Category: Evening Report

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Kadlec, Researcher, Athlete Health and Performance, School of Medical and Health Sciences, Edith Cowan University

It’s an athlete’s worst fear. Hearing a loud “pop” and feeling severe pain are usually the first signs you’ve torn your anterior cruciate ligament, also known as the ACL.

The ACL connects your shin and thigh bones, and is one of the key ligaments that help stabilise your knee joint.

Research suggests ACL injuries are becoming increasingly common across all age groups. Children as young as ten are rupturing their ACLs, with many never regaining their pre-injury strength or ability.

So how do ACL injuries happen? And what makes them so serious?

Why the ACL matters

The ACL is an indispensable part of your knee joint. Its main job is to keep your knee stable by stopping it from rotating or extending too much. This is especially important if you regularly twist, pivot or land on your knee joint.

ACL injuries are most often a result of the fatigue-failure process. This is the idea that repeatedly using and putting strain on the ACL, without proper training, makes it significantly weaker over time.

Doing specific strength exercises and regular physical activity can help slow this process. But if you don’t do these activities, even minor movements can gradually weaken your ACL.

Importantly, ACL injuries don’t just affect elite athletes. Injury rates are just as high in amateur and community sport, where access to athletic rehabilitation is typically more limited. This means people playing at amateur levels can face longer, more uncertain paths to recovery compared to professional athletes who have a specialist team of medical and performance staff. As a result, many amateur athletes stop playing sport altogether.

Why are ACL injuries so severe?

Unlike many other tissues in the body, the ACL has a very limited capacity to heal. Once torn or damaged, it can’t regenerate in a way that restores its original structure or function.

ACL injuries impact the stability of the knee, often causing the joint to “give way”. This leads to physical symptoms such as pain and swelling. But ACL injuries can also damage other parts of the leg including the meniscus, cartilage and other ligaments.

Over time, a person with an ACL injury may develop osteoarthritis, a painful condition where the cartilage in your knee breaks down and causes the bones to rub together. Even with appropriate medical care, one in two people who tear their ACL will have knee osteoarthritis.

The road to recovery

Recovering from an ACL injury can be a long, and at times painful, process that typically lasts between nine and 12 months. Any attempt to speed this up increases the risk of re-injury. And subsequent ACL injuries often have more severe consequences than the initial rupture.

The recovery process starts with diagnosis. This usually involves seeing a medical professional, such as a GP or physiotherapist, in a clinic. They often use MRI imaging to assess the damage to your ligaments and knee joint.

Many people will then have surgery to reconstruct their torn ACL. This requires the surgeon to take a piece of suitable tissue, known as a graft, from another part of the body to put it where the torn ligament was. Using special screws, they then secure the replacement tissue to the bone.

No matter how you treat an ACL injury, rehabilitation is key. An exercise physiologist or physiotherapist can help you rebuild the strength and flexibility of your knee joint through exercises focused on reducing swelling and restoring your range of motion.

Rehabilitation is particularly important if you’re planning to return to sport. As you heal and recover, you’ll go through several phases of exercises. By taking this gradual approach, you’ll be better prepared to perform more high-risk movements, such as pivoting or jumping.

Increasingly, ACL rehabilitation prioritises psychological health. This has given rise to a biopsychosocial approach to recovery, where recovery relies on physical healing as well as a positive mindset. Athletes can use strategies such as goal setting to manage the emotional ups-and-downs of sustaining a serious injury. This approach also recognises how crucial an athlete’s support network, which may include coaches, teammates and family, is to their recovery.

Injuring your ACL can take an immense physical and psychological toll. That’s why getting support from qualified medical professionals, as well as a close social network, is vital.

– ref. Injured your ACL? It’s more than just a knee injury – https://theconversation.com/injured-your-acl-its-more-than-just-a-knee-injury-278080

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/injured-your-acl-its-more-than-just-a-knee-injury-278080/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Flavio Macau, Associate Dean – School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University

The fallout from war between the United States, Israel and Iran has dominated global oil markets. And not just because the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries about 20% of global oil and gas, remains effectively closed to shipping traffic.

Deep uncertainty about how long the disruption will continue has added a persistent “risk premium” – an extra cost built into oil prices to account for the risk of disrupted supply.

Rising insurance costs, reduced ship traffic and longer transit routes avoiding the Middle East have all added further friction to global oil supply chains.

An optimist might say this will all be sorted out quickly and soon enough we will be back to “normal”. And oil prices have retreated back below US$100 per barrel this week, on renewed hopes of a peace deal.

But they’re still elevated. Before war broke out in the Middle East, benchmark oil prices had hovered in the range of US$70–80 a barrel since 2023. That’s near where they’ve sat, on average, in “normal” times for much of the past two decades.

But what if there is no way back to “normal”? What if the fundamental challenge now isn’t the short-term disruption in supply, but the realisation that the days of cheap oil may have come to an end?

Oil’s invisible reach

Higher oil prices have a ripple effect that typically starts at the fuel pump. Petrol, diesel and jet fuel are top of mind. Driving to work, moving goods and travelling all become more expensive.

Many fertilisers, too, are petrochemical products. That means farming around the world is exposed to a shock.

But the list of goods that rely on oil and gas goes far beyond fuel and fertiliser. According to the US Department of Energy, petrochemicals (derived from oil and gas) are involved in the manufacturing of more than 6,000 everyday products.

In many cases, this is because petrochemicals are a key input in the production of plastic. But other products on the list may be surprising, such as aspirin, dishwashing liquid, toothpaste and dyes.

Building materials used in construction warrant a special mention. Asphalt, insulation, paint, pipes, membranes, fittings and other composite materials are mostly oil byproducts. Manufacturing bricks and many ceramic products is also gas-intensive.

Add transporting it all to the construction site, and the oil crisis becomes another headwind to housing affordability.

Is this the end of cheap oil?

In 1999, an article in The Economist quoted Don Huberts, who was then head of Shell Hydrogen at oil company Royal Dutch/Shell:

The stone age did not end because the world ran out of stones, and the oil age will not end because we run out of oil.

True enough, but what about cheap oil? Can that come to an end?

The world has faced many oil shocks before, some for geopolitical reasons, others due to concerns demand would outstrip supply.

But almost every time analysts predicted the world was about to run out of oil, price hikes were met with new discoveries, technological improvements and oil substitution.

Companies such as Chevron have pioneered new techniques, such as deepwater drilling.

Extracting oil from shale through fracking unlocked new supplies, especially in the US. This helped the US become the world’s largest producer of crude oil in the late 2010s.

This time, however, production facilities across the Middle East have suffered major damage, which may take years to repair. The central question is no longer whether oil exists in the ground, but whether it can be supplied cheaply, reliably and at scale again.

Just in time vs just in case

Until 2020, global economies largely operated in “just-in-time” mode. You only take what you need, when you need it, assuming it will always be there for you. This system works efficiently – and is cheap – until something goes wrong.

Lessons from the pandemic brought back the idea of “just in case”, particularly as the war in Ukraine caused further disruption.

“Just in case” means that you keep more than you need, so if someone closes the tap, you can keep all else running. However, this creates new costs.

To keep more oil and gas than you need, you don’t just have to pay for the extra stock. Countries also have to build new storage and infrastructure, and pay more in insurance.

You refine your management to make sure it all works properly, so that the extra cost added is part of a larger contingency plan. But someone must foot this bill.

How the world will have to adapt

The end of cheap oil does not mean the end of oil use. It means higher costs embedded throughout daily life.

Pressure on governments to subsidise fuel, expand stockpiles and intervene in markets can mean larger budget deficits. Households will have less money left for non-essentials as the cost of living bites even harder.

We will adapt, as we are already beginning to see in the current crisis. There are signs people around the world are travelling less, using more public transport and electrifying cars and homes.

Industries may invest more in efficiency and green energy not out of environmental idealism, but cost necessity.

But there may still be a rocky road ahead, and we may never get back to “normal”. Adaptation does not end oil dependence; it reshapes it. The challenge is managing a world in which oil remains essential, but is no longer cheap, stable or politically neutral.

– ref. Will oil prices ever truly go back to ‘normal’? – https://theconversation.com/will-oil-prices-ever-truly-go-back-to-normal-280572

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/will-oil-prices-ever-truly-go-back-to-normal-280572/

By Margot Staunton, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

The Solomon Islands’ Attorney-General is challenging a ruling by the Chief Justice in favour of a new coalition of political parties seeking to oust the Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele.

In the High Court on Tuesday, Sir Albert Palmer ordered Manele to call Parliament within three days to face a motion of no confidence in his leadership.

Sir Albert ruled in favour of a new coalition of 28 MPs (in the 50-member house), including government defectors, who filed a judicial review claim in the High Court.

Palmer denied attempts by Attorney-General John Muria Jr to have the judicial review struck out.

It is the latest development in a political saga that began last month after a mass defection of government ministers to the opposition.

However, the prime minister said in a statement shortly after that Sir Albert’s order raised “profound issues” regarding the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary.

Manele added that Muria Jr would appeal the decision “to protect the constitutional integrity of the Office of the Prime Minister for future generations”.

“It is the firm view of the government’s view that certain fundamental legal questions were not adequately dealt with in the judgement,” Manele said.

Remain calm plea
He also urged Solomon Islanders to remain calm as the government sought “absolute legal certainty” over the case in the Court of Appeal.

Muria Jr spoke to local media about an appeal outside the court on Tuesday.

He spoke Solomon Islands pijin, which has been translated: “I think firstly, its appealable, so we will be filing an appeal for that. A lot of the things in the original, all the orders that the claimants were seeking that is not what the Chief Justice has granted.”

Meanwhile, Gabriel Suri, the lawyer for new coalition, said the ruling over the political impasse facing the country represented a significant development in constitutional law.

Speaking outside court, Suri told local reporters that it provided clarity in the event of future constitutional crises.

“The order that he is given today is that the prime minister has a constitutional duty [to call parliament and face a no-confidence-motion] but he failed to exercise this. So that is what he clearly states,” Suri said.

“The prime minister failed to exercise his constitutional duty so he ordered the prime minister to perform his constitutional duty. If he does not perform it then the Governor-General can step in and exercise his residual power.”

‘Constitutional duty’
In his ruling, the Chief Justice stated that Manele had a “constitutional duty” to ensure the motion was brought before Parliament expeditiously and failing to do so was “unlawful.”

Despite their numerical superiority, the group has been locked out of parliament by Manele’s refusal to call a sitting and face a leadership challenge.

The mandatory orders go further in stating that, if the prime minister fails to call parliament within three days, the Governor-General can call parliament and the Speaker must ensure the motion of no confidence is prioritised.

