Category: Evening Report

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelsie Boulton, Senior Research Fellow in Child Neurodevelopment, Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney

When it comes to autism, few questions spark as much debate as how best to support autistic people with the greatest needs.

This prompted The Lancet medical journal to commission a group of international experts to propose a new category of “profound autism”.

This category describes autistic people who have little or no language (spoken, written, signed or via a communication device), who have an IQ of less than 50, and who require 24-hour supervision and support.

It would only apply to children aged eight and over, when their cognitive and communication abilities are considered more stable.

In our new study, we considered how the category could impact autism assessments. We found 24% of autistic children met, or were at risk of meeting, the criteria for profound autism.

Why the debate?

The category is intended to help governments and service providers plan and deliver supports, so autistic people with the highest needs aren’t overlooked. It also aims to re-balance their under-representation in mainstream autism research.

This new category may be helpful for advocating for a greater level of support, research and evidence for this group.

But some have raised concerns that autistic people who don’t fit into this category could be perceived as less in need and excluded from services and funding supports.

Others argue the category doesn’t sufficiently emphasise autistic people’s strengths and capabilities, and places too much emphasis on the challenges that are experienced.

What did we do?

We conducted the first Australian study to examine how the “profound autism” category might apply to children attending publicly funded diagnostic services for developmental conditions.

Drawing on the Australian Child Neurodevelopment Registry, we examined data from 513 autistic children assessed between 2019 and 2024. We asked:

• how many children met the criteria for profound autism?
• were there behavioural features that set this group apart?

Because we focused on children at the time of diagnosis, most (91%) were aged under eight years. We described these children as being “at risk of profound autism”.

What did we find?

Around 24% of autistic children in our study met, or were at risk of meeting, the criteria for profound autism. This is similar to the proportion of children internationally.

Almost half (49.6%) showed behaviours that were a safety risk, such as attempting to run away from carers, compared with one-third (31.2%) of other autistic children.

These challenges weren’t limited to children who met criteria for profound autism. Around one in five autistic children (22.5%) engaged in self-injury, and more than one-third (38.2%) showed aggression toward others.

So, while the category identified many children with very high needs, other children who didn’t meet these criteria also had significant needs.

Importantly, we found the definition of “profound autism” doesn’t always line up with the official diagnostic levels which determine the level of support and NDIS funding children receive.

In our study, 8% of children at risk of profound autism were classified as level 2, rather than level 3 (the highest level of support). Meanwhile, 17% of children classified as level 3 did not meet criteria for profound autism.

Our concern

We looked at children when they first received an autism diagnosis. Children were aged 18 months to 16 years, with more than 90% under the age of eight years.

This aligns with our earlier research, showing the average age of diagnosis in public settings is 6.6 years.

From a practical perspective, our biggest concern about the profound autism category is the age threshold of eight years.

Because most children are already assessed before age eight, introducing this category into assessment services would mean many families would need repeat assessments, placing additional strain on already stretched developmental services.

Second, modifications will be needed if this criteria is going to be used to inform funding decisions as it didn’t map perfectly onto level 3 support criteria.

On balance, however, our results suggest the profound autism category may provide a clear, measurable way to describe the needs of autistic people with the highest support requirements.

Every autistic child has individual strengths and needs. The term “profound autism” would need to be promoted with inclusive and supportive language, so as to not replace or diminish individual needs, but to help clinicians tailor supports and obtain additional resources when needed.

Including the category in future clinical guidelines, such as the national guideline for the assessment and diagnosis of autism, could help ensure governments, disability services and clinicians plan and deliver supports.

What can you do in the meantime?

If you’re concerned your child requires substantial support, here are some practical steps you can take to ensure their needs are recognised and addressed:

Explain your concerns

Not all clinicians have experience working with children with high support needs. Be as clear as possible about behaviours that affect your child’s safety or daily life, including self-injury, aggression or attempts to run away. These details, while difficult to share, help give a clearer picture of your child’s support needs.

It can also be a challenge to find and access clinicians with appropriate expertise. Another potential benefit of having a defined category is that it can better help families navigate care.

Ask about support for the whole family

Our studies show that many caregivers want more support for themselves but don’t always ask. Talk with clinicians about supports for yourself as well, including respite, or family support groups.

Reach out

Coming together with other carers and families can reduce your own isolation and normalise many of the unique challenges you face. Connecting with like-minded people can provide a supportive, empathetic and empowering community.

Plan for safety

For children with high support needs, prioritise safety planning with your child’s care team. This can include strategies to reduce risks, as well as planning how best to support your child’s interactions with health, education and disability services over time.

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Read more: Parents of autistic children are stressed. Here’s what they want you to know

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– ref. A new diagnosis of ‘profound autism’ is on the cards. Here’s what could change – https://theconversation.com/a-new-diagnosis-of-profound-autism-is-on-the-cards-heres-what-could-change-271930

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/a-new-diagnosis-of-profound-autism-is-on-the-cards-heres-what-could-change-271930/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Manwaring, Associate Professor, Politics and Public Policy, Flinders University

South Australians head to the polls on March 21, with Premier Peter Malinauskas’s Labor Party on track to win by a landslide.

But while a predicted landslide in a state election would not normally garner deep national attention, the SA election will be closely watched this time as a microcosm of the changing dynamics of Australian politics.

The headline two-party preferred figure of 61–39% in favour of Labor is masking the broader splintering of the right side of politics. The Liberals are haemorrhaging votes to One Nation, which leads them on the primary vote by 20–19%.

Liberal woes

While the federal Liberals are suffering from leadership and coalition instability, the SA branch has its own systemic problems. The state Liberals have been a party of almost perpetual opposition, only forming government when Labor is plagued by scandal and longevity in office. The Liberals have only won five elections out of 17 since 1965.

SA does not have a coalition, as the Liberal and Country parties merged in 1932. There has been only sporadic Nationals representation in parliament, with the most recent Nationals MP, Karlene Maywald, controversially serving in the Rann Labor Cabinet from 2004–10.

Geography is a major contributor to Liberal electoral woes, with much of their vote traditionally being concentrated in rural and regional seats. One Nation is running candidates in all lower house seats, and would be most hopeful of picking up some of the more regional Liberal seats, such Hammond. Six of the Liberals’ 13 current seats might be under threat, along with two or three of the crossbench seats such as Mount Gambier.

More pointedly, the party has also long been bedevilled by factional infighting and the regular defection of rural members to the crossbench. These rural defectors have demonstrated an ability to “dig in” across usually safe Liberal seats. Rural and regional MPs disproportionately dominate the Liberal caucus, which skews its ability to appeal to more metropolitan seats.

The Liberals are suffering from leadership churn. Liberal leader Ashton Hurn, who was a media advisor to former Liberal Premier Steven Marshall, took over from Vincent Tarzia in December 2025. Tarzia had only served as leader since August 2024, having taken over from David Speirs, who was convicted for supplying a controlled substance.

Under this tumult, Labor consolidated its lead by picking up two crucial byelection wins in Dunstan and Black. The Liberals currently hold a nominal 13 of the 47 seats in the lower House – a record low. Current polling indicates they will lose more seats at the March election, and there is even a chance they will be left without a single lower house MP.

One Nation and the far right in SA

One Nation is a late entrant to SA politics, and has only elected one member, Sarah Game, to the Legislative Council in 2022. One Nation has historically been organisationally weak in the state – it even failed to register its candidates in time for the 2018 state election. Game subsequently resigned from the party in late 2025, following a preselection dispute with Hanson – a common occurrence in One Nation’s history.

Hanson recently announced former senator Cory Bernardi would head the party’s upper house ticket in 2026.

Bernardi served as a Liberal senator for SA in 2006–17, before forming the short-lived Australian Conservatives party between 2017–19. Sharing a similar Christian Conservative values base, the party merged with the pre-existing Family First party – a morality-focused conservative party with an enduring presence in SA politics.

Bernardi is a polarising figure with lower popularity in the state than Hanson. So there is a question about whether his conservative credentials will add to One Nation’s electoral support.

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One Nation’s prospects

The election campaign to date has been relatively uncontroversial, despite lingering issues of ambulance ramping, the algal bloom and the cancellation of the Adelaide Writer’s Week being potential weaknesses for the government. Malinauskas and Labor have been emphasising their “building” credentials, pointing to major infrastructure projects such as the North-South Corridor, and promising significant urban expansion.

Campaign activity has tended to be focused in Liberal-held seats. These range from urban marginals such as Morialta, Unley and Colton to usually more secure regional areas such as Ngadjuri, Hammond and Kavel, which are being encroached on by Adelaide’s urban sprawl.

The Liberals are struggling to offer a policy narrative. For example, there is confusion over their signature stamp duty policy, which has changed in the switch from Tarzia to Hurn.

The electoral conditions seem ideal for a One Nation surge. However, there are reasons to temper expectations. One Nation tends to poll most strongly in rural seats. Several rural electorates in SA already have independent incumbents, or high-profile independent candidates who have been in the field for months. This may complicate One Nation’s path to victory in these areas.

Crisis on the centre-right

The Malinauskas government is poised for an emphatic win on election night. Yet, the foundations of the results are grounded less in Labor’s policy record than in the deepening crisis of the centre-right in Australia.

In common with countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Sweden and Germany, there is a growing fragmentation of the right. A recent academic study of state politics shows how these dynamics play out in very specific and localised ways in Australia.

At the heart of this is an ideological splintering, with a more assertive conservative politics increasingly at odds with the more socially liberal but economically classical traditions. The SA result may offer insight into how deep this fracture is.

– ref. Labor is set for a big win in the South Australian election. But will One Nation cause ructions? – https://theconversation.com/labor-is-set-for-a-big-win-in-the-south-australian-election-but-will-one-nation-cause-ructions-275671

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/labor-is-set-for-a-big-win-in-the-south-australian-election-but-will-one-nation-cause-ructions-275671/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dennis B. Desmond, Lecturer, Cyberintelligence and Cybercrime Investigations, University of the Sunshine Coast

As a career counterintelligence officer for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Defense Intelligence Agency, I worked inside a fully integrated intelligence system.

Signals intelligence from the National Security Agency guided investigations. Satellite imagery from the National Reconnaissance Office provided visibility into hostile environments. Human intelligence came through Defense Intelligence Agency channels.

These streams were strengthened by reporting from domestic and foreign partners. It was a closed, tightly controlled system.

But things have changed. Now private companies are supplying “intelligence as a service” to government entities and others – and as the Amazon-owned Ring doorbell camera company found out when it advertised a new feature last week, the change is not without controversy.

The rise of private intelligence

For most of the 20th century, intelligence remained the exclusive domain of nation states. Collection systems were expensive and specialised. They were protected by strict classification rules designed to safeguard sources and methods.

Intelligence agencies controlled the entire life cycle: human spying, signals interception, satellite surveillance, analysis, and dissemination to decision-makers. This created a closed command economy, where states maintained their own capabilities with legal oversight and institutional tradecraft.

Today, that monopoly is eroding. It’s being replaced by a commercial intelligence marketplace operating alongside – and increasingly inside – government security structures.

The shift began in the late 20th century as open-source intelligence became more valuable. This happened with the rise of online forums, social media platforms and commercial satellite imagery.

Companies entered this market, scraping images from the web and content from social media sites. Clearview AI, perhaps the most well known, entered this market in 2017 – offering to identify people based on photos from social media.

Businesses quickly recognised the opportunity. Intelligence could be produced commercially, packaged, and sold.

The surveillance economy

At the same time, a broader surveillance economy emerged. It was driven by private companies, not governments.

Acoustic gunshot detection systems illustrate this convergence. Originally designed for military force protection, these sensors are now deployed across cities, providing real-time alerts to police. In Australia, this has manifested itself with hardware store chain Bunnings incorporating facial recognition technology from Hitachi.

Uncrewed aerial vehicles – better known as drones – have followed a similar pattern. Once limited to military reconnaissance, sensor-equipped drones are now widely available commercially. Parts of the battlefield surveillance grid have migrated into civilian life.

