Category: Evening Report

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David S G Goodman, Director, China Studies Centre, Professor of Chinese Politics, University of Sydney

Last weekend, China’s Ministry of National Defence announced that the country’s two most senior generals – Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli – would be removed from office and placed under investigation for serious disciplinary violations.

Zhang had been the People’s Liberation Army’s most senior general since October 2022. He was the highest ranking military member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China (CCP), the party-state’s 24-member executive policy-making body.

Zhang was also the senior vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, which controls the armed forces.

Liu was the former commander of the PLA’s Ground Force and had most recently been in charge of the Central Military Commission’s Joint Staff Department.

The reaction to these developments outside China has led to dramatic headlines. A BBC headline initially focused on a “military in crisis”, while the Australian Broadcasting Corporation called it an “astonishing” purge that leaves Chinese leader Xi Jinping almost alone at the top of the world’s biggest army.

Certainly, the moves were surprising. But so little is known about the internal workings of the CCP’s leadership, including Xi’s relations with his colleagues in the Politburo, that interpreting these developments is difficult, if not impossible.

What we know

For historical and political reasons, the PLA is an organisation of the CCP. Both fall under the direct purview of Xi, who is chair of the Central Military Commission, general secretary of the CCP and president of the country.

The removal of Zhang and Liu at least temporarily leaves military leadership under just Xi and General Zhang Shengmin. Three other members of the Central Military Commission have lost their positions since 2024 and not been replaced.

Though the Chinese leadership is notoriously opaque, it is clear there have been disciplinary problems within the military in the last few years, particularly related to corruption and procurement in the more technically advanced departments of the PLA. Some two dozen senior military figures have been dismissed or investigated since 2022.

Zhang and Liu were fairly recent appointments to even more senior positions. Both were also seen as personal supporters of Xi. The fathers of Xi and Zhang had a close relationship dating back to the early days of the CCP in the 1930s before the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

Moreover, the removals of Zhang and Liu happened more quickly than other senior military dismissals of recent years – and there were fewer warning signs. Both men had appeared in public as recently as a month ago.

Perhaps of even greater surprise, the Wall Street Journal reported that Zhang is accused of providing the United States with information about China’s nuclear weapons program, alongside allegations of accepting bribes and forming “political cliques”.

So, how to read the tea leaves?

Past practice suggests without a doubt that once a senior figure loses their status or is dismissed – for whatever reason – their downfall results in accusations of a litany of crimes.

The Politburo has also seen its share of intense internal politics in the past, though the precise circumstances of such conflicts usually take years to surface. A good example is the mysterious death of Lin Biao in 1971, another former PLA commander who at the time was Mao Zedong’s designated successor.

Given the broader context at play here with the management of the military and the development of government programs in recent years, as well as the claims Zhang and Liu violated “discipline and the law”, there are two possible explanations for their dismissals.

Both may have had direct involvement in corruption, taking bribes to appoint officials or ensure contracts for suppliers. It is equally likely they are being held responsible for corruption that has undoubtedly occurred in military procurement under their watch.

Then there is the possibility of a difference of opinion within the Central Military Commission and the Politburo on how to deal with corruption, particularly within the military.

Xi has repeatedly stressed the importance of the fight against corruption since he became general secretary of the CCP in 2012.

In recent weeks, he has made this an even more important crusade in the context of the about-to-be-announced 15th Five-year Plan for Economic and Social Development. On January 12, he designated the issue of corruption as a “major struggle” in a speech to China’s top anti-corruption agency:

Currently, the situation in the fight against corruption remains grave and complex […] We must maintain a high-pressure stance without wavering, resolutely punishing corruption wherever it exists, eliminating all forms of graft, and leaving no place for corrupt elements to hide.

To meet China’s developmental goals, he added, the CCP “must deploy cadres who are truly loyal, reliable, consistent and responsible”.

It is difficult to see Zhang and Liu or indeed anyone else currently willing or able to challenge Xi. Or, indeed, that Xi might feel immediately threatened by Zhang, Liu or others.

To that extent, Xi’s personal position is neither strengthened nor weakened by these dismissals.

Other analysts have suggested that the disruptions caused by the dismissals could lower Xi’s confidence in his military. Some have even said the potential for an invasion of Taiwan has now been lowered.

The removal of so many leaders may indicate the PLA is now expected to undergo culture change. At the same time, it would be drawing a very long bow to suggest its military capacity generally or in relation to Taiwan has either been strengthened or weakened.

David S G Goodman 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. Xi Jinping has dismissed two of China’s most senior generals. What does this mean? – https://theconversation.com/xi-jinping-has-dismissed-two-of-chinas-most-senior-generals-what-does-this-mean-274425

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/xi-jinping-has-dismissed-two-of-chinas-most-senior-generals-what-does-this-mean-274425/

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

Renewed fighting in Syria in recent weeks between government-aligned forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) isn’t just a local issue. It has serious implications for the stability of the rest of the Middle East.

Syrian government forces launched an offensive in early January into areas of northeastern Syria controlled by Kurdish forces. The operation enabled the government to gain control of key oil and gas fields and major border crossings with Iraq and Turkey.

Of particular concern to Syria’s neighbours, though, is the thousands of former Islamic State (IS) fighters who have been held in prisons run by the SDF in the region. One camp, al-Hol, reportedly held about 24,000 detainees, primarily women and children. There were also diehard IS supporters from around the world at the camp.

Amid concerns the prisoners would escape with the SDF retreat, the US military began moving detainees from Syria to other facilities in Iraq last week. Some prisoners, however, were able to escape.

Though both sides agreed to a ceasefire that would see the SDF forces incorporated into the Syrian armed forces, it remains shaky.

The government’s offensive has also resulted in mass displacement, mistreatment of civilians and what the SDF claims are Islamic State-style killings of its forces and civilians.

And there are concerns the Islamic State will take advantage of the chaos to regroup and try to destabilise the region once again.

A pattern of violence

The fighting has followed a pattern disturbingly similar to other violent episodes following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government to forces led by now-President Ahmed al-Sharaa in late 2024.

Al-Sharaa has pledged to protect minorities in the new Syria he is building, but religious and ethnic minorities have specifically been targeted. This includes the Druze in southern Syria and Alawite communities in the west.

There have been credible reports of summary executions, arbitrary killings and kidnappings.

When the Islamic State controlled large portions of Syria around 2014, its violent actions against civilians – in particular, minorities such as the Yazidis and Kurds – were widely condemned as potential war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In al-Sharaa’s Syria, the violence has allegedly been carried out by government security forces, as well as armed factions affiliated with the government, including foreign fighters.

And al-Sharaa’s government has been supported – or at least tolerated – by international actors, most notably the United States. US President Donald Trump praised al-Sharaa earlier this month for his “tremendous progress”, adding, “I think he’s going to put it all together.”

Trump even met al-Sharaa during a visit to Saudi Arabia in May at the behest of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

As a result, violent actions that once triggered airstrikes and global outrage are now met largely with silence, caution or political justification.

This shift is most stark in the treatment of Kurdish forces, particularly the Syrian Democratic Forces. These forces have been among the US government’s most effective local partners in the fight against Islamic State for years.

Despite this record, violence against Kurdish civilians has elicited little meaningful reaction. Instead, US policy has focused on supporting the Syrian government structure and urging Kurdish leaders to accept the new political order and fully integrate into state institutions.

For Kurdish communities, this demand carries profound risks. The experiences of the Druze and Alawites offer little assurance that disarmament and territorial concessions will be met with protection or political inclusion.

Many Kurds fear laying down arms without security guarantees could expose them to similar attacks.

A return of Islamic State

Another destabilising consequence of the fighting in eastern Syria has been the collapse of the detention network built to prevent the return of IS.

The US has said up to 7,000 detainees could be transferred from Syria to detention facilities in Iraq in its operations.

While framed as a logistical and security necessity, the announcement immediately triggered alarm across Iraq, where memories of the 2014 Islamic State invasion remain vivid. That was fuelled, in part, by prison breaks from poorly secured detention facilities in Iraq and Syria.

In response to these concerns, Iraqi security forces have deployed in large numbers along the Syrian border to prevent escaped IS detainees from infiltrating the country.

US and Turkish agendas

At the centre of this unfolding crisis is the US, which favours a centralised Syrian state under a single trusted authority. This is easier to manage diplomatically and militarily than a fragmented country with competing armed factions.