The judgement stated that the judicial review raised questions that were “serious, arguable and justiciable.”

“The claim raises questions at the very core of the constitutional order-namely, the scope and limits of the powers of the Governor-General and the Prime Minister in relation to the summoning of Parliament, and the role of the court where those powers are said not to have been exercised in circumstances giving rise to constitutional impasse,” it said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/solomon-islands-pm-challenges-court-order-to-face-no-confidence-vote-within-days/

Pacific Media Watch

The war on Iran is not only being fought on the battlefield, reports France24 — it is also playing out online.

Iran’s state media recently took a leaf out of the White House’s own social media playbook, mocking US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an AI-generated propaganda video styled like a LEGO animation.

The clip suggested that Trump launched the conflict to distract from scrutiny over his links to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The video quickly circulated online, highlighting how artificial intelligence is being used as a tool of political messaging and satire in modern conflicts.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/iran-trolls-trump-with-ai-generated-lego-video-now-banned/

ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on April 15, 2026.

Streaming platforms give us access to new music, so why are fewer people listening to it?
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Kelly, PhD Candidate, Department of Design and Society., University of Technology Sydney In September, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) excluded catalogue music (recordings more than two years old) from the Australian bestseller single and album charts. From a marketing perspective this decision is logical, as

Could Viktor Orbán be back in 2030? Why Péter Magyar has a fight on his hands after landslide win
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gerhard Schnyder, Professor of International Management & Political Economy, Loughborough University The mood was jubilant among liberals and pro-Europeans in Hungary and beyond on April 13 as Péter Magyar led the Tisza party to a landslide election victory. His win ended the 16-year administration of Viktor Orbán’s

Worried about feeding your baby solid foods? Here’s what you should know
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lillian Krikheli, Lecturer in Speech Pathology, La Trobe University When you have a baby, mealtimes can be messy and stressful. If you’re a new parent you may be unsure what, when, and how to feed your little one. And you may also worry about choking, particularly when

How microplastics hurt the hidden helpers that keep our coasts healthy
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Francis Thrush, Professor of Marine Science, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Walk across a mudflat at low tide and you might notice small, neat mounds of sediment scattered across the surface. These so-called “chimneys” are the calling card of the humble bamboo worm (Macroclymenella stewartensis)

In the face of rampant AI, is ‘data poisoning’ a new form of civil disobedience?
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Tanner, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Gender Studies, Monash University The explosion of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools has provoked both hopes and anxieties about the potential benefits and harms of this technology. In advanced economies, people are almost equally worried and optimistic about it. This

Searching for a ‘technofix’ to climate change has many dangers. Could radical humility save the planet?
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nanda Jarosz, Researcher, Environmental Philosophy, University of Sydney In 1989, environmentalist Bill McKibben announced to the world that nature was dead. Due to the rapid rate and scale of anthropogenic climate change, he argued, the idea of nature as an entity independent of human activity had become

Friendship, honey and the simple life: 100 years of Winnie-the-Pooh
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Hale, Senior Lecturer in English and Writing (children’s literature), University of New England Isn’t it funnyHow a Bear likes honeyBuzz buzzI wonder why he does Just over a century ago, the satirical writer and playwright A.A. Milne, suffering from the after-effects of fighting in the trenches

The beloved emperor penguin and Antarctic fur seal are now officially endangered. Here’s what can be done
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary-Anne Lea, Professor in Marine/Polar Predator Ecology, University of Tasmania In 1902, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott spotted a large group of large black and white birds at Ross Island, Antarctica. This was among the many milestones of Scott’s famous Discovery expedition: the first breeding colony of

Does your school do mental health checks? They should be regular, not just a one-off
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shane Rogers, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Edith Cowan University Students’ mental health is one of the biggest challenges facing schools. In Australia, half of all adult mental health challenges emerge before the age of 14. It is also estimated that more than 50% of children experiencing mental

When AI starts shopping for you, fashion may be entering a new era of pricing
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aayushi Badhwar, Lecturer in Enterprise and Technology, RMIT University Fashion has always been a bit different to other industries. Consumers do not just buy because they need something. They buy because they are bored, influenced or simply browsing. That makes it a perfect space for technologies designed

Justin Bieber’s Coachella performance wasn’t ‘lazy’ – and actually references 50 years of music history
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Callander, Lecturer in Music Industry, RMIT University After a four-year break from touring, Justin Bieber is headlining Coachella’s main stage. In a controversial section of the show he sang along to YouTube clips – and at times didn’t sing at all. Up to 125,000 punters attend

How do ionic hair dryers work? Can they do what they promise?
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Magdalena Wajrak, Senior Lecturer in Chemistry, Edith Cowan University If you’ve been in the market for a new hair dryer, you’ve likely seen advertising for ionic ones. Some claim to produce negative ions in the millions – with or without the help of added minerals like tourmaline.

Autism diagnoses are up, largely fuelled by the NDIS. What happens next isn’t entirely clear
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Whitehouse, Deputy Director, the Kids Research Institute Australia, Professor of Autism Research, The University of Western Australia Research published earlier this year found the strongest evidence yet that the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has played a key role driving up autism diagnoses

Trust in news rises after years of decline in NZ. What’s behind the shift?
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Treadwell, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Auckland University of Technology Public trust in news in has risen for the first time since records began in 2020. According to the latest Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand report, 37% of respondents now trust the news generally, up

Fiji military puts public ‘on notice’ citing national security threats
RNZ Pacific The Fiji military has warned that individuals responsible for “any attempt to destabilise national security” and those who aid “individuals engaged in criminal activity” have been “put on notice”. It comes after the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) confirmed just last Friday that “unknown individuals” had made “unsuccessful” attempts to access its

Liberal candidate draws top of ballot paper in Farrer but faces mammoth battle
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Liberal candidate Raissa Butkowski has drawn top position on the ballot paper for the May 9 Farrer byelection, in a field of a dozen candidates. While she will be at the top of the ballot paper Butkowski, a lawyer with

Auckland council votes to probe sanctioning Israel over war crimes
Asia Pacific Report The planning and policy committee of New Zealand’s largest city today voted decisively to investigate sanctioning companies listed by the UN Human Right Council that are alleged to be complicit with the illegal Israeli occupation and settlements in Palestine Territory. Auckland Council is the local body governing a “super city” with a

Keith Rankin Analysis – Printing Money to Finance this and other Wars
Analysis by Keith Rankin, 14 April 2026. Despite the mega-commentary about the Israel-Iran war, and especially the United States’ participation in that war, almost nothing is being debated about how the war is being funded. I’ll make some comments about Iran later. But we need to focus on the United States, which is by far

The government wants to curb NDIS spending. Here’s how it might succeed
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Bennett, Disability Program Director, Grattan Institute Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has grown too big, too fast. The NDIS is a government-funded program providing support to more than 760,000 disabled Australians. It launched in 2013 as a way to make disability support more accessible and

Why Iran will never break – and Iranians will decide their own future
COMMENTARY: By Kaveh As an Iranian living in New Zealand, I wake up every morning to the quiet green hills and the calm sea, but my mind is always thousands of kilometres away in Iran. The news from home hits differently when you are far away. You feel helpless, but you sometimes also see things

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/er-report-a-roundup-of-significant-articles-on-eveningreport-nz-for-april-15-2026/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Kelly, PhD Candidate, Department of Design and Society., University of Technology Sydney

In September, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) excluded catalogue music (recordings more than two years old) from the Australian bestseller single and album charts.

From a marketing perspective this decision is logical, as it creates room to expose new recordings to the market. However, it also obscures the reality of the new music economy in Australia.

My latest research – which looks at new music releases in Australia from 2000 to 2024 – shows a significant decline in the sale of new music since the adoption of music streaming.

These findings point to a crisis for new and emerging artists in the Australian market.

The new music market is shrinking

In 2017, music streaming platforms, led by Spotify, became the dominant form of recorded music distribution in Australia. The shift from a purchase-based (CDs, vinyl and downloads) to an access-based (streaming) economy represented a fundamental change in the music business.

Streaming platforms, with close to unlimited repertoire, enable and encourage passive listening via playlists and algorithmic recommendation. The result is that catalogue music has become the mainstay of the recorded music industry.

From 2000 to 2018, new release music made up 99% of the ARIA annual top 100 singles, and 78% of the top 100 albums. But from 2022 to 2024, these figures dropped to 62% and 28%, respectively.

The data indicate that since 2000, new music revenue in Australia has declined by 55% in actual and 71% in inflation-adjusted value.

The rise of streaming has led to us spending more on music overall, but less of this is going to new music. My estimates suggest new music revenues in Australia have grown by just 4% since 2014, in a market that has doubled in value.

A similar trend is evident overseas. In the United States, new music accounted for an estimated 65% of recorded music revenue in the pre-streaming economy, compared to 25–30% post-streaming.

New talent can’t rely on industry

From an Australian perspective, the challenges for new music have created concern about pathways for emerging artists, and the music industry’s commitment to developing them.

Industry insiders I interviewed for the research highlighted how labels were playing a diminishing role in artist development.

The stress on the new music economy – combined with the reduced presence of Australian artists in the ARIA charts – has led to ongoing calls for the government to support the industry via cultural policy initiatives.

The recorded music industry also has a role to play in addressing the environment which it helped to create – particularly in regards to how artists are remunerated.

The current “pro-rata” model used by streaming platforms places equal value on all streams, regardless of whether it is a catalogue track or new release. Under this model, there is no business incentive to prioritise new music.

Adjusting this model, so that new releases are valued higher than catalogue music, could create this incentive.

Major labels will likely resist change, as they reap the rewards of selling back catalogue at pure profit. But the idea of valuing new music over catalogue is not new.

Before the streaming era, new release CDs were sold at full price and catalogue CDs were often sold at mid-price. This model reflected the costs associated with developing new products and provided business incentive by attaching greater profit margins to new releases.

Prioritising long-term industry health

Australia’s new music economy has experienced significant revenue decline and reduced industry commitment to new and emerging artists.

For independent labels, which are largely dependent on new release revenue, the ability to compete in a catalogue market is limited. For artists, the lack of pathways to earning revenue may lead to disconnection with the sector.

The role of Australian major record labels as generators of local talent is also in question.

In addition to policy, a business incentive for record labels to invest in new music could enable the long-term health of the sector.