Perhaps the most significant shift comes from everyday consumer technology. Internet-connected door cameras, home security systems, and other “Internet of Things” devices now form a vast, privately owned sensor network. This is likely to grow, as products such as Meta’s planned facial-recognition smart glasses hit the market.

Real intelligence value but real privacy concerns

These systems were never intended as intelligence tools. Yet their intelligence value is undeniable.

In the recent case of the kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie in Arizona, for example, Nest door camera footage helped reconstruct movements and identify a possible kidnapper. The data was captured passively, through daily digital life.

This is intelligence collection by proxy. It is constant, ambient, and privately owned.

Amazon Ring’s attempt to launch its “Search Party” program demonstrates the tension.

Framed as a community safety feature, the program proposed using AI to scan neighbourhood camera footage to locate missing pets.

Concern escalated when Ring explored partnering with Flock Safety, whose automated license plate reader networks are widely used by law enforcement. Linking home surveillance cameras with other tracking systems signalled the emergence of a fully integrated commercial intelligence network.

Public backlash was swift – especially after the capability was advertised during the Super Bowl. Critics argued the pet-recovery narrative masked the normalisation of mass surveillance.

Facing mounting privacy concerns, Ring ultimately abandoned the partnership.

Intelligence as a service

Commercial surveillance partnerships continue to expand. Networked cameras and license plate readers equipped with AI-powered object recognition enable vehicle tracking across jurisdictions.

Data brokers feed into this ecosystem too. They sell credit histories, utility records, and behavioural data to government clients.

Taken together, these developments represent “intelligence as a service”. Governments now buy cyber threat reporting, commercial sensor data, facial recognition, and behavioural analytics through subscriptions and data-sharing agreements. Intelligence production has become scalable, modular and market-driven.

This transformation raises serious governance questions. Commercial intelligence providers often operate under far looser legal restrictions. They allow agencies to circumvent data privacy laws.

Consumer-generated data, door cameras, vehicle telemetry and biometric identifiers can often be used by investigators without the need for a warrant. This complicates privacy protections and civil liberties safeguards.

None of this makes state intelligence services obsolete. Governments still retain unique authorities: human espionage, covert action, offensive cyber operations, and classified technical collection.

However, these capabilities now operate within a broader intelligence supply chain. Also in the mix are satellite firms, data brokers, AI analytics companies, and cyber intelligence vendors.

Questions for the future

The integration of commercial surveillance and artificial intelligence is likely to deepen.

Technology leaders envision a near future where cameras on homes, vehicles and public infrastructure feed constant video into AI systems. Citizens and police alike would operate under continuous algorithmic observation. Automated reporting would aim to shape behaviour.

The privatisation of intelligence is neither temporary nor accidental. It is the outcome of technological diffusion, data proliferation, and commercial innovation meeting demand from national security and law enforcement.

The question is not whether intelligence as a service will expand. It will.

The real question is different. What happens to national sovereignty, democratic oversight, and personal privacy when the power to collect and analyse intelligence no longer belongs solely to the state? What happens when it belongs to private actors willing to sell it?

– ref. Amazon’s Ring wanted to track your pets. It revealed the future of surveillance – https://theconversation.com/amazons-ring-wanted-to-track-your-pets-it-revealed-the-future-of-surveillance-276020

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/amazons-ring-wanted-to-track-your-pets-it-revealed-the-future-of-surveillance-276020/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Wilhelm, Professor of Microbiology, University of Tennessee

Virus. The word evokes images of illness and fears of outbreaks. Yet, in the oceans, not all viruses are bad news.

Some play a helpful, even critical, role in sustaining marine life.

In a new study, we and an international team of scientists examined the behavior of marine viruses in a large band of oxygen-rich water just under the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. What we discovered there – and its role in the food web – shows marine viruses in a new light.

Studying something so tiny

Viruses are incredibly small, typically no more than tens of nanometers in diameter, nearly a hundred times smaller than a bacterium and more than a thousand times smaller than the width of a strand of hair.

In fact, viruses are so small that they cannot be seen using conventional microscopes.

Decades ago, scientists thought that marine viruses were neither abundant nor ecologically relevant, despite the clear relevance of viruses to humans, plants and animals.

Then, advances in the use of transmission electron microscopes in the late 1980s changed everything. Scientists were able to examine sea water at a very high magnification and saw tiny, circular objects containing DNA. These were viruses, and there were tens of millions of them per milliliter of water – tens of thousands of times greater than had been estimated in the past.

A theory for how viruses feed the marine world

Most marine viruses infect the cells of microorganisms – the bacteria and algae that serve as the base of the ocean food web and are responsible for about half the oxygen generated on the planet.

By the late 1990s, scientists realized that virus activity was likely shaping how carbon and nutrients cycled through ocean systems. We hypothesized, in what’s known as the viral shunt model, that the marine viruses break open the cells of microorganisms and release their carbon and nutrients into the water.

This process could increase the amount of nutrients reaching marine phytoplankton. Phytoplankton provide food for krill and fish, which in turn feed larger marine life across the oceans. That would mean viruses are essential to a food web that drives a vast global fisheries and aquaculture industry producing nearly 200 million metric tons of seafood.

Watching viruses in action

In the new study in the journal Nature Communications led by biologists Naomi Gilbert and Daniel Muratore, our international team demonstrated the viral shunt in action.

The team took samples from a meters-thick band of oxygen that spreads for hundreds of miles across the subtropical Atlantic Ocean. In this region, part of the Sargasso Sea, single-celled cyanobacteria known as Prochlorococcus dominate marine photosynthesis with nearly 50,000 to upwards of 100,000 cells in every milliliter of seawater. These Prochlorococcus can be infected by viruses.

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By sequencing community RNA – molecules that carry genetic instructions within cells – our team was able to look at what nearly all viruses and their hosts were trying to do at once.

We found that the rate of virus infection in this oxygen-rich band of the ocean is about four times higher than in other parts of the surrounding ocean, where cyanobacteria don’t reproduce as quickly. And we observed viruses causing massive infections in Prochlorococcus.

The viruses were attacking cells and spilling organic matter, which bacteria were taking up and using to fuel new growth. The bacteria respired away the carbon and released nitrogen as ammonium. And this nitrogen appears to have been stimulating photosynthesis and the growth of more Prochlorococcus cells, resulting in greater production that generated the ribbon of oxygen.

The viral infection was having an ecosystem-scale impact.

Understanding the microscopic world matters

Viruses can cause acute, chronic and catastrophic effects on human and animal health. But this new research, made possible by an open-ocean expedition supported by the National Science Foundation, adds to a growing range of studies that demonstrate that viruses are central players in how ecosystems function, including by playing a role in storing carbon in the deep oceans.

We are living on a changing planet. Monitoring and responding to changes in the environment require an understanding of the microbes and mechanisms that drive global processes.

This new study is a reminder of how important it is to explore the microscopic world further – including the life of viruses that shape the fate of microbes and how the Earth system works.

– ref. Viruses aren’t all bad: In the ocean, some help fuel the food web – a new study shows how – https://theconversation.com/viruses-arent-all-bad-in-the-ocean-some-help-fuel-the-food-web-a-new-study-shows-how-273088

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/viruses-arent-all-bad-in-the-ocean-some-help-fuel-the-food-web-a-new-study-shows-how-273088/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Moran, Lecturer in the Department of English, Creative Writing and Film, Adelaide University

Cicero, the Roman Stoic, once wrote to his friend Varro, pending a visit to his home: “If you have a garden in your library, we shall have all we want.” This same desire for good books and natural beauty is at the heart of Byung-Chul Han’s In Praise of the Earth, in which he reflects on gardening as a form of philosophical meditation.

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Review: In Praise of the Earth: A Journey into the Garden – Byung-Chul Han (Polity)

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Born in South Korea and based in Germany, Han has risen to prominence as a philosopher in the last ten years with a series of short, readable but penetrating works critiquing the values that govern contemporary capitalist society.

Han considers contemporary concerns like burnout, the loss of attention and information overload, drawing on thinkers such as Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche to diagnose the effects of digital capitalism.

As well as these canonical European thinkers, he considers the ideas of Eastern philosophers and poets like Lao Tzu and Bashō. Indeed he has written books on Zen Buddhism and the Chinese idea of shanzhai or “decreation”, which disrupts the usual hierarchy between real and fake.

Han is a rare thinker who can make complex ideas engaging without losing any of their intellectual acuity. He writes slim volumes, easily carried in a coat pocket, which brim with explosive diagnoses of contemporary ills while proposing new ways of living.

In The Burnout Society, for instance, Han critiques the effects of what he calls “the achievement society”, in which efficiency and a relentless drive toward self-optimisation result in feelings of despair, loneliness and exhaustion. Against the tide of self-help manuals focusing on positivity and success, he suggests “rest and contemplation are acts of resistance against a world that demands constant productivity. In pausing we reclaim our humanity.”

In Praise of the Earth suggests the humble practice of gardening can offer one example of this kind of resistance. While he reflects on the deeper implications of gardening and thinking, Han’s book is also practical and personal. It is both a philosophical treatise on gardening and a diary of his experiences tending to his Bi-Won, Korean for “secret garden” in Berlin, over a period of three years.

Han describes gardening as a form of “silent meditation, a lingering in stillness”. Cultivating plants, he suggests, can transform our relationship to time. “Since I have begun working in my garden,” he writes, “I experience time differently. It passes much slower. It expands. The time until next spring feels like an eternity.”

This new sense of time is not only attuned to the changing seasons but to the growth of the plants and flowers he nurtures. “Every plant has its proper time,” he notes. “In the garden many such times overlap. The autumn crocus and the spring crocus have an altogether different sense of time.”

This awareness of overlapping time schemes prompts Han to reflect on what he describes as “the time of the other”, which invites an ethical response of care and concern. This time of the other is not related to acquisition or domination but instead thrives through a mutual act of cultivation.

For Han the time of the garden is fundamentally different to the time of digital capitalism, which is characterised by speed, distraction, and exploitation. “Digitalisation intensifies the noise of communication”.

In contrast, “the garden is an ecstatic place for lingering.”

The language of flowers

As a gardener, Han is entranced by the names of plants. Many of the book’s short chapters bear the names of those he is growing: Willow Catkins, White Forsythia, Anemones … These names prompt reflection: “Since I have taken up gardening, I try to remember as many flower names as possible.”

Reflecting on these names, Han begins to develop new ideas. He notes that astilbes are called Prachtspiere in German, which translates as “splendid splinters”. Spier means “small, tender tip”. He notes, “Without my garden, I would never have come across the word […] Such words widen my world.”

His world also widens as his attention moves from language to nature more broadly and he starts to see plant life all around him in Berlin.

Before gardening, he writes, “I was in some way indifferent not only toward willow catkins but towards all plants. Today I see my former indifference as an embarrassing blindness.” Gardening opens our eyes to the movement of leaves and opens our ears to the buzzing of insects.

This reflection is complemented by Isabella Gresser’s botanical drawings interspersed throughout the book. The delicate, white line drawings on black paper are accompanied by the botanical names of the flowers in question, allowing the reader to linger.

Song of praise

The movement from the particular to the universal is one of the book’s great strengths. The practical problem of keeping a camellia alive on a snowy night prompts a reflection on care, while waiting for a Japanese allspice to bloom sparks a contemplation on the nature of hope. “Hoping is the temporal mode of the gardener,” Han writes.

By attending to the most minute bud of a flower Han believes we can begin to develop a “planetary consciousness”. This consciousness is accompanied by “a deep reverence for the Earth.”

This reverence is in turn complemented by one of the oldest philosophical sensations – that of wonder – which Plato described as the feeling that gives birth to philosophy.

In this spirit, Han writes,

We should learn again to wonder at the earth […] In the garden I experience that the earth is magical, enigmatic, and mysterious. As soon as you treat her as a resource to be exploited you have already destroyed her.

Han’s book is part of a long tradition of philosophical reflections on the art of gardening.