This approach also aligns with Trump’s broader regional ambitions, including expanding the Abraham Accords by persuading more regional countries to normalise ties with Israel.

Turkey, a NATO member and key US ally, also has a vested interest in the future of Syria. Ankara, a key backer of al-Sharaa, has long viewed any form of Kurdish autonomy in Syria as an existential threat, fearing it would embolden Kurdish demands inside Turkey.

Together, these overlapping agendas reveal why the international response to the fighting in eastern Syria has been so muted. Concerns over civilian protection or the potential regrouping of the Islamic State have been trumped by the strategic realignment taking place with a post-Assad Syria.

Kurdish forces, once indispensable partners, now find themselves caught between shifting alliances and competing regional interests — another casualty of a new international order defined by convenience rather than principle.

Ali Mamouri 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. As Syria’s new government consolidates its power, the Kurdish minority fears for its future – https://theconversation.com/as-syrias-new-government-consolidates-its-power-the-kurdish-minority-fears-for-its-future-274110

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/as-syrias-new-government-consolidates-its-power-the-kurdish-minority-fears-for-its-future-274110/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Head, Canberra School of Government, University of Canberra

Inflation has risen further above the Reserve Bank of Australia’s 2–3% target. There is now a very real prospect the Reserve Bank will feel it needs to increase interest rates at its meeting next week, with an announcement due on Tuesday afternoon.

Inflation rose 3.8% in the year to December, up from 3.4% in the year to November, according to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics consumer price index (CPI) report.

The Reserve Bank will look at the data for the December quarter at its February 2-3 meeting.

Financial markets and economists had been leaning towards the possibility of an interest rate rise, as inflation proved stubbornly high in recent months and the jobs market picked up. Today’s inflation data has led markets to regard an interest rate increase as more likely.

Where prices moved the most

Comparing prices in the December quarter of 2025 with the same period in 2024, strong rises were recorded for beef and veal, up 10.7%, reflecting strong overseas demand for Australian red meat.

The ending of rebates saw electricity prices rise 26%, reversing previous sharp declines. The cost of child care was up 11.3%. The prices of some food items, such as pork, poultry, seafoods and cheese, were little changed over the year. So were prices of furniture and pharmaceuticals. But very few goods and services showed significant price falls.

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The Reserve Bank’s preferred indicator for the underlying trend in inflation is the “trimmed mean”, which takes out items with the most extreme price changes. This measure was 3.4% in the December quarter, up from 3.0% in the September quarter.

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This is significantly above the top of the target range and almost 1% above the mid-point of the range, which is where the central bank would like to see inflation. It is also above the RBA’s most recently published forecast.

This measure of underlying inflation initially dropped rapidly from its 6.8% peak at end of 2022, once the Reserve Bank started raising interest rates. Progress in returning to the target range, unsurprisingly, slowed going into 2025. But inflation has now risen again.

The International Monetary Fund recently warned Australia is “projected to see some drawn-out persistence in above-target inflation”.

But another international body, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, was more optimistic, commenting “if, as expected, inflation turns back down during 2026, there may be some space for further easing” in interest rates.

The more volatile monthly series

As well as the long-running quarterly series, the Bureau of Statistics has recently published monthly data. The December 2025 data is only the third complete monthly CPI issued.

Previously, the monthly update was called an “indicator” because it covered fewer goods and services than the long-running quarterly CPI report.

But the complete monthly CPI is not only new, it is also more volatile than the long-running quarterly series. So this increase in reported inflation needs to be interpreted with care.

As you can see from the chart above there have been periods such as August–September 2023 when the monthly measure briefly spiked up but inflation was still on a downward trajectory. So the annual increase of 3.8% in December may be exaggerating the problem.

Why the latest jobs data matters too

The recent jobs data showed a very healthy labour market. About 65,000 more people were employed in December than November. The unemployment rate dropped from 4.3% to 4.1%.

Low unemployment is a good thing. Indeed, full employment is explicitly an objective of the Reserve Bank.

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Read more:
Reserve Bank says unemployment rise was not a shock, inflation on track

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The RBA would only be concerned about lower unemployment if they thought the labour market was overheating and causing inflationary pressures. Wages growth has been 3.5% or less for the past year. The RBA’s latest forecast is for it to slow to 3%. If labour productivity can grow close to 1%, as the bank expects, that would be consistent with inflation around the middle of the RBA’s 2–3% target range.

Nor is the latest annual growth in the economy, around 2%, indicating an economy that is overheating.

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Read more:
Australian economic growth is solid but not spectacular. Rate cuts are off the table

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What it all means for interest rates

The increase to 3.4% in the RBA’s preferred measure of underlying inflation means the bank will seriously consider lifting its key interest rate, the “cash rate”.

This would be an unusually rapid turnaround after the recent interest rate cuts. Generally, the RBA will hold rates steady for a longer time – perhaps a year or so – before reversing course.

The Reserve Bank would want to be sure there has truly been a sustained increase in the inflationary pressures in the economy, or that they had earlier been underestimating them.

The central bank would want to avoid a situation where, after cutting rates last August, it raised them again in February – then had to cut again soon after if the economy slowed again.

John Hawkins formerly worked as a senior economist at the Reserve Bank.

– ref. Australian inflation jumps, adding to chances of an RBA interest rate hike – https://theconversation.com/australian-inflation-jumps-adding-to-chances-of-an-rba-interest-rate-hike-274195

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/australian-inflation-jumps-adding-to-chances-of-an-rba-interest-rate-hike-274195/

Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. –

Feckless European leaders like Starmer let Israel and the US tear up international law in Gaza. Now, faced with Greenland and Ukraine, they are suffering from a severe case of buyer’s regret.

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

US President Donald Trump has declared the three-month “ceasefire” in Gaza a great success, and now wants to move on to phase two of his so-called “peace plan”.

What does success look like? Israeli soldiers have killed more than 460 Palestinians since October, including at least 100 children.

Israel has levelled another 2500 buildings, the last of the few that were still standing.

And amid a continuing humanitarian catastrophe engineered by Israel through its blockade of food, water, medicines and shelter, at least eight babies are known to have frozen to death as winter temperatures plummet.

Marking the transition to the new phase, Trump announced earlier this month a “Board of Peace” to determine the enclave’s future.

“Peace” here is being used in exactly the same Orwellian sense as “ceasefire”. This is not about ending Gaza’s suffering. It is about creating Big Brother-style narrative control, selling as “peace” the final eradication of Palestinian life in Gaza.

The narrative spin is that, once Hamas is disarmed, the board will take on the job of Gaza’s reconstruction.

Implicit assumption
The implicit assumption is that life will gradually return to normal for the survivors of the two-year genocide Israel has carried out — though no Western leader is acknowledging it as a genocide, or cares to find out how many Palestinians have actually been killed in the onslaught.

But, as we shall see, peace is definitely not what the board is aiming to achieve. This is a cynical exercise in smoke and mirrors.

The term “board” hints not only at Trump’s preference for the language of business over politics. It alludes too to the business opportunities he intends to make from Gaza’s “transformation”.

His plan is to strip the United Nations — and thereby the international community — of any oversight of Gaza’s fate.

We are back to the time of viceroys. Colonialism is again out and proud.

Trump’s “Board of Peace” has much grander ambitions than simply managing Gaza’s takeover. In fact, the enclave and its future is not even mentioned in the board’s so-called “charter” sent out to national capitals.

In a leaked invitation to the president of Argentina, Trump referred to the board as a “bold new approach to resolving global conflicts”.

‘Results-orientated’
The charter says it will be “results-orientated” and have the “the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed”.

Some of us have long warned that Israel and the US view the Palestinians as lab rats, both for testing weapons and surveillance technologies and for changing the norms developed after the Second World War to safeguard against the return of fascist, militaristic and expansionist ideologies.

The critical legal and humanitarian architecture put in place in the post-war era included the UN and its various institutions, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Israel and the US stress-tested this system to destruction from the very start of the two-year genocide in Gaza, as Israel carpet-bombed the enclave’s homes, schools, hospitals, government buildings and bakeries.

Trump’s second presidency has pushed this agenda into overdrive.

Only this month the White House announced that the US was pulling out of 66 global organisations and treaties — some half of them affiliated with the UN.

Meanwhile, the judges and prosecutors of the ICC have been under draconian US sanctions for issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant. The ICJ, which is investigating Israel for genocide, appears to have been cowed into silence.

