistleblowers. After rival bank NAB was allegedly defrauded of around $150 million, the Commonwealth Bank also reportedly began investigating its own loans. Its Australian home loans alone are worth around $634 billion.

While the bank is yet to make any detailed comment on the case, a Commonwealth Bank spokesman said the industry faced “sustained and increasing levels of attempted fraud, driven by criminals who actively evolve their methods”.

This is an industry-wide challenge, with fraud being attempted through mortgage broking and referral channels.

Even though I’ve been warning about the need to make AI companies do more to stop facilitating crime, the sheer scale of this suspected fraud still surprised me.

We should assume criminals won’t only have been targeting the Commonwealth Bank and NAB, but that they’re trying all the banks.

This case has implications for all of us: from individuals to business owners wanting to avoid being fooled by fake AI invoices, to the banks, our government regulators and the AI companies themselves.

Don’t panic – but expect tighter security

First of all, given the Commonwealth Bank has 17 million customers, let’s be clear: this won’t be a $1 billion loss for the bank.

From what we’ve heard so far, the bank should be able to recover a significant amount of this money. These loans are reportedly being paid off, and there are bricks-and-mortar properties involved to sell if needed too.

But even for a bank as big as the Commonwealth, $1 billion is no loose change. After suspected fraud on this scale, I suspect we are going to see all banks ramp up their security.

[embedded content]

As customers, we should expect to be asked to do more to secure our accounts and secure our transactions. We’re also increasingly likely to need to use biometric authentication (such as facial recognition), as well as two-factor authentication.

I also think it’s likely to mean that, in future, we’ll need go into the bank to show ourselves along with our original documents – to a real person. That will be a lot less convenient than just providing certified copies to a mortgage broker. However, it’s also a lot more secure.

That way, the bank can see the real, physical passport, with its holograms and stamps, which are hard to reproduce.

Faking financial or identification documents with AI is now free and easy. For example, only last year we heard how ChatGPT could be used to forge passports.

---

Read more: Can you spot a financial fake? How AI is raising our risks of billing fraud

---

Given the Commonwealth Bank is reportedly investigating the role of mortgage brokers and others in this suspected fraud, it’s likely we’ll see banks make mortgage brokers go through more hoops too.

And the Commonwealth isn’t the only bank offering loans. So people should be asking questions of their own bank: have you uncovered fraud like this in your own loan book? And what are you doing about it?

What regulators and governments need to do

As well as being used for fraud, AI is also being used by the banks to try to detect and catch scammers.

AI can be very helpful in looking for strange patterns – for instance, a mortgage broker is suddenly submitting three times as many home loan applications?

But fraud on this scale, affecting Australia’s biggest bank, does show the federal government needs to stop saying we don’t need any new AI regulation. We just don’t have adequate safeguards in place.

Rethinking how we pay bills and do business

Whether you’re a business owner or an individual, if someone sends you a large invoice to pay, don’t pay it until you’re sure it’s real.

It’s just so easy to “spoof” (mimic) someone’s web address, email or invoice, especially the first time you’re paying someone.

We’ve seen too many cases of “middle men” attacks, where criminals get between a person and the company they’re trying to pay, then change the bank details.

There are some terrible stories about how people have transferred their deposit to buy a house to what they thought was the solicitor’s account. But it was changed – and they lost their whole deposit.

My rule of thumb is that any time it’s a first-time payment, or sum of money large enough to really hurt you, call whoever you’re paying over the phone and confirm their bank details are correct.

– ref. Why Commonwealth Bank’s $1 billion suspected loan fraud should change how we bank and do business – https://theconversation.com/why-commonwealth-banks-1-billion-suspected-loan-fraud-should-change-how-we-bank-and-do-business-277083

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/why-commonwealth-banks-1-billion-suspected-loan-fraud-should-change-how-we-bank-and-do-business-277083/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Jeffries, Senior Lecturer in Microbiology, Western Sydney University

A common mould has killed two people, and left four others seriously ill, at one of Sydney’s largest hospitals.

Health authorities are investigating a cluster of fungal infections at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital’s transplant unit.

Six patients developed infections between October and December 2025 after being exposed to Aspergillus, a common mould found in soil, plants, dust and damp environments.

In a statement, a hospital spokesperson suggested the mould may have been present at nearby construction sites, part of the hospital’s A$940 million redevelopment.

So what is Aspergillus? And should you be concerned?

It’s a common mould?

Yes. Aspergillus moulds are a type of filamentous fungi, meaning they form long chains, and are usually found in soil, plants and damp areas.

This type of mould is usually harmless to healthy people. But it can cause a severe respiratory disease called aspergillosis. Aspergillosis affects about 250,000 people around the world.

How can Aspergillus harm?

This type of mould produces airborne spores, which people may inhale into their lungs.

There, these spores can cause an infection in the smallest chambers of the lungs. This is because they release toxins and enzymes that damage lung tissue. These spores can spread to other parts of the body such as the brain, kidneys, heart or skin, causing further infection.

Symptoms of an infection include fever, cough and chest pain. You may have trouble breathing or might start coughing up blood. Aspergillus can also cause skin and eye infections.

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Read more: Global deaths from fungal disease have doubled in a decade – new study

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Who is most vulnerable?

Our immune systems can generally fight Aspergillus infections. But people with weakened immune systems have a much higher risk of developing an infection.

These include people having chemotherapy, corticosteroid treatment, or organ or stem cell transplants. Transplant patients are particularly vulnerable. This is because their immune system must be deliberately weakened to stop their body rejecting the transplanted organ. If they somehow inhale Aspergillus spores, the fungus can more easily take hold in their lungs.

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Read more: Deadly drug-resistant fungus spreading rapidly through European hospitals

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Dormant spores in the lungs of transplant patients may also cause infection when the spores are activated. But health authorities did not indicate this occurred at the Sydney hospital.

One large US study found just 59% of organ transplant recipients and 25% of stem cell transplant patients were still alive one year after developing invasive aspergillosis.

People with asthma may develop allergies to Aspergillus even if their immune systems are healthy. And it can cause severe allergic reactions in people with cystic fibrosis, a genetic condition in which sticky mucus blocks their airways. People with other lung conditions such as tuberculosis, influenza or COVID are also at a higher risk of developing an Aspergillus infection.

What are the treatment options?

Aspergillus can be treated with antifungal drugs such as itraconazole and corticosteroids. This treatment is most effective when we detect the infection early.

But researchers have identified strains of Aspergillus that don’t respond to this kind of treatment. So antifungal resistance is an urgent problem.

What else do I need to know?

Aspergillus infections are relatively uncommon in the general population. And they are rare in hospitals, where wards and rooms are usually fitted with high-efficiency particulate air, or HEPA, filters. These filters capture and remove potentially harmful particles from the air.

However, construction work may disturb the soil near or around the hospital, releasing a high number of Aspergillus spores into the air. This increases the risk of hospitals having clusters of infection. It remains unclear whether this is what happened at The Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

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Read more: Almost half of antibiotic prescribing for surgery is inappropriate, new report shows

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– ref. What is Aspergillus, the fungus behind recent hospital deaths? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-aspergillus-the-fungus-behind-recent-hospital-deaths-277067

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/what-is-aspergillus-the-fungus-behind-recent-hospital-deaths-277067/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milad Haghani, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow in Urban Risk and Resilience, The University of Melbourne

This week, images on social media showed global superstar Ed Sheeran alighting from the overnight train from Sydney into the decidedly utilitarian surrounds of Southern Cross Station in Melbourne.