The followers of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus formed a community called “The Garden” where they practised philosophy among trees and flowers. Chinese literati found solace in ornamental gardens designed to reflect Taoist principles such as the unity of opposites.

It is also part of a recent wave of works in which contemporary thinkers reflect on the philosophical significance of gardens. Italian thinker Giorgio Agamben’s The Kingdom and the Garden (2019), for instance, illuminates the relationship between theological reflections on the biblical Garden of Eden and political theories of liberation.

In Praise of the Earth is a philosophical song, which finds in the most delicate blossom a resounding call for care. “Flowering is rapture,” Han writes and reading this book too, is a rapturous experience.

– ref. ‘A lingering in stillness’: philosopher Byung-Chul Han on the radical power of gardening – https://theconversation.com/a-lingering-in-stillness-philosopher-byung-chul-han-on-the-radical-power-of-gardening-272812

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/a-lingering-in-stillness-philosopher-byung-chul-han-on-the-radical-power-of-gardening-272812/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thalia Anthony, Professor of Law, University of Technology Sydney

The lawyer for the accused Bondi Beach gunman, Naveed Akram, commented in court that his client was subject to “very onerous conditions” at Goulburn’s supermax prison. Goulburn Correctional Complex, in New South Wales, houses the country’s highest security prison.

At the High Risk Management Correctional Centre, prisoners endure “very strict daily regimes and intense scrutiny by staff”, according to a review by the NSW Ombudsman. The ombudsman concluded there is “no doubt” the unit fails to provide “a therapeutic environment for these inmates”.

Goulburn’s supermax facility is set aside for the most serious offenders. It’s overwhelmingly populated with those who are convicted or accused of terrorism offences. They are categorised as requiring the “top level of security classifications”.

Given the gravity of the crimes of which Akram is accused, it makes sense he would be kept in such a facility. His case is among the worst of the worst.

But it’s the type of exception that normalises harsh prison conditions across the country. The solitary confinement, intensive surveillance and long periods of lockdown that Akram will experience even while he awaits court proceedings are becoming increasingly common, not just for accused mass murderers but for many non-violent prisoners too.

What are the rules for prisons?

The minimum standards for Australian prisons are set out in the 2025 Guiding Principles for Corrections. They promote safe practices in relation to health and wellbeing, rehabilitation and reintegration, and respectful interactions, while also maintaining prison security. They are not legally enforceable.

Inspectors of Custodial Services across the country seek to uphold minimum standards, ensure accountability and prevent breaches.

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But their main role is systemic reviews, not investigating individual complaints. As with ombudsman reports, the recommendations of inspectors are non-binding.

Toothless monitoring and oversight bodies risk the Australian prison system becoming a law unto itself.

What about international law?

There are also international minimum standards set out in documents such as the United Nations Mandela Rules.

The Mandela Rules say prisoners should be treated with respect and dignity. They say prisoners should not be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment or punishment.

Breaches of standards include prolonged isolation, overcrowding and excessive strip searches.

But these rules are also non-binding.

How do Australia’s prisons fare?

The unprecedented Australian prison population, which stands at almost 47,000, makes overcrowding and lockdowns more likely, and effective enforcement elusive.

The Productivity Commission has reported several jurisdictions where prison populations are either nearing or exceeding the facility’s capacity.

In New South Wales, minimum standards for children and adults in detention have largely evaded scrutiny for years.

In 2021–22, the NSW Ombudsman received 147 reports of young people held in segregation for more than 24 hours. It was a 46% increase from the previous year.

In 2023–24, there were 878 notifications of young people in segregation.

In addition, the NSW Ombudsman found in 2022 that officers were conducting fully-naked strip searches on young people in youth detention.

In adults prisons, segregation rates are not consistently recorded. But the NSW Ombudsman found in 2024 that of its sample of prisoners who were penalised with cell confinement, about three quarters were classed as particularly vulnerable, including 42% who were Aboriginal.

First Nations people most at risk

A further breach is systemic discrimination on the grounds of race.

First Nations people account for 37% of people in prison in Australia. But there are inadequate levels of Indigenous staffing. There are also very few cultural therapeutic programs and health and wellbeing services.

In 2025, the NSW inspector of custodial services expressed deep concern about the number of Aboriginal deaths in custody in the state. The inspector’s report highlighted “poor conditions in many correctional centres caused by a combination of understaffing, excessive lockdowns, poor staff culture, aged infrastructure, and high remand numbers”.

Avoiding scrutiny

Australia is also a signatory to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and the United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture. The protocol requires “effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture”.

Accordingly, Australia must also establish and facilitate “a system of regular visits undertaken by independent international and national bodies to places where people are deprived of their liberty, in order to prevent torture”. These inspections are carried out unannounced in order to identify torture risks without state interference or window dressing.

Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory have enacted laws that align with the treaty.

But NSW, Victoria and Queensland, which have the highest prison populations, have consistently failed to implement the minimum standards outlined in the protocol.

The NSW and Queensland governments refused access to prisons in the first visit to Australia of the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture in 2022.

This is an indictment on these governments’ lack of cooperation, especially given countries across South America, the Middle East and Africa with fewer resources to uphold standards have complied.

The slippery slope

The severe supermax prison conditions Naveed Akram will endure for the foreseeable future may be met with public approval.

However, extreme cases can give rise to a slippery slope of inflicting inhumane conditions on the great majority of people in prison: those on remand, sentenced for non-violent offences and held for breach of justice procedures.

As Nelson Mandela remarked, “no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails”. Looking inside Australian prisons tells a story of prejudice, few protections and lack of transparency and accountability.

– ref. As Australia’s prisons evade scrutiny, conditions inside are getting worse – https://theconversation.com/as-australias-prisons-evade-scrutiny-conditions-inside-are-getting-worse-276165

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/as-australias-prisons-evade-scrutiny-conditions-inside-are-getting-worse-276165/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hamid R. Jamali, Professor, School of Information and Communication Studies, Charles Sturt University

Scientific publishing relies on peer review as the mechanism that maintains trust in what we publish. When we read a journal article, we assume experts have rigorously scrutinised it before publication. This crucial system is currently under severe strain.

We conducted a comprehensive study of Australian academic journals and their editors – surveying 139 editors and interviewing 27. The picture is concerning.

Finding qualified peer reviewers has become one of the most significant challenges editors face. When peer review cannot be secured adequately, both the long-term viability of journals and research integrity suffer. The voluntary system underpinning academic trust is breaking down.

The scale of the crisis

More than half of the editors we surveyed (55%) rated finding reviewers as a significant or very significant challenge.

Some described having to send out 30 or more invitations to secure just two reviewers. One called the process “ridiculous”. Another expressed frustration with authors who had recently published in their journal yet “repeatedly refuse to review” for it.

There are also reviewers who say yes and then never do the review, which delays the process further.

The consequences are significant. Some journals now reject manuscripts outright when they cannot find suitable reviewers, despite the work being in scope and potentially valuable.

Publishing articles takes longer and quality research can go unpublished because it cannot be properly peer reviewed. This is a systemic crisis.

Why academics decline review invitations

Peer review remains entirely voluntary. Academics review manuscripts without payment, formal recognition, or acknowledgement in their workload.

Researchers face pressure to increase the quantity, quality and impact of their research. At the same time, universities are actively discouraging the activities that sustain scholarly publishing, with many editors reporting that their universities have removed editorial and peer review roles from workload models entirely.

As a consequence of workload intensification, scholars protect their time more carefully. Post-COVID shifts in work-life balance have also made academics more selective about how they allocate effort. At the same time, submission volumes continue to grow: more papers to review, fewer willing reviewers, besides the fact that not every author is a qualified reviewer.

There is also a lack of reciprocity. Authors who have just published often decline to review. Some editors suggested publishing in a journal should come with an obligation to review for it.

Current strategies fall short

Editors, of course, have developed workarounds. These include using databases to identify reviewers, running reviewer training workshops to mentor emerging scholars, mining reference lists, and relying more heavily on editorial boards.

They also report rejecting more papers at the initial screening stage, before sending them out for peer review, to reduce the number of manuscripts that need reviewing. But this increases the time required of editors.

An emerging concern raised by some editors is the appearance of reviews generated by artificial intelligence (AI). These reviews can be vague, confusing, and fail to improve manuscripts. This worsens the crisis. Peer review is supposed to be conducted by peers after all.

Systemic change is essential

Short-term strategies won’t solve this crisis.

Some proposed solutions include paying reviewers or introducing mandatory review requirements for authors to review an equal number of articles to those they publish. But these are not easy to implement.

Peer review is so integral to the scholarly system that research would grind to a halt without it.

Yet it remains invisible in how universities and research bodies measure success in the current metric-driven culture.

The core of the problem, as one editor put it, is that “the extrinsic or intrinsic benefits are just not as strong as they used to be”. Therefore, it needs to be better recognised and incentivised by universities and other stakeholders by actions such as including it in workload models, highlighting it in promotion criteria and so on.

Why this matters

This crisis affects all of us who rely on published research. It threatens the viability of journals, particularly local or independent journals not owned by big publishers. But fundamentally, it jeopardises the integrity of the scientific record itself.

We have built a publishing system dependent entirely on voluntary labour, especially for local and independent journals. Without significant change – without formal recognition, support, and genuine incentives – the shortage of reviewers will deepen. Publication schedules will suffer. The diversity of publishing outlets will diminish. Trust in peer review will erode.

The solution requires action from multiple stakeholders including universities, funders and research assessment bodies.

Scholarly communities must understand that sustaining peer review is a shared responsibility. The voluntary system underpinning academic trust has been taken for granted too long. It’s time to start properly valuing it.

– ref. The peer review system is breaking down. Here’s how we can fix it – https://theconversation.com/the-peer-review-system-is-breaking-down-heres-how-we-can-fix-it-275317

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/the-peer-review-system-is-breaking-down-heres-how-we-can-fix-it-275317/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siegfried Gudergan, Professor of Strategy & Associate Dean (Research), James Cook University; Aalto University

Publicly funded research underpins much of daily life, from policy decisions to innovation and public debate. When research remains inaccessible, its value is diminished.

Australia has made real progress on open access to research. In 2024, around 59% of papers authored by researchers in Australia were freely available online.

Yet a large and mostly invisible gap remains. Hundreds of thousands of Australian research papers remain locked behind publisher paywalls, even though many of them could legally be shared right now.

This is because much of our open-access potential is never activated. However, there are simple ways to fix this, as we have shown with a recent university library initiative. Our results are now published in IFLA Journal.

The hidden potential of green open access

When people picture “open access”, they often think of journals that make articles free to read immediately. Sometimes the publishers charge steep fees to the authors in return for making the article free.

But there’s another pathway that has existed for decades: green open access. This option, also known as self-archiving, allows authors to share the accepted manuscript of a paper – the peer-reviewed version before journal formatting – through a university repository. Most publishers permit this, often after an embargo period.

In theory, this makes green open access one of the most scalable and cost-effective ways to improve access to research. In practice, however, it remains underused.

Many researchers are unsure which version of the paper they’re allowed to share. Others simply never return to older work stored on personal hard drives or in email archives. Over time, eligible manuscripts accumulate in forgotten folders, old attachments or cloud storage.

The result is a growing stock of publicly funded research that could be shared, but can’t be accessed by the public.

‘Bring out your dead’

At James Cook University, librarians suspected the issue of not submitting manuscripts to the repository was not resistance to open access. Researchers have competing demands on their time. While most academics support sharing their work, after publication their focus moves on to teaching, grants and new research.

Without a prompt or hands-on support to turn good intentions into action, depositing older papers rarely happens.

Rather than introducing new compliance rules, the university tested a different approach: a short, time-limited campaign to prompt action.

The initiative, called “Bring Out Your Dead!”, invited researchers to locate and submit older accepted manuscripts to the university’s repository. It ran for four months in 2024, leading into International Open Access Week.

The framing was deliberately light-hearted, but academics were offered substantial support to complete their submissions.

Librarians provided hands-on assistance with copyright checks, embargo rules and processing. Researchers didn’t need to navigate publisher policies themselves – just submit what they had.