Dysfunctional world order
Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and his imminent seizure of Greenland are evidence enough that the already dysfunctional, international “rules-based order” is now in tatters. Both the UN and Nato, the West’s so-called “defence” alliance, are on the ropes.

The US president hopes his “Board of Peace” will deliver the knockout blow, supplanting the UN and the system of international law it is there to uphold.

The reconstruction of Gaza may be its first task, but Trump has much larger aspirations.

The board stands at the heart of a new world order being shaped in Trump’s image. Billionaires and their hangers-on will openly decide the fate of weak nations, based on the power elite’s naked, predatory instincts to make money.

In a petulant letter sent to Norway’s prime minister, Trump advised that, after being passed over for the Nobel peace prize: “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.” What in that case, one might wonder, is the point of a “Board of Peace”?

The answer is that Orwell’s moment is truly upon us: “War is peace.”

Trump, of course, has sat himself atop this new imperial business venture, an updated East India Company — the gargantuan, militarised corporation licensed by England’s Queen Elizabeth I that went on to pillage much of the globe for more than two centuries, spreading death and misery in its wake.

Trump’s lone veto
As chairman, Trump hand-picks the other members — he is reported to have sent out invitations to some 60 national leaders. He can terminate their participation whenever he sees fit. He decides when the board sits and what it discusses. He alone has a veto.

His term as chair, it seems, may extend even beyond his time as US president.

Members are granted a three-year term. A permanent seat at Trump’s new alternative to the UN Security Council can be bought for $1 billion in “cash funds”.

Hungary’s far-right leader Viktor Orban was among the first out of the blocks. He was joined by Netanyahu. Other early participants include the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Belarus and Argentina.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin is reported to be considering a place at the top table.

The significance of this is not lost on the diplomatic community. One told Reuters: “It’s a ‘Trump United Nations’ that ignores the fundamentals of the UN charter.”

Similarly, in a desperate attempt to hold the line, the French Foreign Ministry issued a forlorn statement that “reiterates [France’s] attachment to the United Nations charter”.

White House shredder
But the founding UN document, with its formal commitments to non-aggression, self-determination, multilateral obligations and the protection of human rights, has been put through the White House shredder.

Gangsters have no time for rules.

For decades, Israel has been dreaming of this moment: of taking a wrecking ball to the UN and its legal and humanitarian institutions.

With a record number of UN resolutions against it, Israel believes the world body has too often limited its room for manoeuvre. Now it will hope Trump frees it to finish its long-cherished plan of eradicating the Palestinian people from their homeland.

As if in celebration, Israeli bulldozers swept into occupied East Jerusalem to demolish the buildings of Unrwa, the UN refugee agency that has served as the main aid lifeline for Gaza’s people.

Unrwa called Israel’s action an “unprecedented attack” and one that “constitutes a serious violation of international law and the privileges and immunities of the United Nations”.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the “Board of Peace” to raise any objections.

Sidelining of UN
Trump’s sidelining of the UN means its assessments of the realities facing Gaza, after Israel’s two-year campaign of genocidal destruction, can be quietly shunted into the shadows.

Trump has set a five-year timeline for Gaza’s transition. But the figures simply don’t add up.

The world body has warned that, even if Israel stops its blockade tomorrow, it will take decades to reconstruct Gaza, effectively from scratch, to house those of its 2.1 million inhabitants who survive.

According to estimates from the UN Development Programme, on the best-case scenario it could take seven years to clear some 60 million tonnes of rubble. Other surveys by the UN suggest a more realistic timetable of 20 years, with 10 years to clear unexploded ordnance.

The UN’s trade and development arm further warns that Israel has erased 70 years of human development in Gaza, and destroyed nearly 90 percent of cropland, leading to “the worst economic collapse ever recorded”.

Gaza’s schools, universities, hospitals, libraries and government offices are all gone. And Israel’s so-called “Yellow Line” that divides Gaza into two has annexed in all but name almost 60 percent of what was already a tiny territory, one of the most densely populated on the planet.

The fact is that these enormous hurdles to restoring life in Gaza to anything approximating “modernity” barely register in Trump’s peace plan. There is a good reason for that: strip away the fanfare and the plan has nothing substantive to say about the welfare of Gaza’s population.

Gaza’s population ignored
Or to put it more bluntly, Trump’s Gaza’s plan is not interested in Gaza’s population because it does not envision them being present in the enclave for much longer.

Israel’s barely veiled goal over the past two years has been the wholesale ethnic cleansing of Gaza. The carpet bombing was intended to make the territory entirely uninhabitable.

Trump’s plan does not conflict with that ambition. It complements it. His “Board of Peace” is the means to arrive at the final destination willed by Israel.

The first practical function of the “Board of Peace” will be to entrench the complicity of Western and Arab states in Israel’s eradication of Gaza. None can wriggle out of their responsibility for what follows.

Real decision-making powers, however, will reside not in the Board but in an executive body comprising seven figures close to Trump. The “Board of Peace” will presumably be expected to sign off on — and fund — whatever they decide.

This “Founding Executive Board”, like the “Board of Peace”, will have no Palestinian representatives.

Instead, Palestinians will be present only on a technocratic, dogsbody committee, called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. It will oversee the administration of day-to-day affairs in the so-called Red Zone, where Gaza’s people are penned up, in place of Hamas.

Revamped UN peacekeeping force
Finally an “International Stabilisation Force”, a revamped UN peacekeeping force, will be led by a US major-general, and presumably partner closely with Israel’s genocidal army.

Even assuming that Trump has the Palestinians’ welfare at heart — he doesn’t — no progress can be made by any of these bodies until Israel gives its approval.

In the meantime, their role will be to provide a veneer of legitimacy for further inaction, while more of Gaza’s survivors die from the Stone Age conditions engineered for them by Israel.

Note well the three real power brokers appointed to the “Founding Executive Board”: Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and Tony Blair. Gaza’s fate is effectively in their hands.

It was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and scion of a real estate business family, who way back in February 2024 — long before Trump took office — framed Israel’s genocide in Gaza as “a real-estate dispute”.

It was then that Kushner first publicly floated the idea of developing the enclave into a “very valuable” waterfront property, once it had been “cleaned up”.

Steve Witkoff, a New York real estate mogul and Trump’s special envoy, has spent long months with Kushner — as Israel has been busy clearing out Old Gaza — working on a 40-page prospectus for their proposed New Gaza.

Kushner’s panic
In October, on the US TV news show 60 Minutes, panic was etched on Kushner’s face as Witkoff observed that the pair had been working on a “masterplan” for Gaza’s reconstruction for two years — long before Gaza was levelled by the Israeli military.

He added: “Jared has been pushing this.”

Witkoff’s slip suggested Trump’s team had known from the outset of Israel’s bombing campaign that the intention was to eradicate the whole of Gaza rather than just Hamas. They therefore began working on a business plan to cash in on the carnage.

Through a so-called GREAT Trust — an oh-so-clever acronym for Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation — they have reimagined the enclave as a glitzy seaside resort and a tech hub generating billions of dollars in annual revenue.

A surreal video Trump posted on social media nearly a year ago gave an early idea of what the pair may have in mind. It showed the US president and Netanyahu sipping cocktails on sun loungers in their swimwear amid high rises on Gaza’s ethnically cleansed beachfront.

Gaza’s population — impoverished and malnourished by decades of isolation and blockade, even before the genocide — is viewed as an obstacle to the plan’s realisation.

The enclave’s Palestinians must first be resettled elsewhere, on terms that are as yet unclear, seemingly even to the plan’s formulators.

Misleading Tony Blair
Also popping up on the Executive Board, like a bad penny, is Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who misled Parliament and the public to make the case for joining President George W Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

A subsequent, long, violent US-led occupation resulted in the collapse of Iraqi society, a vicious sectarian civil war, the development of an extensive US torture programme, and the deaths of more than a million Iraqis.

Those seem like exactly the kind of qualifications Trump needs from someone overseeing his Gaza plan.

His administration is therefore selling Blair as a safe pair of hands, a statesman apparently well-acquainted with navigating the yawning gap between the imperious demands of Israel and the forlorn hopes of the Palestinian leadership.

Blair’s skill set, we are assured, will be critically important as the board turns its attention to rebuilding Gaza.