In Australia for an international tour, the $700 million star chose to travel 11 hours overnight by train, rather than take a one-hour flight. Media stories speculating at his motive noted Sheeran’s wife, Cherry Seaborn, is a consultant in sustainability and encourages him to travel on public transport to save emissions.

Sheeran has also been open about his plan to buy land and “rewild” as much of the United Kingdom as he can, saying: “I love my county and I love wildlife and the environment.”

In a live touring industry built around tight schedules and frequent air travel, Sheeran’s decision may be a symbolic gesture, driven by a desire to reduce his carbon footprint.

Australia hosts hundreds of live events such as concerts and music festivals each year. In 2024 alone, the live entertainment sector drew more than 31 million attendances, including more than 14 million concertgoers. Across the country, more than 160 music festivals are staged each year.

Sell-out concerts at a huge scale, such as Sheeran’s, inevitably come with a major environmental footprint.

How large is the carbon footprint of major concerts and events? Where do those emissions come from? Is anything being done to reduce them; and why should the event industry care in the first place?

The emission impact of concerts and major events

Event footprints vary widely depending on their scale. This ranges from hundreds or thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions for conferences, to tens of thousands for large festivals and concerts, and hundreds of thousands or more for global mega-events such as the Olympic Games.

Estimates suggest emissions average around 5kg of CO₂ per attendee per day, though impacts vary considerably depending on travel patterns and the way events are designed.

There is no agreed global estimate of the total carbon footprint of concerts or major events globally. Most impacts are calculated on an event-by-event basis.

Music festivals in the UK, for example, are estimated to collectively generate more than 400,000 tonnes of carbon emissions each year.

That level of emissions is broadly comparable to the annual carbon footprint of more than 230,000 average passenger cars.

An event’s carbon footprint reflects the activities required to bring together and service the crowds. Carbon audits typically account for how audiences travel to the venue, where they stay, what they eat and drink, how the site is powered, and how waste is managed.

The key emission contributors

While public attention often focuses on artist travel and sound systems, evidence shows these are rarely the main drivers of emissions.

The largest contributor is audience travel. Multi-city concert analyses covering multiple large-scale international tours found transport by attendees creates 38 times more emissions than artist and crew travel, hotel stays and gear transportation combined.

Accommodation for major events typically contributes a secondary share of emissions, particularly when concerts attract interstate or international visitors requiring overnight stays.

Other emissions sources include food and beverage services, venue energy use and production, freight and touring logistics, and waste management. Each of those typically account for a much smaller share of total event emissions.

How are organisers and bands responding?

There is growing environmental awareness across the live music industry. In recent years, artists, promoters and venues have begun experimenting with ways to reduce the environmental footprint of their live events.

Much of this has focused on energy use and touring operations.

British band Coldplay, for example, reported that its Music of the Spheres world tour reduced direct touring emissions by about 60%, compared with its 2016–17 stadium tour. This was based on a show-by-show comparison, and verified by independent audits. Coldplay achieved this mainly by replacing diesel generators with battery-powered systems, using renewable energy, and redesigning freight and touring logistics, or even incorporating kinetic energy systems such as power-generating dance floors and bicycles.

Their tour also funded a large-scale tree-planting initiative; one tree for every ticket sold. The program has so far supported the planting of millions of trees worldwide.

Massive Attack also made headlines last year after staging the ACT 1.5 concert in Bristol, described as one of the lowest-carbon live music events ever held. It used battery-powered energy systems instead of diesel generators, plant-based catering, reduced freight logistics and offered incentives for low-carbon audience travel.

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Where to now? The audience needs to change

While these efforts are encouraging, evidence consistently shows that even low-emissions concerts might achieve limited overall reductions unless audience travel behaviour also changes.

Industry guidance from Green Music Australia identifies fan transport as one of the largest remaining emission sources, and prompts organisers to experiment with public-transport incentives, venue selection and travel partnerships.

Technological improvements on stage are becoming increasingly achievable. But influencing how tens of thousands of people travel to events remains the hard bit.

Gestures such as Sheeran choosing the train over flying may appear symbolic, but symbols matter. They help make lower-carbon choices seem normal, and reinforce environmental values across an industry already confronting the impacts of climate change on live events.

A recent global analysis of more than 2,000 mass gatherings disrupted by extreme weather between 2004 and 2024 across several high-income countries around the world found that arts, cultural and entertainment events – particularly festivals and concerts – were among those most frequently affected by climate change.

Storms, heat and other climate-related disruptions are already altering event timing and financial viability across countries including Australia, the UK and the United States.

In other words, the live events industry is not only contributing to climate emissions; it is increasingly exposed to their consequences.

Efforts to reduce the emissions footprint of large events and concerts should become an core part of the broader adaptation challenges facing the events industry. Its very existence depends on stable environmental and climate conditions.

– ref. Ed Sheeran caught the train to Melbourne to protect the climate. But what about his thousands of fans? – https://theconversation.com/ed-sheeran-caught-the-train-to-melbourne-to-protect-the-climate-but-what-about-his-thousands-of-fans-276971

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/ed-sheeran-caught-the-train-to-melbourne-to-protect-the-climate-but-what-about-his-thousands-of-fans-276971/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Poe, Associate Professor of Social and Political Thought, Australian Catholic University

The New South Wales government has just announced the launch of a new, permanent rapid response police unit.

Composed of about 250 officers and 28 administrative staff, the unit will be equipped with a fleet of rapid response vehicles and officers will be armed with long-arm rifles.

The Minns government made the announcement as part of a strategic response to violent crime in the aftermath to the Bondi Beach terror attack on December 14 2025.

But does this type of policing work?

What will the unit do?

This new unit will engage in what the government describes as “intelligence-led policing” that can respond quickly to evolving threats, patrol high-risk areas and offer protection to public spaces, mass gatherings and major events.

The unit will be fully active, engaged for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and publicly visible.

The introduction of this unit is an important change in police structure and practice in NSW.

The newly constituted rapid response unit has evolved from a temporary taskforce called “Operation Shelter”, which was established to address increasing social tensions following the outbreak of the Gaza War on October 7, 2023.

While the “Operation Shelter” taskforce functioned as what NSW officials described as a “reactive operation”, the new unit will become a permanent, fully active police unit, with dedicated officers, training, management and budgets.

It will be proactive, attempting to prevent crime from happening before it starts.

New tactics and priorities

Rapid response teams can be distinguished from ordinary patrol policing through their structure and purpose.

There are many international precedents for such units, including in major metropolitan centres across the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe.

A NSW Police Force delegation studied such units in Europe and England, travelling to investigate them in January 2026.

Previously, NSW Police deployed a strategy of “surge” operations – diverting resources for emergency engagement to disrupt criminal activity and promote public safety.

What the NSW government proposes now is a shift from what it describes as reactive policing to proactive prevention.

Police will deploy regular patrols to “high-risk areas”, engaging in surveillance of potential criminal activity before it starts.

As NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said:

Our priority is not only ensuring the community is safe, but that people also feel safe, while providing a deterrence to anyone who wants to do harm (while we also want to) support our frontline operational police.

But opinion on this change in policing has not been unanimous.

Power and accountability

Dramatic, traumatic events such as the Bondi Beach terror attack draw can be a source of collective anxiety. In response, lawmakers often feel compelled to react, generating policy solutions that show a rapid governmental response.

But will expanding police powers in the form of a rapid response unit prevent further terror attacks?

The research is mixed.

Place-based interventions – such as patrolling neighbourhoods already considered as a source of criminality and close monitoring of the “usual suspects” – can sometimes prevent crime in the short-term.

But research has shown proactive police engagement can in fact increase, rather than decrease, major crimes.