– ref. Streaming platforms give us access to new music, so why are fewer people listening to it? – https://theconversation.com/streaming-platforms-give-us-access-to-new-music-so-why-are-fewer-people-listening-to-it-278088

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/streaming-platforms-give-us-access-to-new-music-so-why-are-fewer-people-listening-to-it-278088/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gerhard Schnyder, Professor of International Management & Political Economy, Loughborough University

The mood was jubilant among liberals and pro-Europeans in Hungary and beyond on April 13 as Péter Magyar led the Tisza party to a landslide election victory. His win ended the 16-year administration of Viktor Orbán’s pro-Russian Fidesz party. Given the high turnout and margin of victory, giving Tisza a two-thirds constitutional majority in parliament, the jubilant mood seems justified.

However, defeating Orbán will be a long-term project. While several centrist politicians around the world have successfully unseated governing far-right populists in recent years, fewer have been successful in keeping them at bay long term. Poland’s Donald Tusk and Joe Biden in the US are probably the most obvious examples of this struggle.

A major challenge for Magyar will be to undo the system Orbán has put in place over the past 16 years to exercise control over the country. A key component of that system is Fidesz’s extensive control over the media.

Research I have carried out alongside colleagues shows that, despite a semblance of pluralism, most Hungarian media outlets are now controlled by people close to Fidesz. The pro-Fidesz Central European Press and Media Foundation (Kesma) plays a particularly central role, controlling more than 500 national and local media outlets.

Here, the experience of Poland is informative. When Tusk’s centre-right Civic Coalition replaced the populist, right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party as Poland’s governing coalition in December 2023, one of the first actions of the new government was to try and depoliticise public media.

In eight years of PiS government, Polish state media was accused of promoting the party’s policies and launched personal attacks on opposition figures, including Tusk. During a campaign rally months ahead of the election, Tusk said: “We will need exactly 24 hours to turn the PiS TV back into public TV. Take my word for it.”

And when in power, his government acted swiftly. It fired the supervisory boards of all three of Poland’s public media institutions – Polish Television, Polish Radio and the Polish Press Agency.

The PiS and its supporters quickly pushed back. PiS organised street protests and a sit-in at the public broadcaster, prompting the government to send in the police. This created an opportunity for PiS to denounce the new government’s action as an anti-democratic attack on the free press.

Mishandling the depoliticisation of the media was part of the Tusk government’s bad start to the post-populist era. At least partly as a result of this, PiS was able to regroup. In June 2025 it secured a big electoral win when PiS-backed Karol Nawrocki beat the governing party’s candidate, Rafał Trzaskowski, to the presidency.

Post-Orbánomics

Beyond the depoliticisation of captured public institutions – which include not only the media but also courts and parliament – the economic performance of Hungary’s post-populist government will be important. It is one thing to promise a brighter future; it is another to deliver it.

Here, the Biden administration provides a cautionary tale. According to American political scientist Paul Pierson, Biden’s economic programme was arguably the most ambitious democratic economic programme of investment and stimulus since the 1960s.

As a result, unemployment fell more quickly in the US than elsewhere after the COVID pandemic and, for the first time since the 1970s, wage inequality in the US decreased. Yet, during the 2024 presidential election campaign, the democrats were not able to take advantage of this success.

Instead, inflation largely caused by external factors such as post-pandemic supply chain disruptions and increasing energy prices became the key economic talking point. The usual authoritarian populist “culture wars” campaign did the rest to see US voters elect Donald Trump for a second term.

Magyar will face an equally daunting task when it comes to reforming the Hungarian economy. Since the end of socialism in the late 1980s, Hungary’s economic model has been strongly dependent on foreign direct investment (FDI).

It initially depended on inward investment from western Europe, in particular from Germany. Now it depends increasingly on investment from east Asia. The strong reliance on FDI has created what researchers have called a dependent market economy model of capitalism.

Orbán has sought to attract investment from China and South Korea into EV battery manufacturing. Due to, among other things, the massive water usage of EV battery plants, this part of “Orbánomics” is ecologically disastrous and highly unpopular among the Hungarian population. This led some observers to consider foreign EV battery investments as an electoral liability for Orbán.

In this context, Hungary’s post-socialist strategy of relying on FDI may have run its course. But developing an alternative economic strategy will be no easy task. Over the past decade or so, the EU has relaxed its traditionally hostile approach to industrial policy, giving member states more leeway to pursue industrial change.

So far, governments in eastern and central Europe have used this leeway to try and take back control over their domestic economies by reducing FDI dependence and driving out foreign companies from some industries. But this strategy has not helped to provide the economic growth and uplift in living standards that these countries need.

Magyar will need to surround himself with the right economic advisers to figure out what an alternative model that delivers on the promise of a more prosperous future for Hungarians could look like. If that fails, Orbán – with the help of his backers in Russia and the US – will try and regroup in opposition and possibly return in 2030 portraying Fidesz as the saviour of the Hungarian people.

– ref. Could Viktor Orbán be back in 2030? Why Péter Magyar has a fight on his hands after landslide win – https://theconversation.com/could-viktor-orban-be-back-in-2030-why-peter-magyar-has-a-fight-on-his-hands-after-landslide-win-280604

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/could-viktor-orban-be-back-in-2030-why-peter-magyar-has-a-fight-on-his-hands-after-landslide-win-280604/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Francis Thrush, Professor of Marine Science, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

Walk across a mudflat at low tide and you might notice small, neat mounds of sediment scattered across the surface.

These so-called “chimneys” are the calling card of the humble bamboo worm (Macroclymenella stewartensis) which inhabits sandy sediments within New Zealand’s sheltered bays and estuaries.

Despite their hidden lives and small size – most measure just a few centimetres long – these worms have an outsized influence on the health of our marine environment.

But now there are troubling signs that microplastics – tiny but pervasive fragments of broken-down plastic – are disrupting the vital role the worms play, with potentially wider effects we are only just beginning to understand.

Hidden heroes of the seafloor

Over time, scientists have come to recognise the role bamboo worms and other tiny creatures have in bioturbation: a process essential to the functioning of coastal ecosystems.

When healthy, the worms burrow in the seafloor, enabling oxygenated water to enter deeper into the sediment. This, in turn, breathes life into the seabed.

The worms also feed on organic matter, helping regulate carbon and nitrogen in the sediment and surrounding waters. As they deposit small piles of waste, they provide nutrients for microscopic plants, supporting coastal food webs.

When these processes are disrupted, the impacts can ripple outward.

Nutrients can build up, increasing the risk of algal blooms that strip oxygen from the water. This can worsen conditions to the point where fish and other marine life can no longer survive.

Healthy marine sediments also act as a buffer against climate change by locking away carbon. When that balance is lost, sediments can instead release greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide and methane.

How microplastics mess with marine life

Marine microplastics – fragments smaller than 5 millimetres from sources such as vehicle tyres, synthetic clothing fibres and degraded plastic waste – are now found from the tropics to Antarctica. Some estimates suggest there may be more than 170 trillion pieces in the world’s oceans today.

In New Zealand, scientists have been surprised to find them building up even in seemingly pristine marine environments, far from towns and major sources of pollution.

Their impacts are wide-ranging and still being uncovered.

Their small size makes them easy for marine organisms to ingest, often by mistake, where they can cause physical damage and leave animals malnourished. Microplastics can also carry toxic chemicals that interfere with reproduction and development, with these effects building up through the food chain.

When we look at how microplastics affect life on the seafloor, the picture becomes yet more complex.

In a recent study carried out at the University of Auckland’s Leigh Marine Laboratory, we found bamboo worms became less active when exposed to them.

It’s still not clear why. The worms may be ingesting plastic, absorbing chemicals from contaminated sediments, or simply finding less food if microplastics reduce algal growth.

What matters is that their behaviour shifts as microplastic levels increase – with potentially important implications for bioturbation and ecosystem health.

It might also be causing knock-on impacts for wider food chains, as seabirds and eagle rays feed on worms and other tiny creatures in the seabed.

A micro pollutant, a macro problem

While plastic continues to accumulate in the marine environment, some microplastics may break down in sediments over time. Even so, this is unlikely to offset the growing volume, meaning the overall burden continues to rise.

People can help tackle the microplastic problem by reducing the amount of plastic they buy, picking up plastic rubbish on the beach, supporting harbour clean up groups and buying clothing made of natural fibres.

Presently, there are no limits set for safe levels of microplastic pollution in New Zealand – and policies will be needed to manage the problem.

Clean coasts are highly valued by New Zealand communities, but the health of these environments depends as much on what lies beneath the surface as what is visible above it.

While attention often focuses on those “charismatic” species such as dolphins and penguins, the small organisms living in the seabed play an equally important role in keeping ecosystems functioning.

– ref. How microplastics hurt the hidden helpers that keep our coasts healthy – https://theconversation.com/how-microplastics-hurt-the-hidden-helpers-that-keep-our-coasts-healthy-280266

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/how-microplastics-hurt-the-hidden-helpers-that-keep-our-coasts-healthy-280266/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lillian Krikheli, Lecturer in Speech Pathology, La Trobe University

When you have a baby, mealtimes can be messy and stressful.

If you’re a new parent you may be unsure what, when, and how to feed your little one. And you may also worry about choking, particularly when it’s time to start feeding your baby solid foods.

For babies starting solids at the recommended age of six months, it’s important to offer foods in a variety of different ways. Purees can be a helpful starting point, but they shouldn’t be the only texture a baby experiences.

Research suggests not waiting too long to introduce lumpy or textured foods. Infants who start eating lumps at 10 months or later were more likely to develop feeding difficulties and become selective eaters.

So if you’re a parent, where do you start? And what other foods are good to try?

Why texture matters

Mealtimes are crucial for a child’s development because they’re an opportunity to explore different textures and develop oral motor skills.

Imagine you’re eating a piece of toast. This involves performing a range of movements including holding, biting, chewing and swallowing. All of these actions require different muscles to work together, and only improve through practice. But that practice is only effective if it involves real food, as opposed to non-edible teething toys and isolated oral exercises like jaw opening and closing or cheek puffing.

When starting solid foods, many parents rely on purees and pouches as convenient ways to feed their babies. There’s nothing wrong with puree in itself. Many of our favourite foods resemble purees. Think of buttery mashed potato, yogurt, ricotta and applesauce.

The problem arises when purees and pouches become the only texture parents offer their babies, particularly early on. Babies who only eat pureed foods have less opportunity to develop the skills needed for eating and drinking. And research suggests children who frequently eat pouched foods are more likely to become fussy eaters.

So there’s nothing inherently bad about pureed foods. But feeding your baby varied foods gives them more opportunity to develop crucial oral motor skills.

Does it matter how I feed my baby?

There are various ways to start giving your baby solid foods.

