Category: Evening Report

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabrielle Appleby, Professor of Law, UNSW Law School, UNSW Sydney

More than two years on, you’d be forgiven for thinking the story of the failure of the referendum on an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice has been neatly folded away and filed as a story of inevitable loss. Bipartisanship was essential. The country was not ready. Racism raised its ugly head. The proposal was too radical.

As we explore in our recently released book, contrary to some accounts, the Voice referendum was not doomed from the start. It was a carefully developed proposal for constitutional reform, crafted over more than a decade, supervised by successive federal governments from both sides of politics.

Its defeat was the product of a complex amalgam of factors. The Albanese government announced first and prepared later. It failed to genuinely engage with the First Nations people who had been developing this reform for years. It misread and was over-confident about the political terrain following the Coalition’s 2022 election defeat.

Then there was the No campaign, spearheaded by key opposition figures that openly relied on political lies and conspiracy claims, in a largely unregulated political and media environment.

But we explore an under-emphasised dimension of this story: the government’s own lack of preparation and respect for the reform it had committed to take to the people.

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This article is an edited extract from our chapter in the new book The Failure of the Voice Referendum and the Future of Australian Democracy, edited by professors Gabrielle Appleby and Megan Davis.

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Announce first, prepare later

We are, unfortunately, seeing the lessons from the 2023 Voice referendum being identified by commentators in the government’s response to the Bondi attacks.

Political scientist professor Chris Wallace observed what she refers to as “a now unmissable pattern in Anthony Albanese’s behaviour: overestimating his political judgement and being closed to alternative viewpoints and advice”.

The Voice referendum campaign required extensive preparation and the humility to listen and respond. Positive structural reform campaigns are hard. A successful campaign required groundwork: sustained civics education delivered to Australian voters, reform of referendum legislation and a holistic response to the challenges of misinformation.

Opposition to reform, on the other hand, is easy. You don’t have to present a coherent alternative proposal, something aptly demonstrated by the No campaign.

None of this groundwork was undertaken prior to the prime minister unilaterally sounding the starting gun for the referendum on election night in May 2022. No one involved in the proposal knew it would become part of the prime minister’s personal election-night pledge. The government’s subsequent attempts to prepare before the referendum were rushed and flawed.

From the moment the referendum was announced, the behaviour was set. Key decisions were made without meaningful consultation. The referendum’s timing, the wording of the constitutional amendment and the composition of advisory groups were all decided without the input of those who came up with the idea.

Outsourcing the politics

The government refused briefings from those involved in the proposal. This left ministers unprepared, unable to explain the genesis of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and unable to articulate the purpose of the Voice.

At the same time, the government remained stubbornly uninterested in proposals from those who had been involved with the Voice process for 12 years. Reforming the machinery of referendums framework (including through the introduction of a fact-checking authority), releasing more details about the Voice’s design and engaging the Australian public through a citizen’s assembly were among the ignored suggestions.

As economist professor John Quiggin recently wrote, reflecting on the prime minister’s response to the Bondi terror attack, Albanese’s instinct is often to make the announcement and “leave the hard yards to others”.

That instinct was on full display during the Voice campaign. Political scientist Mark Kenny astutely observed a year after the referendum that the business (and weight) of politics and garnering bipartisanship was outsourced to First Nations people.

This matters because the Voice was never a symbolic flourish. It was not, as Albanese has since described it, a “gracious” and generous request from First Nations people seeking recognition.

The Voice was a serious and hardheaded reform that emerged from an unprecedented and deliberative process — the First Nations Regional Dialogues and the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

The ongoing need

In May last year, Albanese’s government returned with a thumping majority. Some re-imagine the result as redemptive for the defeat of the Voice — or vindication of the result. This fundamentally misunderstands what was at stake.

Looking forward, the need for a Voice has not diminished. If anything, the years since the referendum has reinforced its necessity.

The government is back to cheering for economic empowerment. It turns only to a minuscule group of well-funded Indigenous elites for consultation.

It also has a renewed focus on Closing the Gap. But this comes without addressing the structural reasons for why the gap persists, including the denial of First Nations input about the necessary solutions.

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Read more:
Progress on Closing the Gap is stagnant or going backwards. Here are 3 things to help fix it

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Some governments are trying to address these challenges at the state level. In 2025, after nearly a decade of negotiation, Victoria enacted legislation to give effect to Australia’s first statewide treaty.

Central to that agreement is a stable representative body, Gellung Warl. This makes permanent (or at least legislates) the First Peoples’ Assembly, empowered to speak to government and parliament on matters affecting Aboriginal people.

The logic mirrors the federal Voice because the need is the same. Without a durable representative institution first, Indigenous participation remains contingent, fragile and easily sidelined.

South Australia was the first state to have a First Nations Voice, and Victoria’s Treaty-as-Voice was next. Yet, they remain fragile reforms and limited to support from the Labor party in each state.

Australia is a federal system governed by a Constitution. We need constitutional guarantees that insulate First Nations people from the vagaries of majoritarian politics.

At present, we appear far from any realistic proposal for constitutional reform on any issue, especially for First Nations. The prime minister has emphatically stated he will not take another proposal to referendum — not this term, and not at all.

But Australia’s democracy and constitutional institutions cannot afford stagnation. They require reconstruction and renewal to reflect the composition and challenges of contemporary society.

Preparing for the future

There will be another moment for structural constitutional change. When that inevitable moment is upon us, our hope is that Australia has developed the constitutional maturity that was lacking in 2023.

Research shows the primary reason Australians voted “no” in 2023 is because they believed there was no mention of race in the Constitution. They ostensibly voted against putting it in.

But the Constitution is imbued with race and it has a races power: a provision giving the Commonwealth the power to make special laws to govern people of a particular race. If Australians are to espouse pride in equality and fairness and the rule of law, constitutional history and civic education are fundamental to this.

When inklings of constitutional change emerge, as they will, lessons from 2023 will be crucial. Sustained civics education must become a permanent feature of our educational curriculum and democratic life, sooner rather than later.

Regulatory reform is essential. Modernising referendum legislation (as repeatedly urged by parliamentary inquiries) can be done now, rather than during a campaign. So, too, can truth in political advertising laws.

One idea raised consistently is the creation of a standing constitutional commission. It would undertake research, consultation and develop future reform proposals. Constitutional change should not be so daunting.

And then there is the hardest work of all: the work of a future proposal itself. Governments must approach structural reform not as a branding exercise or an act of political “courage”. It’s a process that improves Australian democracy and is worthy of sustained and earnest focus and commitment. It demands preparation, humility, openness and sustained engagement.

This is the only way to have all Australians participating in change.

Gabrielle Appleby is currently the Research Director for the Centre for Public Integrity, as well as holding positions as the constitutional consultant to the Clerk of the House of Representatives. She has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council. She was involved as a pro bono constitutional adviser to the Indigenous Steering Committee of the Referendum Council during the First Nations Regional Dialogues and Constitutional Convention at Uluru in 2017. She has continued to provide pro bono assistance to the Uluru Dialogue in the lead up and during the referendum campaign.

Megan has received funding from the Australian Research Council and holds the Balnaves Chair in Constitutional Law, funded by the Balnaves Foundation. She was a member of the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, the Referendum Council, the Prime Minister’s Referendum Working Group and Engagement Group and the Constitutional Expert Group.

– ref. Why the Voice referendum failed – and what the government hasn’t learned from it – https://theconversation.com/why-the-voice-referendum-failed-and-what-the-government-hasnt-learned-from-it-255969

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/02/why-the-voice-referendum-failed-and-what-the-government-hasnt-learned-from-it-255969/

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

As summer has well and truly set in, we hope you’re able to while away some hours in the comfort of air-conditioning. And what better way to spend that time than with some new treats to stream?

This month, our experts are watching the smash-hit ice-hockey romance Heated Rivalry; getting familiar with Martin Scorsese and who he is behind the camera; and keeping the Australian Open vibes going with a new miniseries about Evonne Goolagong Cawley.

We hope you find your next great binge watch in this selection!

Goolagong

ABC iView

Evonne Goolagong Cawley was one of Australia’s greatest champions of all time.

Goolagong, a compelling and inspiring three-part mini-series honouring the Wiradjuri tennis legend, is a rags-to-riches story about a small-town girl with a ball and a piece of 2 x 4 who dreams of one day winning Wimbledon. A little Aussie battler.

Evonne is portrayed by the remarkable Whadjuk and Wardandi Noongar actor Lila McGuire, who delivers a sublime performance that compellingly showcases Goolagong’s vulnerability, resilience, grace and fighting spirit. The ensemble cast of Australian actors provides a rich, talented and authentic foundation for the story.

This series is not just for tennis fans, who will relish the big tournament moments and the portrayal of renowned players of the time, such as John Newcombe, Margaret Court, Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert. This is a story for all Australians.

Skilfully directed by Batjala, Mununjali and Wakka Wakka man Wayne Blair, the series offers an in-depth look at the complexities of athletes’ lives both on and off the field, and an intimate portrayal of an Indigenous family’s life in rural Australia during the 1970s.

The mini-series delves intimately into Goolagong’s personal life, the international tennis circuit and what it takes to be the world’s best.

– Liza-Mare Syron

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Read more:
Goolagong is a compelling and inspiring mini-series – a story for all Australians

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Heated Rivalry

HBO Max (Australia), Neon (New Zealand)

Heated Rivalry, written and directed by Jacob Tierney, has become a massive hit. Rachel Reid’s romance novel was written for a mainly female readership, and it doesn’t quite capture all of the nuances of a gay male relationship. Tierney’s adaptation brings a whole new understanding to the intricacies of gay love.

Heated Rivalry follows the romantic relationship between two rising professional hockey players: the Canadian captain of the Montreal Metros, Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), and the Russian captain of the Boston Raiders, Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie).

Tierney’s perspective makes the pair fully realised people who are each battling their own demons. He emphasises that queer men’s lives aren’t just full of spicy, sexy moments. Often, our sexuality can be a point of difference in how we are perceived in our careers, family lives, relationships and on the wider world stage.

Tierney’s adaptation honours both the women who will come to the show from the novel, and the show’s new male audience. He understood the show had to be spicy and honour the books, but also be authentically gay.

Tierney’s Shane and Ilya cry, have good sex, share their hurts and worries, and work through their vulnerabilities together. All while still being active, attractive and complicated queer men.

– Harry Stewart

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Read more:
Why the Heated Rivalry TV series understands gay men better than the book

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Beyond the Bar

Netfilx

Beyond the Bar offers a fresh lens on gender, and society’s moral and ethical dilemmas, viewed through the prism of the law. This new 12-episode South Korean limited series is co-created by Kim Jae-hong, who also directs, and Park Mi-hyeon, who is a writer and former lawyer.

It stars two well-known actors who give outstanding performances: Jung Chae-yeon (The King’s Affection) as the young female lawyer, and Lee Jin-wook (Squid Game) as her boss. Creative choices – such as the camera lingering on their exchanged looks – create pauses that underscore their connection. In an unusual representation of a marriage of minds, it becomes clear they admire one another’s ethical judgement and professional success.

The series features female-centred storylines, relationships and legal dilemmas. The number three symbolises balance and harmony. This motif recurs: three women at different career stages, including the female head of the firm signal a shift in sexual politics in South Korea; three sisters struggling with poverty; three female housemates who vow enduring support wherever life takes them.

There are two types of men in the series: men who work supportively with women, and the lazy scheming male lawyers, who are villains derided as “salary thieves”. In contrast the women and their male collaborators strive for fairness and transparency, engaging ethically with arising problems.

I loved the women-led stories and the central relationship, where the expected sexual frisson is replaced by genuine intellectual chemistry.

– Lisa French

Dog Park

ABC iView

Raise a paw if your dog ever helped you to meet a new two-legged friend? The premise of Dog Park capitalises on the fact that pet ownership in Australia is increasing, with canines being the most popular choice.