Recent policing violence in US cities – such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) action in New York, Minneapolis and Los Angeles – testifies to these dangers. These recent conflicts highlight the ways in which expanded police powers can be the source of pandemonium, rather than peace.

Some Australian lawmakers have criticised NSW’s new rapid response unit, seeing this increase in police power as a potential source of harm, especially to legally authorised protestors.

And they are right.

Closer examination of the proposal for NSW’s rapid response unit highlights further threats to public safety, including changes to weapons use and technology.

Much current research highlights how changes in technology escalate police power and police violence.

The expansion of police power cannot always be rewound, making it difficult to always hold police accountable to the law.

Difficult questions

The launch of a new unit raises difficult questions:

• who will engage in new police work, and what communities will these officers come from?
• how will this work be evaluated (and can communities participate in those evaluations, or will the state determine all metrics of success)?
• what, if anything, would allow for the dissolution of such a unit?

NSW Premier Minns has said: “because our security challenges have changed, our policing model needs to change with them.”

Considering the current research on police power, do we need to consider and ameliorate for potential perverse outcomes?

– ref. NSW’s new rapid response police unit may help some people feel safer, but it also raises difficult questions – https://theconversation.com/nsws-new-rapid-response-police-unit-may-help-some-people-feel-safer-but-it-also-raises-difficult-questions-276982

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/nsws-new-rapid-response-police-unit-may-help-some-people-feel-safer-but-it-also-raises-difficult-questions-276982/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

Deposed Liberal leader Sussan Ley formally resigned from parliament on Friday – and sent a blunt challenge to her successor, Angus Taylor, in her farewell statement.

Speaker Milton Dick will now set the date for the byelection in the regional New South Wales electorate. The poll is expected to be in mid April or early May. It is too late to have it before Easter.

Ley, who has been on a goodbye tour of the electorate, will not return to parliament – which resumes next week – to deliver a valedictory.

Upping the ante for Taylor, Ley said in a statement: “The election of a Liberal Member in the Farrer by-election is vital for the betterment and ongoing strength of our region and I know that Angus Taylor can and will ensure the Party continues to enjoy the support, trust and confidence of the people of Farrer”.

In fact, the byelection is a very open contest, with at least four main contenders. The Liberals, Nationals, and One Nation will run. Also, one strong independent, Michelle Milthorpe, is already campaigning. She polled 20% of the primary vote at last year’s election.

Milthorpe, who received Climate 200 funding at the 2025 election, is being backed by independent Helen Haines, who holds Indi, the Victorian seat across the border from Farrer, and by independent ACT senator David Pocock.

Labor has not made a decision on whether to stand, but appears unlikely to do so. It can’t win the seat, although if it stood it would preference One Nation last and therefore put maximum pressure on the Liberals to do so. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in Farrer early this week.

The contest is shaping as a big test of whether the surge of support for One Nation in recent opinion polling will translate into actual votes. One Nation will choose its candidate on March 7. It has had more than 70 nominations and has reduced the field to three possible candidates. It says it is well resourced for the byelection, in finances and local membership.

Taylor told a news conference the contest would be “very, very tough” for the Liberals.

The Liberals have nominations open and could choose their candidate as early as next week if there is a stand-out contender. The Nationals also have nominations open; the party’s candidate will be chosen by a rank and file ballot.

The 2025 primary votes were: Liberals, 43.4% (-8.9%); Milthorpe 20%; ALP 15.1% (-3.9%); One Nation 6.6% (+0.3%).

Ley won over Milthorpe 56.2% – 43.8% on the two candidate preferred result.

The seat has been held by either the Nationals or Liberals since its creation in 1949. Tim Fischer, who was leader of the Nationals and deputy prime minister, held it from 1984-2001. He was the only National to represent the seat. In 2001, after Fischer’s retirement, Ley won the seat from the Nationals by only 206 votes.

The electorate’s main centre is Albury, on the Murray River. The sprawling seat, which stretches to the South Australian border, also includes the towns of Griffith and Leeton in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. One of the issues in the byelection will be water.

Ley said in her statement: “After the Liberal Party suffered our worst defeat in 81 years, it was with gratitude and humility that I took on the role of Leader of our Party. I was elected by my parliamentary colleagues and I thank them once again for the opportunity to serve.

“I believe my election as the first woman to ever lead not just the Federal Liberal Party, but any Federal Opposition, is a milestone for all women to be proud of. I hope I have paved the way for the next woman to be elected to, and succeed in, both these roles.

“It will be for commentators and historians to measure the period of my leadership, but I am proud that we were instrumental in establishing a Commonwealth Royal Commission into Antisemitism and that we set clear directions on several key policy areas in tax, industrial relations, energy, national security, and families. I welcome the Coalition’s immediate re-adoption of many of these directions and policies in recent days and weeks.”

– ref. View from The Hill: Ley formally resigns, tells Taylor it’s ‘vital’ he holds Farrer – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-ley-formally-resigns-tells-taylor-its-vital-he-holds-farrer-275910

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/view-from-the-hill-ley-formally-resigns-tells-taylor-its-vital-he-holds-farrer-275910/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michele Lastella, Senior Lecturer, CQUniversity Australia

On paper, the Matildas should have a major advantage playing on home soil for the upcoming Women’s Asian Cup.

However, from a sleep and travel perspective, they may be fighting a hidden disadvantage despite Australia hosting the tournament, which runs from March 1–21.

This is because most of Australia’s squad is based overseas, many flying from the top European leagues in England, Italy, Germany and Sweden.

Let’s unpack the challenges they face and how travel impacts these athletes.

How flying impacts sleep

The human body runs on an approximate 24-hour internal timing system known as the circadian rhythm.

This body clock regulates when we feel alert, when we feel sleepy and even how well we perform.

Therefore, when a team travels from Southwest or Central Asia to Australia, the players may shift forward up to 6–7 hours.

Let’s take, for example, the Iranian national team, almost all of whom play in the local domestic league. For staff and players travelling from Tehran to Brisbane, their internal body clocks will still think it’s the middle of the night when it’s morning in Brisbane.

The result is jet lag: a misalignment between the internal body clock and the new time zone, which generally resolves at about one day per time zone crossed.

Jet lag results in disrupted sleep, daytime fatigue, slower reaction times and reduced concentration.

In travelling to Australia, nations such as Iran and Uzbekistan will cross five or more time zones, others such as Vietnam, North Korea and South Korea will face only minor shifts.

But the Matildas, Japan and South Korea have many players arriving from various European countries.

The Matildas have the most overseas-based players of any squad (closely followed by Japan). The Australians have 23 players arriving into Perth from all different locations: 13 from England, four from Sweden, two from Italy, two from Germany, one from the United States and one from Canada.

The distance of travel matters. Long-haul flights can disrupt sleep even before jet lag begins.

Athletes often struggle to sleep on planes due to restricted movement, cabin pressure, dehydration and unfamiliar conditions.

They can suffer what is known as travel fatigue, which is different from jet lag.

So some teams will arrive in Australia only sleep-deprived (travel fatigue, minor shifts), and some will arrive both sleep-deprived as well as circadian-misaligned (jet lag).

Direction matters

The severity of symptoms and rate of adaptation largely depend the direction of the flight and the individual variation.

Travel to Australia can take up to 30 hours in the less favourable eastward direction.

To put it simply, recovering from eastward travel usually requires people to shift their sleep and wake up earlier.

Physiologically, this is harder than travelling west because advancing the body clock affects the body more than delaying it.

Why some players adapt faster

Not everyone responds to travel in the same way.