One common approach is “baby-led weaning”. That’s where parents encourage their baby to feed themselves, rather than fully spoon-feeding them. This can encourage your baby to be more independent and explore food on their own. But it may also make mealtimes messier and more time-consuming for parents. And it can also feel daunting for parents who are concerned about choking.

However, one 2016 study found babies who feed themselves are no more likely to choke than babies who are spoon-fed. Foods which are suitable for baby-led weaning include strips of omelette, ripe avocado wedges or well-cooked corn on the cob. However, the researchers emphasised the importance of preparing foods appropriately and using risk minimisation strategies. These include avoiding high-risk foods such as popcorn, cutting round foods such as grapes and cherry tomatoes, and supervising babies whenever they eat.

An ‘in-between’ option for feeding is to offer your baby purees, while giving them a degree of independence. For example, you may pre-load a spoon for your baby to bring to their own mouth. You can also pair purees with larger foods, say a broccoli floret dipped in hummus. These combinations will help your baby develop eating skills while you become more confident with feeding your baby.

No matter what feeding approach you take, infant first aid training is a must for parents and carers. And if your child was born premature, has a developmental delay or has specific nutrition requirements, it’s best to speak to a paediatrician before giving them solid foods.

When you have a picky eater

Even if your baby transitions well to solid foods, toddlerhood can bring a new set of challenges.

Toddlers tend to be selective about what foods they do or don’t eat. They may also become more cautious around unfamiliar foods. These are both normal parts of a child’s development.

But problems can arise when parents pressure toddlers to eat food they don’t want to eat or when they aren’t hungry. Even small gestures, such as using a “spoon as aeroplane” or asking them to take “one more bite” in front of the TV or tablet, can put pressure on children. As a result your child may eat that next mouthful but, over time, they may develop a negative relationship with food and mealtimes.

As parents and carers, our role is to offer food at predictable times and in positive mealtime environments. Some ways to do that include:

• trusting they’ll eat as much as they need
• eating shared meals when possible
• modelling enjoyment of different foods during shared meals
• offering new foods alongside familiar favourites
• giving children multiple opportunities to see and try new foods, even if they don’t eat them the first time.

Unfortunately, babies and toddlers won’t love every meal you make them. But in time they’ll come to learn about, and even enjoy, a world of different textures and tastes.

– ref. Worried about feeding your baby solid foods? Here’s what you should know – https://theconversation.com/worried-about-feeding-your-baby-solid-foods-heres-what-you-should-know-278891

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/worried-about-feeding-your-baby-solid-foods-heres-what-you-should-know-278891/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Tanner, Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Gender Studies, Monash University

The explosion of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools has provoked both hopes and anxieties about the potential benefits and harms of this technology. In advanced economies, people are almost equally worried and optimistic about it.

This is perhaps unsurprising. AI consumes vast amounts of natural resources yet promises to save the planet. It may improve human efficiency and productivity, while putting millions out of work.

For many white-collar workers, AI use now seems non-optional. The messaging is clear – get on board or be left behind.

Amid this uncertainty and rapid technological uptake, concerned citizens have made efforts to resist AI. One form of AI resistance, aimed at sabotaging the functionality of AI large language models, is data poisoning. But how accessible is it to the everyday person? And what is at stake in its use?

What is AI resistance?

Acts of AI resistance range from social sanctions and boycotts, to strikes, protests, public outcry and lawsuits. Driving these acts are perceived threats to jobs, ethics, safety, democracy and sovereignty, and the environment.

AI is also described as an existential risk to creative industries, including music, fiction and film. In the United Kingdom, generative AI has been characterised as an “industrial scale theft” that threatens a £124.6 billion (A$237bn) creative sector and more than 2.4 million jobs.

People have long used civil disobedience to address social injustices. Famously, Rosa Parks’ refusal to sit at the back of a bus in Alabama led to a 13-month bus boycott by tens of thousands of Black residents. It only ended when racial segregation on public transport was deemed unconstitutional in the United States.

Acts of sabotage have also long been central to collective action against injustice. In fights for labour rights, workers have employed diverse tactics to reduce efficiency and productivity. This has ranged from hotel workers putting salt in sugar bowls to farm workers breaking machinery.

Data poisoning can be viewed as a modern version of these historic actions.

How does data poisoning work?

Data poisoning means deliberately inserting misleading, biased, or nonsensical content into the data AI models learn from, to make their outputs worse. Only 250 poisoned documents in a dataset could compromise outputs across AI models of any size.

There are various ways to poison data. Some require highly technical skills, others are accessible to anyone with an internet connection – if their text or images are used as training data.

Researchers have developed several data poisoning tools that exploit the vulnerabilities of AI models. Glaze and Nightshade enable artists to make poisoned visual images that can’t be used as training data. The tool CoProtector defends against the exploitation of open source code repositories like Github. Monash University and the Australian Federal Police have created Silverer, enabling social media users to doctor personal images to prevent them from being used in deepfakes.

But you don’t need a tool or advanced skills to affect AI. Simply creating websites with factitious information, making jokes in Reddit, feeding models their own outputs, or editing Wikipedia can poison data.

Data poisoning is commonly presented as a dangerous act perpetrated by “cyber criminals” or “malicious actors”. But what if it’s used to protect human rights?

Is data poisoning legal? Is it ethical?

Legal obligations related to data poisoning are often directed to AI developers and organisations. The EU Artificial Intelligence Act requires that appropriate measures are adopted to prevent and detect data poisoning.

The legal status of AI data poisoning by individual users is less clear. Criminal penalties may apply under US or UK computer fraud and misuse laws. Interference with an AI model would also likely breach the terms of service of AI companies.

If AI data poisoning is unlawful, questions could still be asked about its ethical status. Philosophers have long recognised that civil disobedience can be justifiable in circumstances where legally sanctioned practices produce serious injustice.

If AI companies are operating with state approval in ways that impact citizens’ rights to privacy, copyright, safe and secure work, quality education, social and sexual safety, data poisoning may constitute ethical civil disobedience.

For philosopher John Rawls, “[civil disobedience] is one of the stabilising devices of a constitutional system, although by definition an illegal one”.

If the intention is to prevent mass unemployment, preserve the integrity of elections, and protect against social harms (suicide, child abuse, increased human isolation, loss of human creativity and environmental degradation), data poisoning could align with the principles of justice that underpin democratic social institutions.

A significant problem with data poisoning is that even if models become compromised – and outputs grow inconsistent, misleading, or nonsensical – users overly trust AI systems. Data poisoning then could contribute to harms it seeks to resist, amplifying the inaccuracy of systems humans are increasingly relying on, irrespective of their quality and effects.

Data poisoning is not simply an immoral cyber crime. It can be an ethically complex strategy to address social injustices. AI development needs to be of collective benefit and aligned with public values and interests. If AI company employees are asking “Are we the baddies?”, history may prove that in some cases data poisoners are on the side of good.

– ref. In the face of rampant AI, is ‘data poisoning’ a new form of civil disobedience? – https://theconversation.com/in-the-face-of-rampant-ai-is-data-poisoning-a-new-form-of-civil-disobedience-280146

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/in-the-face-of-rampant-ai-is-data-poisoning-a-new-form-of-civil-disobedience-280146/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Hale, Senior Lecturer in English and Writing (children’s literature), University of New England

Isn’t it funny
How a Bear likes honey
Buzz buzz
I wonder why he does

Just over a century ago, the satirical writer and playwright A.A. Milne, suffering from the after-effects of fighting in the trenches of World War I, started writing some poems for his only child, Christopher Robin.

They were published in a collection, When We Were Very Young and they caused a literary sensation for a reading public looking for comfort in difficult times.

Two years later, Milne followed up with the stories of the Hundred Acre Wood in his book Winnie-the-Pooh, based on the tangle of scrub and trees at the bottom of his garden and populated by Christopher Robin’s toys.

Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, Eeyore, Tigger, Kanga and Roo, and Owl, each distinctive characters in their own right, chatted and played, going on adventures, solving problems, presided over by Christopher Robin, the wise child who knows what to do.

Not every critic loved it: “Tonstant Reader fwowed up” wrote the acerbic Dorothy Parker in her New Yorker Constant Reader column. She found the stories saccharine and cloying. But for those who enjoyed the simple humour, cameraderie and warmth of the stories, Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends became part of the children’s literary canon. And so they have remained to this day.

Winnie-the-Pooh has been translated into over 50 languages, including Bengali, Swedish, Polish and Latin (with the wonderful Winnie Ille Pu). In Poland, a Warsaw street, Ulica Kubusia Puchatka, was named after Winnie-the-Pooh by the children of the city.

In 1961, Disney acquired the rights to Winnie-the-Pooh, resulting in a popular television cartoon and merchandising. In China, in 2018, a film version of Winnie-the-Pooh was banned after internet memes compared his gentle laziness to the President, Xi Jinping. More than 20 million copies of the books have been sold worldwide.

Winnie-the-Pooh contains a perfect mixture of sweetness and sharp observation, shifting between light and dark, between funny and tragi-comic. The stories of Pooh and his friends, each one flawed but also delightful, demonstrate the ups and downs of life, held in a delicate and optimistic balance.

Take, for instance, the depressive toy donkey, Eeyore, continually miserable yet somehow contented in his misery, bouncy toy tiger, Tigger, causing mayhem with every move, or timid Piglet, Pooh’s best friend. All (along with Pooh) have problems that are solved with one another’s help and particularly with the help of the boy-hero, Christopher Robin. Problems occur, are solved, and life carries on.

A romance of community

The Winnie-the-Pooh stories are what we might think of as a romance of community. The inhabitants of the 100 Acre Wood show resilience and resourcefulness in dealing with difficulties, largely because they deal with them together.

They are also pastoral, set in a comfortable and nonthreatening rural place, offering readers (often weary urbanites) a holiday from their busy lives. And as such, they allow us to gently contemplate what makes life tick, and what makes life worth living.

This philosophical streak runs through all Milne’s work for children: in his follow-up to Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner (1928), and his second collection of poems, Now We Are Six (1927). In 1929 he adapted another children’s classic, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, for the stage. Also a pastoral, featuring anthropomorphised animals rather than toys, it promoted the English countryside as a space for gentle reflection on the good life and friendship.

The Wind in the Willows has a wild quality. Such wildness does not impinge greatly in the Pooh stories: the characters are toys rather than animals and the god-figure is Christopher Robin.