Roland (Dog Park co-creator Leon Ford) is a middle aged recluse and all-round grump who has a hard time trusting or liking other humans. His sense of dissolution takes a further dip when his estranged wife Emma (Brooke Satchwell) departs for work in the United States, leaving the TAFE career counsellor in charge of his distant teenage daughter Mia (Florence Gladwin) and disdained dog Beattie.

The first turning point of this six-part series occurs when Beattie goes missing and boozehound Roland searches for her at the local park. This is where Roland meets the always sunny Samantha (Celia Pacquola) and a ragtag bunch of overly friendly folks and their fur babies (AKA the Dog Park Divas), all of whom are quite familiar with Beattie already.

The Dog Park Divas dole out life lessons, trying to help slow Roland’s downhill roll. Their interventions slowly begin to take effect – which gives hope that all humans are ultimately redeemable.

Dog Park is tender in a darkly bittersweet way with an underlying theme of connection and chosen family. Beattie (played by a poodle of unspecified breed named Indie in real life) is pretty cute – and proof that dogs really are the superior species.

– Phoebe Hart

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Read more:
Dog parks are an unexploited arena for a television dramedy – so now we have ABC’s Dog Park

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Mr. Scorsese

Apple TV

Canonisation has an irritating habit of smoothing over the rough, interesting edges. I kept thinking about that while watching Mr. Scorsese. At its best, the series pushes back against that tendency. Chronologically structured, it opens with a rich, evocative portrait of Martin Scorsese’s Italian American childhood in New York, shaped by illness, Catholic ritual and an intense, almost unhealthy devotion to cinema.

The attention given to Scorsese’s student years and early experiments is especially welcome. We see a filmmaker borrowing styles, pushing form, overreaching, then pulling back – trying to invent a language before he fully understands its grammar. That groundwork matters when the series turns to his masterpieces Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino.

Rebecca Miller’s documentary does an excellent job of cutting through decades of familiarity, reminding us just how abrasive, violent and volatile these films remain.

It is revealing to hear Scorsese and his collaborators reflect on the personal and professional peaks and troughs of his career, especially given how securely he now sits in the cultural landscape.

The only real criticism I have with the series is the relatively limited attention paid to the later films, with some receiving only a perfunctory mention and others missing altogether. In a sense, however, this speaks to the scale of Scorsese’s achievement. There is simply too much ground to cover, and the series flies by. Five episodes could easily have been ten.

– Alexander Howard

Lesbian Space Princess

Netflix, from February 6

In Lesbian Space Princess, outer space emerges as a new and inclusive habitat for a smart, funny story exploring the inner spaces of lesbian consciousness and self-affirmation.

The film pushes hard against the gendered conventions of the sci-fi genre, re-pointing them to unexpected ends.

Can introspective Princess Saira rescue her ex-girlfriend, Kiki, from the evil clutches of a rogue group of incels known as the Straight White Maliens?

Low on self-confidence and belittled by her royal lesbian mothers, Saira sustains an unshakeable attachment to Kiki, a soft-butch bounty hunter who is as attachment-avoidant as Saira is clingy.

Saira battles through the beautifully drawn pink-hued reaches of constellations and moonscapes in a spaceship (depressively voiced by Richard Roxburgh). As she reluctantly traverses outer space, she must step up to its greatest challenge: plumbing the messy depths of her inner world.

Rather than provide lesbian romantic satisfaction or ground its utopian energies in the bold new world of queer community, in the future imagined here the way desire is experienced by the self is more important than who or what it is directed toward.

– Lee Wallace

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Read more:
Lesbian Space Princess is a cheeky, intergalactic romp that turns the sci-fi genre on its head

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The Pitt, season two

HBO Max (Australia), Neon (New Zealand)

Last year the beloved, award-winning drama The Pitt reconceptualised medical storytelling post-COVID and post-network TV.

Set in a strained Pittsburgh emergency department, and featuring a terrific ensemble cast, the full 15-episode season covered an entire shift, each episode moving hour by hour. Patient and staff storylines, some ripped from the headlines, painted a powerful picture of care and humanity in the face of a broken health system and wider social crises.

Season two has been greatly anticipated. It’s the fourth of July, one of the worst days for accidents and injuries. Burnt-out ER boss Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) has one last shift before he goes on extended leave, ready to take his new motorbike (hello, midlife crisis) and get out of Dodge. Clearly things won’t go smoothly.

Just about the whole gang is back – everyone from nurses, cleaners and experienced physicians to student doctors and ER regulars, many still dealing with the tragic events and disclosures of season one. The fast-paced, well-shot show remains adept at balancing dense mental jargon and frank representations of medical trauma with sharp, compassionate characterisation and wry humour. A few episodes in and a new omnicrisis is brewing… It’s compelling stuff.

– Erin Harrington

Stranger Things, season five

Netflix

Beyond its monsters and 1980s nostalgia, Stranger Things resonates because it tells stories of struggles familiar to young people: trauma that lingers, identity that wavers, and friendships that buffer against fear.

And by turning inner struggles into visible monsters, Stranger Things can provide a lens to discuss trauma, identity and resilience. Adults can use the show to talk to teenagers about their own mental health.

The Upside Down is a dark mirror of the Hawkins township – a shadow world where threats feed on secrecy and avoidance. It works as a metaphor for “unseen” unprocessed experiences, shame and anxious avoidance. The young people at the heart of the show must face their fears to overcome their power.

Vecna’s attacks dramatise shame and self-criticism. His voice echoes characters’ darkest self-judgments: Max hears accusations about Billy’s death; Eleven relives failures to protect friends. You can help young people by reminding them the harsh voice in their head isn’t who they are. It’s just a thought, like a bully they can fight.

And at its heart, Stranger Things is a friendship story. The party’s loyalty and shared rituals provide a scaffold against isolation and fear. Rituals of D&D campaigns, walkie-talkie check-ins and bike rides create a safety net. Adults can point out how the characters in Stranger Things share burdens and protect one another.

– Stephen Goldsmith

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Read more:
How adults can use Stranger Things to talk to young people about their mental health

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

– ref. Gay ice-hockey players, lesbian space princesses, and cute dogs: what to watch in February – https://theconversation.com/gay-ice-hockey-players-lesbian-space-princesses-and-cute-dogs-what-to-watch-in-february-273799

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/02/gay-ice-hockey-players-lesbian-space-princesses-and-cute-dogs-what-to-watch-in-february-273799/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John White, Associate Professor in Wildlife and Conservation Biology, Deakin University

The Australian authority that regulates pesticides has finally released its long-delayed review of the rodenticide poisons used by millions of Australians to combat rat and mice infestations.

As researchers who study Australia’s amazing native owls (and more recently, the rodenticide poisoning of wildlife), we were extremely hopeful about its findings. We thought this review would make world-leading recommendations that would protect wildlife and set the global standard for regulating these toxic compounds.

Instead, the recommendations from the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) leave Australians still reliant on rodent poisons that are responsible for most of the documented impacts on wildlife globally.

Why these poisons are a wildlife problem

Second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs) which include brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difethialone, difenacoum and flocoumafen, are the core problem. These extremely potent poisons prevent normal blood clotting processes and ultimately lead to death, often via uncontrollable internal bleeding.

When a rat or mouse eats a SGAR-based bait, the poison remains in its body for up to a year. This is how it ultimately passes to predators and scavengers such as owls, frogmouths, raptors, quolls and goannas that eat the poisoned animal.

These native animals die slowly and painfully. This process, known as secondary poisoning, is well documented in predators in Australia and globally.

What the review found

The review acknowledges the science and highlights the risks that SGARs pose, not only to our wildlife and fragile ecosystems but also potentially to humans.

However, despite the risks and advice from scientists to ban SGARs, the review proposes keeping SGARs as the primary tool for Australia’s war on rodents. It described them as an “unacceptable risk”, but stopped short of recommending a blanket ban.

The review argues SGARs remain essential for rodent control, especially with rodents developing some resistance to older poisons. The proposed changes focus on mitigating exposure risk to non-rodents. These include changes to labels and the way bait is delivered, and packaging controls. Under these changes, SGARs will remain widely available to the public.

Ultimately the real difficulty – not adequately addressed – is broader than simply preventing non-rodents from consuming baits. The real issue lies with the nature of the toxins themselves.

These poisons are highly effective at killing rodents, but they do not kill them quickly. After eating poisoned bait, a doomed “zombie” rodent will remain alive for several days, potentially up to a week. During this time, their behaviour changes. Normally cautious, these nocturnal animals become slower, disoriented and far more likely to be eaten by predators such as owls (or even your pet cat or dog).

Crucially, these poisoned “zombie” rodents can continue to eat more poisoned bait. By the time they die, they may contain very high concentrations of rodenticide.

Secondary poisoning is a predictable outcome

When a predator eats a poisoned rodent (or any other poisoned species), it also ingests its poison. This is unlikely to cause immediate death, but SGARs accumulate in the liver and remain there for up to a year. With repeated consumption of poisoned animals, the predator reaches a toxic threshold and dies.

Unfortunately, secondary poisoning is not an accidental or a misuse scenario. It is a highly predictable outcome of allowing the use of poisons in our ecosystems that accumulate in the body.

Paradoxically, the animals most affected by SGARs are the very species that help control mice and rat populations naturally. Predators such as owls breed more slowly than rodents. When rodenticides kill predators in urban and agricultural landscapes, rodent problems often worsen and spur further reliance on poisons. This creates a damaging feedback loop that Australia has been reinforcing for decades, one not addressed by the proposed changes.

Many researchers, including our colleagues and ourselves, argued during this review that meaningful reform requires either banning SGARs in Australia completely or severely restricting access so they are not available to the public. Other countries such as Switzerland and Canada have reached similar conclusions, and responded by significantly limiting access to these compounds with the intent of banning them.

Australia’s proposed changes move in the wrong direction, and leave us considerably behind much of the developed world. Australia will continue using rodenticides that cause the greatest harm, such as SGARs. And lower-risk alternatives that use the First Generation Anticoagulant Rodenticide (FGAR), such as Warfarin, face cancellation because they do not contain chemicals that make them bitter an aspect to try and make them less attractive to non-rodent species.

Warfarin-based baits are safer as they do not accumulate in the body of poisoned animals to the same extent and they are expelled from the body more quickly, reducing the risk of secondary poisoning.

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Read more:
A dangerous pesticide isn’t being monitored in key bird of prey populations – we’re shedding light on that gap

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Restriction will protect wildlife

This review could have broken the cycle of poisoning native Australian predators in the name of rodent control. Instead, it preserves a system that does not work here, or anywhere else in the world.

If Australia is serious about protecting its wildlife while managing rodents effectively, it must confront the role of SGARs directly. Adjusting labels and packaging cannot solve a problem driven by the chemistry of the poisons themselves.

We simply must do better. Until access to these compounds is meaningfully restricted, secondary poisoning will remain an inevitable — and entirely preventable — outcome. Many native animals will continue to die slow and painful deaths.

John White receives funding from various organisations for ecological and toxicological research.

Raylene Cooke receives funding from various organizations to undertake ecological and toxicological research.

– ref. Household rat poisons found to be ‘unacceptable risk’ to native animals. So why aren’t they banned? – https://theconversation.com/household-rat-poisons-found-to-be-unacceptable-risk-to-native-animals-so-why-arent-they-banned-272346

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/02/household-rat-poisons-found-to-be-unacceptable-risk-to-native-animals-so-why-arent-they-banned-272346/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tilman Ruff, Honorary Principal Fellow, School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne

The New START treaty, the last remaining agreement constraining Russian and US nuclear weapons, is due to lapse on February 4.

There are no negotiations to extend the terms of the treaty, either. As US President Donald Trump said dismissively in a recent interview, “if it expires, it expires”.

The importance of the New START treaty is hard to overstate. As other nuclear treaties have been abrogated in recent years, this was the only deal left with notification, inspection, verification and treaty compliance mechanisms between Russia and the US. Between them, they possess 87% of the world’s nuclear weapons.

The demise of the treaty will bring a definitive and alarming end to nuclear restraint between the two powers. It may very well accelerate the global nuclear arms race, too.

What is New START?

The New START or Prague Treaty was signed by then-US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dimitri Medvedev, in Prague on April 8, 2010. It entered into force the following year.