In fact, the last person Gaza needs is Blair, as he proved during his disastrous eight-year stint as special envoy to the Middle East, shoe-horned in by the US in 2007 on behalf of a little-missed, defunct international body known as the Quartet.

At the time, most observers mistakenly assumed Blair’s mandate would be to revive a moribund “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians.

Diplomatic pressure avoided
But Blair avoided bringing any diplomatic pressure to bear on Israel and remained silent about what was then a newly instituted blockade of Gaza in 2007 that rapidly eviscerated its economy and left much of its population destitute and poorly fed.

One of his key battles as envoy was lobbying Israel — over the Palestinians’ heads — to let a British-led consortium drill for natural gas in Gaza’s territorial waters, where large reserves are known to exist.

According to reports, he sought to entice Israel into approving a $6 billion deal by promising that the pipeline would head directly to Israel’s port of Ashkelon. Israel would be the only customer permitted to buy the Palestinians’ gas and could therefore dictate the price.

Israel, preferring to maintain its chokehold on Gaza’s people, refused.

Blair claimed he promoted the Gaza gas project at the behest of the Palestinians. But even the supine Palestinian leadership of the Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank, had no love for him.

In 2011, Nabil Shaath, then one of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ most trusted advisers, observed of Blair: “Lately, he talks like an Israeli diplomat, selling their policies. Therefore he is useless to us.”

Another official called him “an obstacle to the realisation of Palestinian statehood”.

No interest in Palestinians
Like Blair, Trump has no interest in the Palestinians ever benefiting from their own resources. But doubtless he will be keen to leverage the former UK prime minister’s “experience” as envoy to assist in plundering its gas fields.

The centrality of Israel to Blair’s moral worldview was underscored in a comment by him in 2011 about the Arab Spring, in which peoples across the Middle East tried to liberate themselves from the toxic grip of tyrants. The former British prime minister chiefly saw these democratic uprisings as likely to “pose a problem for Israel”.

Blair has denied any personal dealings with Kushner and Witkoff’s Gaza Riviera plan — now sometimes referred to as the Sunshine Project — of luxury beachfront resorts and a “smart manufacturing zone” named for billionaire Elon Musk.

But a version leaked last July suggests his fingerprints are all over the plan, including a proposed “voluntary relocation” scheme to buy out Palestinian landowners with minor sums to leave Gaza.

It emerged that two key members of his think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, had been liaising behind the scenes with Israeli businessmen and the Boston Consulting Group on the project.

A statement from the institute welcomed Blair’s role on Trump’s Executive Board, noting: “For Gaza and its people, we want a Gaza which does not reconstruct Gaza as it was but as it could and should be.”

It is hard to believe that Blair’s “should” connotes anything other than Israel’s dream of a Palestinian-free Gaza and Trump’s vision of Gaza as a playground for the rich.

Trumpian world template
The template for a new Trumpian world order is being crafted in Gaza. The US president’s road to the takeover of Venezuela and Greenland is being paved in this tiny Palestinian territory.

Feckless European leaders, like Britain’s Keir Starmer, who helped arm Israel and provided it with diplomatic cover as it levelled the enclave, were the ones who emboldened Trump.

Those now trying to assert the primacy of international law and the “rules-based world order” — whether in Greenland or Ukraine — were the ones who helped Washington destroy that order. They are now suffering from a severe case of buyer’s regret.

They could still stymie Trump’s latest, sinister vanity project by refusing to join the “Board of Peace” and instead defend the United Nations and its legal institutions like the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

Will they do so? Don’t bet on it.

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. Republished from the author’s blog with permission. This article was first published by Middle East Eye.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/jonathan-cook-trumps-board-of-peace-is-the-nail-in-gazas-coffin/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Conley Tyler, Honorary Fellow, Asia Institute, The University of Melbourne

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is in Timor-Leste today, making his first official visit.

Known in English as East Timor, Timor-Leste is one of Australia’s closest neighbours.

The countries have shared interests in everything from fishing to biosecurity.

Australia’s foreign policy has consistently identified Timor-Leste as a country of “fundamental importance”.

It’s in Australia’s interests that Timor-Leste is successful and stable.

Challenges in Timor-Leste

Timor-Leste faces significant challenges.

Despite being about 700 kilometres from Darwin, the United Nations considers it one of the world’s least developed countries. Its per person GDP is $1,502, compared to Australia’s $64,604.

In many ways, the period since Timor-Leste gained independence in 2002 is the first opportunity its people have had to shape their destiny.

Timor-Leste endured centuries as a Portuguese colony before political turmoil in Portugal caused it to drop its colonies in 1975.

Then, a declaration of independence was followed by annexation and 24 years of occupation by Indonesia.

Now it is full of hope as a new democratic nation with a rapidly growing youth population.

But it needs support. One in two children under five are stunted – not getting enough nutrition to grow in their early years – which will have lifetime effects on their health, education and productivity.

Encouragingly, a recent external review of Australia’s development cooperation program shows evidence that long-term partnerships are paying off, with local civil society organisations in Timor-Leste steadily strengthening their capacity over time.

Why visit now?

Timor-Leste is right in the middle of what President José Ramos Horta describes as “a crucial period for the future of our nation”.

Revenue from oil and gas fields has dried up. Past profits were saved in a petroleum fund, but that may soon be depleted.

Timor-Leste’s economy is not growing fast enough to create youth jobs.

However, Timor-Leste has just joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) after a long process, with hopes it will open up economic opportunities.

When I visited last year, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was in town talking up the potential of trade links.

Australia also needs to prepare for eventual political change in Timor-Leste.

Until now, top political posts have been held by those who fought for independence. At some point there will be a generational transfer of power.

There was some political unrest last year in the form of student protests against politicians perceived to be granting themselves perks.

Australia does not want democratic regression or a failed state on its doorstep.

What’s on the agenda?

Not much information has been released ahead of Albanese’s visit.

We know the prime minister will be meeting with Ramos Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão.

He will be addressing parliament, which he describes as an honour.

The fact Albanese will be receiving Timor-Leste’s highest civilian award suggests the mood will be positive.

The biggest news would be if there are any further developments on the Greater Sunrise gas field, located in the Timor Sea, about 450km northwest of Darwin.

This A$50 billion project has not yet been developed due to disagreement over whether processing would take place in Darwin or Dili, Timor-Leste’s capital.

It is not expected to be a focus of the visit.

Other big news would be an enhanced security treaty.

Given concerns about China’s security cooperation with countries in the region, Australia has signed significant security agreements in the past year with Tuvalu, Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.

But the prime minister has been at pains to stress this visit is not about China.

More likely it could be celebrating and expanding things that are going well. One example is the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme which enables Timorese workers to come to Australia to develop skills and earn money.

Another is the New Colombo Plan which supports young Australians to study and immerse themselves in the region. This has just been extended to Timor-Leste in 2026.

It may be there is nothing new from the visit, just a clear statement of how seriously Australia takes the relationship with Timor-Leste.

It may be as simple – and as important – as that.

Beyond government

The Timor Leste-Australia relationship has a lot of buy-in beyond the federal government.

Across Australia, there are friendship groups that raise funds for schools in Timor-Leste or sell Timorese coffee through local councils.

I’ve met Australians who came to Timor-Leste as students and are still there.

A great example is the MP for Darwin, Luke Gosling, who will be accompanying the prime minister on the visit.

After his Army service in the peacekeeping mission that led to Timor-Leste’s independence, he established a volunteer charity to build schools, provide running water and deliver maternal health care.

It’s important to keep these sorts of initiatives going and to extend them. The needs in Timor-Leste are so great that individual Australians can have a huge impact.

Surprisingly, given the complicated history between the two countries, most Timorese seem to have a real sense of friendship with Australia.

Having a neighbour that is stable, prosperous and friendly is something that is well worth our prime minister’s time.

Melissa Conley Tyler is executive director at the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D), an initiative funded by the foreign affairs and defence portfolios and hosted by the Australian Council for International Development.

– ref. Plenty on the agenda as Anthony Albanese heads to Timor-Leste as PM for the first time – https://theconversation.com/plenty-on-the-agenda-as-anthony-albanese-heads-to-timor-leste-as-pm-for-the-first-time-274023

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/plenty-on-the-agenda-as-anthony-albanese-heads-to-timor-leste-as-pm-for-the-first-time-274023/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martin Brook, Professor of Applied Geology, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

In the days since last week’s fatal landslides at Mount Maunganui, there has been widespread discussion about what may have caused the slopes above the campground to fail, including the possible role of recent tree removal on Mauao.