Asked, for instance, to help resolve a squabble between Eeyore and Tigger, after Tigger’s loud sneeze has frightened Eeyore into falling into the river, Christopher Robin concludes: “Well, … I think – I think we all ought to play Poohsticks”. This is a simple game in which players drop sticks on the upstream side of a bridge over running water and wait to see which one emerges first. (See: How to Play Pooh Sticks)

Living in the moment

Why is Winnie-the-Pooh called Winnie-the-Pooh? The name Winnie comes from a North American black bear at the London Zoo, which was brought to Britain from Winnipeg, Canada. Like many London children, Christopher Robin was taken to the London zoo to see the animals, and he shortened the name Winnipeg to “Winnie”. “Pooh,” on the other hand, came from a swan, encountered on a family holiday. This mixture of inside-joke and idiosyncratic names created by a very young child adds to the book’s whimsy.

In their appeal to the good life and emphasis on friendship and community, these books have struck a chord with readers well beyond the nursery. Best known in this vein is Benjamin Hoff’s book The Tao of Pooh, a philosophical work that connects the behaviour of Pooh and friends with the principles of Daoism, which emphasise the importance of simplicity, naturalness and effortlessness.

In this regard, the innocent everyman Pooh exemplifies the ability to live in the present moment, and to live a life of simple “being”.

As such, he is the valuable sounding-board for the other characters, beset by life difficulties and behavioural dysfunction: the hyperactive Tigger, the depressive Eeyore, anxious Piglet, busy Rabbit and so-on. He offers solutions to their problem, without criticising them, in doing so providing stability for them and for readers.

Certainly, when one visits the 100 Acre Wood, one is aware of entering a place of calm, of smallness, a place attuned to nature where the oddities of human character and behaviour are distilled into small, funny, calming stories. It is a world close to beauty, but also tolerant of imperfection.

According to Daoism, the secret of life lies in accepting things according to their true nature, neither blaming nor praising.

What of Christopher?

It helps, too, that Pooh Corner is visually lovely: the illustrations by E.H. Shephard present Pooh and friends as cute and appealing, while remaining faithful to the toys that inspired them.

Pictures such as one where Pooh and Piglet climb a gate together show the odd-couple balance of their friendship – brave Pooh, fearful Piglet – trusting one another in difficult circumstances.

Christopher Robin Milne had a somewhat difficult time as a child thrust into the spotlight when the books found fame. It is hard enough having one’s childish cuteness paraded around family and friends; harder still when one’s reputation precedes one.

In adult life, Christopher Robin owned a successful bookshop and before he died in 1996, he did reach a measure of acceptance of his father’s work. In 2001, Disney Corporation paid a large sum of money to Milne’s estate and other rights holders of Winnie-the-Pooh. His wife Lesley and daughter Clare decided the money should be used to fund a charity supporting people with disabilities. The Clare Milne Trust has been in operation since 1999.

2026 will be a year of busy celebration for Winnie-the-Pooh. Disney, unsurprisingly, will launch new merchandise. An academic conference on 100 years of the 100 acres will be held at the University of Cambridge.

For the rest of us, it may be time to dig out our childhood copies of Milne’s books, to spend a little time with old friends from these best of old stories, hanging out in the 100 Acre Wood, doing not very much and thinking a little about life.

– ref. Friendship, honey and the simple life: 100 years of Winnie-the-Pooh – https://theconversation.com/friendship-honey-and-the-simple-life-100-years-of-winnie-the-pooh-276175

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/friendship-honey-and-the-simple-life-100-years-of-winnie-the-pooh-276175/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nanda Jarosz, Researcher, Environmental Philosophy, University of Sydney

In 1989, environmentalist Bill McKibben announced to the world that nature was dead. Due to the rapid rate and scale of anthropogenic climate change, he argued, the idea of nature as an entity independent of human activity had become obsolete.

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Review: Brave New Wild: Can Technology Really Save the Planet? – Richard King (Monash University Publishing)

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A new book by Richard King, Brave New Wild: Can Technology Really Save the Planet?, conducts a postmortem on this idea of “nature”. And it describes a dangerous ideology that has taken root at the heart of the environmental movement.

King considers the moral, political, social and economic implications of a particular way of attempting to solve climate change, known as the “technofix”. This mindset looks for “a technological solution to tackle a social or environmental issue”.

We are, King suggests, entering “a period in which mitigation and adaptation are giving way to re-engineering”. As the consequences of climate change become harder to ignore and the environmental and moral costs of inaction become too high, “radical interventions such as geoengineering and de-extinction are taking root in the imaginations of thought leaders and policymakers across the globe”.

But solutions that come in the guise of technological progress may harbour dangers to the planet that we can’t fully fathom or control.

Brave New Wild examines proposals involving nuclear power, geoengineering, de-extinction approaches to conservation, nanotechnologies capable of manipulating matter at a molecular level, smart technologies and interplanetary colonisation. It outlines potentially terrifying scenarios associated with the technofix mindset.

King describes, for example, the risks that come with developments in nanotechnology. Billions of self-fuelling and self-replicating nanomachines deployed to clean up an oil slick could run out of control and lead to an environmental disaster of planetary scale:

Given that every new nanite created would need to consume some of the Earth’s resources to use as fuel or source material, the resulting army could reduce the biosphere to dust within a matter of days. The grey goo would consume the world.

It has also been suggested that mining the moon “will be feasible by the end of the decade”. King notes that some see this as a positive scenario, because the moon is uninhabited and a “barren, airless wasteland”. But he points out there are many potential hazards to such work: lunar dust pollution, the proliferation of space junk and debris, and risks to workers, including mental health problems, physical disabilities, exploitation and death.

Anthropocene thinking and moral hazards

King grounds his critique of the “technofix” in an analysis of the concept of the Anthropocene: a period when human activity is altering the conditions of life on a planetary scale and leaving perceptible traces in the geological record.

This development, King argues, “places humanity at the centre of the Earth story, suggesting that whatever challenges the planet faces will need to be solved by Homo sapiens, the species whose destructiveness is inseparable from its genius”.

Paired with the concept of the “death of nature”, Anthropocene thinking is a deadly precursor to the types of technological interventions that, King argues, will fundamentally change humanity’s relationship to the environment.

The problem is not only that technology can escape human control, with catastrophic consequences. Accepting a perspective that subjugates the non-human world to purely human ends has moral and ethical implications.

“The Anthropocene narrative,” King writes, “tends to encourage a view of nature as infinitely malleable – something that can and should be shaped by human hands, to human ends – and this perspective is likely to reproduce the arrogance and lack of principled reflection that placed us in this situation in the first place.”

Removing the separation between human and non-human nature actually makes it easier to exploit the natural environment, including other humans. This mindset – which King terms “ecomodernism” – “repeats the error of industrial capitalism, and even modernity itself, in treating the environment as an abstract entity that can be endlessly manipulated.”

Responsibility towards nature

In response to the ecomodernist mindset, which “effectively abolishes nature as a category distinct from humanity by making everything humans do effectively identical with it”, Brave New Wild suggests an alternative: what King terms “ecohumanism”.

He argues that nature is at once an idea and a phenomenological reality. “Human beings in short, are always part of and always apart from the natural world: nature defines us, and we define nature.”

This view may appear to be the same as that taken by proponents of the technofix. For King, however, our idea of nature actively shapes our experience of reality: “our ability to recognise ourselves as animals marks us out from all the other animals, while the suite of powers (intellectual, technological) from which that self-recognition is inseparable imposes upon us certain responsibilities – to ourselves and to parental nature.”

In the act of recognising that nature is created through human thought, we can realise that it should not be used purely for human gain. We must act with a sense of responsibility towards it.

King proposes an embodied approach to technological solutions to the problem of anthropogenic climate change. He argues that modern science must move away from a perspective of mastery over nature, towards “an attitude of care”.

The first level of interaction with nature should not be mediated through logic or distant observation. It should be phenomenological: at the level of lived experience. It should involve what King calls a “more holistic way of being”. This is based on a consideration of all aspects of what it means to be human and the implications of potential solutions for “conscious, subjective, immediate experience”.

One way to achieve this goal is by engaging with the democratic, creative and imaginative aspects of our humanity. King suggests decentralising political and technological control “as far as possible to individual human beings”. He proposes developing community through political policies such as universal basic income and “bringing energy and other utilities into public ownership”.

He also points to sources of inspiration in creative and imaginative exercises, such as reading nature writing, or other activities that help to elicit what he calls “human flourishing”. The point, for King, is to revitalise a sense of “conviviality” through a communal understanding of what it means to be human.

Radical humility

Brave New Wild advocates an ethical sense of human agency. It offers an accessible point of departure for many ideas circulating in environmental philosophy.

But while it is true that human beings are part of nature and should treat it respectfully, it is also true that “nature” is not limited to human perception or ideas. Human beings employ reason and sensory perception to make sense of the world, but the universe itself is not rational or reasonable.

Despite advances in science and technology, nature exists beyond the powers of human comprehension, in both a material and conceptual sense. As much as scientists can engineer life, they do not know how life in the universe started or how it will end.

What King does not explain is how to cultivate ecohumanism among those who view science and technology as providing ready solutions to the messy realities of our ecological existence. To foster the embodied responsibility that his interventions demand, we must first appreciate nature as a force that unsettles our claims to knowledge and mastery.

One way of doing this is through the aesthetic appreciation of the sublime. An experience that embraces wonder and destruction, the sublime offers a view of nature on its own terms. It compels us to experience nature as fundamentally incomprehensible. It directly challenges the hubris of a “technofix” approach.

In a world of high-tech maps and data-driven solutions, the sublime offers a glimpse of nature as it exists independently of us. The sense of awe might inspire a radical humility. It might move us away from trying to fix the planet, and towards caring for it as a source of infinite possibility.

– ref. Searching for a ‘technofix’ to climate change has many dangers. Could radical humility save the planet? – https://theconversation.com/searching-for-a-technofix-to-climate-change-has-many-dangers-could-radical-humility-save-the-planet-276046

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/searching-for-a-technofix-to-climate-change-has-many-dangers-could-radical-humility-save-the-planet-276046/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Callander, Lecturer in Music Industry, RMIT University

After a four-year break from touring, Justin Bieber is headlining Coachella’s main stage. In a controversial section of the show he sang along to YouTube clips – and at times didn’t sing at all.

Up to 125,000 punters attend Coachella each weekend. The festival is also livestreamed to an enormous international audience: 5.89 million people subscribe to the YouTube channel.

Audiences and reviewers argued over whether Bieber’s performance was a clever statement on nostalgia or a lazy display of disrespect.

But, placed in a historical context, Bieber’s performance can actually be read as an interesting contribution to “live” performance.

[embedded content]

What happened during Bieber’s performance?