It superseded a 2002 treaty that obligated Russia and the United States to reduce their operationally deployed, strategic nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by the end of 2012.

The New START Treaty called for further reductions on long-range nuclear weapons and provided greater specificity about different types of launchers. The new limits were:

• 700 deployed intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (together with heavy bombers)
• 1,550 nuclear warheads deployed on those platforms, and
• 800 launchers (both deployed and non-deployed).

These reductions were achieved by February 5, 2018.

The treaty included mechanisms for compliance and verification, which have worked effectively. It provided for twice-yearly exchanges of data and ongoing mutual notification about the movement of strategic nuclear forces, which in practice occurred on a nearly daily basis.

Importantly, the treaty also mandated short-notice, on-site inspections of missiles, warheads and launchers covered by the treaty, providing valuable and stabilising insights into the other’s nuclear deployments.

Lastly, the treaty established a bilateral consultative commission and clear procedures to resolve questions or disputes.

Limitations of the deal

The treaty was criticised at the time for its modest reductions and the limited types of nuclear weapons it covered.

But the most enduring downside was the political price Obama paid to achieve ratification by the US Senate.

To secure sufficient Republican support, he agreed to a long-term program of renewal and modernisation of the entire US nuclear arsenal – in addition to the facilities and programs that produce and maintain nuclear weapons. The overall pricetag was estimated to reach well over US$2 trillion.

This has arguably done more harm by entrenching the United States’ possession of nuclear weapons and thwarting prospects for disarmament.

As the New START treaty was about to expire in 2021, Russia offered to extend it for another five years, as allowed under the terms. US President Donald Trump, however, refused to reciprocate.

After winning the 2020 US presidential election, Joe Biden did agree to extend the treaty on February 3, 2021, just two days before it would have expired. The treaty does not provide for any further extensions.

In February 2023, Russia suspended its implementation of key aspects of the treaty, including stockpile data exchange and on-site inspections. It did not formally withdraw, however, and committed to continue to abide by the treaty’s numerical limits on warheads, missiles and launchers.

What could happen next

With the imminent expiry of the treaty this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in September 2025 that he was prepared to continue observing the numerical limits for one more year if the US acted similarly.

Besides an off-the-cuff comment by Trump – “it sounds like a good idea to me” – the US did not formally respond to the Russian offer.

Trump has further complicated matters by insisting that negotiations on any future nuclear arms control agreements include China. However, China has consistently refused this. There is also no precedent for such trilateral nuclear control or disarmament negotiations, which would no doubt be long and complex. Though growing, China’s arsenal is still less than 12% the size of the US arsenal and less than 11% the size of Russia’s.

The New START treaty now looks set to expire without any agreement to continue to observe its limits until a successor treaty is negotiated.

This means Russia and the US could increase their deployed warheads by 60% and 110%, respectively, within a matter of months. This is because both have the capacity to load a larger number of warheads on their missiles and bombers than they currently do. Both countries also have large numbers of warheads in reserve or slated for dismantlement, but still intact.

If they took these steps, both countries could effectively double their deployed strategic nuclear arsenals.

The end of the treaty’s verification, data exchanges, and compliance and notification processes would also lead to increased uncertainty and distrust. This, in turn, could lead to a further build-up of both countries’ already gargantuan military capabilities.

An ominous warning

The most unsettling part of this development: it means nuclear disarmament, and even more modest arms control, is now moribund.

No new negotiations for disarmament or even reducing nuclear risks are currently under way. None are scheduled to begin.

At a minimum, after New START expires this week, both Russia and the US should agree to stick to its limits until they negotiate further reductions.

And, 56 years after making a binding commitment in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to achieve nuclear disarmament, both nations should work to implement a verifiable agreement among all nuclear-armed states to eliminate their arsenals.

But Russia, the US and and other nuclear-armed states are moving in the opposite direction.

Trump’s actions since taking office a second time – from bombing Iran to toppling Venezuela’s leader – show his general disdain for international law and treaties. They also affirm his desire to use any instrument of power to assert US (and his personal) interests and supremacy.

Putin, meanwhile, has used of a nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile to strike Ukraine, made repeated threats to use nuclear weapons against Kyiv and the West, and continued his unprecedented and profoundly dangerous weaponisation of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants.

These moves signal a more aggressive Russian stance that rides roughshod over the UN Charter, as well.

All of this bodes ill for preventing nuclear war and making progress on nuclear disarmament.

Tilman Ruff is affiliated with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the Medical Association for Prevention of War, Doctors for the Environment Australia and the Public Health Association of Australia.

– ref. The only remaining US-Russia nuclear treaty expires this week. Could a new arms race soon accelerate? – https://theconversation.com/the-only-remaining-us-russia-nuclear-treaty-expires-this-week-could-a-new-arms-race-soon-accelerate-269508

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/02/the-only-remaining-us-russia-nuclear-treaty-expires-this-week-could-a-new-arms-race-soon-accelerate-269508/

Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. –

COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

I don’t know what to say today. We are ruled by abusive monsters.

The US is preparing for war with Iran.

They’re going in for the kill shot on Cuba.

The latest batch of Epstein emails looks horrifying.

The US is full of protests because ICE keeps killing people.

Israel is still massacring civilians in Gaza as Australia prepares to host its president for an extended visit.

Reuters has confirmed that Biden officials actively obstructed the circulation of internal USAID reports that Gaza was being turned into a nightmarish hellscape in early 2024.

There’s so much cruelty. So much abuse.

[embedded content]
Our rulers are psychopaths                               Video: Caitlin Johnstone

You’d think all this evidence that we are ruled by deranged psychopaths would unite us against them, but it doesn’t. The population is more angrily, bitterly divided against itself than ever.

Political discourse has gotten as intensely vitriolic as I’ve ever seen it as Donald Trump supporters take their stand behind the current abuser-in-chief and defend the status quo warmongering and tyranny with all their might.

Discussing politics on social media feels like stepping into an emotional blast furnace these days.

They’ve done such a good job dividing us and conquering us. It’s really incredible how good at it they are. It would be awe-inspiring if it wasn’t so evil and destructive.

I haven’t felt like I’m in the zeitgeist recently. Usually I feel like I’m surfing the crest of dissident political consciousness and can provide insight and information into what’s coming up for us as a collective, but everything’s been so chaotic and frenzied lately it’s like trying to ride a bucking bull. I don’t know if that makes any sense to anyone but me, but that’s what it feels like.

I don’t really have anything to add to that right now. I try to write something every day, but today all I’ve got is a feeble “There’s so much cruelty, and it hurts.”

It fucking hurts, man.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/02/caitlin-johnstone-our-rulers-are-psychopaths-and-theyre-making-everything-awful/

By Johnny Blades, RNZ Pacific bulletin editor

Political leaders in a Papua New Guinea province plagued by gun violence are making a collective stand to stop it.

There is a new sense of political will among Enga Province’s political leaders and police to come down hard on the use of illegal weapons. But they are confronted by a daunting task.

Recent research by Joe Barak of PNG’s National Research Institute has tracked the escalation of tribal and election-relate violence in PNG, particularly in the Highlands where the most frequent violent attacks are recorded.

The research shows that Enga Province had the highest number of incidents, 79 between the years 2018 and 2022, or 27.8 percent of the overall number of incidents in the Highlands region during that period.

Prime Minister James Marape this month laid out a ‘war on guns’-type plan to crack down on lawlessness in PNG by asserting the authority of the state. But all too often in Enga the authorities have been part of the problem.

Each of the past few general elections have sparked deadly fighting between supporters of rival candidates in at least two of Enga’s electorates, with fingers of blame pointed often at political leaders.

Furthermore, there’s now more high powered weapons in circulation than ever, and in many cases they are sold by the country’s security forces, police and military.

This set of issues is not confined to Enga, but this province has seen the worst of it. A massacre in an Engan village in 2024 which killed at least 49 people was shocking even for a part of the country familiar with tribal warfare.

No respect for authority
Enga’s Governor, Sir Peter Ipatas, said people in his province had taken lawlessness to another level using modern guns, with no respect for authority.

“In the past, the tribe used to take ownership and they would discuss whether to fight or not,” he explained.

“These days, you have got young people who are on drugs or whatever, causing fights, and a lot of innocent people’s lives are at risk, so we need to come up with a tough strategy to identify all these culprits.”

Prosecutions have been lacking and this needed to change, Ipatas said, adding that it required police to “actually do their job to make sure that our people who do not respect authority, who break the laws, are investigated and prosecuted properly”.

A generally poorly resourced police force has long struggled to deal with social disorder in Enga.

Also Engans have had a lot to deal with themselves in the past couple of years, including landslide disasters, political instability and displacement of communities caused by the Porgera gold mine operations. Through it all, the violence persists.

Lethal force
Early last month in Enga’s Wapenamanda district, a raid on suspected illegal firearms holders by the elite police Kumul 23 unit resulted in five people being killed.

Despite criticism about alleged deaths of innocent people in the raid, Marape was unapologetic about the use of lethal force to target illegal gunmen

He said this approach would continue because those driving violent conflict through the build-up of illegal weapons had ruined countless lives in this area.

“Wapenamanda was a peaceful district — it’s now destroyed,” the prime minister said.

However, the former commander of PNG’s Defence Force, retired Major-General Jerry Singirok, commended Enga’s political leaders for finally saying “enough is enough”.

He said they were taking ownership of their past mistakes, and showing a willingness to get their clans and tribesmen to put down their guns.

Illegal guns
However, before Enga’s violence problem can be stemmed, the build-up of illegal firearms needs to be addressed.

General Singirok has been pushing for gun reform in the country for decades. He headed a UN-backed report into gun violence in the Highlands which was published last year, finding there could be as many as 100,000 illegal weapons in circulation in the region, many of which are sold by police, military and corrections officers.

“I had a particular encounter where a tribesman showed me a pump action shotgun bought from the police force, and the young people on the street said ‘well, if you don’t have bullets, we buy [them] from the military and the police’,” Singirok said.

“So as part of the crackdown, the government must hold security forces accountable and [serve] heavy penalties on those soldiers who are moonlighting their weapons or selling their weapons or selling ammunition.

“It’s very important to cut off the supply chain of weapons and ammunition,” he said, noting that security forces needed to enforce command and control, and regularly account for use of weapons and ammunition from their armories.

The government is looking at a range of options to reduce the massive build-up of illegal firearms across the country, with Marape mentioning a possible amnesty period and a buy-back scheme.

Singirok said the major 2005 gun reform report he authored made clear that incentives are the way to go. He said communities were more likely to give up arms if they know projects that help develop health, education or other services can be established in their area as a result.

Heat on police
Both Singirok and Ipatas said they expected that having an Engan Member of Parliament as PNG’s new police minister would help combat law and order problems in the province.

The prime minister appointed one of Enga’s veteran politicians, Sir John Pundari, the MP for Kompiam-Ambum, an electorate which has suffered repeated tribal violence since the 2022 national elections.

Firstly, rather than Enga, Pundari had his sights on PNG’s capital Port Moresby, where he singled out police senior commanders, saying they need to set an example for the rest of the country by lifting the standard of policing.

“Improve your duty statements, monitor those KPIs, do audit against those KPIs. The deliverables must be visible. The outcomes must be felt. The pride of policing in this country must start from the National Capital District.”

Pundari’s message may have been corporate in language, but it reflected hopes of many Papua New Guineans: for police to simply do their job.

To do their job they need to be properly resourced — that has not always been the case. It will have to be if police are to stop the fighting, the massacres and political vendettas in Enga.

Pundari is pushing for the death penalty to be brought back to deter violent crimes in the country.

PNG’s political class is sounding deadly serious about ending gun violence, but the ‘big men’ will have to lead by example.

As far as Enga is concerned, the true test of that commitment will come in next year’s general election.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/01/leaders-of-pngs-enga-province-plagued-by-violence-vow-to-weed-out-illegal-guns/

ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on February 1, 2026.