During the campaign, researchers submitted 169 manuscripts. Across the full year, 233 papers were deposited – more than double the previous year’s total, and the highest annual deposit rate since the repository was established in 2006.

No new funding was allocated, nor did the library need to renegotiate any publishing agreements. By simply putting out the word and providing administrative support for the researchers to deposit their work, dozens of papers were made available to the public.

This approach could be easily scaled to any university and other publicly-funded research institutes and centres.

Small interventions, huge gains

In recent years, Australian universities have expanded immediate open access largely through “read and publish” agreements negotiated collectively with major publishers.

Through these arrangements, universities pay an agreed fee that combines journal subscription access with the ability for their researchers to publish a certain number of articles openly, without paying individual publication charges. This collective bargaining has increased open access across many high-volume journals and has removed upfront costs for many individual authors.

However, these agreements don’t cover all publishers, journals or disciplines, and their benefits are uneven. Not all researchers publish in journals included in the deals, and not all articles fall within the negotiated quotas. This is why green open access remains the most inclusive pathway.

For the wider public, the lesson is simple: much of the research you have already paid for exists, but remains unnecessarily hard to find. Studies that could inform healthcare decisions, education practice, environmental management, regional planning and public debate are often locked away – not because access is forbidden, but because no one has prompted or helped their release.

When research is easier to access, its value increases. Policymakers can draw on stronger evidence, practitioners can apply research findings more directly, journalists and community organisations can engage with original sources, and citizens can see how public funding translates into knowledge and impact.

Our work shows that small, low-cost changes to encourage green open access inside universities can unlock decades of research and make it available to everyone.

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The authors acknowledge research collaborators Jayshree Mamtora and Tove Lemberget from James Cook University.

– ref. Thousands of paywalled research papers could be freed with this simple fix – https://theconversation.com/thousands-of-paywalled-research-papers-could-be-freed-with-this-simple-fix-275205

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/thousands-of-paywalled-research-papers-could-be-freed-with-this-simple-fix-275205/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sebastian Maslow, Associate Professor, International Relations, Contemporary Japanese Politics & Society, University of Tokyo

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and her ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) got a historic landslide victory in last week’s parliamentary elections.

This marks the first time since its founding in 1955 that the conservative LDP controls a two-thirds supermajority in the lower house. If necessary, Takaichi’s cabinet could also overrule any opposition in the upper house of the Diet (Japan’s parliament), where her coalition still lacks a majority.

Given this, Takaichi now has a massive mandate to push her agenda. This includes boosting defence spending, strengthening the military and even potentially revising Japan’s pacifist constitution, which constrains the role of the Self-Defence Forces and forbids going to war.

So, does this mean Japan could become a more militarised state under Takaichi? And if so, what are the implications for regional security?

Countering China’s rise

Takaichi has portrayed herself as Japan’s Margaret Thatcher and the standard-bearer of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s legacy.

Abe, who led the LDP back to power in 2012, had pledged to “restore a strong Japan”. During his eight-year rule, Japan adopted a so-called “proactive pacifism”. Under this new security strategy, Japan began to depart from its postwar pacifism through a number of ways:

• strengthening the military
• lifting bans on arms exports
• building new security partnerships (including with NATO, the European Union and the Quad)
• consolidating its alliance with the United States.

In 2014, a new interpretation of the constitution also permitted Japan to engage in “collective self defence”, or aid an ally under attack.

Takaichi now sees her job as continuing Abe’s work. And her direction is clear.

Shortly after becoming prime minister last year, Takaichi triggered a spat with Beijing when she suggested Japan would come to Taiwan’s defence if it was attacked by China. Beijing retaliated with economic pressure and coercive rhetoric, but Takaichi refused to back down.

Neither Takaichi nor China’s leader, Xi Jinping, are in a hurry to improve diplomatic relations.

Beijing has urged Chinese tourists not to travel to Japan and warned that Takaichi’s moves threaten regional security and the international order.

Takaichi, meanwhile, is hoping an assertive China will help her overcome domestic opposition to her security agenda. So far, the public supports her government, too. In a poll after the election, 69% approved of her cabinet’s performance.

How Takaichi wants to transform Japan’s military

Takaichi’s government will soon begin work on a revision of its National Security Strategy from 2022. It is likely to adopt her declared “crisis management” approach, combining security and economic objectives with industrial policy.

Despite mounting public debt, Takaichi has already increased defence spending to 2% of Japan’s GDP ahead of schedule, and has pledged to spend more.

Her government is also considering acquiring nuclear submarines and has announced plans to further deregulate arms exports, ultimately allowing the transfer of lethal weapons.

Japan has already permitted the export of Patriot PAC-3 air defence missile systems to the United States to replenish stocks sent to Ukraine and Israel. Japan has also agreed to sell Mogami-class frigates to Australia and has signed deals with Italy and the United Kingdom to co-develop a next-generation fighter jet.

In addition, Japan is participating in a NATO-led initiative to supply Ukraine with military equipment. While Japan’s involvement is limited to non-lethal arms, this could lead to more defence cooperation with NATO overall.

On the domestic intelligence front, Takaichi has pledged to pass a new anti-spy law, establish a National Intelligence Bureau modelled on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and issue a national intelligence strategy.

These initiatives are intended to bolster the country’s intelligence capabilities, which have often been hindered by bureaucratic infighting. The long-term aim is eventually joining the “Five Eyes” network.

Stronger ties with the Trump administration

Faced with threats from China, North Korea and Russia, Japan has little choice but to maintain its security alliance with the US.

At the top of Takaichi’s agenda, therefore, is managing the US–Japan alliance in the era of the so-called “Donroe doctrine”. This is Trump’s new security strategy that shifts the focus of US security towards the Western hemisphere, potentially distracting from the Indo-Pacific.

Trump endorsed Takaichi during her election campaign. And when she goes to Washington on March 19, she will likely attempt to influence the White House’s China agenda before Trump visits Beijing in April.

In order to offset the potential impact of a trade deal between the US and China, Takaichi could also use her new political capital to accelerate the implementation of Japan’s own US$550 billion (A$777 billion) investment pledge in the US.

Big challenges ahead

Ten years ago, Angela Merkel, then-chancellor of Germany, was hailed as the “new leader of the free world”. Now, Takaichi is being celebrated as the “world’s most powerful woman”.

How she uses her new-found power to manoeuvre in a world of great-power rivalry and uncertain alliances will define her legacy and shape the region for years to come.

– ref. Make Japan strong again: Sanae Takaichi’s plan to transform her country’s military – https://theconversation.com/make-japan-strong-again-sanae-takaichis-plan-to-transform-her-countrys-military-275676

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/make-japan-strong-again-sanae-takaichis-plan-to-transform-her-countrys-military-275676/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney

This is an article in our Guide to the Classics series.

I first encountered William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies in my final year of primary school in the UK. A long-term staple of English and Australian classrooms, it invites debate about human nature, morality and the creeping dangers of unchecked power and herd behaviour.

The cover of the edition I read bore an ink drawing of a severed pig’s head, its eyes closed, blood streaming from its mouth. The vivid, disturbing image remains fresh in my mind decades later. It felt less like an illustration than a portent.

Set during wartime, Lord of the Flies tells the tale of a group of British schoolboys marooned on a tropical desert island after the plane evacuating them crashes. With no adults to guide them, the boys attempt to build a makeshift social order, establishing rules and electing a leader. But the fragile system soon teeters and collapses. Fear and resentment take hold. Violence follows.

Among the younger boys, rumours circulate about a threatening presence on the island. The idea of a “beast” begins to influence behaviour, lending form to anxieties that might otherwise have remained diffuse and unspoken.

At the centre of the mounting tension is a struggle between Ralph and another boy, Jack. Ralph remains committed to rules and procedure – to the maintenance of order and the hope of rescue. Jack, on the other hand, grows increasingly impatient with the idea of restraint. Hunting becomes his priority, and with it comes a very different model of leadership, one grounded less in consent than in command.

Stuck in the middle is Piggy – an asthmatic, overweight and bespectacled boy whose real name we never learn. Intellectually alert, he grasps the symbolic importance of objects and concepts more clearly than most. But he is mocked, interrupted, and continually sidelined. In certain respects, Piggy serves as a barometer of the group’s moral health – and as a measure of Ralph’s character. To defend Piggy is to defend reason itself.

I remember our faltering discussions revolving around what I now recognise as an age-old question: nature or nurture? Were the murderous schoolboys shaped by their circumstances, or were those circumstances merely revealing something already present?

Golding, a schoolteacher deeply marked by his Navy service in World War Two, wrote his novel to say,

you think that now the war is over and an evil thing destroyed, you are safe because you are naturally kind and decent. But I know why the thing rose in Germany. I know it could happen in any country. It could happen here.

Its stark warning about the thin veneer of civilisation – and the speed with which it can give way – continues to resonate in our age of resurgent authoritarianism (including in the United States), routine atrocity (including Sudan, Gaza and Ukraine) and an increasingly feverish public sphere.

A new BBC adaptation of the novel, by Adolescence creator Jack Thorne, is now streaming, to mixed reviews. He told the ABC he sees resonances between the “climate of populism and hate” Golding was writing about in the early days of the Cold War, and our current moment.

The adolescent cruelty and rage he drew on to write his portrait of young toxic masculinity are infused into his Lord of the Flies.

A moral fable

Golding studied the sciences before switching to English literature and training as a teacher. His early career was interrupted by World War Two. In the Royal Navy, he served in the North Atlantic and took part in the D-Day landings at Normandy. He later described the conflict as “the great formative experience” of his life.

When he returned to teaching, he began drafting what would become Lord of the Flies. Former pupils at the provincial grammar school where he taught classics recalled their schoolmaster intently writing at his desk during lessons. There, he composed his despondent fable about the collapse of order among boys not unlike them.

In a 1965 essay, Golding insisted Lord of the Files was not a realist novel in the conventional sense, but a fable – and therefore unapologetically moral. As he put it: “The fabulist is a moralist. He cannot make a story without a human lesson tucked away in it.”

Golding knew this was deeply unfashionable, acknowledging most audiences “do not much like moral lessons”. But he stood by the approach, “with all its drawbacks and difficulties” – and knew “the pill has to be sugared, has to be witty or entertaining, or engaging in some way or other”.

Ironically, he famously came to detest the book that bought him fame and fortune, dismissing it later as “boring and crude”. He went on to write 12 other novels, winning the Booker Prize in 1980 for Rites of Passage. In 1983, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Human nature, revealed

The marooned schoolboys in the novel must decide how to look after and govern themselves. They start by attempting to reproduce the structures of the world they have left behind. An assembly is called and rules are agreed upon. A conch shell becomes a symbol of authority, granting the one who holds it the right to speak. A signal fire is lit in the hope of rescue.

At first, there is a real sense of possibility. The island appears abundant and beautiful. Freed from classrooms and the drudgery of routine, the boys experience a surge of excitement. Golding’s description of Ralph, one of the novel’s primary figures, captures that early exhiliration:

He patted the palm trunk softly; and forced at last to believe in the reality of the island, laughed delightedly again, and stood on his head.

But then things start to fall apart. Consensus proves difficult to maintain. Discipline falters. Responsibilities are shirked.

As allegiances shift, the boys divide and the balance of power alters. It unfolds gradually, through small concessions and the accumulated weight of slights and petty grievances. The island, once a setting for adventure, becomes an arena in which a darker understanding of human nature is revealed.

The names of Golding’s central protagonists are key to unlocking the work, written in the dying days of the British Empire. Ralph and Jack are borrowed from R.M. Ballanyte’s 1857 novel The Coral Island, a Victorian narrative in which a trio of shipwrecked English boys embody pluck, Christian virtue and imperial confidence.

In Ballantyne’s book, evil is external. It arrives in the guise of cannibals and pirates. The danger lies beyond the boys, not within them. Their moral certainty remains intact. Steadfast, they take solace in their own innate goodness. The island tests their ingenuity, but not their character.