The controversial section ran for around 20 minutes of the 90-minute set.

Coachella is known for guest appearances, and in other sections of the performance, Bieber welcomed Dijon, Tems, Wizkid, Mk.gee and The Kid Laroi. Much of the set played out like a typical festival show.

Still, there were early hints at something different. After performing Speed Demon, Bieber peered directly into the camera to shout-out his “living room” audience, and Coachella’s giant screens showed the chat feed on the festival’s livestream.

When the show approached 50 minutes, Bieber addressed the audience again: “tonight is such a special night, but I feel like we gotta take you guys on a bit of a journey. You guys remember this song?”

Sitting at a laptop, he typed “baby” into the YouTube search bar displayed on screen. The video for his 2010 hit appeared and he sang along, omitting certain lyrics and silently mouthing others.

[embedded content]

Modern performances are increasingly supported by backing tracks, but often attempt to hide this fact. Today’s Bieber, the backing vocalist, sounded far more adult than his high-pitched, former self. It was a duet of sorts.

After the main hook, Bieber cut the song abruptly and revisited the “going back” theme: “But how far back do you go?” He pressed play on 2009’s Favorite Girl and again sang over the chorus before another abrupt ending.

As he moved quickly through a range of YouTube hits, Bieber apologised only once, not for the backing tracks but for the swift ending to 2013’s Confident: “I’m sorry to cut it but these are just little snippets.”

He played early YouTube cover versions of Chris Brown and Ne-Yo songs, then his commercial hits Sorry and Where Are Ü Now.

After feigning a wifi dropout, the focus switched to pop culture references: a blooper reel included footage of young Bieber walking into a glass door and falling through a stage floor, followed by a more recent rant about paparazzi and privacy.

As a producer of live-shows and researcher of performance technologies, I was fascinated and entertained. I’m hardly a Belieber, but I liked how this performance challenged expectations around “liveness”.

[embedded content]

I wonder if the “lazy” reviewers realise that every pause and anecdote in this section was likely rehearsed, and that the on-screen “typing” was produced in advance? There is too much at stake in a performance of this scale to leave it to chance.

What makes music ‘live’?

There is a long history of artists interacting with their recorded selves and confusing the audience.

In 1967, The Doors brought a television on stage to watch themselves in a pre-taped variety show performance. In the next decades, Kraftwerk presented themselves as robots rather than virtuosi. In the 21st century, Deadmau5 exposed conventions for pre-recorded festival sets in electronic dance music.

In using pre-recorded or sequenced audio in place of playing their instruments live, these artists played with audience expectations about what is seen and how it connects to what is heard.

As a child, I watched Natalie Cole’s 1992 Grammy performance alongside her deceased father, Nat King Cole. My parents found it moving, I found it creepy.

Other duets with the deceased include a hologram of Tupac Shakur “performing” at Coachella in 2012 and a hologram of Maria Callas “singing” with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2023.

These holograms offer access to otherwise inaccessible performances and attempt to keep the past alive.

In a way, the Bieber performance attempted something similar as he engaged directly with his own past performances.

He not only called upon pre-recorded materials, but his own viral history. His self-referential performance was directly inspired by online cultural consumption. His interaction with YouTube was relatable and human, rather than detached and lazy.

YouTube and performance

As a DJ, I first became aware of YouTube’s impact on the presentation of performances through the emergence of Boiler Room, a channel that shows videos of DJs performing while surrounded by punters.

Eventually, the optics of these videos informed how clubbing might look: nightclubs and festivals configured “Boiler Room setups”, with DJs surrounded by a dancing audience instead of elevated and separated.

Despite encouraging a generation of overt posers, it showed how what we see online influences what is presented on stage.

Bieber takes this thinking to a much larger audience, demonstrating real engagement with his presence in pop culture online. In turn, how we react to this performance might inform future live shows.

– ref. Justin Bieber’s Coachella performance wasn’t ‘lazy’ – and actually references 50 years of music history – https://theconversation.com/justin-biebers-coachella-performance-wasnt-lazy-and-actually-references-50-years-of-music-history-280463

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/justin-biebers-coachella-performance-wasnt-lazy-and-actually-references-50-years-of-music-history-280463/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aayushi Badhwar, Lecturer in Enterprise and Technology, RMIT University

Fashion has always been a bit different to other industries. Consumers do not just buy because they need something. They buy because they are bored, influenced or simply browsing.

That makes it a perfect space for technologies designed to shape how we shop. Fashion sales are driven by cyclical trends and volume.

Much of the industry depends on overproduction, followed by constant cycles of discounting to clear stock. Sales are not just occasional events. They are built into how the system operates.

And now, a new layer of AI technology is starting to turbocharge that system.

Pricing is already starting to change

Dynamic pricing has been around for years. We see it most clearly with flights and ride sharing, where prices often increase the more you search, especially when there is a clear intention to pay for the service.

But in fashion, demand is not always tied to necessity. Because of this, pricing does not just reward urgency. It can also reward patience.

This suggests that dynamic pricing in fashion is not simply about pushing prices up. It is about constantly adjusting them to keep products moving.

A recent report from Business Insider in the United States shows how dynamic pricing is already taking hold in fashion retail. Prices of items sitting in an online cart at a major clothing retailer changed multiple times over a few days. Sometimes they went up, sometimes they dropped. In some instances, waiting resulted in a discount of up to 17%.

As this becomes more common, shopping will feel less like a simple decision and more like timing a system.

In Australia, the consumer watchdog does not consider dynamic pricing inherently unlawful. Broader data-use guidelines around pricing are not yet comprehensive.

When the bot does the shopping

At first glance, new AI tools for online shopping seem focused on convenience.

Virtual try-ons are becoming more realistic, allowing people to see how garments fit and drape on their own bodies. This could help reduce returns, which are a costly burden to retailers.

But companies like Google are taking this a step further. You can try items on, set the price you are willing to pay, and the system will track it, notify you when it hits that price, and even complete the purchase if you give permission.

What starts as a tool for convenience quickly becomes something more. You’re not even actively shopping anymore, your bot is purchasing on your behalf.

This is part of a broader shift towards what is called “agentic commerce”, where an AI agent acts on your behalf based on pre-set preferences.

Is the consumer setting the price?

Using a shopping agent changes how dynamic pricing works.

Traditionally, brands set prices and adjust them based on demand, inventory and consumer behaviour. But in this emerging model, consumers are also feeding into that system directly by stating what they are willing to pay.

At first, this feels empowering. It sounds like consumers are gaining more control. But it also creates a new dynamic.

Who’s really in control of pricing if both sides are driven by AI?

If someone sets a price they are comfortable with, the system can complete the purchase as soon as that price is reached. But the price might have dropped even lower if that data was not available.

In effect, consumers may be setting their own limits without realising it.

This creates a feedback loop. Retailers optimise prices using data, while consumers provide their own price thresholds. Both sides are guided by algorithms and the final outcome sits somewhere in between.

The question is no longer just how prices are set, but who is really influencing them.

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Convenience meets over-consumption

There are clear benefits to this shift. Automating purchases could make everyday shopping easier.

But in fashion, where consumption is already high, tech tools that make pricing feel more personalised or within reach are unlikely to reduce consumption. They may even encourage overconsumption.

Consumers should be mindful not to let the apparent convenience of shopping bots and personalised pricing alerts lead to a rise in impulse purchases.

– ref. When AI starts shopping for you, fashion may be entering a new era of pricing – https://theconversation.com/when-ai-starts-shopping-for-you-fashion-may-be-entering-a-new-era-of-pricing-280142

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/when-ai-starts-shopping-for-you-fashion-may-be-entering-a-new-era-of-pricing-280142/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shane Rogers, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Edith Cowan University

Students’ mental health is one of the biggest challenges facing schools.

In Australia, half of all adult mental health challenges emerge before the age of 14. It is also estimated that more than 50% of children experiencing mental health challenges are not receiving professional help.

Schools are increasingly being asked to help identify students who may be struggling and to help identify them early.

One way schools do this is through mental health screening. Students complete a questionnaire, and those whose score particular results may be flagged for follow-up.

When screening is used, it is often conducted at a single point in time. But when it comes to mental health, we know it’s important to notice patterns or changes over time.

Does this means schools are making decisions about support for students based on unreliable snapshots?

Our research

To explore this, our new study tracked students’ emotional experiences over time.

We asked 767 students aged 11-15 years old from schools in Australia and the UK, to complete a very brief check-in, repeatedly across six to seven weeks.

Each check-in took around one to two minutes and used a brief, structured measure of emotional wellbeing. For example, students rated how much they had been feeling emotions such as happiness, calmness, worry or sadness.

Students also reported on related aspects of their day-to-day functioning, such as sleep, concentration, exercise, and quality of relationships. Together, this allowed us to track changes in both emotional experience and everyday functioning over time, rather than relying on a single snapshot.

There is often concern that mental health screening might feel burdensome or intrusive, particularly in school settings. So we also asked students about their experience of this process.

What we found

What we found challenges some common assumptions.

First, students’ scores were not as stable as single screenings assume.

In our study, 17% of students moved above and below the low wellbeing threshold during the monitoring period. This means a single-time-point assessment could easily get the wrong impression about how they are really doing, depending on whether it captured a “better” or “worse” point in time.

So a student who happens to have a “good day” during a one-off screening might be missed entirely. Conversely, a student having a particularly bad day might be flagged when they would not typically require support. In both cases, decisions are being made on incomplete information.

What happens over time?

Second, looking at patterns over time provided a clearer and more reliable indication of student’s mental health. Repeated observations made it easier to distinguish between temporary fluctuations and more persistent difficulties. This is exactly the kind of distinction that matters when deciding who may need additional support.

In our research, when focusing on a single time point, about 12% of students scored below a threshold and would be flagged for follow-up. This is broadly consistent with other recent school-based screening research, which has identified around 10–20% of students as at risk and needing follow up at a given time point.

However, when we instead looked at students who were consistently below this threshold over time, that figure dropped to around 5%.

What do students think?

As with any self-report measure, responses depend on students answering honestly. While some students may under-report or over-report their experiences, brief and repeated check-ins may help reduce the impact of any single biased response by focusing on patterns over time rather than one-off answers.

Students in our study were also generally receptive to regular check-ins. More than half reported the regular check-ins helped them better understand how they were feeling. Rather than being seen as an added burden, the process appeared to allow some students to think about how they were feeling. This kind of regular reflection may support emotional awareness. Research shows emotional awareness is is an important part of maintaining wellbeing.

What now?

Our research suggests brief, repeated check-ins can provide a more accurate basis for decision-making around students’ mental health.