Greenland and Western hypocrisy over the rules-based international order
COMMENTARY: By John Menadue Western leaders defend the rules-based international order when it suits them, but remain largely silent as those same rules are breached by the United States and Israel. The result is a system that shields the powerful and abandons the vulnerable — most starkly in Palestine. The white men and a few

Why Trump’s new pick for Fed chair hit gold and silver markets – for good reasons
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Maher, Lecturer in Politics, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images After months of speculation, US President Donald Trump confirmed he will be nominating Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the US Federal Reserve. The appointment has been closely watched

Protesters demand freedom for 9000+ Palestinian ‘political prisoners’ held hostage by Israel
Asia Pacific Report New Zealand protesters in Tamaki Makaurau today heralded a global demand for the freedom of thousands of Palestinians who have been unlawfully imprisoned by Israel in its illegal occupation of Palestine. Today is the Red Ribbon Campaign’s global day of solidarity for Palestinian hostages or political prisoners. It is the culmination of

Funny, tender, goofy – Catherine O’Hara lit up the screen every time she showed up
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, Adelaide University Catherine O’Hara, the beloved actor and comedian who has died aged 71, occupied that rare position in contemporary screen culture: a comic actor, a cult figure and a mainstream star. Her work spanned more than 50 years, from

ER Report: A Roundup of Significant Articles on EveningReport.nz for January 31, 2026
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on January 31, 2026.

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/01/er-report-a-roundup-of-significant-articles-on-eveningreport-nz-for-february-1-2026/

COMMENTARY: By John Menadue

Western leaders defend the rules-based international order when it suits them, but remain largely silent as those same rules are breached by the United States and Israel.

The result is a system that shields the powerful and abandons the vulnerable — most starkly in Palestine.

The white men and a few women couldn’t hide their anger over Trump threatening to take over Greenland. NATO members joined in at the horror of Trump subverting the rules-based international order (RBIO).

They were appalled at this breach of the RBIO, that Australian Foreign Minister Richard Marles and all right-thinking people in the West keep talking about.

But these very same people — including the Australian and New Zealand political elite — say precious little or nothing at all when the rules are broken by the US and Israel to attack the poor and vulnerable of this world.

Greenlanders are special, but not Palestinians.

The breaches of RBIO didn’t come with Trump. The West has been breaching the rules for decades. Trump’s rule-breaking is just more gross and explicit.

Not only are we very selective in our concerns, but we also tug the forelock in joining the US and Israel in numerous and wilful breaches of the RBIO, breaches that have brought death and misery to tens of millions of people.

With impunity the rich and powerful break the rules and punish the poor and vulnerable. Or as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney put it, “the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must.”

And those that suffer are not white Christians or Jews but brown Muslims. No wonder our Muslim brothers and sisters believe that the system is loaded against them. They are right to feel aggrieved.

The cruellest example in the world today of breach of rules is the genocide which Israel, with the support of United States, is inflicting on the brave people of Palestine.

This is not to suggest that Mark Carney’s Davos speech is not to be welcomed and applauded. But the RBIO is selectively applied. Are Palestinians of less value than Greenlanders?

Just look at some instances of how the US has breached the RBIO.

1. Use of force without UN authorisation
Under the UN Charter, force is legal only in self-defence or with UN Security Council approval. The US has violated this rule multiple times.

Iraq (2003)

• The invasion had no explicit UN Security Council authorisation.
• Claims about weapons of mass destruction were false. It resulted in massive civilian casualties and long-term regional destabilisation.

Kosovo / Serbia (1999)

• NATO bombing campaign (led by the US) proceeded without UN authorisation.

Panama (1989)

• US invaded to arrest Manuel Noriega. It was condemned by the UN General Assembly as a violation of international law.

Syria (from 2014 onward)

• US military presence and airstrikes occurred without Syrian consent or UN authorisation.

2. Undermining state sovereignty through regime change
The US has frequently violated the principle of non-intervention.

Latin America (1970s–1980s)

• Chile (1973): Supported the overthrow of democratically elected President Allende
• Nicaragua: Funded and armed the Contras, despite a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) condemning US actions.

Afghanistan (1980s)

• Covertly armed insurgents to weaken the Soviet-backed government, contributing to decades of instability.

Libya (2011)

• UN authorisation was for civilian protection, not regime change. NATO operations (led by the US) went far beyond the mandate, resulting in state collapse.

3. Ignoring or rejecting international courts and legal rulings

International Court of Justice (ICJ)

• Nicaragua vs United States (1986): ICJ ruled the US violated international law by supporting Contra rebels. The US rejected the ruling, withdrew from ICJ compulsory jurisdiction, and refused to pay reparations.

International Criminal Court (ICC)

• The US refuses to join the ICC and passed domestic laws authorising force to free US personnel if detained by the ICC.
• The US sanctioned ICC officials investigating US actions in Afghanistan

4. Torture, detention, and human rights violations

‘War on Terror’ practices

• Guantánamo Bay: Indefinite detention without trial, violating habeas corpus and Geneva Conventions.
• CIA black sites: Secret prisons involving torture (waterboarding, sleep deprivation).
• Extraordinary rendition: Transferring suspects to countries known to practise torture.

These actions directly contradict:

• The UN Convention Against Torture (which the US ratified).
• International humanitarian law.

5. Violations of international humanitarian law in warfare

Civilian casualties

• Repeated airstrikes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Syria caused high death tolls.

Use of controversial weapons

• Cluster munitions: Used despite long-recognised humanitarian concerns (the US is not a signatory to the ban).
• Depleted uranium munitions: Long-term health and environmental impacts.

6. Sanctions and economic coercion outside UN frameworks
The US increasingly uses unilateral sanctions, bypassing the UN.

Examples:

Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Russia.

Sanctions often:

• Lack UN approval and have severe humanitarian consequences.
• Use extraterritorial enforcement, pressuring third-party states.

7. Selective application of ‘rules’
A core criticism isn’t just violations — but selectivity.

• Condemning territorial conquest while supporting allies doing similar things.
• Defending human rights rhetorically while shielding allies from accountability.
• Promoting international law when convenient.

Israeli breaches of rules-based international order

1. Occupation and settlements in the West Bank

• Under international humanitarian law (Fourth Geneva Convention), an occupying power is prohibited from transferring its civilian population into occupied territory.
• Israel has built and expanded settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
• These settlements are considered illegal under international law by the UN, the (ICJ).

2. Annexation of East Jerusalem

• Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war.
• The UN Security Council has repeatedly declared this annexation null and void.
• Unilateral annexation violates the principle that borders cannot be changed by force.

3. Use of force and civilian harm in Gaza

• Israel’s military operations in Gaza have resulted in large civilian casualties and infrastructure destruction.
• Human rights groups and UN bodies have accused Israel of disproportionate force and potential war crimes, including collective punishment (such as blockades affecting civilians).

4. Blockade of Gaza

• Israel has maintained a land, sea, and air blockade on Gaza since 2007.
• The UN and many legal scholars argue the blockade constitutes collective punishment, which is prohibited under international law.

5. Disregard for UN resolutions and international rulings

• Israel has not complied with numerous UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions, particularly on settlements and occupation.
• It has rejected the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) over alleged crimes in the occupied territories.

6. Unequal application of law (apartheid allegations)

• Major human rights organisations (e.g., Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch) have accused Israel of practising apartheid due to different legal systems for Israelis and Palestinians in the same territory.

The bigger picture: Israel benefits from political protection, especially from the US, which shields it from sanctions or enforcement — creating a perception that the rules-based order is selective rather than universal.

The RBIO was designed to help protect the weak but is selectively applied by the strong. The US and Israel regularly breach the RBIO.

John Menadue is the founder and editor-in-chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas. For this article he has been assisted by WeChat for breaches by the US and Israel of the RBIO. He edited to shorten. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/01/greenland-and-western-hypocrisy-over-the-rules-based-international-order/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Maher, Lecturer in Politics, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

After months of speculation, US President Donald Trump confirmed he will be nominating Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the US Federal Reserve. The appointment has been closely watched in the context of Trump’s ongoing conflict with the Fed and its current chairman Jerome Powell.

The immediate reaction to the announcement was a significant crash in gold and silver markets. After months of record highs and stretched valuations, spot prices for gold and silver dropped 9% and 28% respectively after the announcement. The US stock market also fell, with major indexes all reporting modest losses.

However, in the context of concerns over Trump’s interference with the Fed, the market crash can ironically be understood as an early vote of confidence in Warsh’s independence and suitability for the role.

Understanding why requires the context of Trump’s ongoing conflict with the Federal Reserve, and the importance of central bank independence to our current global financial system.

Trump’s war with the Fed

The last year has seen Trump in an unprecedented conflict with the Federal Reserve.

Trump appointed current Chairman Jerome Powell back in 2017. However, the relationship quickly soured when Powell did not cut interest rates as quickly as Trump wanted. In characteristically colourful language, Trump has since called Powell a “clown” with “some real mental problems”, adding “I’d love to fire his ass”.

The war of words descended into legal threats. Trump’s Justice Department announced an investigation into Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook over alleged fraud in historical mortgage documents. Then last month, in a shocking escalation the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into Powell relating to overspending in renovations of the Federal Reserve offices.

Both sets of allegations are widely viewed as baseless. However, Trump has tried to use the investigation as grounds to fire Cook. The case is currently before the Supreme Court.

Powell has hit back strongly at Trump, saying the legal threats were

a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.

Powell received support from 14 international central bank chiefs, who noted “the independence of central banks is a cornerstone of price, financial and economic stability”.

Historically, presidential interference with the Fed was a major cause of the stagflation crisis in the 1970s. More recently, both Argentina and Turkey have experienced significant financial crises caused by interference with central bank independence.

Who is Kevin Warsh?

Kevin Warsh is a former banker and Federal Reserve governor, who previously served as economic advisor to both President George W Bush and President Trump.

Originally Trump seemed likely to favour the current director of Trump’s National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, for the job. However, Hassett was widely viewed as being too influenced by Trump, intensifying fears about Fed independence.

Warsh appears more independent and brings a reputation as an inflation “hawk”.

What is an inflation hawk?

The Federal Reserve is responsible for setting US interest rates. Put simply, lower interest rates can increase economic growth and employment, but risk creating inflation. Higher interest rates can control inflation, but at the cost of higher unemployment and lower growth.

Getting the balance right is the central role of the Federal Reserve. Central bank independence is essential to ensure this delicate task is guided by the best evidence and long-term needs of the economy, rather than the short-term political goals.

An inflation “hawk” refers to a central banker who prioritises fighting inflation, compared to a “dove” who prioritises growth and jobs.

From Warsh’s previous time at the Federal Reserve, he established a strong reputation as an inflation hawk. Even in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, Warsh was more worried about inflation than jobs.

Given Trump’s past conflict with Powell around cutting interest rates, Warsh might seem a curious choice of candidate.

More recently though, Warsh has moderated his views, echoing Trump’s criticism of the Fed and demands for lower interest rates. Whether this support will continue, or if his hawkish tendencies return leading to future conflict with Trump, remains to be seen.

The market reaction

The crash in gold and silver, and decline in stock markets, suggests investors view interest rate cuts as less likely under Warsh than alternative candidates.

Gold and silver prices typically rise in response to instability or fears of inflation.

The previous record highs were driven by many factors, including global instability, concerns over Fed independence, and a speculative bubble.

That Warsh’s appointment has triggered a market correction in precious metals means investors expect lower inflation, and greater financial stability. The US dollar trading higher also supports this view.

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Read more:
Silver and gold hit record highs – then crashed. Before joining the rush, you need to know this

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The credibility of the Fed is at stake

The past month has seen much discussion of the changing world order. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently decried the end of the international rules-based order and called for a break from “American hegemony”.

The global dominance of the US dollar is a crucial plank of US economic hegemony. Though Trump clearly remains sceptical of central bank independence, his appointment of Warsh suggests he recognises the importance of retaining the credibility of the US currency and Federal Reserve.

Whether that recognition can continue to temper Trump’s instinct to interfere with the setting of interest rates remains to be seen.