Adaptation to time-zone change is moderated by chronotype – natural preferences of the body for sleep and wake activities.

Morning types (larks) feel alert early and are ready for bed earlier while evening types (owls) prefer later schedules.

These differences are important because morning types may adapt better to eastward travel.

Evening types often struggle more because they must fall asleep earlier than their biological preference. Exposure to bright light at the wrong time (such as scrolling on a phone in a brightly lit hotel room) may further delay adjustment.

That’s why screening players’ natural sleep patterns before a tournament can help staff individualise plans.

Experience counts. Players who regularly compete in international tournaments are repeatedly exposed to long-haul travel and rapid time-zone changes where overtime they often develop different behavioural strategies to help reduce the severity of jet lag symptoms.

Sleep banking and light exposure

One of the simplest and most effective strategies is something called sleep banking.

In the week before departure, players can deliberately extend their nightly sleep by 30–60 minutes. This creates a buffer against the inevitable sleep loss during travel and competition.

Research shows this can minimise performance declines and speed-up recovery later, especially when going into periods of disrupted sleep.

In short, we can’t eliminate jet lag but we can prepare for it.

Once in Australia, timing becomes everything.

The timing of light exposure after eastward travel becomes ever more important. Evening light should be limited.

Short daytime naps (20–60 minutes, ideally early afternoon) can reduce fatigue without impairing night-time sleep.

Caffeine can be helpful but only when timed carefully: a sneaky late-afternoon coffee may impact subsequent sleep and potentially delay adaptation.

Sleep as a competitive advantage

In tournament football, sleep should be viewed as a performance variable that underpins both preparation and recovery.

Athletes’ sleep is commonly disrupted after competition, particularly night games.

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Read more: The next great performance booster for athletes? Sleep

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In a tournament context, this creates a compounding problem: one poor night can carry into subsequent matches via reduced recovery, impaired mood and vigilance, and altered physiological readiness.

Multi-match schedules, short turnarounds, late kickoffs, unfamiliar beds and heightened cognitive arousal can all compress sleep opportunity and reduce sleep quality at the very time when athletes need it most.

The goal isn’t perfect sleep – it is consistency and protecting one’s sleep opportunities. Teams must make sleep a priority and stop stealing it through poorly timed meetings, recovery sessions or media obligations.

Prioritising sleep and recovery could be the difference between falling at the group stages of the tournament and pushing deep into the final matches.

– ref. Home ground disadvantage? How sleep and travel could impact the Matildas – https://theconversation.com/home-ground-disadvantage-how-sleep-and-travel-could-impact-the-matildas-276059

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/home-ground-disadvantage-how-sleep-and-travel-could-impact-the-matildas-276059/

ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on February 27, 2026.

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Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/er-report-a-roundup-of-significant-articles-on-eveningreport-nz-for-february-27-2026/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tam Ha, Associate Professor of Cancer Epidemiology, University of Wollongong

More than 1,300 Victorians have joined a class action against Johnson & Johnson alleging its talcum powder products left them with ovarian cancer, mesothelioma (cancer affecting the lungs) and other cancers affecting the reproductive organs.

This follows lawsuits in the United Kingdom and the United States, including a prominent case in California. In December 2025, Johnson & Johnson was forced to pay two women US$40 million after a jury found its baby powder was dangerous and that it had failed to warn consumers.

Talc is a naturally occurring mineral mined in many parts of the world. People can come into contact with it during mining and processing, industrial applications, and more commonly, through its use in cosmetics and body powders.

People use talc on their genitals to absorb moisture, reduce friction, disguise odours, or to reduce skin rashes and chafing. Talc increases the opaqueness of face powders and cosmetics, leaving skin feeling smooth and soft.

So how is it linked to cancer? And what does the scientific evidence say?

Contamination with asbestos

Since the 1970s, questions have emerged about whether talc could be contaminated with asbestos. Asbestos is a cancer-causing agent that can affect the lungs when inhaled.

Talc and asbestos are minerals often found close to each other in the Earth, so there is potential for talc to be contaminated with asbestos during the mining process.

Since the 1970s, manufacturers have attempted to produce pure talcum powder free from asbestos. However, it’s unclear how routinely samples are tested and the extent of contamination over the past 50 years.

In 2023, Johnson & Johnson stopped selling talc in its products worldwide, including in Australia, switching instead to a cornflour base. Other manufacturers still sell talcum powder and it’s still used in cosmetics, as well as industrially.

What does the science say about the cancer link?

Two cancers have a possible link with talc use:

• lung cancer, due to the potential to inhale talc particles, which can occur with some types of jobs

• ovarian cancer, due to regular use of talcum powder in the genital area.

Some human studies have found products containing talc are linked with higher rates of ovarian cancer. Other studies have found no link.

Studies that examined the use of talc on the genital area found no evidence to suggest a link between talc and uterine or cervical cancer.

But there are several challenges to overcome when studying the link between talcum powder and cancer. It can be difficult to recall details about talc use (brand, amount, and so on) many years later. Some people who developed cancer will have died before being identified and studied, so won’t be included.

However, when researchers investigated how often participants used talc powder and compared those who used it frequently with those who didn’t, they found an increased risk of ovarian cancer among frequent users.

So what does it all mean?

When there are differing results from multiple studies, those results can be summarised together to answer the research question. So what does all the currently available evidence say about the relationship between talc usage and ovarian cancer?

This summary study concludes there appears to be a weak risk of some types of ovarian cancer, meaning it’s linked to a small increase in risk, but the reasons why remain unclear.

The evidence suggests talc does not increase the risk of other gynaecological cancers, such as uterine and cervical.

Talc contaminated with asbestos is clearly linked to an increased risk of lung cancer. However, cosmetic use of talc doesn’t seem to increase the risk of lung cancer because users don’t breathe it in.

In 2024 the World Health Organization (WHO) updated its advice to say that talc is “probably carcinogenic” which means it probably causes cancer in humans. This is the second-highest risk level for cancer, which includes the herbicide glyphosate (Roundup) and red meat.

If you use talcum powder and are concerned about an increased risk of cancer, it’s recommended you stop using it or limit how much you use. As with all decisions in life, consider the balance between potential harms and benefits, especially if you’ve used talc for a long time and want to minimise your risk of getting cancer.

– ref. What’s the link between talcum powder and cancer? – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-link-between-talcum-powder-and-cancer-276745

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/whats-the-link-between-talcum-powder-and-cancer-276745/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Heilpern, Associate Professor and Chair of Discipline (Law), Southern Cross University

Imagine sitting in a crowded local court in Australia, and this happens (names have been changed):

Court officer: I call the matter of James Burnett

JB: I am the personage known by that name but do not identify for the purposes of this court.

Judge: Are you James Burnett?

JB: I am known by that name but do not identify. I challenge the jurisdiction of this court as the Queen did not personally appoint you. The Magna Carta states that I am a “freemen of our realm for ourselves” and have “distrained to do more service for a knight’s fee or for any other free tenement than is due”.

Judge: If you are not James Burnett, then I will assume that you are not in court, and will convict you of this traffic matter in your absence.

JB: You cannot do that because the Royal Coat of Arms behind you means that it is English law I must answer to.

Judge: Last chance – are you James Burnett?

JB: Only for the purpose of this discourse and not in any legal or corporate sense without the capitalisation of my name.

Judge: Do you plead guilty or not guilty to the charge of drive unregistered.

JB: I was not driving, I was journeying, and to plead would consent to the corporate entity known as Corporatus Australis.