It also suggests we could potentially reduce the number of students flagged for further support. This finding is especially important when schools say they often do not begin mental health screening because they don’t have enough resources to provide any follow-up required.

Checks-ins do not need to be expensive or labour-intensive. They can be done via a short survey on phones or tablets.

More broadly, we need to shift how we think about emotional wellbeing in schools. Mental health is not static. It changes over time. Our methods for assessing it should reflect that.

– ref. Does your school do mental health checks? They should be regular, not just a one-off – https://theconversation.com/does-your-school-do-mental-health-checks-they-should-be-regular-not-just-a-one-off-280571

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/does-your-school-do-mental-health-checks-they-should-be-regular-not-just-a-one-off-280571/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary-Anne Lea, Professor in Marine/Polar Predator Ecology, University of Tasmania

In 1902, British explorer Robert Falcon Scott spotted a large group of large black and white birds at Ross Island, Antarctica. This was among the many milestones of Scott’s famous Discovery expedition: the first breeding colony of emperor penguins.

Now, only 124 years since this penguin colony was discovered, emperor penguins have officially been listed as endangered, along with the Antarctic fur seal. As the world warms, Antarctic krill are shifting southwards and sea ice is shrinking at record levels. And these unprecedented changes are having a domino effect on these species.

These are the first penguin and pinniped – marine mammals that have front and rear flippers – to be given this conservation status in the Southern Ocean. Their perilous situation is a critical turning point, and shows how rapidly the Antarctic environment is changing.

At the same time, the spread of highly contagious avian influenza, or bird flu, adds a new and immediate threat to Southern Ocean wildlife, compounding the pressures of climate change on stressed species.

Dramatic declines linked to climate change

The first emperor penguin breeding colony was discovered at Cape Crozier, on Ross Island, during Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery expedition in 1902. A decade later, Scott’s Terra Nova expedition returned, in part to collect emperor penguin eggs. It was an ill-fated expedition, immortalised in Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s famous book, The Worst Journey in the World.

In the 1960s, Scott’s son, Sir Peter Scott, one of the founders of modern conservation, helped establish the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List. Just 124 years after those early discoveries at Cape Crozier, that same framework has now been used to classify emperor penguins as endangered. The swift arc from discovery to extinction risk is a striking reminder of how quickly the species’ fortunes have changed.

Over nine years, between 2009 and 2018, emperor penguin numbers fell by 10%. Their numbers are expected to halve by 2073.

The decline is more pronounced for Antarctic fur seals. Hunted to the brink of extinction in the early 1880s, by 1999 their numbers had rebounded to an estimated 2.1 million mature seals. But since then, the global population has decreased by more than 50%, to about 944,000 mature individuals.

In just a decade, they have been reclassified on the IUCN’s Red List, going from of “least concern” – those species that are widespread and at low risk of extinction – to “endangered”. The IUCN’s red list is the comprehensive information source on the extinction risk status of species. This shows the remarkable speed at which these seals are declining.

Climate change and bird flu

Both of these dramatic declines are linked to climate change. Warming ocean temperatures and a reduction in sea ice affect the availability of the Antarctic fur seal’s key prey, Antarctic krill. Krill are shifting southwards and moving deeper, potentially making them less accessible to some predators. Competition with a growing population of whales has also increased.

Emperor penguins, by contrast, are completely dependent on sea ice. They use it as a stable platform for courtship, incubating their eggs and rearing chicks. But as sea ice declines and becomes less reliable, their breeding success is increasingly threatened. If the ice breaks up before chicks are fully developed, many are unable to survive.

At the same time, the spread of highly contagious bird flu adds a new and immediate threat to Southern Ocean wildlife. High mortality associated with avian influenza has also caused the uplisting of the southern elephant seal to “vulnerable” this week.

Some elephant seal populations have experienced more than 90% of pups dying, alongside sharp declines in breeding adults. These represent tens of thousands of animals lost, with many Antarctic fur seals also dying as a result of bird flu outbreaks.

We need to know more

Emperor penguins, Antarctic fur seals and southern elephant seals are three of the more widely researched Southern Ocean predators. But there is still a lot we don’t know, because of the remote location and the difficulty of sustaining research over time. And there are many species we know far less about. Antarctic ice seals, including Weddell seals, crabeater seals, leopard seals, and Ross seals, have “unknown” population trends on the IUCN red list, meaning there is not enough data to know if numbers are declining.

These recent listings make clear the urgent and ongoing need for improved, real-time monitoring. We need to know much more about wildlife health and population trends, the Antarctic environment and sea ice quality.

Human-driven threats facing Antarctic wildlife are many, and cumulative. To respond, we need to better protect Antarctic habitat and the species that live there. We need to reduce the interaction of marine species with industrial fishing. And we must improve how we assess current and suspected threats in Antarctica, when there is growing evidence of impacts.

Defining these animals as endangered is a stark reminder of how quickly Antarctica is changing before our eyes. Without a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and sustained conservation action, these species may be lost forever.

– ref. The beloved emperor penguin and Antarctic fur seal are now officially endangered. Here’s what can be done – https://theconversation.com/the-beloved-emperor-penguin-and-antarctic-fur-seal-are-now-officially-endangered-heres-what-can-be-done-280362

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/the-beloved-emperor-penguin-and-antarctic-fur-seal-are-now-officially-endangered-heres-what-can-be-done-280362/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Magdalena Wajrak, Senior Lecturer in Chemistry, Edith Cowan University

If you’ve been in the market for a new hair dryer, you’ve likely seen advertising for ionic ones. Some claim to produce negative ions in the millions – with or without the help of added minerals like tourmaline.

The broader claim is usually that these ions break water molecules into micro-droplets, resulting in faster drying and reducing frizz to give you super smooth, shiny-looking hair.

Are ionic hairdryers actually capable of doing what they claim? To understand this, we need to briefly delve into some fundamentals.

Wait, what is an ion?

All matter is composed of invisible building blocks called atoms. But they’re not the smallest things we know of. Atoms contain subatomic particles – protons, neutrons and electrons.

Every atom has a nucleus, a very dense centre made up of protons and neutrons. The number of protons determines what chemical element the atom is. Hydrogen has one proton, carbon has six, oxygen has eight, and so on. Molecules are groups of two or more atoms that form a chemical element; an oxygen molecule consists of two oxygen atoms, for example.

How does all this relate to ions? This is where electric charge comes in. All subatomic particles have an electric charge. Protons have a positive charge (+), electrons have a negative charge (-) and neutrons are, as the name suggests, neutral.

The nucleus has a positive charge overall, thanks to all the protons. Negatively charged electrons surround the nucleus because opposite charges attract. This is called electrostatic force, and it is this force that actually keeps the electrons from flying off away from the nucleus.

But electrostatic force is pretty weak. When materials touch or are rubbed together, we get the triboelectric effect – electrons can transfer from one surface to the other. This produces ions: positively or negatively charged atoms or molecules. For example, a negative oxygen ion is oxygen that’s gained an extra electron.

What do ions have to do with hair, then?

For the most part, hair is composed of large complex molecules called keratin proteins. In turn, keratin molecules are composed of various chemical groups, such as carboxyl groups, amino groups and disulfide groups. These can gain or lose electrons.

So, when hair is dried with hot air or is subjected to friction, keratin fibres lose electrons via the triboelectric effect – they become positively charged.

Remember electrostatic force? When hair strands are positively charged they push away from each other, and you get frizz and fly-aways.

This is why hairdryer manufacturers have come up with the idea to neutralise the positive charge with negative ions from the hairdryer. In theory, this should return the charges in your hair to neutral and therefore reduce frizz.

How do hair dryers generate negative ions?

This part is just physics. Although different manufacturers may use slightly different methods, most ionic hairdryers use high voltage applied to a fine wire inside the hairdryer.

This creates a very strong electric field near the outlet where the hot air is blowing. It sends electrons into the surrounding air, producing negatively charged ions – mostly oxygen and nitrogen. The airflow then carries these ions out with the hot air.

To increase the number of negative ions produced during this process, some ionic hairdryers incorporate a mineral called tourmaline which emits negative ions naturally.

Although theory does support the claim that negative ions might neutralise the electrostatic charge of positively charged hair, in practice the amount of ionisation generated by the ionic hairdryers is very small because they’re limited by the voltage applied (typically 1,600V).

Sure, you could generate a huge amount of negative ions with enough electricity, but that’s beyond the scope of an everyday beauty appliance.

The effect would likely be subtle

Overall, this means the effects from an ionic hair dryer would likely be subtle.

Other factors will play a more significant role in smoothness – such as your hair type, hair quality (whether it has been chemically damaged by bleaching or dyes) and what products have been used on the hair prior to drying.

There is also no scientific proof that ionic hairdryers dry hair faster by breaking up water droplets more efficiently, although some studies have demonstrated that ions enhance the evaporation rate of water.

Ultimately, before investing in a very expensive hair dryer, you may want to look at improving the health of your hair in general. Negative ions – while plausible in theory – can only take you so far.

– ref. How do ionic hair dryers work? Can they do what they promise? – https://theconversation.com/how-do-ionic-hair-dryers-work-can-they-do-what-they-promise-278785

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/how-do-ionic-hair-dryers-work-can-they-do-what-they-promise-278785/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Whitehouse, Deputy Director, the Kids Research Institute Australia, Professor of Autism Research, The University of Western Australia

Research published earlier this year found the strongest evidence yet that the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has played a key role driving up autism diagnoses in Australia.

The study found evidence the increase may be due to clinicians lowering the threshold for an autism diagnosis, rather than a “catch up” in the diagnosis of historically under-diagnosed groups.

But major changes to the NDIS due to start in October this year mean a formal diagnosis will no longer be the main gateway for autistic children to access support. So are autism diagnoses likely to fall?

What’s behind the increase in autism diagnosis?

Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition where people show social and communication differences (for example, in eye contact or speaking), and restricted and repetitive behaviours (for example, a preference for routines or repeated movement).

It is well established that autism is caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

But over the past two decades, the rate of autism diagnosis has increased dramatically worldwide – tripling, by some estimates.

The main reason is that diagnostic boundaries for autism have been redrawn.

Autism was once most often diagnosed in people with significant developmental, intellectual and/or language difficulties. But since the mid-90s, autism has been increasingly understood as a “spectrum”.

This means a person does not need to have intellectual disability or marked language difficulties to receive an autism diagnosis.

A diagnosis can be made if the core features of autism – differences in social and communication behaviours, and restricted and repetitive behaviours or interests – are persistent and meaningfully impact daily life.