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

– ref. Why Trump’s new pick for Fed chair hit gold and silver markets – for good reasons – https://theconversation.com/why-trumps-new-pick-for-fed-chair-hit-gold-and-silver-markets-for-good-reasons-273233

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/01/why-trumps-new-pick-for-fed-chair-hit-gold-and-silver-markets-for-good-reasons-273233/

Asia Pacific Report

New Zealand protesters in Tamaki Makaurau today heralded a global demand for the freedom of thousands of Palestinians who have been unlawfully imprisoned by Israel in its illegal occupation of Palestine.

Today is the Red Ribbon Campaign’s global day of solidarity for Palestinian hostages or political prisoners.

It is the culmination of the Red Ribbon campaign that has been running globally for several weeks.

At the time of the so-called Gaza “ceasefire” declared on October 10, Israel was reported to be holding a record 11,100 Palestinians hostage, mostly innocent and without charge or due process.

In exchange for the final 20 Israeli hostages still alive held by Hamas and other resistance groups at the time of the ceasefire, almost 2000 Palestinian prisoners were freed by Israel.

This leaves more than 9100 prisoners — 400 of them children and 3544 of them held under “administrative detention” — yet to be freed.

Speaking at the solidarity rally in Ta Komititanga Square today, Palestinian academic and theatre practitioner Associate Professor Rand Hazou highlighted how Israel was the only country in the world to detain children under military law and military courts.

Denied access to parents, lawyers
“According to UNICEF, Palestinian child detainees are denied access to their parents and lawyers. They are often arrested in the middle of the night, blindfolded and beaten, threatened with torture and denied food and sleep,” he said.

“Palestinian detainees, including children, are forcibly transferred outside the occupied the Palestinian territory in contravention of Article 4 of the Geneva Convention relative to the protection of children and civilian persons at the time of war.”

His comments were greeted with cries of “shame” by the crowd.

Dr Hazou also criticised the practice of mainstream media in referring to the Israeli prisoners being held by the Gaza resistance fighters as “hostages” while the Palestinians were described as “prisoners”.

This was a “quite deliberate” policy by the media to imply innocence of the Israeli hostages, while suggesting guilt by the Palestinian detainees — “who are also actually hostages”.

Former trade union advocate Mike Treen condemned the inhumane practice of administrative detention and blamed it on the British colonial administration for introducing it during the Palestine mandate prior to 1948.

Administrative detention means that those detainees have not been charged with an offence. Some of them have been detained for between one and two years, with the period of time extended repeatedly — and indefinitely — so that prisoners and their families never know when they will be freed.

Persecution of Palestinians
Amnesty International has found that Israel systematically uses administrative detention as a tool to persecute Palestinians.

Treen also condemned the global “billionaire classes” for their exploitation.

“Billionaires monopolise everything they can so that they can extort rents out of us at any price.

“The rich north countries are also the old imperialist countries and we are reverting back from the neocolonial pretence that it doesn’t exist to more open forms of it today.”

Speaking in her personal capacity, Red Ribbon campaigner Audrey van Ryn cited the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“When people are found guilty of a crime, what usually happens is that they go to court for a trial and a judge will decide how they should be punished,” she said.

Prisoner rights
However, people who were who sent to prison for a crime had rights under the Universal Declaration, including:

Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 9: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10: Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal.

Article 11 (1): Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

“Some states abuse these rights of prisoners,” van Ryn said.

“Some states detain people who have not even been charged with an offence. One of these states is Israel.”

Illegal colonisation
According to a Spheres of Influence article about under reported crimes against humanity, “For 77 years, indigenous Palestinians have lived under Israel’s illegal colonisation of their own land, a regime that controls every aspect of their lives.

“One of the occupation’s most brutal tools of control is the mass abduction of Palestinians, where men, women, and children are taken hostage and imprisoned to shatter communities and crush their struggle for freedom.

“Human rights organisations describe these prisons as a ‘grave for the living’.

The first thing some of the recently released Palestinians said was a desperate plea:

“Save what remains of the hostages. If you die once a day, we die a thousand times.”

The article also alleged that since 1948, Israeli occupation forces (IDF) had arrested more than 1 million Palestinians.

“Almost every Palestinian family has lived through the trauma of a loved one kidnapped, interrogated, and disappeared into prison.”

Among high profile cases of injustice against Palestinians are:

• Marwan Barghouti, a popular leader regarded as “Palestine’s Mandela”, who was imprisoned by Israel in 2004 for life on trumped up charges.
• Dr Hussam Abu Safiya is a Palestinian paediiatrician who was born in Jabalia Refugee Camp and became director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza. His hospital was bombed in December 2024 and he was seized as a prisoner. He has been held without charge by Israel in Ofer Prison since then, assaulted and tortured.

Red Cross plea to visit jails
Calls have been made by the UN and human rights experts for the release of women, children, and elected representatives, detained for activities resisting the occupation.

Resolutions have also called for allowing the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit prisons.

Earlier today, about 3000 people took part in a rally and march in central Auckland with the theme Toitū te Aroha, a celebration of cultural diversity and immigration.

This was a counter protest to one staged by the Destiny Church with 700 people in Victoria Park condemning immigration, but a police cordon prevented the protesters led by self-styled pastor Brian Tamaki marching on to Auckland Harbour Bridge.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/02/01/protesters-demand-freedom-for-9000-palestinian-political-prisoners-held-hostage-by-israel/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, Adelaide University

Catherine O’Hara, the beloved actor and comedian who has died aged 71, occupied that rare position in contemporary screen culture: a comic actor, a cult figure and a mainstream star.

Her work spanned more than 50 years, from improv sketch comedy to Hollywood features and off-beat TV classics.

She was celebrated for her unmatched comic timing and chameleon-like character work. Her roles were often absurdist and quirky, but they hid a razor-sharp humour.

Born and raised in Toronto in a close-knit Irish Catholic family, O’Hara was one of seven siblings. She once remarked humour was part of her everyday life; storytelling, impressions and lively conversation helped hone her comedic instincts.

After high school, she worked at Toronto’s Second City Theatre, a famed breeding ground for comedy talent, and sharpened her deadpan improvisational skills.

Big break

O’Hara’s break came with Second City Television (SCTV), a sketch comedy series that rivalled Saturday Night Live in creativity and influence. Alongside contemporaries Eugene Levy, John Candy, Rick Moranis and Martin Short, she defined her distinctly smart, absurdist comedic voice.

O’Hara was not merely a performer on SCTV; she was also a writer, winning an Emmy Award for her contributions. This dual role shaped her career-long sensitivity to rhythm, language and character construction.

Unlike sketch performers who rely on repetition or catchphrases, O’Hara’s humour emerged with a different comedic logic. Audiences laughed not because the character was “funny”, but because the character took herself so seriously.

Though briefly cast on Saturday Night Live in the early 1980s, O’Hara chose to stay with SCTV when it was renewed, a decision she later described as key in letting her creative career flourish where it belonged.

The transition to film

By the mid-1980s, O’Hara was establishing herself as a screen presence. She appeared in Martin Scorsese’s offbeat black comedy After Hours (1985), and showcased her comic range in Heartburn (1986).

In 1988, she landed what would become one of her most beloved film roles: Delia Deetz in Tim Burton’s left-field Beetlejuice (1988).

Delia – a pretentious, New York art-scene social climber – allowed O’Hara to combine physical comedy and imbecilic dialogue (“A little gasoline … blowtorch … no problem”).

Burton once noted

Catherine’s so good, maybe too good. She works on levels that people don’t even know. I think she scares people because she operates at such high levels.

She went on to play Kate McCallister, the beleaguered mother in the holiday blockbusters Home Alone (1990) and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). Audiences loved the fact that this rather thinly written role became the films’ beating heart.

Working with Christopher Guest

Another distinctive phase of O’Hara’s career was her work with writer-director Christopher Guest on a series of largely improvised mockumentaries that have become cult classics.

Three standouts were Waiting for Guffman (1996), where she plays a desperate local performer in a small-town theatre troupe, and A Mighty Wind (2003), where she teamed up with old pal Levy as an ageing folk duo.

Her best turn came in Best in Show (2000), in which she and Levy played a couple competing in a national dog show. Her character Cookie Fleck remains one of the finest examples of improvised comedy on film.

Her relentless monologues about former lovers are objectively inappropriate, yet O’Hara delivers them with such earnest enthusiasm that they become strangely compelling.

Her gift for improvisation glittered in these films: these eccentric characters were often laugh-out-loud funny – but O’Hara never mocked them.

Late success

She returned to TV in Six Feet Under (2001–05) and guest appearances on The Larry Sanders Show (1992–98) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (1999–2024). More recently, she appeared in prestige shows such as The Last of Us (2023–) and The Studio (2025–).

But it was the role of Moira Rose, the eccentric, ex-soap opera star in the Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek (2015–20), created by Eugene Levy and his son Dan, that would become O’Hara’s most significant late career move. And what a role it was!

Written for O’Hara’s unique talents, Moira was a larger-than-life character with a bizarre, unforgettable vocabulary, dramatic mood swings and a wardrobe that became nearly as famous as the character herself.

Feminist media scholars have noted the rarity of such complex roles for older women, particularly in comedy, making O’Hara’s performance culturally significant.

The show became a global streaming blockbuster during COVID lockdowns and O’Hara’s multi-award-winning performance became a social media phenomenon, spawning memes and viral clips.

There are so many standout moments – her drunken meltdown after losing her wigs, her audition for The Crows Have Eyes 3 and the show’s moving finale where she performs Danny Boy at Alexis’s graduation.

An enduring legacy

O’Hara had a remarkable ability to play flamboyant, self-absorbed characters who were often uproariously funny.

Many comedians and actors have cited O’Hara as an influence for her fearlessness, her ability to blend absurdity with emotional truth, and her steadfast commitment to character integrity. She influenced performers like Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, Kate McKinnon and Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

O’Hara also refused to chase conventional stardom. Rather than choosing projects designed to flatten her eccentricities, O’Hara favoured collaborative environments that valued creativity over control.

For her, comedy was always an art of intelligence, empathy and generosity.

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

– ref. Funny, tender, goofy – Catherine O’Hara lit up the screen every time she showed up – https://theconversation.com/funny-tender-goofy-catherine-ohara-lit-up-the-screen-every-time-she-showed-up-274816

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/31/funny-tender-goofy-catherine-ohara-lit-up-the-screen-every-time-she-showed-up-274816/

ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on January 31, 2026.

Silver and gold hit record highs – then crashed. Before joining the rush, you need to know this
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angel Zhong, Professor of Finance, RMIT University Zlaťáky.cz/Pexels, CC BY The start of 2026 has seen gold and silver surge to record highs – only to crash on Friday. Gold prices peaked above US$5,500 (A$7,900) per ounce for the first time on Thursday, well above previous highs.