I was the magistrate in this case, and it went on like this for 45 minutes. “James Burnett” is a so-called sovereign citizen, and cases like his are becoming more common in the courts. The group uses pseudo law – nonsense “law” that has no basis in fact– to obfuscate and frustrate judicial matters. In the process, they are clogging Australian courts, something I saw many times as a magistrate and now observe as a legal academic.

Who are sovereign citizens?

They cover a broad range of perspectives, from sophisticated to naïve, from Christian to isolationist. However, the common theme is a belief that the laws that apply to everyone else do not apply to them, because they are “sovereign”. They maintain they can remove themselves from laws relating to traffic, debts, family law and tax by a range of legal manoeuvres and reliance on ancient legal texts and principals.

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Even though there have been no numeric studies, it is universally accepted this phenomenon is increasing, particularly in local courts in rural and regional areas.

Sovereign citizens became more common in Australian courts during the ructions surrounding COVID restrictions, where a growing number of people resisted or at least resented government shut-downs, and sought out fellow travellers of dissent. This is not just an Australian phenomenon – courts in the United States, New Zealand, Canada and Europe have seen similar increases.

It is important to note that nowhere in any court in Australia or in these jurisdictions overseas has any sovereign citizen argument been accepted by the courts. Every contention raised by “James Burnett”, for example, has been comprehensively and bluntly rejected at all levels.

The real problem is time

The actual James Burnett transcript runs for many more pages. In a list of 100 matters, one obstreperous sovereign citizen can throw the whole day into turmoil, disadvantaging all the other litigants, their lawyers, witnesses and victims. Sovereign citizens are always self-represented, as lawyers have strict ethical rules for putting fallacious legal arguments to the court. So, a parking ticket charge on a list day – which should take a minute or two – ends up taking, literally, hours.

The main method courts have developed is the self-explanatory “shut down and move on” technique, which I tried in James Burnett’s case.

How can this be more effectively curtailed?

In my experience there are two measures that may help reduce the problem. First, enforcement agencies should prosecute those profiteering from spreading this misinformation, such as those selling booklets and coaching on getting around the law. If I was selling dodgy shampoo, the authorities would come down hard, so it is hard to tell why these people are being given free reign. Second, there could be a trial of a rehabilitation program diverting from the courts. We have them for drug addiction, anger management and traffic offences – why not sovereign citizens?

A diversion program would not focus on changing opinions, just pointing out that maintaining this approach is doomed to failure, has never worked and will certainly lead to increased penalties and public humiliation.

The need for action is urgent – the evidence is that this movement is growing, diverting courts from their core business which is administering justice for all.

– ref. How should Australia handle ‘sovereign citizens’ clogging the courts? A former magistrate explains – https://theconversation.com/how-should-australia-handle-sovereign-citizens-clogging-the-courts-a-former-magistrate-explains-276044

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/how-should-australia-handle-sovereign-citizens-clogging-the-courts-a-former-magistrate-explains-276044/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carolina Quintero Rodriguez, Senior Lecturer and Program Manager, Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise) program, RMIT University

You pull on your rain jacket, step out into the storm, and within half an hour your undershirt is soaked. The jacket you purchased as “waterproof” seems to have stopped working, and all the marketing claims feel a bit suspect.

In reality, the jacket probably hasn’t failed overnight: a mix of how it’s built, the exact level of water protection it offers, and years of sweat, skin oil and dirt have all played a part.

But there are a few simple ways you can care for your rain jacket to ensure you stay dry, even when it’s pouring.

The science behind rain jackets

Most proper rain jackets are built around a waterproof “membrane” sandwiched inside the fabric. Gore-Tex is the most popular technology used which includes a very thin layer of chemicals known as PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene) or expanded PTFE (ePTFE) which are full of microscopic pores.

Those pores are much smaller than liquid water droplets. But they’re big enough for individual water vapour molecules, so rain on the outside can’t push through, but sweat vapour from your body can escape outwards.

Other fabrics use solid, non-porous membranes made from polyurethane or polyester that move water vapour by absorbing it and passing it through the material molecule by molecule rather than via tiny holes. This can make them a bit more tolerant of dirt.

The outer fabric is sometimes treated with a very thin chemical finish that makes water roll off the surface instead of soaking into the fibres – a bit like wax on a car. This finish is known as “Durable Water Repellent” and helps to reduce saturation of water in the exterior of the jacket.

In the past, many of these chemical finishes used “forever chemicals” (PFAS) that repelled both water and oil, but persist in the environment and build up in wildlife and people.

Because of this, brands and regulators have started using alternatives based on silicones or hydrocarbons. These still repel water but are generally less hazardous.

It’s also useful to understand the words you see on labels.

A waterproof jacket is built to stop rain coming through, even in heavy or prolonged downpours, and usually has a membrane, a chemical finish plus fully taped seams.

“Water resistant” means the fabric slows water down and copes with light showers but will eventually let water through. It often relies on a tight weave and a chemical finish but no true membrane.

“Water repellent” just describes that beading effect from the chemical finish. It can apply to both waterproof and non-waterproof fabrics.

Some brands also say rainproof or weatherproof as a friendlier way of saying “pretty much waterproof”, but there’s rarely a separate test behind that word.

Why do rain jackets degrade over time?

When you realise your jacket isn’t waterproof anymore, the first thing that has usually gone wrong isn’t the membrane. It’s the chemical finish on the outside.

That ultra thin surface layer gets scuffed by backpack straps and seat belts, baked by sun, and contaminated by mud, smoke and city grime.

These coatings can gradually lose their water repellent properties through abrasion and washing if harsh detergents and washing cycles are used, and bits of them are shed into the environment over time.

Body oils, sunscreen and insect repellent also play a role, as they build up in the fabric over time. Outdoor gear care guides and lab work on waterproof fabrics both point out that these oily contaminants can damage the chemical finish and clog the pores of the membrane, making it harder both for rain to be repelled and for sweat vapour to escape.

Over many years, slow physical ageing also takes a toll. Constant flexing can cause a membrane to thin or develop tiny cracks and the finish to deteriorate. Seam tapes can also start to peel away, especially on shoulders where backpack straps press.

How to keep a jacket waterproof

The single best thing you can do for both your comfort and the planet is to keep a good jacket working for as long as possible, because making new technical fabrics has a significant environmental footprint.

Gentle washing will help extend the life of your rain jacket, as it removes the build up of contamination such as dirt and body oils. Brands and care guides recommend closing zips and Velcro, then washing on a gentle cycle with a cleaner designed for waterproof fabrics or a very mild soap, avoiding normal detergents and softeners that leave residues.

Depending on the type of chemical finish, this coat can be re-applied through spray-on or wash-in products found commercially. Some finishes can be re-activated by exposure to low heat (low dryer heat or low ironing heat). Heat makes the water-repelling molecules stand back up after they have been “flattened” by use and contamination.

Although the above will help you to keep your jacket waterproof, it is best to follow the care instructions given by the manufacturer as they change according to the type of composition of the fabric.

In any case, it is important to avoid leaving the jacket wet and scrunched up for weeks, and be mindful of heavy sunscreens and repellents.

– ref. Raincoat no longer waterproof? A textile scientist explains why – and how to fix it – https://theconversation.com/raincoat-no-longer-waterproof-a-textile-scientist-explains-why-and-how-to-fix-it-272801

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/raincoat-no-longer-waterproof-a-textile-scientist-explains-why-and-how-to-fix-it-272801/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rodney Taveira, Senior Lecturer in American Studies, University of Sydney

The Biennale of Sydney is returning this year for its 25th edition, and exploring a bold new theme: rememory.