Golding challenged those assumptions. Ballantyne’s island, he observed, belonged to the 19th century. His would belong to the 20th. If the earlier tale reflected what he called the “smugness” of its age, Lord of the Flies would interrogate the confidence of his own.

‘What one man could do to another’

The “truth” of the novel stemmed from Golding’s profound disillusionment. Before World War II, he believed in what he called “the perfectibility of social man” – the idea that the correct social structures would “produce goodwill” and that injustice could be cured through “reorganization” and reform. But after 1945, he understood “what one man could do to another”.

He was reflecting on the decades between the two world wars in Europe – the rise of fascism and the consolidation of autocratic regimes in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia. What disturbed him more deeply than “one man killing another with a gun, or dropping a bomb on him” was “the vileness beyond all words that went on, year after year, in the totalitarian states”.

These crimes, he stressed, were carried out “skilfully, coldly, by educated men, doctors, lawyers, by men with a tradition of civilization behind them, to beings of their own kind”.

Western civilisation had neither eliminated cruelty, nor prevented brutality. In some cases, it had rendered them systematic and efficient. The problem had nothing to do with political systems or failed institutions. The problem was humanity.

He had come to believe “man was sick – not exceptional man, but average man”. He said “the best job I could do at the time was to trace the connection between the connection between his diseased nature and the international mess he gets himself into”.

He was clear about his book’s message:

if humanity has a future on this planet of hundred million years, it is unthinkable that it should spend those aeons in a ferment of national self-satisfaction and chauvinistic idiocies.

– ref. ‘It could happen here’: Lord of the Flies took its lessons from Hitler’s Germany. They speak to now – https://theconversation.com/it-could-happen-here-lord-of-the-flies-took-its-lessons-from-hitlers-germany-they-speak-to-now-275672

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/it-could-happen-here-lord-of-the-flies-took-its-lessons-from-hitlers-germany-they-speak-to-now-275672/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Damian Tobin, Lecturer in International Business, University College Cork

After the US captured Venezuela’s president at the start of 2026, Donald Trump promised to “unleash” the country’s oil supply. He wanted companies to invest US$100 billion (£74 billion) to get hold of it.

Big oil though, seems less than keen on that idea, appearing to consider Venezuela too expensive or risky. Exxon Mobil’s unenthusiastic response, describing Venezuela as “uninvestible”, even earned a personal rebuke from Trump.

So maybe Trump misunderstood how big oil works, and thought of oil firms as the quintessential risk takers – the ultimate exploiters of uncertainty. Perhaps he had in mind Daniel Day Lewis’s character in the film There Will be Blood, who was willing to risk everything to get his hands of more of the black stuff.

But while that may have been true for some oil firms in the early 1900s, in the 21st century, nothing could be further from the truth. Big oil in 2026 does not like uncertainty. It prefers to invest in what it knows, like plastics and petrochemicals. It does not want to get involved with things as uncertain as Venezuela and green energy.

This idea is backed by my own research on the international oil industry, which shows that large oil companies tend to base their business strategies on long term oil production.

And South American countries play only a minor role in this outlook. Instead, big oil is focused on two key areas: shale oil in the US, and expanding petrochemical production in Asia.

The low cost of shale oil extraction gives it significant cost advantages as a raw material for refineries, while Asia’s growing share of global manufacturing provides a growth market for petrochemicals.

This in turn is linked to oil companies seeking to exploit growing demand for plastics (and lower demand for transport fuels) as part of a clear and long term path to profit. That path is what matters most to oil companies, and Trump’s plan for Venezuela (nor the green transition for that matter) does not provide it.

The priority of profit is also the reason why governments who want greener or cheaper energy cannot rely on powerful oil companies to help them out.

Strength in oil

Underpinning the oil industry’s extreme strength in the global economy is its captive market, where consumer choice is limited to a small number of producers. In the case of the oil market, those consumers are nation states. And even those with large oil reserves of their own need the companies’ technology to refine it.

Venezuela’s oil reserves were once part of this international captive market. But research has shown that not oil is equal. And the range of products which can be manufactured from a barrel of it depends on a mix of geological characteristics and technical capabilities.

So while Venezuela produces more crude oil then it consumes, it needs to import fuels and petrochemicals to meet the needs of its economy. This is because it lacks the refineries to produce these products domestically.

International companies in the oil refining and services sectors control key technology and intellectual property in this area. Without their participation, Venezuela’s crude will remain unsuitable for international refineries.

This fundamental inequality around access to advanced refining technology means there is little relationship between a country’s oil reserves and whether or not it needs to import oil products.

Big oil may yet decide to stump up the investment required to open Venezuela’s oil industry if suitable guarantees are provided. But such state sponsored access places the risk with tax-payers, when those kind of guarantees could be better deployed in the development of clean energy.

And while society needs large firms to invest, politicians need to direct this investment towards productive opportunities. More cheap oil, petrochemicals and plastics are not the answer.

Governments need to recognise that the problem with oil companies is not that they take too many risks, but rather that they take insufficient risks in areas where investment is needed most. For as my research also shows, the retreat of the oil companies from green investment has been matched by a ramping up of their investment in high emission and heavily polluting plastics and petrochemicals.

Addressing this will not be easy. It will requires strong supranational coordination among states to influence the sector, by increasing the costs of oil production and limiting the construction of new infrastructure. But that’s a very different approach to trying to “unleash” the oil supply of a whole nation.

– ref. Why big oil is not interested in Venezuela – https://theconversation.com/why-big-oil-is-not-interested-in-venezuela-275763

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/why-big-oil-is-not-interested-in-venezuela-275763/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Clark, Professor of Medieval History, University of Exeter

Henry VIII is not remembered as a loving husband. Any English schoolchild can recount the unpleasant fates of most of his six wives with the rhyme: “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.” But though the end of his relationships are famous, less is known about Henry in love.

Now, a rare jewel discovered by an amateur detectorist and bought by the British Museum for the national collection may force us to reconsider the king’s brutal reputation.

The jewel is a heart-shaped locket, crafted in gold with red enamel decoration, and attached to a solid gold chain. On the face are the letters H and K linked together by the stems of a Tudor rose and a pomegranate, which was the symbol of Katharine’s Spanish royal family. It is a reasonable deduction that this remarkable jewel was connected directly to Henry and the first of his wives, Katherine of Aragon.

Katherine was the subject of Henry’s first and most shocking divorce, which precipitated England’s breach with the Roman papacy and the transformation of religion which we now know as the Reformation. In many ways Katherine also suffered the worst of the king’s personal cruelty. Although not executed, she was consigned to virtual house-arrest, much of the time separated from her only living child, Mary.

If this was indeed Henry and Katherine’s jewel it could be a vital clue to quite different moment in their relationship, and to a dimension of the king’s character that his otherwise notorious conduct has completely obscured.

In late medieval and Renaissance society, monograms – the linking of people’s initials – were often created to represent a personal connection, a marriage, a betrothal or even a secret love-match. Beneath the linked letters on the locket is the French word “Toujo(u)rs”, meaning “always” – a natural choice for a pledge between lovers. Here, the letters surely stand for Henry and Katherine.

The locket’s flower and fruit decoration seal the royal connection. The pomegranate symbol swept into English public life after the two families were joined through Henry’s marriage. Decorations for the coronation of the king and queen, just two weeks after the wedding, paired the Tudor rose with golden pomegranates. A woodblock print published to mark the occasion under the title A Joyful Meditation to All England, showed Henry and Katherine receiving their crowns under a twin canopy of the flower and the fruit.

Accounts of textiles commissioned for the royal household show dozens of different pieces – upholstery, wall-hangings, and livery to be worn by servants – all featuring the rose and the pomegranate prominently in their design.

Devoted designs

The decoration of the heart pendant is matched in a wide variety of treasures described in Henry’s household inventories. These contain descriptions of a bag of crimson satin, a silver comb case and standing cup all marked in the same way for the king and his queen. These lists also identify several collars or necklaces – described by the archaic term carkeynes – with heart-shaped pendants. One of these, coloured blue, is also inscribed, “H K”.

Henry spent prodigiously on beautiful, bespoke furnishings, but jewellery was his greatest passion. The inventories of his jewels and plate (gold, gilt and silver objets d’art) compiled shortly after his death in January 1547 record almost 4,000 individual pieces.

This Tudor heart pendant is a prime example of this level of investment. The locket itself is formed from 24-carat gold; the wide chain found with it is weighty and long – more than 40cm. Together they amount to 317 grams of precious metal. It is no wonder that the British Museum’s purchase price was £3.5 million.

It is clear from his wardrobe accounts – which record the purchase of decorative pieces for his household – that Henry took a personal interest in the material and design of many of these pieces. Surviving examples of designs for jewellery drawn by Hans Holbein, the German artist active at Henry’s court in the 1530s and early 1540s, may have come from a pattern book made to influence, or illustrate, the king’s developing tastes. He bought, or commissioned pieces, not only for his own household but also as gifts – often marking the new year – to family members and court favourites.

This may well be the origin of the heart pendant. Since it came to light, it has been spoken of as associated with Henry’s great pageant in the Pas-de-Calais in 1520, the so-called Field of the Cloth of Gold. Here he, Katherine and his court staged a ceremonial meeting with the French King, François I. A great many furnishings from the royal residences and chapels did cross the Channel to decorate the pop-up canvas palace and tents.

But I am convinced the message conveyed by this jewel is not political but profoundly personal. Toujours is an expression of deep, heartfelt attachment. An alternative theory, advanced by the British Museum itself, is that the pendant was made to mark the betrothal in October 1518 of Katherine’s only living child, Princess Mary, aged two, to the eight-month-old heir to the French throne.

But given the presence of pieces of very similar design in the royal household soon after the marriage and coronation, it must be possible that the pendant belongs to the early years of Henry and Katherine’s relationship. At first, she and the king were inseparable. Five months from the wedding she was pregnant. She conceived again each year from 1510 to 1513. One of these pregnancies resulted in a son, named Henry, born in January 1511. He lived for a little under two months.

In the late summer of that year, the king and queen embarked on a progress through the Thames Valley and on into the West Midlands, culminating at Warwick. It was in a Warwickshire field that the detectorist, Charlie Clarke, uncovered the heart pendant in 2019.

Could it be that a jewel gifted to Katherine at the time of the birth of Henry’s longed-for male heir was carried with the royal party – as so many of their personal jewels were – as they made their way into Warwickshire? It gives the locket an edge not just of romance, but of tragedy. Here, perhaps, Katherine was parted from a present that was, already, a memento mori of her lost son.

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– ref. Heart-shaped locket discovery offers rare glimpse into Henry VIII and Katharine of Aragon’s marriage – https://theconversation.com/heart-shaped-locket-discovery-offers-rare-glimpse-into-henry-viii-and-katharine-of-aragons-marriage-276123

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/heart-shaped-locket-discovery-offers-rare-glimpse-into-henry-viii-and-katharine-of-aragons-marriage-276123/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bert Johnson, Professor of Political Science, Middlebury College

Jesse Jackson’s two campaigns for president, in 1984 and 1988, were unsuccessful but historic. The civil rights activist and organizer, who died on Feb. 17, 2026, helped pave the way for Barack Obama’s election a generation later as the nation’s first – and so far only – African American president.

Jackson’s campaigns energized a multiracial coalition that not only provided support for other late-20th-century Democratic politicians, including President Bill Clinton, but helped create an organizing template – a so-called Rainbow Coalition combining Black, Latino, working-class white and young voters – that continues to resonate in progressive politics today.

Vermont, where I teach political science, did not look like fertile ground for Jackson when he first ran for president. Then, as now, Vermont was one of the most homogeneous, predominantly white states in the country. But if Jackson seemed like an awkward fit for a mostly rural, lily-white state, he nonetheless saw possibilities there.

He campaigned in Vermont twice in 1984, buoyantly declaring in Montpelier, the state capital, “If I win Vermont, the nation will never be the same again.”

He did not win Vermont, taking just 8% of the Democratic primary vote in 1984 but tripling his share to 26% in 1988. Appealing to voters in small, rural New England precincts was a remarkable achievement for a candidate identified with Chicago and civil rights campaigns in the South.