In the aftermath of such tragedy, it is natural to search for clear explanations. But landslides typically reflect a complex combination of factors – from geology and long-term slope evolution to weather, climate and land use.

A landscape prone to failure

The Tauranga region is underlain by volcanic materials that are well known for their instability. Over time, volcanic rock weathers into clay-rich soils, including a problematic mineral known as halloysite.

During heavy rainfall, water infiltrates these clay-rich soils, increasing porewater pressure between soil particles. This reduces the soil’s shear strength, making slopes more prone to failure.

Similar processes have driven devastating landslides elsewhere: dozens of people were killed in rainfall-triggered landslides in Indonesia’s West Java region just days ago, on comparable volcanic clay soils.

Recognising this risk, Tauranga City Council commissioned landslide susceptibility mapping following the extreme weather events of 2023. These datasets allow the public to view landslide-prone areas and “relic slips” – ancient landslides that still leave visible imprints on the landscape.

Importantly, they indicate where land has failed in the past – and remains potentially vulnerable during intense rainfall or after land-use changes.

While most of the Tauranga district is comprehensively covered by these mapping tools, there is one notable omission: the area west of Adam’s Avenue, where Mauao and the campground are located. Landslide hazard layers for this zone are absent from public web portals, despite Mauao being particularly landslide-prone.

Historical aerial imagery dating back to 1943 reveals dozens of landslides on Mauao’s slopes. Some of the most significant occurred during Cyclone Wilma in January 2011, when 108mm of rain fell in 24 hours.

A detailed University of Auckland study identified at least 80 landslides from that single storm, including debris avalanches extending up to 120 metres downslope. Some of these failures have partially reactivated since, following later heavy rainfall.

Trees, slopes and stability

In addition to these historic events, older “paleo-landslides” exist on Mauao, including two on slopes above the campground. It was from this general zone that the January 22 landslide appears to have initiated – and much online discussion has also centred on tree removal within it.

Some media reports have pointed to vegetation clearance during 2022–23, but historical imagery suggests removal in this specific area likely occurred earlier, around 2018–19. More broadly, vegetation cover above the campground has declined gradually since the mid-20th century.

However, the relationship between vegetation and landsliding on Mauao is not straightforward. During Cyclone Wilma, major landslides occurred across both densely vegetated slopes and grass-covered areas.

Trees typically enhance slope stability in two main ways: their canopy intercepts rainfall, slowing water infiltration, and their roots reinforce soil strength. This is why widespread landsliding associated with forestry harvesting – particularly radiata pine – has long been a serious problem in parts of New Zealand.

But trees can also contribute to slope failure under certain conditions. Large leafy trees can act like sails during extreme winds, transmitting powerful forces into saturated soils.

After the 2023 Auckland Anniversary storm, research showed wind loading likely initiated some landslides on the slopes of Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill, as trees were rocked back and forth until they uprooted, dragging soil downslope.

As well, when trees grow near the tops of steep slopes, their weight – known as “surcharge” – can increase destabilising forces. In some clay soils, this effect may exceed the stabilising benefit of root reinforcement. Tree roots can also promote long-term weathering by growing into fractures in underlying rock.

All of this means vegetation is only one factor among many.

Why simple explanations fall short

Landslides in New Zealand’s hilly terrain typically result from a combination of preconditioning factors, many of which are influenced by human activity.

These can include reshaping slopes to create building platforms, cutting into slope toes for roads or structures, loading slopes with buildings, redirecting stormwater onto vulnerable terrain, and constructing poorly designed retaining walls that trap water within slopes.

While some trees were certainly removed from the broader source area of last week’s landslide, their role in destabilising the slope remains uncertain.

The slope had already experienced multiple historical failures, was underlain by volcanic clays and was subjected to intense rainfall – conditions that together are well known to trigger landsliding.

There is still much we do not yet know about the precise mechanisms that caused last week’s failures on Mauao. That is precisely why independent investigations and technical reviews are so important.

Martin Brook receives funding from the Natural Hazards Commission.

– ref. Do trees prevent landslides? What science says about roots, rainfall and stability – https://theconversation.com/do-trees-prevent-landslides-what-science-says-about-roots-rainfall-and-stability-274518

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/do-trees-prevent-landslides-what-science-says-about-roots-rainfall-and-stability-274518/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Pawson, Emeritus Professor of Housing, UNSW Sydney

The European Commission recently released its first-ever Affordable Housing Plan.

Property prices have outpaced incomes across Europe over the past decade. Home ownership has been pushed out of reach for many.

But for economically successful cities and tourist regions, price and rent trends have been even more stark. For example, the commission reports that “in cities and regions in high demand, even one third of average income is often not sufficient to pay the rent on a 25 square metre apartment”.

The commission’s plan, therefore, is mainly a response to the growing worries about the socially destructive effects of failing housing systems.

Equally concerning, though, is the economic damage wreaked by housing affordability stress. The commission sees this as “impairing labour and educational mobility, weighing on economic growth, innovation, and competitiveness”. It’s a highly pertinent assessment for Australia.

So what does the European plan suggest, and what lessons does it hold for Australia?

Tackling housing unaffordability

As in Australia, the commission’s top prescription for enhanced housing affordability is ramped-up home building. Here, it’s estimated that EU-wide industry output needs to rise by 40% to match current demand.

This is in the same ballpark as the Australian government’s five-year aspiration to enable the construction of 1.2 million new homes from 2025. That’s a 33% increase over the 2005–25 norm.

As desirable as such an objective may be, the scope for significantly enhancing affordability in this way remains questionable. It’s particularly doubtful in light of recently published Australian modelling on the relationship between house building and house prices.

This analysis suggests that, without complementary policies, generating even a very modest affordability improvement would be challenging. It would require housing industry output to be boosted by a third, not just for five years, but consistently for two decades.

Wisely, though, the commission’s plan recognises many complementary efforts are also needed. These include “maximising the efficient use of the existing building stock”. In other words, policymaker attention to expanding new housing production is illogical without a parallel emphasis on reducing the large numbers of vacant and under-used homes nowadays present in many countries.

With one million Australian dwellings unoccupied on census night in 2021 and another million owner-occupied properties grossly underutilised, this point resonates here, too.

Fundamental land tax reform, widely supported by economists and other housing experts, is the most obvious solution in Australia, just as in other countries.

The role of other property tax settings

Similarly highlighted as problematic by the European Commission is how “increased financialisation and speculation” is putting further pressure on housing affordability.

In response, EU member states are encouraged to implement measures including “effective taxation policies” and “[assigning] a set share of new housing developments to social and affordable housing, reflecting local housing needs”.

If transposed to the Australian setting, these messages would reinforce growing calls for winding back private landlord tax concessions.

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The European Commission recommendations also align with Australian calls to expand affordable housing contribution requirements. That is, developer obligations to include below-market rental units within market-rate housing projects in pricey areas.

Not only does this effectively source housing subsidy from land value, it can also help to ensure a degree of social mix in areas otherwise dominated by higher income populations.

The plan also addresses the need for improved energy efficiency and building quality to lower living costs. These important housing policy issues are largely neglected in Australia.

More social and affordable rentals

The European Commission’s advocacy on housing for low-income groups rejects any suggestion that stepped-up market house building (if achieved) can be solely relied upon to “naturally” address such needs.

This idea, termed “market filtering”, is the process sometimes described as “trickle-down housing”.

Rather, the plan contends that “expanding social and affordable housing is particularly important to support low- and middle-income households”.

To facilitate this, restrictive state aid rules are to be relaxed to encourage more affordable housing investment.

This measure has no direct Australian parallel. But the commission’s stance here chimes with the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council view. It says “significant investment is needed to increase [Australia’s] stock of social and affordable housing”.

Spending has been recently stepped up by both federal and state governments in Australia, but current commitments remain insufficient in both scale and duration.

The importance of ambition

The EU plan, of course, has limitations.

Its problem analysis is stronger than its pledged responses. Consistent with EU traditions, these lean heavily towards market-enabling measures rather than active interventions.

And the union’s powers over member states in areas such as property tax and land use planning are very limited.

But perhaps the plan’s greatest significance to nations beyond the EU is simply its existence and ambition.