It’s a term artistic director Hoor Al Qasimi adopted from Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved (1987). In her curatorial text, Al Qasimi says:

Abandoning typical and linear storytelling, in which history and memories are presented through objectification, rememory is how we become subjects and storytellers of our collective present through events of the past.

It’s a concept that asks us to rethink not only how we remember the past, but how our engagement with memories in the present – especially memories transformed into artwork – can shape the future for ourselves and those around us.

Morrison’s concept of rememory

Morrison’s Beloved is set primarily in 1873, after the American Civil War. The novel follows Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman haunted by her past.

Her story is inspired by Margaret Garner, a real-life fugitive slave who killed her baby daughter and attempted to kill her three other children to prevent their recapture into slavery. Sethe, too, is forced down this path in Beloved.

Throughout the novel, rememory is an involuntary, disorienting and deeply personal form of remembering – wherein characters relive forgotten or repressed traumatic histories. These “ghosts” of the past materialise as Beloved, a mysterious young woman who embodies the main character’s dead daughter and the trauma she bears.

Beloved vividly intrudes from the past into the present, tormenting and destabilising each character – yet remains unreachable.

For Morrison, the true horrors of slavery are in many ways “unspeakable”. They cannot be adequately “counted” in official facts and figures, which often make “the institution and not the people” the centre of history.

Morrison viewed rememory as a way of “putting the authority back into the hands of the slaves, rather than the slaveholder”.

Throughout the novel, this is created by immersing the reader in each character’s interior world. We feel Sethe fight against remembering her past – the repetition of the visceral “No. No. Nono. Nonono” as she desperately tries to resist a memory breaking through.

Like the characters, the reader is haunted by Beloved’s ambiguous, lingering presence. We, too, are trying to piece together these fragments of repressed memories that emerge in fits and starts rather than a clear chronology.

Morrison throws us into a world where nobody “can bear too long to dwell on the past” and yet “nobody can avoid it”.

We cannot look away. The reader is compelled to inhabit the pain and suffering of the characters, who in turn, reclaim authority over their own past.

Rememory is a personal reckoning and a blueprint for confronting traumatic histories that can’t be neatly contained or forgotten.

Who is Hoor Al Qasimi?

In 2024, Hoor Al Qasimi was named ArtReview’s most influential person in the contemporary art world. She is a Sheikah (Emirati princess) from the United Arab Emirates, with her father serving as the emir of Sharjah. At just 22-years-old, she assumed responsibility for the 2003 Sharjah Biennial.

Al Qasimi has earned international credibility by championing non-Western and Indigenous artists, weaving political themes into large-scale exhibitions.

Her guiding philosophy appears straightforward: decentralise art and make it accessible for all, not just those in elite spaces.

We see this philosophy realised in the Sydney Biennale’s first appearance in the suburb of Penrith and its return to Campbelltown — both highly multicultural areas. As Al Qasimi explained in an interview:

People say, ‘oh, it’s too far’ and I think, far for whom?

Biennale donors and board members have debated Al Qasimi’s appointment due to her views on the war on Gaza. She has condemned the systemic destruction of Palestinians and Gaza, and voiced the sentiment that “none of us will be free until Palestine is free”.

Peter Wertheim, the co-chief executive of Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said her appointment was an “example of one of Australia’s flagship cultural institutions being captured by an extremist anti-western political agenda”.

Rememory and ethical spectatorship

Art encourages contemplating the other, breaking down their otherness and preventing the simplistic, violent divide of “us” versus “them”. Being “pro” something doesn’t automatically make us “anti” to another, seemingly opposed idea.

With this in mind, there’s another way to view Sethe’s unspeakable act in Beloved. Her decision to kill her daughter is, at face value, abominable. Yet it approaches our understanding against the backdrop of the larger unspeakable suffering of the world she was born into.

Rememory calls on all of us to engage more thoughtfully with what we encounter. In the context of art, this means not just passively viewing a work, but actively engaging with it. It also means accepting the responsibility that other people’s experiences ask of you – without rushing to simple resolutions.

Whether you are viewing Kamilaroi artist Warraba Weatherall’s sculptural works at the Chau Chak Wing Museum, or Dread Scott’s portraits of the incarcerated at Campbelltown Arts Centre, you can ask: whose memory is being held in the piece before me? And do I share that memory, or encounter it from a different angle?

Both positions are real and valid, and each carries different obligations. If the memory is yours, the work may ask you to see yourself in it. If it’s not yours, you may be asked not to turn away.

Even the controversy surrounding Al Qasimi’s appointment is a form of rememory, as it surfaces tensions about who can speak, grieve, resist publicly – and whose suffering matters.

Moreover, Khaled Sabsabi’s reinstatement at this year’s Venice Biennale – wherein he will become the first Australian artist to exhibit in both the main exhibition and Australia Pavilion – suggests artists who confront our complex politics should be valued as much as they are challenged.

The Biennale isn’t about resolving such tensions, but holding them open.

– ref. Sydney’s Biennale theme, ‘rememory’, urges us to confront trauma – now more relevant than ever – https://theconversation.com/sydneys-biennale-theme-rememory-urges-us-to-confront-trauma-now-more-relevant-than-ever-276394

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/sydneys-biennale-theme-rememory-urges-us-to-confront-trauma-now-more-relevant-than-ever-276394/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Guy Bate, Professional Teaching Fellow, Management and International Business, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

The steady embrace of artificial intelligence (AI) in the public and private sectors in Australia and New Zealand has come with broad guidance about using the new technology safely and transparently, with good governance and human oversight.

So far, so sensible. Aligning AI use with existing organisational values makes perfect sense.

But here’s the catch. Most references to “responsible AI” assume values are like a set of house rules you can write down once, translate into checklists and enforce forever.

But generative AI (Gen AI) does not simply follow the rules of the house. It changes the house. GenAI’s distinctive power is not that it automates calculations, but that it automates plausible language.

It writes the summary, the rationale, the email, the policy draft and the performance feedback. In other words, it produces the texts organisations use to explain themselves.

When a system can generate confident, professional-sounding reasons instantly, it can quietly change what counts as a “good reason” to do something.

This is where “value drift” begins – a gradual shift in what feels normal, reasonable or acceptable as people adapt their work to what the technology makes easy and convincing.

Invisible ethical shifts

In the workplace, for example, a manager might use GenAI to draft performance feedback to avoid a hard conversation. The tone is smoother, but the judgement is harder to locate, as is the accountability.

Or a policy team uses GenAI to produce a balanced justification for a contested decision. The prose is polished, but the real trade-offs are less visible.

For small businesses, the appeal of GenAI lies in speed and efficiency. A sole trader can use it to respond to customers, write marketing copy or draft policies in seconds.

But over time, responsiveness may come to mean instant, AI-generated replies rather than careful, human judgement. The meaning of good service quietly shifts.

None of this requires an ethical breach. The drift happens precisely because the new practice feels helpful.

The biggest ethical effects of GenAI don’t often show up as a single shocking scandal. They are slower and quieter. A thousand small decisions get made a little differently.

Explanations get a little smoother. Accountability becomes a little harder to point to. And before long, we are living with a new normal we did not consciously choose.

If responsible AI use is about more than good intentions and tidy documentation, we need to stop treating values as fixed targets. We need to pay attention to how values shift once AI becomes part of everyday work.

Hidden assumptions

Much of today’s responsible-AI guidance follows a straightforward model: identify the values you care about, embed them in GenAI systems and processes, then check compliance.

This is necessary but also incomplete. Values are not “fixed” once written down in strategy documents or policy templates. They are lived out in practice.