Micronesia: Island US military veterans struggle to get healthcare
By Giff Johnson, editor, Marshall Islands Journal / RNZ Pacific correspondent The death earlier this month of a 26-year veteran of the US Army from the Micronesian island of Kosrae, who was an ardent advocate for healthcare benefits for island veterans, highlights the ongoing lack of promised US healthcare support for those who served in

Jonathan Cook: BBC pushes the case for an illegal war on Iran with even bigger lies than Trump’s
COMMENTARY: By Jonathan Cook Here is another example of utterly irresponsible journalism from the BBC on News at Ten. Diplomatic correspondent Caroline Hawley starts the Thursday edition by credulously amplifying a fantastical death toll of “tens of thousands of dead” from recent protests in Iran — figures provided by regime opponents. Contrast that with the

Open letter: Seven warning signals to the global warmongers who are claiming to lead
COMMENTARY: By Richard David Hames Dear warmongers: You are sleepwalking towards a war in the Middle East that could set the whole world ablaze. Do not pretend you don’t know this. Your generals know it. Your intelligence agencies know it. Financial markets know it. Every citizen with a memory longer than a news cycle can

Puzzling slow radio pulses are coming from space. A new study could finally explain them
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Csanád Horváth, PhD Candidate, Radio Astronomy, Curtin University Artists impression of the white dwarf in GPM J1839-10 interacting with its companion star, producing a powerful radio beam. Danielle Futselaar Cosmic radio pulses repeating every few minutes or hours, known as long-period transients, have puzzled astronomers since their

View from The Hill: Hastie pulls out but Liberal leadership battle remains in flux
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The battle over the Liberal leadership took a dramatic turn late on Friday when Andrew Hastie announced he was pulling out. His surprise announcement came just a day after a meeting between Hastie and the other aspirant – defence spokesman

The government has promised a $25 billion boost to hospital funding – but only hints at real reform
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Breadon, Program Director, Health and Aged Care, Grattan Institute Federal and state governments have finally resolved their long-running standoff on public hospital funding. The deal struck at National Cabinet on Friday includes a A$25 billion boost to hospital funding, and state government commitments on disability services

UpScrolled – the Australian pro-Palestine platform shaking up global social media
Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. – By Agnese Boffano in London As Meta, TikTok, Instagram and X continue to dominate online social spaces, a new platform called UpScrolled has entered the scene. It is not built around dances or memes, but instead positions itself as a space promising fewer shadowbans and greater

Sussan Ley fills frontbench holes temporarily, giving a brief window for Nationals to rethink Coalition split
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Opposition Leader Sussan Ley on Friday allocated responsibilities formerly held by the Nationals to existing Liberal shadow ministers on a temporary basis. This will get the opposition through the next parliamentary week, starting Tuesday. It also gives the Nationals a

UpScrolled – the pro-Palestine platform shaking up social media
By Agnese Boffano in London As Meta, TikTok, Instagram and X continue to dominate online social spaces, a new platform called UpScrolled has entered the scene. It is not built around dances or memes, but instead positions itself as a space promising fewer shadowbans and greater freedom of political expression, particularly for pro-Palestinian voices. So,

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/31/er-report-a-roundup-of-significant-articles-on-eveningreport-nz-for-january-31-2026/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angel Zhong, Professor of Finance, RMIT University

The start of 2026 has seen gold and silver surge to record highs – only to crash on Friday.

Gold prices peaked above US$5,500 (A$7,900) per ounce for the first time on Thursday, well above previous highs. But by the end of Friday, it had dropped to around US$5068 (A$7,282).

Silver had been making gains even faster than gold. It hit more than US$120 (A$172) per ounce last week, marking one of its strongest runs in decades, before crashing on Friday to US$98.50 (A$141.50).

So what’s behind those surges and falls? And what should everyday investors know about the risks of investing in precious metals right now?

Why gold has been hitting new highs

Gold is the classic safe haven: an asset people buy to protect their savings when worried about financial risks.

With international political tensions rising, trade war threats, shifting signals about where interest rates are heading and a potential changing world order, investors are seeking assets that feel stable when everything else looks shaky.

Friday’s crash in gold and silver was sparked by financial markets reacting to early news of Donald Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh as chair of the US Federal Reserve. The US central bank plays a key role in global financial stability.

Central banks around the world have been buying gold at a rapid pace, reinforcing its reputation as a place to park value during periods of uncertainty.

But it’s not just big institutions moving the market. In Australia and overseas, retail investors – individuals buying and selling smaller amounts for themselves – have played a part too.

Those individuals have been increasingly treating gold, silver and other precious metals as a hedge against so much uncertainty, as well as a momentum play – trying to buy in to keep up with others.

As prices have trended upward, more everyday investors have bought in, especially through gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which make it simple to gain exposure without storing physical gold bullion.

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Read more:
The price of gold is skyrocketing. Why is this, and will it continue?

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What’s been driving silver’s surge

While gold was grabbing headlines for much of 2025, silver has been the real showstopper. Before Friday’s fall, the metal had surged more than 60% in just the past month, far outpacing gold’s still impressive run of around 30%.

Unlike gold, silver has a split personality. Industrial uses are driving up demand for silver. It’s critical for clean energy technologies including solar panels, electric vehicles (EVs), and semiconductors.

This dual appeal – as a safe haven, but also as an in-demand industrial commodity – is drawing investors who see multiple reasons for prices to keep climbing.

Every solar panel contains about 20 grams of silver. The solar industry consumes nearly 30% of total global demand for silver.

EVs also use 25–50 grams each, and AI data centres need silver for semiconductors.

The kicker? The silver market has run a supply deficit for five consecutive years. We’re consuming more than we’re mining, and most silver comes as a byproduct of other metals. You can’t simply open more silver mines.

Individual buyers have piled into silver

One of Australia’s most popular online investment platforms for retail investors is CommSec, with around 3 million customers.

Bloomberg tracking of CommSec trades shows how much retail purchases of silver ETFs in particular have spiked higher in the past year.

Over the past year, gold ETF trades on CommSec grew 47%, with cumulative net buying reaching A$158 million. That reflects gold’s established role in portfolios.

Yet despite attracting slightly lower total investment overall at A$104 million, silver trading activity exploded by far more: it’s been 1,000% higher than the year before.

This means retail investors made far more frequent, smaller trades in silver. This is classic momentum-chasing behaviour, as everyday investors piled into an asset showing dramatic price gains.

The pattern is unmistakable: while gold remains the anchor, silver has become the speculative play.

Its lower per-ounce price, industrial demand narrative, and social media buzz make it particularly accessible to retail investors seeking exposure to the precious metals rally, at a much lower price than gold.

The risks every investor needs to know

The data shows Australian retail investors have been buying as prices rise. But this “fear of missing out” approach comes with serious risks.

Volatility cuts both ways. From February 2025 to just before Friday’s sharp drop, the price of silver had surged 269%. But even before that fall, silver’s spectacular gain had come with 36% “annualised volatility” (which measures how much a stock price varies over one year). That was nearly double gold’s 20% volatility over the same period.

What does that mean in practice? As we’ve just seen, what goes up fast can come down quickly too.

Buying high is dangerous. When retail investors pile in after major price increases, they often end up buying near the top. Professional investors and central banks have been accumulating gold and silver for years, at much lower prices.

No income, higher risk. Unlike shares or bonds, metals don’t pay dividends or interest. Your entire return depends on prices rising further from already elevated levels. And as the past few days have shown, the potential for sharp drawdowns is substantial.

Keep it modest. Financial advisers typically recommend precious metals comprise 5–15% of a diversified portfolio. After such extraordinary price volatility, that guideline matters more than ever.

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Disclaimer: This article provides general information only and is not intended as financial advice. All investments carry risk.

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

– ref. Silver and gold hit record highs – then crashed. Before joining the rush, you need to know this – https://theconversation.com/silver-and-gold-hit-record-highs-then-crashed-before-joining-the-rush-you-need-to-know-this-274622

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/31/silver-and-gold-hit-record-highs-then-crashed-before-joining-the-rush-you-need-to-know-this-274622/

By Giff Johnson, editor, Marshall Islands Journal / RNZ Pacific correspondent

The death earlier this month of a 26-year veteran of the US Army from the Micronesian island of Kosrae, who was an ardent advocate for healthcare benefits for island veterans, highlights the ongoing lack of promised US healthcare support for those who served in the US armed forces.

Kosraen Robson Henry, who died earlier this month at age 66 in Kosrae, spent nearly half his life in the US military and was part of the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

A huge issue for Marshallese, Micronesian and Palauan members of the US Armed Forces is that once they get out of the military and return home, there are no Veterans Administration health services available to them as there are in the US and other international locations for American veterans.

To access medical care, island veterans must fly at their own expense to Honolulu, Guam or the US mainland where VA hospitals are located.

Despite the US Congress in the past several years adopting increasingly explicit legislation directing the US Veterans Administration to initiate systems for providing care to the hundreds of veterans of these three US-affiliated island nations, services have yet to materialise.

The Compact of Free Association (COFA) that became part of US law in 2024 “included provisions to have this healthcare available in our islands — as this Congress emphasised in November’s Continuing Resolution and December’s National Defense Authorisation Act,” Marshall Islands Ambassador to the US Charles Paul told a US House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Subcommittee on Health hearing in January.

However, he said the Department of Veterans Affairs had not acted to make the healthcare available.

‘Actively advocating’
“Robson has been actively advocating to extend veteran benefits to COFA citizens since at least 2008-09, when I first met him,” said filmmaker Nathan Fitch, who directed the award-winning film Island Soldier that tracked the lives of Kosraeans in the US Army — from Middle East war zones to their isolated and tranquil island home in the North Pacific.

Fitch said the Kosraean veteran had been active for the longest time advocating for services for veterans.

“Any progress on benefits for COFA veterans has to be part of Robson’s legacy,” Fitch said.

Still, despite ongoing advocacy by veterans like Henry and Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Kalani Kaneko, a 20-year veteran of the US Army, services mandated by US Congressional legislation remain in limbo.

Henry was also one of the first Micronesians to join the US Army when he entered on 13 October 1987 — just a year after implementation of the first COFA that allowed citizens of the three freely associated states to join the US military.

Henry stayed in the Army until October 2013, a total of 26 years, through which he was posted to locations around the world and saw tours of duty in various Middle East battle zones.

His story is not atypical, as many islanders who join the US military remain in the US armed forces for decades.

Higher enlistment
The US military “enlists our citizens at rates that are higher than the enlistment of US citizens in most US States,” noted Paul in his testimony at the hearing in Washington.

Paul told the House Veterans Committee members that healthcare for returning military veterans “was a major issue in the renegotiation of our free association, which culminated in the enactment of the Compact of Free Association Amendments Act of 2024. The law was intended to resolve the issue”.

But he said the Veterans Administration “has acted contrary to what we negotiated, and Congress has said is the intent of the law. The government of the Marshall Islands, therefore, strongly supports the enactment of legislation to ensure that our veterans can receive the care if they return home.”

Meanwhile, a small section at the end of the over 3000 page National Defense Authorisation Act passed by the US Congress in December sets out a timetable for action by the Veterans Administration.

The US Defence spending law requires the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to provide the US Congress with updates within 30 days of the passage of the law and monthly thereafter on the implementation of provisions relating to services for military veterans in the freely associated states.

The defence law includes provisions requiring the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to develop plans and costs for providing health services for veterans from the freely associated states. This includes the requirement of:

• Engagement with the three island governments;
• A projected timeline for island veterans to receive hospital care and medical services; and
• An estimate of the cost to implement these services.

‘Served honourably’
“For many years, Marshallese and other Freely Associated States veterans have served honourably in the United States Armed Forces, often at higher per capita rates than many States, yet without full and equal access to veterans’ benefits,” Foreign Minister Kalani Kaneko was quoted by the Marshall Islands Journal in its January 9 edition.

“Addressing that inequity has always been about fairness, dignity, and recognition of service not politics.”

Kaneko said that while the language of the US legislation passed in December is “encouraging . . .  the most important phase now is implementation.”

He said the Marshall Islands government is ready to “work constructively with US agencies to support that process. This moment represents progress, but it is also a reminder that our partnership works best when commitments made in law are carried through in practice”.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/31/micronesia-island-us-military-veterans-struggle-to-get-healthcare/

COMMENTARY: By Jonathan Cook

Here is another example of utterly irresponsible journalism from the BBC on News at Ten.

Diplomatic correspondent Caroline Hawley starts the Thursday edition by credulously amplifying a fantastical death toll of “tens of thousands of dead” from recent protests in Iran — figures provided by regime opponents.

Contrast that with the BBC’s constant, two years of caution and downplaying of the numbers killed in Gaza by Israel.

The idea that in a few days Iranian security forces managed to kill as many Iranians as Israel has managed to kill Palestinians in Gaza from the prolonged carpet-bombing and levelling of the tiny enclave, as well as the starvation of its population, beggars belief. The figures sound patently ridiculous because they are patently ridiculous.

Either the Iran death toll is massively inflated, or the Gaza death toll is a massive underestimate. Or far more likely, both are intentionally being used to mislead.

The BBC pushes the case for an illegal war on Iran with even bigger lies than Trump’s.

Read my latest here: https://t.co/ge4QSBwpbp pic.twitter.com/utynu3KImq

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 29, 2026

The BBC has a political agenda that says it is fine to headline a made-up, inflated figure of the dead in Iran because our leaders have defined Iran as an Official Enemy.