Jackson’s presidential ambitions coincided with a pivotal moment in Vermont politics: The state’s voting patterns were shifting left, with new residents arriving and changing the state’s culture and economy. In 1970, nearly 70% of Vermonters had been born there. By 1990, that figure had dropped by 10 percentage points.

The Vermont Rainbow Coalition, which was formed to support Jackson’s first campaign, organized a crucial constituency in a fluid time, establishing patterns that would persist for decades.

Setting the standard in Vermont

Jackson created a “People’s Platform” that would sound familiar to today’s progressives, calling for higher taxes on businesses, higher minimum wages and single-payer, universal health care.

In light of Jackson’s efforts, Vermont activists saw the potential for a durable statewide organization. Rather than disband the Vermont Rainbow Coalition after the 1984 primary, they kept the group going, endorsing candidates in campaigns for the legislature and statewide office in each of the next three election cycles. The coalition also endorsed Bernie Sanders’ failed bid for Congress in 1988.

Sanders served eight years as mayor of Burlington as an “independent socialist,” cultivating a core collection of local allies known as the Progressive Coalition who sought to wrest power away from establishment members of the city’s Board of Aldermen.

In 1992, the Vermont Rainbow Coalition merged with Burlington’s Progressive Coalition to form the statewide Progressive Coalition.

The Jackson-Sanders lineage

Sanders eventually went on to win election to the House as an independent in 1990, serving in the chamber until winning his Senate seat, also as an independent, in 2006. His presidential runs in 2016 and 2020 made him a prominent national figure and a leader among progressives.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who unseated a member of the House Democratic leadership in a stunning 2018 primary upset in New York, had been a Sanders campaign organizer and remains his close ally. On Jan. 1, 2026, Sanders swore in Zohran Mamdani – like Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic socialist – as mayor of New York City.

Sanders had endorsed Jackson for president in 1988. Years later, Jackson returned the favor.

Sanders paid tribute to Jackson at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. “Jesse Jackson is one of the very most significant political leaders in this country in the last 100 years,” Sanders said. “Jesse’s contribution to modern history is not just bringing us together – it is bringing us together around a progressive agenda.”

Not just Vermont

In Vermont, Jackson performed surprisingly well in unlikely places – taking nearly 20% of the 1984 primary vote in working-class Bakersfield and Belvidere, for example.

Today’s Vermont Progressive Party, which emerged out of the old Vermont Progressive Coalition, is one of the most successful third parties in the nation, winning official “major party” status in the state shortly after its official founding in 2000. The party has elected candidates to the state legislature, city councils and even a few statewide offices, including that of lieutenant governor.

Vermont was not alone in experiencing the catalyzing effect of Jackson’s presidential runs. Jackson had a significant mobilizing impact on Black voters nationwide. In Washington state, the Washington Rainbow Coalition started in Seattle and spread across the state between 1984 and 1996. New Jersey and Pennsylvania had their own successful and independent Rainbow Coalitions. In 2003, the Rainbow Coalition Party of Massachusetts joined the Green Party to become the Green Rainbow Party.

In my own research, I’ve investigated the durability of the “Jackson effect” in Vermont. There is no better test of what differentiates the Vermont Progressive Party from the state’s Democratic Party than the 2016 Democratic primary race for lieutenant governor, which pitted progressive David Zuckerman against two prominent, mainstream Democrats.

Zuckerman beat the Democrats most handily in towns that had voted the most heavily for Jesse Jackson in 1984, an effect that persisted even when controlling for population, partisanship and liberalism.

Many people would point to Sanders as the catalyst for Vermont’s continuing progressive movement. But Sanders and the progressives owe much to Jackson.

– ref. How Jesse Jackson set the stage for Bernie Sanders and today’s progressives – https://theconversation.com/how-jesse-jackson-set-the-stage-for-bernie-sanders-and-todays-progressives-276249

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/how-jesse-jackson-set-the-stage-for-bernie-sanders-and-todays-progressives-276249/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Graham, Associate Professor in Digital Media, Queensland University of Technology

A new study published today in Nature has found that X’s algorithm – the hidden system or “recipe” that governs which posts appear in your feed and in which order – shifts users’ political opinions in a more conservative direction.

Led by Germain Gauthier from Bocconi University in Italy, it is a rare, real-world randomised experimental study on a major social media platform. And it builds on a growing body of research that shows how these platforms can shape people’s political attitudes.

Two different algorithms

The researchers randomly assigned 4,965 active US-based X users to one of two groups.

The first group used X’s default “For You” feed. This features an algorithm that selects and ranks posts it thinks users will be more likely to engage with, including posts from accounts that they don’t necessarily follow.

The second group used a chronological feed. This only shows posts from accounts users follow, displayed in the order they were posted. The experiment ran for seven weeks during 2023.

Users who switched from the chronological feed to the “For You” feed were 4.7 percentage points more likely to prioritise policy issues favoured by US Republicans (for example, crime, inflation and immigration). They were also more likely to view the criminal investigation into US President Donald Trump as unacceptable.

They also shifted in a more pro-Russia direction in regards to the war in Ukraine. For example, these users became 7.4 percentage points less likely to view Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy positively, and scored slightly higher on a pro-Russian attitude index overall.

The researchers also examined how the algorithm produced these effects.

They found evidence that the algorithm increased the share of right-leaning content by 2.9 percentage points overall (and 2.5 points among political posts), compared with the chronological feed.

It also significantly demoted the share of posts from traditional news organisations’ accounts while promoting or boosting posts from political activists.

One of the most concerning findings of the study is the longer-term effects of X’s algorithmic feed. The study showed the algorithm nudged users towards following more right-leaning accounts, and that the new following patterns endured even after switching back to the chronological feed.

In other words, turning the algorithm off didn’t simply “reset” what people see. It had a longer-lasting impact beyond its day-to-day effects.

One piece of a much bigger picture

This new study supports findings of similar studies.

For example, a study in 2022, before Elon Musk had bought Twitter and rebranded it as X, found the platform’s algorithmic systems amplified content from the mainstream political right more than the left in six out of the seven countries.

An experimental study from 2025 re-ranked X feeds to reduce exposure to content that expresses antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity. They found this shifted feelings towards their political opponents by more than two points on a 0–100 “feeling thermometer”. This is a shift the authors argued would have normally taken about three years to occur organically in the general population.

My own research offers another piece of evidence to this picture of algorithmic bias on X. Along with my colleague Mark Andrejevic, I analysed engagement data (such as likes and reposts) from prominent political accounts during the final stages of the 2024 US election.

Our findings unearthed a sudden and unusual spike in engagement with Musk’s account after his endorsement of Trump on July 13 – the day of the assassination attempt on Trump. Views on Musk’s posts surged by 138%, retweets by 238%, and likes by 186%. This far outstripped increases on other accounts.

After July 13, right-leaning accounts on X gained significantly greater visibility than progressive ones. The “playing field” for attention and engagement on the platform was tilted thereafter towards right-leaning accounts – a trend that continued for the remainder of the time period we analysed in that study.

Not a niche product

This matters because we are not talking about a niche product.

X has more than 400 million users globally. It has become embedded as infrastructure – a key source of political and social communication. And once technical systems become infrastructure, they can become invisible – like background objects that we barely think about, but which shape society at its foundations and can be exploited under our noses.

Think of the overpass bridges Robert Moses designed in New York in the 1930s. These seemed like inert objects. But they were designed to be very low, to exclude people of colour from taking buses to recreation areas in Long Island.

Similar to this, the design and governance of social media platforms also has real consequences.

The point is that X’s algorithms are not neutral tools. They are an editorial force, shaping what people know, whom they pay attention to, who the outgroup is and what “we” should do about or to them – and, as this new study shows, what people come to believe.

The age of taking platform companies at their word about the design and effects of their own algorithms must come to an end. Governments around the world – including in Australia where the eSafety Commissioner has powers to drive “algorithmic transparency and accountability” and require that platforms report on how their algorithms contribute to or reduce harms – need to mandate genuine transparency over how these systems work.

When infrastructure become harmful or unsafe, nobody bats an eye when governments do something to protect us. The same needs to happen urgently for social media infrastructures.

– ref. A few weeks of X’s algorithm can make you more right-wing – and it doesn’t wear off quickly – https://theconversation.com/a-few-weeks-of-xs-algorithm-can-make-you-more-right-wing-and-it-doesnt-wear-off-quickly-276153

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/a-few-weeks-of-xs-algorithm-can-make-you-more-right-wing-and-it-doesnt-wear-off-quickly-276153/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Fuerbach, Professor, Photonics Research Centre, Macquarie University

Scientists at Microsoft Research in the United States have demonstrated a system called Silica for writing and reading information in ordinary pieces of glass which can store two million books’ worth of data in a thin, palm-sized square.

In a paper published today in Nature, the researchers say their tests suggest the data will be readable for more than 10,000 years.

What tiny pulses of light can do

The new system, called Silica, uses extremely short flashes of laser light to inscribe bits of information into a block of ordinary glass.

These pulses are called “ultrashort” for a reason. Each one lasts mere quadrillionths of a second (aka femtoseconds or 10^–15 s).

To get your head around that: comparing ten femtoseconds to a single minute is like comparing one minute to the entire age of the universe.

These incredibly short flashes can be used to generate even shorter bursts of light lasting attoseconds (a thousandth of a femtosecond or 10^–18 s).

These attosecond bursts can be used to observe the motion of electrons inside atoms and molecules – and in 2023 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for pioneering work in this area, to Ferenc Krausz (coincidentally my former PhD supervisor), Anne L’Huillier and Pierre Agostini.

Writing in glass

Femtosecond laser pulses also have a practical technological application. They can be used to make changes deep inside transparent materials such as glass.

These lasers produce light of a wavelength that normally passes through glass without interaction. However, when ultrashort pulses of this light are tightly focused on a particular region, it produces an intense electric field that alters the molecular structure of the glass in the focal zone.

This means only a tiny three-dimensional volume, often less than a millionth of a metre to a side, is affected. This is called a “voxel”, which can be made at precisely controlled positions in the glass.

Decades of research

The idea of using laser-written voxels for three-dimensional data storage is not new.

Eric Mazur and co-workers at Harvard University in the US investigated volumetric optical storage back in the 1990s. Their groundbreaking work demonstrated that permanent data structures could be inscribed into common glass using femtosecond lasers.

In 2014, Peter Kazansky and colleagues at the University of Southampton in the UK reported data storage in fused quartz glass with a “seemingly unlimited lifetime”. This helped to to establish the idea of ultra-stable glass-based memory devices.

In 2024, Kazansky spun out a company called SPhotonix to commercialise what they describe as “5D glass nanostructuring”. Their vision of a “5D memory crystal” even made its way into popular culture: a similar device appeared in the latest Mission Impossible film, The Final Reckoning, portrayed as a secure vault capable of containing a powerful but sinister AI.

A complete system

The Silica project does not claim to have made a new scientific breakthrough. Instead the team presents the first comprehensive demonstration of a practical real-world technology.

Their work brings together all the key elements of such a storage platform based on femtosecond lasers and glass. It includes encoding data, writing, reading, decoding and error correction. The work explores different strategies for reliability, writing speed, energy efficiency and data density, and involves systematic assessments of the data lifetime.

Silica looked at two main types of laser-written voxels.

The first consists of tiny elongated void-like features created by laser-driven “micro-explosions” inside the glass. These allow an extremely high storage density of 1.59 gigabits per cubic millimetre.

The second type involves making subtle changes in the local refractive index of the glass. These can be written faster, using less energy – but each cubic millimetre of glass can hold less data. This method can write about 65.9 megabits per second, and the authors say this could be increased with more laser beams.

Finally, accelerated ageing experiments suggest that the written data, even in the case of the more sensitive phase voxels, could remain stable for more than 10,000 years. This vastly exceeds the lifetime of conventional archival storage media such as magnetic tape or hard drives.