They show up in how people talk, what they notice, what they prioritise and how they justify trade-offs. When technologies change those routines, values get reshaped.

An emerging line of research on technology and ethics shows that values are not simply applied to technologies from the outside. They are shaped from within everyday use, as people adapt their practices to what technologies make easy, visible or persuasive.

In other words, values and technologies shape each other over time, each influencing how the other develops and is understood.

We have seen this before. Social media did not just test our existing ideas about privacy. It gradually changed them. What once felt intrusive or inappropriate now feels normal to many younger users.

The value of privacy did not disappear, but its meaning shifted as everyday practices changed. Generative AI is likely to have similar effects on values such as fairness, accountability and care.

In our research on leadership development, we are exploring how we teach emerging leaders to recognise and reflect on these shifts.

The challenge is not only whether leaders apply the right values to AI, but whether they are equipped to notice how working with these systems may gradually reshape what those values mean in practice.

Constant vigilance

The emphasis in New Zealand and Australia on responsible AI guidance is sensible and pragmatic. It covers governance, privacy, transparency, skills and accountability.

But it still tends to assume that once the right principles and processes are in place, responsibility has been secured.

If values move as AI reshapes practice, though, responsible AI needs a practical upgrade. Principles still matter, but they should be paired with routines that keep ethical judgement visible over time.

Organisations should periodically review AI-mediated decisions in high-stakes areas such as hiring, performance management or customer communication.

They should pay attention not just to technical risks, but to how the meaning of fairness, accountability or care may be changing in practice. And they should make it clear who owns the reasoning behind AI-shaped decisions.

Responsible AI is not about freezing values in place. It is about staying responsible as values shift.

– ref. AI can slowly shift an organisation’s core principles. How to spot ‘value drift’ early – https://theconversation.com/ai-can-slowly-shift-an-organisations-core-principles-how-to-spot-value-drift-early-276511

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/ai-can-slowly-shift-an-organisations-core-principles-how-to-spot-value-drift-early-276511/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Song Shi, Associate Professor, Property Economics, University of Technology Sydney

A single street tree can potentially increase an average Sydney house price by A$30,000, our new research shows. This echoes past research showing street trees not only help boost property prices, but offer other benefits, from improved scenery and privacy to increased shade.

But there’s a catch. Our analysis, published in the international Cities journal, also found that if a street tree is too close, it can actually reduce the selling price by more than $70,000.

Our study looked at more than 1,500 house sales in the City of Sydney from 2021 to 2024, then matched those with detailed council data on nearly 50,000 public trees.

After accounting for other, better known price factors – number of bedrooms, bathrooms, car parking, land size, proximity to the CBD, transport, schools and more – we found trees can be associated with higher house prices. But that price boost only occurred when the trees were about 10–20 metres from a home, such as across the street or near the frontage.

In contrast, trees planted too close – within a 10m radius from the centre of the property – were actually associated with lower sale prices.

This matters beyond Sydney. Every Australian capital city has set tree-planting goals, such as the City of Sydney’s target for 23% tree canopy cover in 2030 and 27% in 2050. Yet many will struggle to meet them, with some facing resistance from residents. Our research explains why tree placement will be crucial if we ever want to meet those targets.

What’s new about this research

Past studies in Perth, as well as several cities in the United States and Canada, have consistently shown trees tend to increase property values.

But what we didn’t know before now was where the benefits stop and the costs begin.

Our study identifies a clear “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) boundary, of around 10m, within which street trees’ economic value turns negative.

That finding is important, because that’s when resident resistance to street trees is likely to be strongest.

This is a first study of its kind to quantify the economic value of public trees by taking advantage of using individual tree-level data managed by the City of Sydney from 2023.

It allowed us to measure tree effects at the finest possible distance from the centre of property: under 10m, 10–20m, 20–50m, 50–100m, and beyond 100m. This is something previous studies could not do when relying on satellite or street imagery.

How tree location affects price

We controlled for all the usual factors that influence house prices, including property features and location amenities. This meant we could measure the impact of trees after accounting for everything else.

We found that distance matters. In dollar terms, one additional tree within 10m of the centre of a property reduced its value by 2.96%. An average home sold in the City of Sydney from 2021 to 2024 was worth $2,613,000 – so that reduction worked out to be a $70,290 cost.

Given the average lot size of 176m² in the City of Sydney, the distance from the centre of an average property to its boundary is typically about 8m.

But if a tree was located 10-20 metres away, it increased the value by about 1.16%, worth an average of $30,310.

If the tree was further than 20 metres away, we found no price difference.

This show a clear proximity effect. Trees being too close to a house are a cost risk; trees at a moderate distance are a valued feature; and trees further away are neutral and just part of the neighbourhood amenity.

Our study used more precise data than ever before to calculate the distance between street trees and the centre of each property.

But future research could take this further by measuring the distance from each tree to the house. It could also incorporate resident surveys to better understand how people perceive and value trees near their homes.

Why trees being too close matters

It makes sense that people may see trees close to home as a financial risk.

Trees can cause structural damage to buildings and infrastructure, increase fire hazards, and safety concerns from falling branches.

Rather than dismissing residents’ concerns as NIMBYism, they should be seen as rational market responses to maintenance risks, structural damage, and amenity loss.

Planting plans need resident support

Every Australian capital city has adopted “urban forest” or tree planting strategies, many of them aiming to hit 30-40% canopy cover in coming decades. For example, the City of Melbourne’s target is 40% canopy cover by 2040, while Brisbane City Council is aiming for 50% shade for residential footpaths and bikeways by 2031.

However, there are doubts about whether many of those targets will be met.

There are good reasons for governments to invest in urban trees, as they can protect us from extreme heat and help as a response to climate change. But resistance from homeowners can undermine these policies.

Our research shows residents are more likely to welcome street trees if they’re planted not too close, and not too far, from their homes.

* Thanks to the coauthors of this paper, Qiulin Ke and Bin Chi from University College London.

– ref. One street tree can boost Sydney house prices by $30,000 – or cost $70,000 if it’s too close: new study – https://theconversation.com/one-street-tree-can-boost-sydney-house-prices-by-30-000-or-cost-70-000-if-its-too-close-new-study-276860

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/one-street-tree-can-boost-sydney-house-prices-by-30-000-or-cost-70-000-if-its-too-close-new-study-276860/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason M. Lodge, Director of the Learning, Instruction & Technology Lab and Professor of Educational Psychology, School of Education, The University of Queensland

It it time to get rid of group assignments at university? Federal Opposition education spokesperson Julian Leeser thinks so. On Thursday, he called for universities to drop group assessments entirely, arguing they are fundamentally “unfair” and “cheapen” degrees.

In a speech to the Universities Australia conference in Canberra, Leeser said:

Students feel, instinctively, that in many cases it is deeply unfair to assess them individually based on others’ work.

His logic is one many students will find familiar: one person inevitably ends up doing all the heavy lifting, while others coast along to a shared grade. Leeser added collaboration is merely a “soft skill” that should be taught in the classroom, but not formally assessed.

I understand the need for employers to have graduates who can collaborate in the workplace, but these are soft skills which should not be the subject of a university assessment system.

This is a seductive argument. But it ignores the realities of life inside our universities, as well as the skills we need in today’s workplaces.

Group assignments make sense for unis

There is a pragmatic reason why group assignments persist. They lessen the marking and feedback load, particularly in courses with high numbers of students. For cash-strapped universities, the efficiency is hard to ignore.

But universities do not use group assignments simply to save time. In many disciplines, they are part of a core requirement to graduate.

In the health professions, for example, accreditation standards require students to demonstrate interprofessional practice – or working with other professions.