While the BBC has a converse political agenda that says it’s fine to employ endless caveats to minimise a death toll in Gaza that is already certain to be a huge undercount because Israel is an Official Ally.

Stenography for the West
This isn’t journalism. It’s stenography for Western governments that choose enemies and allies not on the basis of whether they adhere to any ethical or legal standards of behaviour but purely on the basis of whether they assist the West in its battle to dominate oil resources in the Middle East.

Notice something else. This news segment — focusing the attention of Western publics once again on the presumed wanton slaughter of protesters in Iran earlier this month — is being used by the BBC to advance the case for a war on Iran out of strictly humanitarian concerns that Trump himself doesn’t appear to share.

Trump has sent his armada of war ships to the Gulf not because he says he wants to protect protesters — in fact, missile strikes will undoubtedly kill many more Iranian civilians — but because he says he wishes to force Iran to the negotiating table over its nuclear programme.

There are already deep layers of deceit from Western politicians regarding Iran — not least, the years-long premise that Iran is seeking a nuclear bomb, for which there is still no evidence, and that Tehran is responsible for the breakdown of a deal to monitor its civilian nuclear power programme.

In fact, it was Trump in his first term as president who tore up that agreement.

Iran responded by enriching uranium above the levels needed for civilian use in a move that was endlessly flagged to Washington by Tehran and was clearly intended to encourage the previous Biden administration to renew the deal Trump had wrecked.

Instead, on his return to power, Trump used that enrichment not as grounds to return to diplomacy but as a pretext, first, to intensify US sanctions that have further crippled Iran’s economy, deepening poverty among ordinary Iranians, and then to launch a strike on Iran last summer that appears to have made little difference to its nuclear programme but served to weaken its air defences, to assassinate some of its leaders and to spread terror among the wider population.

Collective punishment
Notice too — though the BBC won’t point it out — that the US sanctions are a form of collective punishment on the Iranian population that is in breach of international law and that last year’s strikes on Iran were a clear war of aggression, which is defined as “the supreme international crime”.

The US President is now posturing as though he is the one who wants to bring Iran to the negotiating table, by sending an armada of war ships, when it was he who overturned that very negotiating table in May 2018 and ripped up what was known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The BBC, of course, makes no mention whatsoever of this critically important context for judging the credibility of Trump’s claims about his intentions towards Iran.

Instead its North America editor, Sarah Smith, vacuously regurgitates as fact the White House’s evidence-free claim that Iran has a “nuclear weapons programme” that Trump wants it to “get rid of”.

But on top of all that, media like the BBC are adding their own layers of deceit to sell the case for a US war on Iran.

First, they are doing so by trying to find new angles on old news about the violent repression of protests inside Iran. They are doing so by citing extraordinary, utterly unevidenced death toll figures and then tying them to the reasons for Trump going on the war path.

The BBC’s reporting is centring once again — after the catastrophes of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere — bogus humanitarian justifications for war when Trump himself is making no such connection.

And second, the BBC’s reporting by Sarah Smith coolly lays out the US mechanics of attacking Iran — the build-up to war — without ever mentioning that such an attack would be in complete violation of international law. It would again be “the supreme international crime”.

‘Weakened leadership’
Instead she observes: “Donald Trump senses an opportunity to strike at a weakened leadership in Tehran. But how is actually going to do that?

“I mean he talked in his message about the successful military actions that have definitely emboldened him after the actions he took in Venezuela and earlier last year in Iran.”

Imagine if you can — and you can’t — the BBC dispassionately outlining Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans to move on from his invasion of Ukraine into launching military strikes on Poland.

Its correspondents note calmly the number of missiles Putin has massed closer to Poland’s borders, the demands made by the Russian leader of Poland if it wishes to avoid attack, and the practical obstacles standing in the way of the attack.

One correspondent ends by citing Putin’s earlier, self-proclaimed “successes”, such as the invasion of Ukraine, as a precedent for his new military actions.

It is unthinkable. And yet not a day passes without the BBC broadcasting this kind of blatant warmongering slop dressed up as journalism.

The British public have to pay for this endless stream of disinformation pouring into their living rooms — lies that not only leave them clueless about important international events but drive us ever closer to the brink of global conflagration.

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published on the author’s Substack and reepublished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/31/jonathan-cook-bbc-pushes-the-case-for-an-illegal-war-on-iran-with-even-bigger-lies-than-trumps/

COMMENTARY: By Richard David Hames

Dear warmongers:

You are sleepwalking towards a war in the Middle East that could set the whole world ablaze. Do not pretend you don’t know this.

Your generals know it. Your intelligence agencies know it. Financial markets know it. Every citizen with a memory longer than a news cycle can feel it in their bones.

This is an open letter from a species that wishes to survive. I will be blunt.

1. Halt all preparations for a war of choice against Iran or any other state in the region. Freeze strike planning. Pull back offensive deployments. If you really have evidence of an imminent threat, present it to independent, technically competent, international scrutiny. If you will not do that, the world is entitled to assume this is a manufactured crisis.

2. Put in place binding, monitored arrangements to stop accidents turning into cataclysms: naval and air incident protocols, hotlines that actually work, rules of engagement that favour restraint, not bravado. If you cannot even agree to that, you are not avoiding war — you are courting it.

3. Stop playing God with other people’s governments. Regime‑change schemes — whether by bombing, sanctions that strangle civilians, or covert destabilisation — have left a trail of wrecked societies across the Middle East and beyond. You know the record. You just refuse to learn from it.

4. If you possess nuclear weapons, stop using them as toys for your vanity. Commit — publicly, in law — to never being the first to use them. Make it clear that any nuclear use by anyone, anywhere, will be treated as an unforgivable crime. If you cannot do even that, your talk of “values” is a sick joke.

5. Choke off the money pipeline that keeps this war machine humming: end the revolving door between government and arms manufacturers, subject major arms sales to real global oversight, and stop treating conflict as a business model. As long as war pays, someone will always be lobbying for it.

6. Admit that your own house is not in order. Societies riven by inequality, corruption and polarisation are more prone to lash out abroad. Fix the rot at home instead of reaching for foreign enemies to distract your populations.

7. Above all, drop the delusion that domination is leadership. Real leadership today is the courage to restrain your own power when using it would shatter the fragile systems that keep all of us alive.

You are not emperors. You are temporary stewards of a civilisation perched on the edge of multiple tipping points, and you’re not any good at that either.

If you drag us into yet another avoidable war, with nuclear forces in the background, you are gambling with everything that breathes.

So here it is, without poetry or excuse:

Step back from your stupidity. Submit your claims to scrutiny. Rein in your war machines. Protect those who speak truth. Treat nuclear weapons as the abomination they are. Stop feeding the economy of perpetual conflict.

If you cannot do that, then you only have the right to call yourselves fools.

Richard David Hames is an Australian philosopher-activist, strategic adviser, entrepreneur and futurist, and he publishes The Hames Report on Substack.

[embedded content]

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/30/open-letter-seven-warning-signals-to-the-global-warmongers-who-are-claiming-to-lead/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Csanád Horváth, PhD Candidate, Radio Astronomy, Curtin University

Cosmic radio pulses repeating every few minutes or hours, known as long-period transients, have puzzled astronomers since their discovery in 2022. Our new study, published in Nature Astronomy today, might finally add some clarity.

Radio astronomers are very familiar with pulsars, a type of rapidly rotating neutron star. To us watching the skies from Earth, these objects appear to pulse because powerful radio beams from their poles sweep our telescopes – much like a cosmic lighthouse.

The slowest pulsars rotate in just a few seconds – this is known as their period. But in recent years, long-period transients have been discovered as well. These have periods from 18 minutes to more than six hours.

From everything we know about neutron stars, they shouldn’t be able to produce radio waves while spinning this slowly. So, is there something wrong with physics?

Well, neutron stars aren’t the only compact stellar remnant on the block, so maybe they’re not the stars of this story after all. Our new paper presents evidence that the longest-lived long-period transient, GPM J1839-10, is actually a white dwarf star. It’s producing powerful radio beams with the help of a stellar companion, implying others may be doing the same.

Enter white dwarf pulsars

Like neutron stars, white dwarfs are the remnants of dead stars. They’re about the size of Earth, but with an entire Sun’s-worth of mass packed in.

No isolated white dwarf has been observed to emit radio pulses. But they have the necessary ingredients to do so when paired with an M-type dwarf (a regular star about half the Sun’s mass) in a close two-star system known as a binary.

In fact, we know such rapidly spinning “white dwarf pulsars” exist because we’ve observed them – the first was confirmed in 2016.

Which raises the question: could long-period transients be the slower cousins of white dwarf pulsars?

More than ten long-period transients have been discovered to date, but they’re so far away and embedded so deep in our galaxy, it’s been difficult to tell what they are. Only in 2025 were two long-period transients conclusively identified as white dwarf–M-dwarf binaries. This was quite unexpected.

However, it left astronomers with more questions.

Even if some long-period transients are white dwarf–M-dwarf binaries, do they radiate in the same way as the faster white dwarf pulsars? And are the long-period transients only visible at radio wavelengths doomed to be a mystery forever?

What we needed is a model that works for both, and a long-period transient with enough high-quality data to test it on.

A uniquely long-lived example

In 2023 we discovered GPM J1839-10, a long-period transient with a 21-minute period. It was the second-ever such discovery, but unlike its predecessor or those found since, it is uniquely long-lived. Pulses were found in archival data going back as far as 1988, but only some of the times that they should have been detected.

As it’s 15,000 light-years away, we can only see it in radio waves. So we dug deeper into this seemingly random, intermittent signal to learn more.

We watched GPM J1839-10 in a series dubbed “round-the-world” observations. These used three telescopes, each passing the source to the next as Earth rotated: the Australian SKA Pathfinder or ASKAP, the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in the United States.

The intermittent signal turned out to not be random at all. The pulses arrive in groups of four or five, and the groups come in pairs separated by two hours. The entire pattern repeats every nine hours.

Such a stable pattern strongly implies the signal is coming from a binary system of two bodies orbiting each other every nine hours. And knowing the period also helps us work out their masses, which all adds up to being a white dwarf–M-dwarf binary.

Checking back, not only were the archival detections consistent with the same pattern, but we were able to use the combined data to refine the orbital period to a precision of just 0.2 seconds.

A heartbeat pattern

Radio data alone tells us GPM J1839-10 is definitely a binary system. What’s more, the peculiar heartbeat of its pulses gives clues to its nature in a way that’s only possible from looking at radio signals.

Inspired by a previous study on a white dwarf pulsar, we modelled GPM J1839-10 as a white dwarf generating a radio beam as its magnetic pole sweeps through its companion’s stellar wind. The varying alignment of the binary bodies with our line-of-sight throughout the orbit accurately predicts the heartbeat pattern.

We can even reconstruct the geometry of the system, such as how far apart the stars must be, and how massive they are.

All told, GPM J1839-10 has the potential to be the missing link between long-period transients and white dwarf pulsars.

Armed with our model, other astronomers have already been able to detect variability at our measured periods in high-precision optical data, despite not being able to distinguish the binary pair.

Research is ongoing on exactly how the emission physics works, and how the broader range of long-period transient properties fit together. However, this is a crucial step towards understanding.

Csanád Horváth receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Natasha Hurley-Walker receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Puzzling slow radio pulses are coming from space. A new study could finally explain them – https://theconversation.com/puzzling-slow-radio-pulses-are-coming-from-space-a-new-study-could-finally-explain-them-272893

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/30/puzzling-slow-radio-pulses-are-coming-from-space-a-new-study-could-finally-explain-them-272893/

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

The battle over the Liberal leadership took a dramatic turn late on Friday when Andrew Hastie announced he was pulling out.

His surprise announcement came just a day after a meeting between Hastie and the other aspirant – defence spokesman Angus Taylor – over who should challenge Sussan Ley, ended in stalemate.

Hastie’s action has brought more clarity to the path ahead. At the same time, it has also left it uncertain, at least in the short term.