The future

When I began my PhD in the late 1990s at the Vienna University of Technology, we were one of only a handful of laboratories worldwide that had the expertise to build lasers capable of generating femtosecond pulses.

Today, after decades of technological development, ultrafast lasers with the reliability, power and repetition rates required for industrial use can be purchased off the shelf.

Dense, fast and energy-efficient archival data storage is an exciting real-world application of these lasers. As ultrafast photonics continues to mature, I have no doubt more applications will follow. Exciting times ahead.

– ref. Is this glass square the long, long future of data storage? – https://theconversation.com/is-this-glass-square-the-long-long-future-of-data-storage-276263

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/is-this-glass-square-the-long-long-future-of-data-storage-276263/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marten Risius, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland

Online chat service Discord has announced it will begin testing age verification for some users, joining a growing list of platforms trying to work out who is actually behind the screen.

The move comes as governments around the world push for stronger protections of young people online. The United Kingdom and France have imposed age verification for visitors of adult content pages. Australia now mandates that social media platforms ensure their account holders are older than 16.

Many people feel immediately uneasy about online age or ID checks. Will the log-in process become more time consuming? Will proving how old we are mean giving up anonymity and force us to hand over sensitive documents to private tech firms?

Will mandatory age verification impact our ability to browse, speak and participate online, making us “transparent citizens” tracked by corporations or the government?

These concerns are not unfounded. In fact, research points to even more risks. Sharing identity-related data makes breaches or identity theft more likely. Age verification systems could be abused for surveillance or lead to discrimination, especially for marginalised groups.

However, our research shows it is possible to provide truly anonymous, safe age checks online.

Not all age assurance works the same

Age assurance is the umbrella term for all kinds of methods that can help determine someone’s age online. This includes age verification – proving the user’s age, often with an official ID.

How age assurance is put into practice differs vastly across jurisdictions and platforms. The Australian government demands firms must take “reasonable steps” to prevent kids from making social media accounts, but the age assurance methods can vary.

The government of France provides more guidance, but still leaves implementation of age proofs to third parties. The European Union is actively preparing a reference implementation for an age verification solution, albeit it has not put age restriction policies in place yet.

To keep things simple, platforms are increasingly turning to facial age estimation. Users are asked to scan their face so an algorithm can guess how old they are.

At first, this may sound less intrusive than showing a government-issued ID. In practice, it often requires handing over highly sensitive biometric data to private companies. Unlike a password, your face can’t be changed if the data is stolen. Such age estimation is also prone to errors.

There is a plethora of alternative age assurance tech. These include user behaviour analysis, payment-based verification, document scans (such as government-issued IDs), video-based verification services involving these documents, and electronic attestations – such as the electronic passports familiar from border control at airports.

There’s no need to share sensitive data

One highly secure approach allows users to prove a single fact – such as being over 18 – not only with high certainty, but without revealing their name, address, or even date of birth. It’s based on cryptographic digital attestations.

For example, the German eID exchanges data directly between a microprocessor in a person’s plastic “eID card” and the platform. The microprocessor proves it belongs to a government-issued eID via a cryptographic key, which is shared with 9,999 other eIDs. This means the only thing a platform learns is that one of 10,000 potential people signed up.

When the service sends the current date and minimum age required to the eID, the microprocessor uses the date of birth, computes the current age and simply responds whether the user is old enough.

The EU digital identity and Google wallets are working on a slightly different approach. It doesn’t rely on special microprocessors built into physical cards, but on hardware components common in mobile phones.

This makes the approach more broadly applicable. These solutions involve highly advanced cryptography that communicates to the platform that a person possesses a digital document proving they’re older than 18, but without revealing any further details.

As you can see, age verification systems can be designed with unlinkability at their core. That means neither the government nor the platform can track a user’s activities despite being able to accurately verify their age.

The real issue isn’t age verification – it’s who runs it

If any government is serious about age assurance, the technical design will matter more than the policy itself.

Privacy-friendly age verification is complex and expensive. It will require governments to invest in the technical details, ensuring the age verification is robust while meeting privacy expectations.

And the software code will need to be open-access to allow for peer review. Transparency is the strongest safeguard against false promises made by the government or hidden attacks by cyber criminals trying to steal the data.

Government involvement must also convincingly resist looming threats of “function creep”, where the scope of data capture through an age verification infrastructure can quickly be changed through political decisions. There is no technical safeguard against such abuse – and governments need to earn their citizens’ trust in future legislation.

Indeed, the stakes are high: a single data breach can easily destroy public trust. If citizens don’t trust the age verification tool, they may just circumvent age controls altogether, as has happened in France.

The bigger picture

The internet is entering a new phase. For years, platforms avoided knowing the age of their users. That appears no longer politically or socially sustainable.

The real choice is not between safety and privacy. It is between two very different technical paths. One path normalises biometric (face, fingerprint and similar) checks, expanding the amount of sensitive data handed to private companies.

The alternative uses advanced cryptographic solutions that confirm age while protecting anonymity.

Age verification does not have to end anonymous participation online. Done properly, it could be the technology that protects it.

– ref. Age verification online can be done safely and privately. Here’s how – https://theconversation.com/age-verification-online-can-be-done-safely-and-privately-heres-how-276104

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/age-verification-online-can-be-done-safely-and-privately-heres-how-276104/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Johra Kayeser Fatima, Senior Lecturer, Marketing, University of Canberra

In Australia, around 16% of major road accidents (such as multi-vehicle crashes and pedestrian collisions) involve distracted driving.

Distracted driving happens when people shift their attention from the primary task of driving to a secondary task such as using a mobile phone or eating.

We recently examined the specific effects of different distraction types on driving performance – and discovered some carried a greater risk than others.

What we studied

Driving distractions that cause accidents can happen for any of these reasons:

• auditory distractions, such as listening to music, having a conversation or hearing a baby cry

• visual distractions, such as looking at a navigator or passengers

• cognitive distractions such as thinking, daydreaming, or future planning

• behavioural distractions such as texting, calling, fixing a mirror or eating/drinking.

In our study we used a driving simulator in a controlled laboratory setting to systematically manipulate distraction conditions and assess their impact on driving.

The simulator had three screens with nearly 180° peripheral vision in a driving scenario.

We distracted participants in four ways. We:

• called their mobile phone while they were driving (auditory distraction)

• asked them to locate a specific key of a computer keyboard located in front of them, which was a part of the driving simulator (visual distraction, as drivers need to look at the key by moving their eyes from road on the screen)

• engaged them in a conversation (cognitive distraction)

• instructed them to move a cup from one side of their driving seat to the other (behavioural distraction).

We studied 103 Australian drivers aged 16–82 in the Australian Capital Territory, using a road deviation measure to reflect the “sway” of the vehicle.

How did these distractions impact driving?

Participants’ driving was worse when they were involved in listening (auditory distraction) and when they were asked to do a task (behavioural distraction) compared with the other two types of distractions (cognitive and visual).

The reason is likely to be that our brains struggle to concentrate on driving and deal with these distractions at the same time. The result? An increased risk of making a mistake on the road.

The results did surprise us. Before the study, we assumed visual distractions would impact drivers most but that was not the case with our results.

A possible explanation is that when drivers intentionally look away from the road, they mentally predict what will likely to take place during the next few seconds. This is an internal decision.

That is not the case for most auditory distractions – these are largely created by others and often happen unexpectedly, like a baby crying or hearing a favourite song on the radio. Drivers may not be mentally prepared for this type of distraction.

Also, audio distractions can happen any time, even in a complex driving moment (such as high traffic or merging). Drivers are less likely to take their eyes off the road in these complex moments.

It must be noted these four distractions can be interrelated (a phone ringing is mainly an auditory distraction but it also sparks the brain to do something, which is cognitive). And you may also look at your phone, which is is a visual distraction.

In our study, we used verbal conversations as a measure of cognitive distractions but drivers can also be cognitively distracted by thinking about problems or being in a hurry.

Our study supports previous research investigating in-vehicle distractions.

Mobile phone usage is the big one – a United States study found using (not just hearing it ring) a phone while driving increases the chances of a collision by up to four times.

Australian research found non technology-based activities – such as eating, drinking, smoking and interacting with passengers – all have the potential to increase crash risk as well.

So, how do we make our roads safer?

Our findings suggest there are a few key takeaways for drivers, educators, government bodies and road safety organisations.

On an individual level, drivers need to be aware of the auditory and behavioural distractions they face, and the potential impact on road safety. We found people often don’t know which distractions negatively influence their driving the most.

While many drivers talk with passengers, it can affect their locus of control and driving behaviour. They therefore need to be mindful of the level of noise inside the vehicle and try to avoid arguments or noisy conversations.

Podcasts and audio books can have a similar effect on driving performance.

Inside vehicle distractions are increasing with the rapid growth of technologies such as smartphones, smart watches and navigation systems. It is therefore essential drivers are also aware of how to use (or not to use) these gadgets safely.

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Read more: Yes, those big touchscreens in cars are dangerous and buttons are coming back

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Road safety organisations and government bodies must develop road safety promotions that highlight inside vehicle distractions (in particular, auditory and behavioural types). Often, these promotions only focus on external distractions such as poor weather, road conditions and pedestrian behaviour.

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We would like to acknowledge Hilmi Khan, research assistant in this project for his contribution.

– ref. Using your phone while driving is dangerous. What about listening to music or eating? – https://theconversation.com/using-your-phone-while-driving-is-dangerous-what-about-listening-to-music-or-eating-273236

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/using-your-phone-while-driving-is-dangerous-what-about-listening-to-music-or-eating-273236/

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

After a coup by the Liberals’ conservative faction, the party has dumped its first female leader Sussan Ley, who had dire polling, in favour of Angus Taylor.

Jane Hume, from the moderate side of the party, won the position of deputy leader. Before entering politics Hume worked in the financial sector. Her win in last week’s ballot came after a turbulent year for her, with mistakes in the election campaign, and then being removed from the frontbench by Ley.

Now back in a big way, Hume takes the shadow portfolio of employment, industrial relations, productivity and deregulation, which will give her a major role in the economic debate.

On her new roles, Hume says she wants to get Australia’s industrial relations system working for employees and employers:

I can understand why previous Coalition governments have been timid on industrial relations reform. They are still scarred by WorkChoices back in 2007. And that’s an easy slogan, I think, for Labor governments to throw, or Labor oppositions to throw, at Liberals and at the Coalition. I’m really not interested in revisiting WorkChoices.

I’m very much interested in looking at job opportunities and career opportunities. What is it that my kids and their kids are going to be looking for in a workplace? […] How do we get our industrial relations system working for both employees and employers? And to some extent, I think that requires a new level of imagination. We want workplace flexibility.

On what a Coalition childcare policy may look like, Hume points to restoring choice and rejecting “dependency” in Labor’s one-size-fits-all approach to childcare:

I do think that there has been an objective, if you like, of dependency that has been part of the Labor Party’s tactics of government, but that’s not healthy. And we can see it in something like childcare.

We need to make sure that we encourage innovation and aspiration, that we reward effort so that when people want to step up and say, hey, I’d really like to start a business, I’d like to really start a family, I’m going to work really hard so that I can send my child to the school that I choose, that there are opportunities for families and individuals to do exactly that.

[A] one-size-fits-all approach [makes] the place a little greyer. I’d like to inject some optimism and some colour back into the Australian economy and to society.

On women in the Liberal party, Hume says the party needs to attract more women but rejects the idea of quotas, saying she’s proud to have made it on merit alone:

I fundamentally believe that we need more women in parliament from every party, not just the Liberal Party. Women’s voices are more than 50% of the Australian population. It’s really important that their voices are heard loudly and clearly in the places where decisions get made about their lives. And I have always been a champion of women within my party.

When we talk about female representation, it’s almost like people say the word “quotas” in the same breath and it’s not that binary. […] There are so many different ways of doing this and quotas is only one way. And it’s one that doesn’t necessarily suit the culture or the nature of the Liberal Party.