Here in Australia, federal Labor pledged in 2022 to produce a long-term housing and homelessness strategy during the last parliament. Regrettably, this commitment remains unfulfilled.

There is an echo of the EU’s constrained position in the Commonwealth’s limited authority over state and territory governments on housing.

But, unlike Brussels, Canberra controls key housing-related policy levers on taxation, financial regulation and social security. The federal government also has financial firepower vastly superior to the states.

Other countries show it can be done. Most notably, in developing its own National Housing Strategy in 2017, federal Canada has provided an instructive model for federal Australia.

Though recent Australian housing policy innovations have been both many in number and generally positive in nature, they remain piecemeal and patchy. There is no coherent road map for the deeper reforms needed for transformative change.

Given the inherent complexity of housing, this is an especially challenging policy domain. As argued in our new book, therefore, a purposeful housing reform agenda demands a long-term, federally-led national housing mission and strategy, underpinned in legislation.

Hal Pawson receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), from the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Fund (City of Melbourne), and from Crisis UK. As an unpaid advisor, he is affiliated with Senator David Pocock. He is a non-exec director of Community Housing Canberra.

Vivienne Milligan receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. She is a committee member of the Australian Community Land Trust Network.

– ref. What can Australia learn from Europe’s housing plan? – https://theconversation.com/what-can-australia-learn-from-europes-housing-plan-272999

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/what-can-australia-learn-from-europes-housing-plan-272999/

ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on January 28, 2026.

What can Australia learn from Europe’s housing plan?
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Pawson, Emeritus Professor of Housing, UNSW Sydney Liene Ratniece/Pexels, CC BY-SA The European Commission recently released its first-ever Affordable Housing Plan. Property prices have outpaced incomes across Europe over the past decade. Home ownership has been pushed out of reach for many. But for economically successful

Pacific delegates warn against US fast-tracking seabed mining
By Mark Rabago, RNZ Pacific Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas correspondent Pacific delegates in the United States Congress are warning efforts to fast-track deep-seabed mining could sideline island communities and cause irreversible damage to fragile ocean ecosystems. The concerns were raised at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing in Washington last week, held a day

Great white sharks grow a whole new kind of tooth for slicing bone as they age
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Hunt, PhD Candidate, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney Ken Bondy/iNaturalist, CC BY-NC A great white shark is a masterwork of evolutionary engineering. These beautiful predators glide effortlessly through the water, each slow, deliberate sweep of the powerful tail driving a body specialised

New fear unlocked: runaway black holes
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Blair, Emeritus Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, OzGrav, The University of Western Australia A runaway black hole leaving a streak of new stars in its wake. James Webb Space Telescope / van Dokkum et al. Last year, astronomers were fascinated by a

Should I take a fish oil supplement for my heart, joints or mood?
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary Bushell, Clinical Associate Professor in Pharmacy, University of Canberra Fish oil, also known as omega-3, is one of the most popular dietary supplements. It’s often promoted to protect the heart, boost mood, reduce inflammation and support overall health. But how much of this is backed by

Swap muesli bars for homemade popcorn: 5 ways to pack a lower-waste lunch box
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neha Lalchandani, Research Fellow, Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition, Deakin University, Deakin University Antoni Shkraba Studio/ Pexels If you pack school lunchboxes for your children, you’ll know it can sometimes feel like a real slog. It needs to be easy to prepare, nutritious and something

A new company tax mix has been proposed. We need to be careful how we assess it
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janine Dixon, Director, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University Steven Wei/Unsplash Australia has a problem. Across the economy, business investment has been sluggish for the past decade, leaving policymakers reaching for solutions. Weak business investment can leave the economy stuck in low gear, operating without enough equipment

Rocket or arugula? How a salad vegetable mapped the Italian diaspora
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt Absalom, Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies, The University of Melbourne sheri silver/Unsplash If you watch American cooking shows, you’ve likely experienced “salad confusion”. You see a chef preparing what looks like rocket, but they call it arugula. It’s the same plant (Eruca sativa). It has the

NZ’s sodden January explained: what’s driven this month’s big wet?
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Renwick, Professor of Physical Geography (Climate Science), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images It has been a month of umbrellas rather than sunscreen across much of New Zealand, with persistent rain, low sunshine and deadly storms dominating headlines and daily life.

In Gaza, university scholarships are now a matter of survival
By Haya Ahmed In Gaza today, university scholarships have taken on a whole new meaning. No longer are they a step towards self-development, educational attainment or an academic experience in a different country. For a whole generation of Gazan students, a foreign university scholarship has become a lifeline and one of the few remaining legal

View from The Hill: Dysfunctional federal opposition is in gridlock
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra A week out from the resumption of parliament, the federal opposition is in a state of paralysis. The Liberals have a full-blown leadership crisis. A majority of the party believe Sussan Ley can’t survive for long. But leadership contenders Angus

Where did southern Australia’s record-breaking heatwave come from?
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steve Turton, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Geography, CQUniversity Australia Kevin Chen/Pexels, CC BY-NC-ND Millions of people in southeastern Australia are sweating through a record-breaking heatwave. The heat this week is likely to be one for the history books. The heat began on Saturday January 24th. On Australia

Red flowers have a ‘magic trait’ to attract birds and keep bees away
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Dyer, Associate Professor, Department of Physiology, Monash University Joshua J. Cotten For flowering plants, reproduction is a question of the birds and the bees. Attracting the right pollinator can be a matter of survival – and new research shows how flowers do it is more intriguing

5 years on from the junta’s coup, Myanmar’s flawed elections can’t unite a country at risk of breaking apart
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Simpson, Senior Lecturer in International Studies in the School of Society and Culture, Adelaide University Five years ago, on February 1 2021, Myanmar’s top generals decapitated the elected government. Democratic leaders were arrested, pushed underground or forced into exile. Since then, the economy has spluttered and

Jakarta at crossroads – can President Prabowo connect with Papuan hearts?
ANALYSIS: By Laurens Ikinia in Jakarta The logbook of presidential flights in Indonesia reveals an unusual pattern — from the Merdeka Palace to the Land of the Bird of Paradise. By 2023, then President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo had set foot in Papua at least 17 times — a record in the republic’s history, surpassing the

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/er-report-a-roundup-of-significant-articles-on-eveningreport-nz-for-january-28-2026/

By Mark Rabago, RNZ Pacific Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas correspondent

Pacific delegates in the United States Congress are warning efforts to fast-track deep-seabed mining could sideline island communities and cause irreversible damage to fragile ocean ecosystems.

The concerns were raised at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing in Washington last week, held a day after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) finalised new rules streamlining permits for seabed mining.

The changes allow companies to apply for exploration and potential commercial recovery through a single process, replacing regulations dating back to the 1980s.

NOAA says the update reflects advances in deep-sea science and technology and does not weaken environmental safeguards.

But Guam Delegate James Moylan said decisions made in Washington had real and lasting consequences in the Pacific.

“The ocean is how we live. It feeds our families, holds our history, and connects our people to generations before us,” Moylan said.

American Samoa Delegate Aumua Amata Radewagen warned seabed mining could threaten fisheries, which she described as the lifeblood of island economies.

Northern Marianas Delegate Kimberlyn King-Hinds said Pacific territories “don’t get the luxury of being wrong” on ocean policy, warning that damage to the seabed would be permanent.

Industry representatives told lawmakers the streamlined process would provide certainty without weakening environmental reviews, while scientists warned deep-sea ecosystems could take decades to recover, if at all.

For Pacific delegates, the message was clear — faster permitting must not come at the expense of island voices or ocean protection.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/pacific-delegates-warn-against-us-fast-tracking-seabed-mining/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Blair, Emeritus Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, OzGrav, The University of Western Australia

Last year, astronomers were fascinated by a runaway asteroid passing through our Solar System from somewhere far beyond. It was moving at around 68 kilometres per second, just over double Earth’s speed around the Sun.

Imagine if it had been something much bigger and faster: a black hole travelling at more like 3,000km per second. We wouldn’t see it coming until its intense gravitational forces started knocking around the orbits of the outer planets.

This may sound a bit ridiculous – but in the past year several lines of evidence have come together to show such a visitor is not impossible. Astronomers have seen clear signs of runaway supermassive black holes tearing through other galaxies, and have uncovered evidence that smaller, undetectable runaways are probably out there too.