As a result, people with a much more diverse range of abilities and support needs have received an autism diagnosis, increasing the overall numbers.

Australia has some of the highest autism rates in the world

The expansion of autism diagnostic boundaries has been observed across the world. But the diagnostic rates in Australia have climbed much faster than in other countries with comparable cultures and economies.

The current rate of autism in Australia is 4.3% for children aged between 5 and 14 years old (up from 3.2% in 2018), compared to 1.8% of 5–19 year olds in the United Kingdom.

One factor unique to Australia – long thought to have contributed to the higher diagnosis rate – was the introduction of the NDIS.

Since its staged rollout across Australia from 2013 to 2020, the NDIS has been the primary pathway through which autistic children can access public funding for therapy and services.

Many anecdotal reports suggest a diagnosis of autism can help children meet eligibility criteria for NDIS support.

Policy makers and clinical and research experts have suggested that higher diagnosis rates in Australia may, in part, reflect clinicians applying a lower diagnostic threshold to enable access to needed supports.

Others have questioned the accuracy of these views, prompting the need for further research to definitively answer this question.

What did the study test?

The recent research examined data from Medicare, the NDIS and Australian Bureau of Statistics. It tested whether the introduction of NDIS was a direct cause of increasing autism diagnosis rates in Australia.

The study took advantage of the gradual rollout of the NDIS across Australia to create a “natural experiment”. In the early part of the rollout, some regions had access to the NDIS while others did not. This allowed the researchers to isolate the effect of the NDIS from broader trends on rising autism diagnosis rates.

Their analysis found geographic regions where the NDIS was introduced had an autism diagnostic rate about 0.56 percentage points higher than areas without the NDIS.

The researchers used statistical modelling to estimate what the growth rate of autism diagnosis would likely have been without the NDIS. They found the NDIS has led to a 32% increase in overall autism prevalence in Australia.

One possible explanation is that this finding reflected a “catch up” in groups that have been historically underdiagnosed, such as girls, older children, and individuals from regional or disadvantaged backgrounds.

However, there was little evidence of this. Instead, increases were larger among boys, children in metropolitan areas, and those from non-culturally diverse backgrounds. There was also no change in the age at diagnosis over time.

The researchers concluded that the NDIS has been a direct cause of the increases in autism diagnosis, most likely because clinicians lowered the diagnostic threshold once the NDIS was introduced.

But the NDIS is undergoing significant reform

In August last year, the federal, state and territory governments agreed to establish a new national disability support program, Thriving Kids.

Thriving Kids is for children aged 0–8 years with developmental delay and/or autism with low to moderate support needs. Children with higher support needs, and eligible adults, are expected to keep accessing support through the NDIS.

Under Thriving Kids, children will be able to access support based on the presence of developmental delays, without a formal diagnosis of autism. So diagnosis will no longer be the gateway to services. This means it is highly possible we will also see the rates of autism diagnoses begin to fall, once Thriving Kids is fully implemented by January 1 2028.

A further practical step would be to strengthen consistency in diagnostic practice, including mandating that clinicians use Australia’s national guideline for autism assessment and diagnosis of autism. Currently, this is not mandatory.

But some experts argue autism now exists as a cultural phenomenon alongside its clinical definition, and believe the motivation for autism diagnoses – among individuals and clinicians – will remain high, regardless of policy changes.

Rigorous epidemiological studies that track autism diagnostic rates across the years of Thriving Kids implementation, and beyond, will be key to answering this question.

– ref. Autism diagnoses are up, largely fuelled by the NDIS. What happens next isn’t entirely clear – https://theconversation.com/autism-diagnoses-are-up-largely-fuelled-by-the-ndis-what-happens-next-isnt-entirely-clear-280143

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/autism-diagnoses-are-up-largely-fuelled-by-the-ndis-what-happens-next-isnt-entirely-clear-280143/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Treadwell, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Auckland University of Technology

Public trust in news in has risen for the first time since records began in 2020.

According to the latest Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand report, 37% of respondents now trust the news generally, up from just 32% last year. In the context of recent trends, that’s a fairly sizeable jump.

The report also shows 50% now trust the news they personally consume, also up five percentage points from 45% in 2025.

These are the first positive results about the public’s trust in news since we began researching the subject at the AUT Research Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy in 2020.

As we have every year, we asked New Zealanders if they felt they could “trust most of the news most of the time”. We also asked about their trust in the news they personally consume, their views on particular news brands, how much they avoid the news, and to what extent they pay for it.

Many of our questions match those asked in a global study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, which allows us to make international comparisons.

The survey of more than 1,000 New Zealanders is weighted by age, gender, highest educational qualification, personal income, ethnicity and region. This means respondents accurately represent the adult population in these demographics.

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What explains the change?

A significant contributing factor to the upturn in trust, we think, is greater public awareness of disinformation, deep fakes and AI slop.

The prevalence of such poor-quality information, distributed on social media for commercial or political gain, and the growing public debate it, seems to have made people more conscious of the need for verified facts.

As one male Pākehā respondent aged 35–44, put it:

Traditional news networks and journalists will end up regaining trust, because [there] will be no way to tell whether something is AI bullshit or not.

Indeed, this year we asked respondents where they go to check news they don’t trust. More than half said they went to a news source they did trust, among other places. Only 8% checked suspicious information using a chatbot.

Overall, our improved level of trust in news (37%) takes us back to near the international average (40%) of the 48 countries surveyed by Reuters, but is still much lower than it was 2020 (53%).

Has time made a difference?

As the COVID pandemic and its related social discord fade a little into history, are we perhaps also seeing a shift back towards a more reasonable national conversation?

The picture isn’t clear. There were plenty of anti-media comments from respondents this year (as there always are). For example, a male Pākehā respondent, 35–44, who voted for New Zealand First in 2023, said:

Mainstream media is biased, woke, swings extremely to the left, and is by and large completely untrustworthy.

This distrust is not confined to the political right. A Green voter from the same demographic said:

Most providers are owned by the wealthy and often put a right wing spin on reporting.

But among the almost 350 comments from mistrustors, there was also significantly less focus on the (now disestablished) Public Interest Journalism Fund, a COVID-era media support package that some saw as a government bribe in return for favourable coverage.

There was also less conspiratorial sentiment about a climate change hoax involving the entire news media.

Anecdotally, at least, it seems the public might be moving on from overtly polarised positions.

Editorial independence important

New Zealanders have also clearly rejected commercial and political meddling in newsrooms.

Asked this year how they would react if media company managers or board members interfered with editorial decision making, 43% of respondents said their trust in the outlet’s news would decline.

Another 27% said they would consider cancelling their subscription to the news outlet.

Overall, that’s 70% who reject that kind of interference in the news.

Support for professional journalism

Asked which information sources they paid most attention to, 61% of respondents said traditional news media were among them.

It seems a significant proportion also still values public-interest journalism for its professionalism, accountability, verification processes, and the checks and balances on its own work.

For the first time, we asked respondents who said they trusted news why they trusted it.

The responses reveal the difference between those who have lost trust in news and those who retain it. Fact-checked stories with reputable sources that are reported on by multiple outlets are trustworthy, they said.

Female Pākehā, 45–54, voted Green:

I trust it because I know how it is produced and I understand its limitations.

Māori, 45–54, voted Te Pāti Māori:

I trust in the integrity of professional journalism here.

Indeed, there seemed to be a degree of push-back against online conspiracies about the news media making things up.

Male Pākehā, 25–34, voted Labour:

I trust the news because, one, it’s true, and two, it’s definitely true.

A sense of perspective

It’s important to be realistic about any positive trends in this latest survey. Since we started publishing the report, trust in news has been declining dangerously.

While welcome, this recent upturn doesn’t alter the overall downward trend over time, which is fairly steep.

But over recent years, the news media have responded to the growing trust issue, and promoted transparency and verification processes. The government has also made public trust a key issue for the state-owned broadcasters.

Facing an overload of misinformation, particularly on social media, the public may be reacting.

It’s still too early to say anything definitive. But this report suggests things are changing – potentially for the better.

– ref. Trust in news rises after years of decline in NZ. What’s behind the shift? – https://theconversation.com/trust-in-news-rises-after-years-of-decline-in-nz-whats-behind-the-shift-280253

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/trust-in-news-rises-after-years-of-decline-in-nz-whats-behind-the-shift-280253/

RNZ Pacific

The Fiji military has warned that individuals responsible for “any attempt to destabilise national security” and those who aid “individuals engaged in criminal activity” have been “put on notice”.

It comes after the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) confirmed just last Friday that “unknown individuals” had made “unsuccessful” attempts to access its installations.

To allay public anxiety, the RFMF assured that “there is no threat to public safety arising from the incident”.

However, in a statement on Monday night, the military said it had initiated joint security operations with the Fiji Police Force as “a deliberate and measured approach to recent unacceptable challenges to security, including threats to infrastructure and isolated acts of violence against civilians and officers in the line of duty”.

While pointing out its constitutional responsibility to “ensure the security, defence and wellbeing of Fiji and all Fijians”, the RFMF said it would not take these matters lightly.

“Therefore, we put on notice that any attempt to destabilise national security or endanger the wellbeing of citizens will be met with firm, lawful and proportionate action.”

According to the statement — authorised by the military commander — the enhanced security measures are expected to “continue for as long as necessary”.

“Members of the public are reminded that providing shelter, assistance, or support to individuals engaged in criminal activity is an offence and directly undermines national security.”

The Fiji Military is encouraging the public to remain vigilant and report suspicious activities to the relevant authorities.

‘Alarming’ development – Labour Party
The Fiji Labour Party (FLP) has reacted to the developments by questioning the current state of national security in the country.

“As a party that has twice been the victim of military coups — in 1987 and 2000 — we understand only too well how fragile national security can become when well-organised elements with ill intent are allowed to operate,” it said in a statement on Sunday.

It said the unauthorised access to RFMF installations “is particularly alarming when set against the backdrop of rising drug-related activities and seizures across Fiji in recent times”.

“The emergence of sophisticated, well-coordinated criminal elements poses a direct threat to public safety and national stability,” the party said in a statement.

“Even though the RFMF has confirmed that no weapons, ammunition, or equipment were compromised, the very fact that such attempts were made sends a dangerous signal: our defence installations may not be as impenetrable as we have been led to believe.”

FLP is demanding clear answers and concrete action to strengthen safeguards across all military and strategic installations.

Meanwhile, Fijians are set to head to the polls later this year.

The general elections can be held anytime between August 7 (earliest) and 6 February 2027 (latest).

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/04/15/fiji-military-puts-public-on-notice-citing-national-security-threats/