Will Taylor, who now has a clear run as conservative candidate, move quickly to bring on a spill? Or will he delay? He’s recently been against an early move but now Hastie is out of the way, his thinking may change.

And it will obviously also be a matter of whether he is confident of his numbers. It may be that even some of the conservatives in the party will believe Ley should be given more time.

Taylor ran Ley close after the election. Her failure to cut through has cost her support since then. On the other hand, some Liberals not tied in tightly to either camp may be unimpressed by the recent disrespectful treatment of her by the jostling aspirants. The numbers could be fluid just now.

Party sources did not have a firm take, after the Hastie announcement, on whether things would move quickly, or whether the embattled leader might get a reprieve.

Much could depend on the reactions coming from members of the parliamentary party – already reeling from the fast moving crisis – over the weekend, ahead of the resumption of parliament on Tuesday.

There is a regular Liberal Party meeting on Tuesday. That would be an unfortunate day for a spill if there was an interest rate rise.

Hastie’s retreat follows Thursday’s debacle, when the two aspirants and their conservative factional backers were captured on camera arriving for their Melbourne meeting. It was the worst of looks – a gaggle of men, not a woman to be seen, plotting to overthrow a female leader, before they went on to a memorial for a female former Liberal MP, Katie Allen.

Leadership struggles are always messy but the optics of this one are worse than most.

Sometime after the meeting, Hastie decided he didn’t have the numbers. It is unfortunate he hadn’t been able to come to this conclusion before the Thursday scenes.

He’d been pushed by a group of supporters, and set things up for a challenge, including with a newspaper story saying his wife was OK with him becoming leader (which would take him away a lot from his young family). He overreached – a comment on his poor judgement.

He said in his statement: “Over the past few weeks there has been speculation about the future leadership of the Liberal Party.

“I’ve previously stated that I would welcome the opportunity to serve my party and our country as leader of the Liberal Party.

“But having consulted with colleagues over the past week, and respecting their honest feedback to me, it is clear that I do not have the support needed to become leader of the Liberal Party.

“On this basis, I wish to make it clear I will not be contesting the leadership of the Liberal Party.

“Australia faces massive issues. I have made it my single focus to campaign on critical issues including immigration and energy, and I have no intention of stopping that.”

A cynic might read this as saying while he won’t be running for leader he will continue to make trouble.

Apart from immediate party sentiment, what happens now will be affected by the opinion polls that will come this weekend. One would have to think they would be bad for Ley.

If there were an early ballot and Taylor won, he would come to the leadership when the government is vulnerable on the economy. This week’s inflation numbers were bad. Even if there were not an interest rate rise next week, one would be on the horizon.

Taylor’s natural ground is economics, so that could give him a good start although, it should be noted, he had trouble as shadow treasurer performing against Jim Chalmers last term.

If the conservatives decide not to move quickly against Ley, that buys her extra time, but it is doubtful she would be able to put it to long-term use. Apart from the pressure from the polls, the Taylor forces and the media would ensure she was always living on borrowed time.

But the nature of Ley is that even under the worst of political circumstances she holds her nerve, trying to keep the wolves at bay, one day after another.

The “wolves” of course are not just in the Liberal ranks. Ley is also trying to deal with the Nationals, who shattered the Coalition last week. She would like to put the team together again, without giving ground over the issue of shadow cabinet solidarity that triggered the breach.

On Friday she allocated to Liberal shadow ministers the portfolio responsibilities given up by the Nationals when they split.

This is only a temporary arrangement, she said. It gives a window for a Nationals rethink. Once things are set in stone, it would be harder to bring the Coalition back together – which some Liberals and some Nationals want to do and others, in both parties, don’t want to happen.

If there is no move for reconciliation, Ley says she will announce a new full shadow ministry in a week, elevating Liberal backbenchers to permanently fill vacancies.

That’s of course assuming she is there in a week.

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

– ref. View from The Hill: Hastie pulls out but Liberal leadership battle remains in flux – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-hastie-pulls-out-but-liberal-leadership-battle-remains-in-flux-274743

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/30/view-from-the-hill-hastie-pulls-out-but-liberal-leadership-battle-remains-in-flux-274743/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Breadon, Program Director, Health and Aged Care, Grattan Institute

Federal and state governments have finally resolved their long-running standoff on public hospital funding.

The deal struck at National Cabinet on Friday includes a A$25 billion boost to hospital funding, and state government commitments on disability services for children.

But while public hospitals will get more money, there’s no clear plan to manage surging costs and rising demand.

Let’s take a look at what’s been agreed, and what’s still missing.

But first – how did we get here?

The states run public hospitals, but both the federal government and the states fund them. Since 2011, a series of deals called National Health Reform Agreements has set out how that funding works.

From 2017, under the second five-year agreement, federal spending growth was capped at 6.5%. That has left the states paying for around three quarters of cost growth since then.

In December 2023, National Cabinet committed to reversing that trend. The federal government agreed to increase its share of spending from around 40% to 42.5% by 2030, and then to 45% by 2035.

The plan also tied hospital funding to progress on disability reforms, including states delivering foundational supports outside the NDIS.

But when the 2020 agreement expired last year, governments failed to land a new five-year deal. Instead, they agreed to a one-year extension for 2025–26, with the Commonwealth providing an additional $1.7 billion.

Since then, there has been a fierce debate between the two sides, often spilling out into public accusations.

The federal government argued it has put record funding on the table. And Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called on states to rein in hospital cost growth, which has surged higher in recent years, helping to blow a hole in the federal budget.

The states countered that long-term funding promises are too far-off for a system in crisis today. They have also pointed to challenges stemming from failures in federal government systems.

This includes thousands of “stranded patients” stuck in hospital for weeks or months because they can’t get aged care places, or disability supports. It means up to one in ten public hospital bed days are being used by patients who shouldn’t be there.

What’s the deal?

The federal government has now agreed to boost public hospital spending by $25 billion over five years. Its total spending is expected to be $220 billion from 2026–27 to 2030–31, so the increase is 12%. It means the federal government’s share of total spending should rise.

The investment has been welcomed by state governments and it’s badly needed as demand for care, the cost of care, and wait times have all been rising sharply.

Some media has reported a federal commitment of $2 billion to help get stranded patients out of hospital and into aged care, but this has not been formally announced.

In return for federal investment in public hospitals, the states have agreed to match $2 billion in federal funding for the Thriving Kids program. The program will provide support outside the NDIS for children with developmental delay and disability. Its start date will be pushed back by three months.

All governments agreed to aim for NDIS cost growth of 5–6% a year, down from the previous target of 8%, and well below the current growth rate of 10%.

What’s missing?

A last-minute deal on hospital funding is welcome, as is progress on NDIS reform. But a rare opportunity to commit to substantive national health reform may have been missed.

An independent review of the last deal, commissioned by the federal, state and territory health ministers, found that although it is called a “National Health Reform Agreement”, the deal is really just a public hospital financing mechanism.

The review recommended 45 changes, arguing that the next agreement must be more than narrow and transactional, achieving real changes such as shifting care out of hospitals, driving innovation in health care, and joining up a fragmented system.

Even the main focus of these narrow agreements – the mechanics of prices and funding for public hospital care – should be improved to promote hospital productivity and reduce the length of patients’ hospital stays.

If you want national reform, it helps to buy it. This $25 billion deal will help secure new foundational supports for children. But it’s still not clear if much-needed reforms to public hospitals have been agreed.

The National Cabinet announced that the new agreement “has key reforms embedded throughout to make Australia’s hospital and health-care system more effective, efficient and equitable”.

With public hospital costs rising by $3 billion a year, and hospitals around the country under strain as Australia’s population gets bigger, older, and sicker, those reforms are increasingly urgent. A full assessment of today’s agreement will have to wait until they are revealed.

Grattan Institute has been supported in its work by government, corporates, and philanthropic gifts. A full list of supporting organisations is published at www.grattan.edu.au.

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

– ref. The government has promised a $25 billion boost to hospital funding – but only hints at real reform – https://theconversation.com/the-government-has-promised-a-25-billion-boost-to-hospital-funding-but-only-hints-at-real-reform-274617

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/30/the-government-has-promised-a-25-billion-boost-to-hospital-funding-but-only-hints-at-real-reform-274617/

Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. –

By Agnese Boffano in London

As Meta, TikTok, Instagram and X continue to dominate online social spaces, a new platform called UpScrolled has entered the scene.

It is not built around dances or memes, but instead positions itself as a space promising fewer shadowbans and greater freedom of political expression, particularly for pro-Palestinian voices.

So, what is it exactly, and why are users switching?

UpScrolled was launched in July 2025 by Palestinian-Australian app developer Issam Hijazi.

At first glance, the platform feels familiar. It features an up and down scrolling video feed reminiscent of TikTok, alongside profile pages, comments and direct messaging features similar to Instagram.

The similarities, however, appear to end there. Unlike major platforms where opaque algorithms determine which content is amplified and which is buried, UpScrolled claims to operate differently.

The platform describes itself as a space where “every voice gets equal power”, promising to operate without “shadowbans, algorithmic games, or pay-to-play favouritism”, according to its website.

In an interview with Rest of World, Hijazi said the motivation behind the launch was the overwhelmingly pro-Israel content he saw being promoted on more established platforms following 7 October 2023.

Working for what he described as big tech companies at the time, Hijazi expressed deep frustration.

“I could not take it anymore. I lost family members in Gaza, and I did not want to be complicit. So I was like, I am done with this, I want to feel useful,” he said.

The Tech for Palestine incubator, an advocacy project that funds technology initiatives supporting the Palestinian cause, has publicly backed the platform.

Moderation without the black box
Hijazi said UpScrolled’s content moderation process differs from other social media platforms in that it does not selectively censor particular groups or viewpoints.

Content deemed illegal, such as the sale of narcotics or prostitution, is removed, but when it comes to free speech, the approach is rooted in transparency, ethics and equal treatment.

According to 7amleh, the Arab Centre for the Advancement of Social Media, major tech platforms such as Meta have consistently engaged in a “systemic and disproportionate censorship of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian content”. This includes the removal of posts, restrictions on account visibility and, in some cases, permanent bans.

Throughout the war on Gaza, numerous Palestinian organisations, activists, journalists, media outlets and content creators were targeted over their pro-Palestine views.

Bisan Owda, an award-winning Gaza-based journalist with more than 1.4 million followers on TikTok, is among the most prominent recent examples, whose account was reportedly permanently banned earlier this week — but has now been reinstated after a global outcry.

Critics argue that censorship concerns extend beyond the Palestinian issue, affecting other sensitive topics, including criticism of US government policies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

High profile commentators critical of the Trump administration have reported what they describe as a systematic effort to remove or suppress their videos and content.

[embedded content]
It’s Bisan from Gaza . . . why the truth is so dangerous.     Video: AJ+

Users flock to UpScrolled
Users frustrated with big tech’s control over online narratives have increasingly turned to the new platform.

UpScrolled has reached number one in the social networking category of Apple’s App Store in both the US and the UK.

As of Tuesday, the app had been downloaded around 400,000 times in the US and 700,000 times globally since its launch. An estimated 85 percent of those downloads occurred after January 21 alone, according to data from marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

The Palestinian-founded app has also seen a surge in downloads following the recent acquisition of TikTok by American billionaire Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle.

Ellison is a prominent supporter of Israel and maintains close ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has also financially backed the Israeli military, including a $16.6 million donation made during a 2017 gala organised by the Friends of the Israeli Forces.

The timing of UpScrolled’s rise has therefore not gone unnoticed. The platform appears to have capitalised on widespread frustration and anger over biased content moderation, offering an alternative built around transparency and user control.

The app remains a work in progress, with users having reported crashes and server overloads amid its rapid growth over the past week.

Still, UpScrolled poses a challenge to dominant platforms and highlights a growing appetite for social media spaces that give users greater control over what they see and share.

Republished from the Middle East News Agency (MENA) and The New Arab.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/30/upscrolled-the-australian-pro-palestine-platform-shaking-up-global-social-media/