Runaway black holes: the theory

The story begins in the 1960s, when New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution of Einstein’s general relativity equations that described spinning black holes. This led to two crucial discoveries about black holes.

First, the “no-hair theorem”, which tells us black holes can be distinguished only by three properties: their mass, their spin and their electric charge.

For the second we need to think about Einstein’s famous formula E = mc ² which says that energy has mass. In the case of a black hole, Kerr’s solution tells us that as much as 29% of a black hole’s mass can be in the form of rotational energy.

English physicist Roger Penrose deduced 50 years ago that this rotational energy of black holes can be released. A spinning black hole is like a battery capable of releasing vast amounts of spin energy.

A black hole can contain about 100 times more extractable energy than a star of the same mass. If a pair of black holes coalesce into one, much of that vast energy can be released in a few seconds.

It took two decades of painstaking supercomputer calculations to understand what happens when two spinning black holes collide and coalesce, creating gravitational waves. Depending on how the black holes are spinning, the gravitational wave energy can be released much more strongly in one direction than others – which sends the black holes shooting like a rocket in the opposite direction.

If the spins of the two colliding black holes are aligned the right way, the final black hole can be rocket-powered to speeds of thousands of kilometres per second.

Learning from real black holes

All that was theory, until the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories began detecting the whoops and chirps of gravitational waves given off by pairs of colliding black holes in 2015.

One of the most exciting discoveries was of black hole “ringdowns”: a tuning fork-like ringing of newly formed black holes that tells us about their spin. The faster they spin, the longer they ring.

Better and better observations of coalescing black holes revealed that some pairs of black holes had randomly oriented spin axes, and that many of them had very large spin energy.

All this suggested runaway black holes were a real possibility. Moving at 1% of light speed, their trajectories through space would not follow the curved orbits of stars in galaxies, but rather would be almost straight.

Runaway black holes spotted in the wild

This brings us to the final step in our sequence: the actual discovery of runaway black holes.

It is difficult to search for relatively small runaway black holes. But a runaway black hole of a million or billion solar masses will create huge disruptions to the stars and gas around it as it travels through a galaxy.

They are predicted to leave contrails of stars in their wake, forming from interstellar gas in the same way contrails of cloud form in the wake of a jet plane. Stars form from collapsing gas and dust attracted to the passing black hole. It’s a process that would last for tens of millions of years as the runaway black hole crosses a galaxy.

In 2025, several papers showed images of surprisingly straight streaks of stars within galaxies such as the image below. These seem to be convincing evidence for runaway black holes.

One paper, led by Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum, describes a very distant galaxy imaged by the James Webb telescope with a surprisingly bright contrail 200,000 light years long. The contrail showed the pressure effects expected from the gravitational compression of gas as a black hole passes: in this case it suggests a black hole with a mass 10 million times the Sun’s, travelling at almost 1,000km/s.

Another describes a long straight contrail cutting across a galaxy called NGC3627. This one is likely caused by a black hole of about 2 million times the mass of the Sun, travelling at 300km/s. Its contrail is about 25,000 light years long.

If these extremely massive runaways exist, so too should their smaller cousins because gravitational wave observations suggest that some of them come together with the opposing spins needed to create powerful kicks. The speeds are easily fast enough for them to travel between galaxies.

So runaway black holes tearing through and between galaxies are a new ingredient of our remarkable universe. It’s not impossible that one could turn up in our Solar System, with potentially catastrophic results.

We should not lose sleep over this discovery. The odds are minuscule. It is just another way that the story of our universe has become a little bit richer and a bit more exciting than it was before.

David Blair receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a member of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery and is director of the Einstein-First education project that is developing a modern physics curriculum for primary and middle school science education.

– ref. New fear unlocked: runaway black holes – https://theconversation.com/new-fear-unlocked-runaway-black-holes-272429

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/new-fear-unlocked-runaway-black-holes-272429/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Hunt, PhD Candidate, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

A great white shark is a masterwork of evolutionary engineering. These beautiful predators glide effortlessly through the water, each slow, deliberate sweep of the powerful tail driving a body specialised for stealth, speed and efficiency. From above, its dark back blends into the deep blue water, while from below its pale belly disappears into the sunlit surface.

In an instant, the calm glide explodes into an attack, accelerating to more than 60 kilometres per hour, the sleek torpedo-like form cutting through the water with little resistance. Then its most iconic feature is revealed: rows of razor-sharp teeth, expertly honed for a life at the top of the food chain.

Scientists have long been fascinated by white shark teeth. Fossilised specimens have been collected for centuries, and the broad serrated tooth structure is easily recognisable in jaws and bite marks of contemporary sharks.

But until now, surprisingly little was known about one of the most fascinating aspects of these immaculately shaped structures: how they change across the jaw and to match the changing demands throughout the animal’s lifetime. Our new research, published in Ecology and Evolution, set out to answer this.

From needle-like teeth to serrated blades

Different shark species have evolved teeth to suit their dietary needs, such as needle-like teeth for grasping slippery squid; broad, flattened molars for crushing shellfish; and serrated blades for slicing flesh and marine mammal blubber.

Shark teeth are also disposable – they are constantly replaced throughout their lives, like a conveyor belt pushing a new tooth forward roughly every few weeks.

White sharks are best known for their large, triangular, serrated teeth, which are ideal for capturing and eating marine mammals like seals, dolphins and whales. But most juveniles don’t start life hunting seals. In fact, they feed mostly on fish and squid, and don’t usually start incorporating mammals into their diet until they are roughly 3 metres long.

This raises a fascinating question: do teeth coming off the conveyor belt change to meet specific challenges of diets at different developmental stages, just as evolution produces teeth to match the diets of different species?

Previous studies tended to focus on a small number of teeth or single life stages. What was missing was a full, jaw-wide view of how tooth shape changes – not just from the upper and lower jaw, but from the front of the mouth to the back, and from juvenile to adult.

Teeth change over a lifetime

When we examined teeth from nearly 100 white sharks, clear patterns emerged.

First, tooth shape changes dramatically across the jaw. The first six teeth on each side are relatively symmetrical and triangular, well suited for grasping, impaling, or cutting into prey.

Beyond the sixth tooth, however, the shape shifts. Teeth become more blade-like, better adapted for tearing and shearing flesh. This transition marks a functional division within the jaw where different teeth play different roles during feeding, much like how we as humans have incisors at the front and molars at the back of our mouths.

Even more striking were the changes that occur as sharks grow. At around 3m in body length, white sharks undergo a major dental transformation. Juvenile teeth are slimmer and often feature small side projections at the base of the tooth, called cusplets, which help to grip small slippery prey such as fish and squid.

As sharks approach 3m, these cusplets disappear and the teeth become broader, thicker, and serrated.

In many ways, this shift mirrors an ecological turning point. Young sharks rely on fish and small prey that require precision and an ability to grasp the smaller bodies. Larger sharks increasingly target marine mammals: big, fast-moving animals that demand cutting power rather than grip.

Once great whites reach this size, they develop an entirely new style of tooth capable of slicing through dense flesh and even bone.

Some teeth stand out even more. The first two teeth on either side of the jaw, the four central teeth, are significantly thicker at the base. These appear to be the primary “impact” teeth, taking the force of the initial bite.

Meanwhile, the third and fourth upper teeth are slightly shorter and angled, suggesting a specialised role in holding onto struggling prey. Their size and position may also be influenced by the underlying skull structure and the placement of key sensory tissues involved in smelling.

We also found consistent differences between the upper and lower jaws. Lower teeth are shaped for grabbing and holding prey, while upper teeth are designed for slicing and dismembering – a coordinated system that turns the white shark’s bite into a highly efficient feeding tool.

A lifestory in teeth

Together, these findings tell a compelling story.

The teeth of white sharks are not static weapons but living records of a shark’s changing lifestyle. Continuous replacement compensates for teeth lost and damaged, but at least equally important, enables design updates that track diet changes through development.

This research helps us better understand how white sharks succeed as apex predators and how their feeding system is finely tuned across their lifetime.

It also highlights the importance of studying animals as dynamic organisms, shaped by both biology and behaviour. In the end, a white shark’s teeth don’t just reveal how it feeds – they reveal who it is, at every stage of its life.

This research has received in kind support for collection of specimens from the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development through the Shark Management Program. David Raubenheimer has no other relevant relationships or funding to declare.