You cannot be an effective nurse, physiotherapist, or doctor in a vacuum. You must be able to function within a multidisciplinary team, where the stakes are literally a matter of life and death.

Group assignments also teach important communication and collaboration skills. Research in my lab, led by Suijing Yang, suggests students often spend as much, and frequently more, time negotiating how a group assignment will be done as they do actually doing the work. This negotiation is an important part of the learning process.

This negotiation is often referred to as “co-regulated learning”. There is an extensive body of evidence supporting how crucial skills involved in co-regulated learning are for life. These include emotional regulation, problem solving and planning. They are so significant, these skills should be, and are, taught and assessed in many disciplines.

Are these really optional skills?

Just because collaborative abilities are not as easy to assess as other skills, such as factual recall, that doesn’t make them any less important.

In fact, they are seen as crucial for the modern workplace and, more broadly, for a functioning society.

As high-profile US researcher Sherry Turkle and others have warned, our constant interaction with digital devices could see these essential human skills atrophy.

Generative AI is poised to accelerate this decline. Some adolescents already report using AI chatbots as their primary source of companionship, opting for the “frictionless” interaction of an algorithm over the messy reality of human peers.

If universities stop mandating collaboration through group assignments, they will no longer be valuing the very “empathic muscles” that make us human and provide a foundation for harmonious workplaces.

How to stop ‘social loafing’

At one level, the dynamics of group assignments can feel deeply unfair. The vast majority of the cognitive and social labour involved in negotiating the assignment is never directly assessed. Often it is only the final, polished product that receives a mark.

Leeser is right there is always a risk of “social loafing” – where students contribute nothing while reaping the rewards.

But simple fixes, such as outlawing specific forms of assessment, are a crude response to a multifaceted set of problems. These include academic integrity concerns, workload issues, and the difficulty of designing effective assessment tasks, which are only exacerbated by the rise of AI.

As the AI framework published by Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency notes, universities need now more sophisticated ways of assuring learning. This means more of an emphasis on things only humans can do – not less.

The interpersonal communication and negotiation skills honed through university group tasks are precisely the kind of capabilities needed in the age of AI.

So perhaps the debate needs to be about how we improve and enhance group assignments – not how we get rid of them.

Then we could focus on recognising the work students do in those negotiation phases. This means effort would be recognised fairly and more emphasis is placed on students learning how to work with other humans.

– ref. Should unis ditch group assignments? – https://theconversation.com/should-unis-ditch-group-assignments-276979

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/should-unis-ditch-group-assignments-276979/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Fazeli, PhD Candidate, UNSW Sydney

Where are you at most risk when a flood or bushfire strikes? You might think it’s at home. But in reality, the most dangerous time is when you leave and jump in your car. Many flood and bushfire deaths are linked to vehicles, often driven by people evacuating late.

One of the clearest examples comes from the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, in which 173 people lost their lives; 35 of those deaths occurred during evacuation, with many on the road.

What is going through people’s minds as they try to escape? We don’t have to guess – many self-recorded evacuation videos are publicly posted on social media. We analysed hundreds of these videos from around the globe to get a better understanding of how people end up in these dangerous situations.

We found many people either evacuated late after realising the situation was more dangerous than they first thought, or drove back to defend their property. They thought they were doing the right thing in trying to flee to safety – only to find the roads were far more dangerous than they expected.

[embedded content]

How risky are roads during bushfires?

When disasters escalate rapidly, the decision to leave can become one of the most crucial moments people face.

Between 2010 and 2020, bushfire deaths in Australia often occurred on the road rather than at the fire front. An analysis found 33 of 65 bushfire deaths during this period were vehicle-related, many during late evacuations.

More recently, an ABC program documented survivor accounts from Black Saturday, including firefighters, people who defended their properties and those who took to the road in the final minutes.

One firefighter’s account, in particular, captures how quickly conditions can change on the road. At first, nothing about the drive appeared unusual.

when I drove up over the top of the hill down into Kinglake, there was nothing untoward. It was just a normal hot day […] a bit of smoke around.

But within minutes, the road environment changed completely.

so I do a U-turn, and there was a wall of smoke. I’m thinking, where did that come from? All of a sudden, […] You can’t see. It was pitch black. As we’re driving, the sides of the roads were igniting.

The risk of conditions changing is not confined to a single event or location. It is a recurring and ongoing feature of bushfire emergencies in Australia.

[embedded content]

How dangerous are roads during floods?

Floods present a different kind of threat, but the risks on the road can be just as severe.

In Australia, nearly half of all flood fatalities are associated with vehicles, most commonly when people attempt to drive through flooded roads, crossings, or causeways.

This is not unique to Australia. A study of flood fatalities in Texas, covering the period from 1959 to 2009, shows around 80% of flood deaths with known circumstances were vehicle-related.

These deaths often occur when drivers underestimate water depth or flow speed, assume the road ahead is still passable, or follow other vehicles into floodwater. This can quickly lead to vehicles stalling, being swept away, or trapping occupants in fast-moving water.

[embedded content]

What people experience inside a vehicle

To gain a first-person view of what actually unfolds on the road in these situations, we analysed hundreds of self-recorded evacuation videos.

On bushfire-affected roads, conversations inside vehicles revealed uncertainty as conditions changed quickly. Many drivers showed fear and stress – some prayed, while others tried to stay calm for their families.

Videos show people caught in intense heat and heavy smoke, struggling with poor visibility and concern over falling trees or bursting tyres. Some said they were struggling to breathe while others decided to stop or turn around.

Conditions appeared hazardous even for firefighters. Conversations between drivers and passengers often reflected the complexity of the environment and a lack of certainty about what to do.

Some drivers travelled with their windows open and suddenly realised how hot the air was.

Drivers struggled with visibility and some cases showed families expressing extreme distress. Parents comforted their children and sometimes sang to them.

On flood-affected roads, drivers showed signs of distress and intense emotion, often reflected in swearing and expressions of regret, or praying.

They sought reassurance from the actions of others, reflecting an “if they can do it, we can too” sentiment. Extreme cases showed water entering the vehicle, causing the vehicle to become unstable or dysfunctional, with water levels reaching the windshield.

Some drivers could not make it through and were forced to escape.

Importantly, these flood and fire videos only represented those who managed to escape and survive.

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The best way to stay safe

In our analysis of these flood and fire videos, we found a recurring theme – surprise. People found themselves in a very different situation to the one they imagined when they began driving.

Driving on roads affected by floods and fires is risky, and the situation can escalate very quickly. Flash flooding is aptly named: torrential rain can trigger floods in just minutes. Bushfires, too, can intensify quickly

The clearest advice remains to avoid these situations altogether by evacuating early. But if you do find yourself in a vehicle on a fire-affected road, existing Country Fire Authority guidance can make a critical difference to survival.

Stop when it’s no longer safe to continue, park well off the road and away from vegetation if possible. Stay inside the car with windows and doors closed, turn off vents and air conditioning, get below window level and protect yourself from radiant heat using woollen blankets or clothing.

In floods, if rising water traps your vehicle, get out early and move to higher ground. As a last resort, climb onto the roof.

Ultimately, the safest option is to avoid hazardous driving wherever possible. Because once you’re on the road, it may already be too late.

– ref. ‘Don’t leave late’ is the best advice for fires or floods. These terrifying videos show why – https://theconversation.com/dont-leave-late-is-the-best-advice-for-fires-or-floods-these-terrifying-videos-show-why-274983

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/27/dont-leave-late-is-the-best-advice-for-fires-or-floods-these-terrifying-videos-show-why-274983/