I think that the women that I know within the Liberal Party, both those that aspire to be in parliament and those that are already there, would feel a level of insult if they felt that they needed special dispensation just for their presence. […] I love the fact that I know that I got to where I am on merit alone and that my female colleagues did the same. It makes us more powerful, more confident and more able to do our jobs.

Asked whether the Liberals need to run a female candidate in the Farrer by-election to maximise their competitiveness, Hume says a women candidate be “terrific” but stresses the decision is up to the party organisation.

There’s no doubt that female candidates are hard workers, they’re great communicators, they feel very representative of the community and they tend to know their communities extremely well.

I’d like to see female candidates in every seat across the country because the more women we have in parliament, the better represented women’s voices are.

Reflecting on how she has changed in her nearly 10 years in parliament Hume said she was surprised how little of her business experience translated to politics:

I think I’m far less naive. I did come in bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, nothing but a ponytail and a dream. And I did feel at that stage too that perhaps my business experience would translate over easily to politics. They are very different beasts.

In business, when teams work together, […] you can be part of the boat that rises on the tide. Politics is a little bit more of a zero-sum game, one in one out. You’re either the party of government or the party of opposition, you’re in the ministry, or you are out of the ministry. […] Because of that, it can create interesting relationships, challenges that perhaps I hadn’t expected before I entered parliament. But I love it. […] What I didn’t realise, but I love most about the job, is that every single day is different.

I think it’s a far better workplace now than it was when I first arrived. It’s far more welcoming to newcomers and to those that might not necessarily fit the cookie-cutter mould of an Australian politician.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: New Liberal Deputy Jane Hume on why she wants a woman contesting every seat – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-new-liberal-deputy-jane-hume-on-why-she-wants-a-woman-contesting-every-seat-276271

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/politics-with-michelle-grattan-new-liberal-deputy-jane-hume-on-why-she-wants-a-woman-contesting-every-seat-276271/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian A. Wright, Associate Professor in Environmental Science, Western Sydney University

There’s little worse as a pool lifeguard than hearing the words “code brown” come through your radio. For swimmers on a hot day, there’s also little worse than being told to immediately get out of the water because there’s poo floating in the pool.

During hot summers, public pools in Australia are often crowded with families and children. The risk of “code brown” incidents at your local pool is probably substantial.

So how is a public pool cleaned after poo or vomit accidentally ends up in the water – and how long before it’s safe to get back in?

The short answer is: it depends. Let’s dive in.

The dangers of poo in the pool

Contaminated swimming pools are hazardous for swimmers. They have been linked to outbreaks of “crypto”, short for cryptosporidiosis. It’s a highly contagious gastric illness and has unpleasant symptoms including diarrhoea, stomach cramps, fever, nausea and vomiting.

New crypto cases are monitored as it’s a notifiable disease in Australia. If multiple cases are traced to a swimming pool, the pool will be closed for extra cleaning and chlorine treatment.

There are other pathogens, such as viruses, that can infect swimmers using pools exposed to poo or vomit incidents. For example, one study in the United States found rapid onset vomiting and diarrhoea (acute gastroenteritis) affect 28% of swimmers who’d used a norovirus-contaminated swimming pool.

Dealing with an ‘aquatic incident’

Responses for a code brown or vomit follow the official health guidelines for public swimming pools under state or territory public health laws.

However, the specific protocol for the staff will also differ depending on the age of the pool, the type of filtration system, chemicals used for disinfecting the water, and … the type of the poo.

Broadly speaking, if a solid stool or vomit is found, the pool is closed and the poo or vomit must be scooped out using a pool scoop or bucket. Then, it should be discarded down the sewer.

When all the particulates have been removed, a pool vacuum is placed in the water for additional cleaning, and the chlorine concentration is raised for an extended period to disinfect the entire pool.

A pool can be reopened once all of the water has been through the pool’s filtration system. This is known as pool “turnover”. How long this takes depends on the age of the pool and its filtration system. Older pools may take eight hours or longer, but newer pools can be as quick as 25 minutes.

Generally, when staff have followed all the proper guidelines, you can assume the water is safe to swim again when the pool is reopened.

Sometimes, you need superchlorination

The protocol changes for loose stool or diarrhoea. The pool is still closed to the public and the particles are scooped out as best as possible.

Then, the chlorine levels are raised and kept at a higher-than-normal level for a bit over a day. This is called shock superchlorination. After this the chlorine levels fall back to safe swimming levels, the other pool chemicals are rebalanced, and the pool reopened.

Chlorine is one of the most common types of disinfectants used in public swimming pools. You might hear lifeguards talk about free chlorine and total chlorine when referring to pool water quality.

Free chlorine is the “active” part of chlorine. Once it makes contact and kills potentially harmful germs (such as bacteria, protozoa or virus), the chlorine is “inactivated” upon reacting with various compounds, and turns into combined chlorine.

In fact, that strong chlorine smell around swimming pools comes from combined chlorine products called chloramines. These are produced when free chlorine reacts with substances such as urine or perspiration in the water.

Lifeguards also monitor pool water quality throughout the day, performing manual checks and keeping an eye on automatic measurements.

On busy days chlorine might be checked every three hours to ensure levels are maintained within specific ranges to maintain optimal pool water quality. This is known as “balancing the water”.

Don’t go to the pool when sick

It’s important to take precautions when visiting a pool to ensure that you and everyone around you stays healthy during and after your visit.

The best way to do this is to not visit the pool if you’re feeling unwell or have had diarrhoea in the past two weeks, or if you have been diagnosed with cryptosporidiosis or infections such as E. coli, shigella or viruses.

Swimming can be fun and exciting for kids who might forget about a bathroom break. Parents should take their babies and toddlers to the toilet every 20–30 minutes to prevent accidents from occurring.

For babies and toddlers, swim nappies are encouraged to prevent accidental code browns. However, the disposable option are usually not effective at containing urine or poo. Reusable swim nappies are a far better option, designed to provide a snug fit.

If you see a poo or vomit at the pool, get out of the water and tell a lifeguard or staff member immediately. Then, follow all directions given by staff members and seek medical attention if you feel unwell in the days following the incident.

– ref. After ‘code brown’, how long before the pool is safe again? Water quality experts explain – https://theconversation.com/after-code-brown-how-long-before-the-pool-is-safe-again-water-quality-experts-explain-274856

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/after-code-brown-how-long-before-the-pool-is-safe-again-water-quality-experts-explain-274856/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Radisic, Fellow at the Centre for Space, Cyberspace and Data Law; Senior Teaching Fellow, Faculty of Law, Bond University

On January 30 2026, SpaceX filed an application with the US Federal Communications Commission for a megaconstellation of up to one million satellites to power data centres in space.

The proposal envisions satellites operating between 500 and 2,000 kilometres in low Earth orbit. Some of the orbits are designed for near-constant exposure to sunlight. The public can currently submit comments on this proposal.

SpaceX’s filing is just the latest among exponentially growing satellite megaconstellation proposals. Such satellites operate with a single purpose and have short replacement life cycles of about five years.

As of February 2026, approximately 14,000 active satellites are in orbit. An additional 1.23 million proposed satellite projects are in various stages of development.

The approval process for these satellites focuses almost entirely on the limited technical info companies have to submit to regulators.

Cultural, spiritual, and most environmental impacts aren’t taken into account – but they should be.

The night sky will drastically change

At this scale of growth, the night sky will change permanently and globally for generations to come.

Satellites in low Earth orbit reflect sunlight for about two hours after sunset and before sunrise. Despite engineering efforts to make them less bright, truck-sized satellites from many megaconstellations look like moving points in the night sky. Projections show future satellites will significantly increase this light pollution.

In 2021, astronomers estimated that in less than a decade, 1 in every 15 points of light in the night sky would be a moving satellite. That estimate only included the 65,000 megaconstellation satellites proposed at the time.

Once deployed at a scale of millions, the impacts on the night sky may not be easily reversed.

While the average satellite only lasts about five years, companies design these megaconstellations for nearly continuous replacement and expansion. This locks in a continuous, industrialised presence in the night sky.

All this is causing a space-based “shifting baseline syndrome”, where each new generation accepts a progressively more degraded night sky. Criss-crossing satellites become the new normal.

And for the first time in human history, this shifting baseline means kids today won’t grow up with the same night sky every previous generation of humanity had access to.

Houston, we have a ‘mega’ problem

Concerns over the sheer volume of proposed satellites come from many sides.

Scientific concerns include bright reflections and radio emissions from satellites that will disrupt astronomy.

Industry experts also note traffic management and logistical concerns. There’s currently no form of unified space traffic management in the same way that exists in aviation, for example.

Megaconstellations also increase the risk of Kessler syndrome, a runaway chain reaction of collisions. There are already 50,000 pieces of debris in orbit that are ten centimetres or larger. If satellites stopped all collision avoidance manoeuvres, the latest data shows we can expect a major collision in 3.8 days.

Major cultural concerns abound, too. Satellite light pollution will negatively impact Indigenous uses of the night sky for longstanding oral traditions, navigation, hunting, and spiritual traditions.

Launching so many satellites uses up vast amounts of fossil fuels, damaging the ozone layer. After the satellites have served their purpose, the end-of-life plan is to burn them up in the atmosphere. This poses another environmental concern – depositing vast quantities of metals into the stratosphere, causing ozone depletion and other potentially harmful chemical reactions.

All this feeds into legal concerns. Under international space law, countries – not companies – are liable for harm caused by their space objects.

Space lawyers are increasingly trying to understand if international space law can actually hold corporations or private individuals accountable. This is especially important as the risk of damage, death or permanent environmental damage grows.

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Read more: Property and sovereignty in space − as countries and companies take to the stars, they could run into disputes

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We can no longer ignore the gaps in regulation

Currently, the main regulations concerning satellite proposals are technical, such as deciding which radio frequencies they will use. At national levels, regulators focus on launch safety, lessening environmental impacts on Earth, and liability if something goes wrong.

What these regulations don’t capture is how hundreds of thousands of bright satellites change the night sky for scientific study, navigation, Indigenous teaching and ceremony, and cultural continuity.

These are not traditional “environmental” harms, nor are they technical engineering concerns. They’re cultural impacts that fall into a regulatory blind spot.

This is why the world needs a Dark Skies Impact Assessment, as proposed by space lawyers Gregory Radisic and Natalie Gillespie.

It’s a systematic way to identify, document, and meaningfully consider all the impacts of a proposed satellite constellation before it goes ahead.

How would such an assessment work?

First, evidence must be gathered from all stakeholders. Astronomers (both amateur and professional), atmospheric scientists, environmental researchers, cultural scholars, affected communities, and industry all bring their perspectives.

Second, it’s essential to model any cumulative effects of the satellites. Assessments should analyse how constellations will change night sky visibility and skyglow, orbital congestion, and the risk of casualties on the ground.

Third, it will define clear criteria for when unobstructed sky visibility is critical for science, navigation, education, cultural practice, and shared human heritage.

Fourth, it must include mitigation pathways such as brightness reduction, orbital design changes, and deployment adjustments to lessen harm. This should include incentives for using as few satellites as possible for a given project.

Finally, the findings must be transparent, independently reviewable, and directly tied to licensing and policy decisions.

It’s not a veto tool

A Dark Skies Impact Assessment doesn’t prevent space development. It clarifies trade-offs and improves decision making.

It can lead to design choices that reduce brightness and visual interference, orbital configurations that lessen cultural impact, earlier and more meaningful consultation, and cultural considerations where harm can’t be avoided.

Most importantly, it ensures that communities affected by satellite constellations aren’t finding out about them after approval has already been granted and bright lights crawl across their skies.

The question is not whether the night sky will change – it’s already changing. Now is the time for governments and international institutions to design fair processes before those changes become permanent.

– ref. Too many satellites? Earth’s orbit is on track for a catastrophe – but we can stop it – https://theconversation.com/too-many-satellites-earths-orbit-is-on-track-for-a-catastrophe-but-we-can-stop-it-275430

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/19/too-many-satellites-earths-orbit-is-on-track-for-a-catastrophe-but-we-can-stop-it-275430/