Ziggy Marzinelli is an Associate Professor at The University of Sydney and receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation and the NSW Environmental Trust.

Emily Hunt 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. Great white sharks grow a whole new kind of tooth for slicing bone as they age – https://theconversation.com/great-white-sharks-grow-a-whole-new-kind-of-tooth-for-slicing-bone-as-they-age-272805

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/great-white-sharks-grow-a-whole-new-kind-of-tooth-for-slicing-bone-as-they-age-272805/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janine Dixon, Director, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University

Australia has a problem. Across the economy, business investment has been sluggish for the past decade, leaving policymakers reaching for solutions.

Weak business investment can leave the economy stuck in low gear, operating without enough equipment or technology and failing to meet its potential. It’s tempting to think that if investment could be revived, higher living standards would follow. But it is not that simple.

In a recent report on creating a more dynamic and resilient economy, Australia’s Productivity Commission proposed some big changes to the way businesses are taxed in Australia, including lowering the corporate tax rate for most businesses and introducing a unique new cash flow tax.

So, what exactly is the Productivity Commission proposing – and would it help boost business investment? And crucially, would it improve living standards for Australian people?

Lower tax rates – with a catch

Right now, there are two rates of company tax. Businesses with turnover of less than A$50 million a year are taxed at 25%. Larger businesses, with turnover of more than $50 million, face a 30% tax rate.

The proposed reform of the corporate tax system has two key elements. First, almost all businesses would be taxed at 20%. Very large corporations, with turnover above $1 billion, would face a rate of 28%.

Second, all businesses would pay a new 5% tax on their “net cash flow”. The government would collect less revenue through company tax, but it would get some of it back through the net cash flow tax. More on this later.

The profitability problem

The Productivity Commission is concerned about potentially profitable business ideas that become unprofitable when company taxes are taken into account.

For example, $1 million invested in building a restaurant might generate profits of $1.3 million over its lifetime, making it a profitable activity. But after paying 25% in corporate tax, or $325,000, the restaurant only generates $975,000 for the investor.

Knowing she will make a loss, the investor will decide not to make the investment.

Now, suppose the corporate tax rate was cut to 20%. Corporate tax paid by the restaurant would be $260,000, leaving $1.04 million for the investor. The investor sees she will make a positive return and decides to finance the restaurant. This argument is at the heart of the Productivity Commission’s recommendation to cut the rate of company tax.

In reality, the picture isn’t quite this simple. The investor must also account for the time value of money, various risks and opportunity cost, and the returns she could be making if she invested the money in other ways.

When calculating profits, the tax office includes depreciation as a cost. This deduction reduces the corporate tax bill significantly compared to our hypothetical example. Depreciation deductions are spread over many years so they are worth less than if the deduction on the whole investment was allowed up front. This is important when we talk about a cash flow tax later.

Foreign and domestic investors

Another complication is Australia’s unique dividend imputation system. If the investor lives in Australia, the tax the company has already paid on its profits is treated as if she paid it herself.

When she does her tax return, that company tax counts as a franking credit towards the income tax she owes on all her income. This means the investor is indifferent to the company tax rate because it works like an advance payment towards the personal tax she has to pay anyway.

If dividend imputation was available to everybody, the corporate tax system would be a very leaky bucket indeed – all the revenue it collected would be lost again when credited to the personal income tax paid by investors.

But a lot of the money invested in Australia comes from foreign investors. They don’t pay personal income taxes to the Australian government, so the company tax we collect from them stays in the bucket.

This is the key to making corporate income tax cuts have an impact. But it is also the reason we need to be careful about how we assess the success of the proposed policy.

With lower corporate taxes, foreign investors will likely invest more in Australia, leading to a larger economy. Our economic modelling at the Centre of Policy Studies, published in the Productivity Commission’s interim report, finds the economy (or GDP) will be larger by 0.2% in the long run. This sounds good – but there’s a catch.

When the Australian government collects less tax from foreign investors, Australia’s income falls. Our modelling finds gross national income will be smaller by 0.3% in the long run. The economy will be larger, but less of it will belong to us.

A new tax on cash flow

Alongside recommendations to cut the corporate tax rate, the Productivity Commission has proposed introducing a cash flow tax.

This is a relatively rare form of taxation used in only a few countries. Like corporate tax, a cash flow tax is levied on profits.

But the big difference is that a cash flow tax treats investment costs as an immediate tax deduction, rather than gradually depreciating the investment.

This is attractive because it does not change the incentive to invest. By treating the investment as one big tax deduction at the beginning of its life, an investment that is profitable in a tax-free world will also be profitable under a cash flow tax.

This means the government can collect tax revenue from companies without having a negative impact on investment.

Under a cash flow tax, highly profitable businesses will pay a relatively large amount of tax, while businesses that are just breaking even will pay very little. Unsurprisingly, lobbyists for big business have urged Treasurer Jim Chalmers to ignore the recommendation.

A company tax cut results in lower income for Australians, but adding a cash flow tax reverses these losses by collecting more revenue from foreign investors and multinational corporations. Our modelling finds this package would lead to gains in Australia’s gross national income of 0.4% in the long run. The Productivity Commission’s report now rests with the treasurer for consideration.

The Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University was commissioned to conduct some of the economic modelling which is quoted in the Productivity Commission’s interim and final reports mentioned in this article.

– ref. A new company tax mix has been proposed. We need to be careful how we assess it – https://theconversation.com/a-new-company-tax-mix-has-been-proposed-we-need-to-be-careful-how-we-assess-it-273892

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/a-new-company-tax-mix-has-been-proposed-we-need-to-be-careful-how-we-assess-it-273892/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neha Lalchandani, Research Fellow, Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition, Deakin University, Deakin University

If you pack school lunchboxes for your children, you’ll know it can sometimes feel like a real slog.

It needs to be easy to prepare, nutritious and something children will actually eat. On top of this, there is increasing awareness it should be friendly for the environment and not generate food and plastic waste.

As a 2021 OzHarvest report noted, Australian students throw away an estimated 5 million uneaten sandwiches, 3 million pieces of whole fruit and 3 million items of packaged foods each year.

As students return to school, here’s what schools and families can do to pack lower-waste lunches.

Our research

My colleagues and I have been researching what South Australian families put in lunchboxes and why.

In our 2025 study of 673 preschool and primary school lunchboxes, we found 53% of all packaged items in lunchboxes were single-use plastics, mostly from snacks. The most common packaged snack types were chips and muesli bars.

We found families tend to let children’s preferences drive what they pack – because if food comes home untouched, kids can go hungry or food may end up in the bin.

Parents also told us they tend to rely on packaged foods because they are busy and have little time to prepare school lunches.

It’s not that they don’t care about sustainability, but choosing familiar packaged items they know their children will definitely eat take priority.

How schools can make eating easier

Our research also found primary school eating times can be short – only around ten minutes at lunch – as children are keen to get out and play.

So schools should consider extending eating time to allow children to be more settled and eat more of what’s packed. This can mean less waste and fewer hungry moments later in the day. Other research shows longer seated time for eating means children are more likely to eat fruits and vegetables.

Schools could also consider scheduling eating times after play. While teachers and parents may worry children will get too hungry, research suggests scheduling play before lunch can help children eat more of their meal, and more nutritious items too. This is because they arrive at lunch with a healthy appetite and less urgency to rush through eating.

Schools can also incorporate food and sustainability literacy into the curriculum, to help kids embrace healthier and less-packaged foods. Schools can also encourage more “nude food” (packaging-free) days, provide families with healthy, low-waste lunchbox suggestions and have recycling and compost bins handy in the playground.

How can you pack a low-waste lunchbox?

1. Talk to your child about what they like to eat at school and how much

This allows them to tell you what works for them at school – which may be different from at home. Invite them to pack the lunchboxes with you the night before school when there is more time.

This can build independence and encourages children to take more responsibility for what they eat at school. Perhaps if they have packed it and understand the work involved, they are more likely to eat it.

2. Substitute packaged snacks for alternatives

Try packing fruits that need no preparation. Also consider vegetable sticks and boiled eggs (you can prep them in a batch and store in the fridge).

You can make a batch of savoury muffins, home-made popcorn (chuck kernels in a brown paper bag and microwave) or your own portions of low-sugar yoghurt in reusable containers.

3. Stock up on reusable containers

There are lots of options to consider, including:

• bento-style, compartmentalised lunchboxes are great for packing a variety of items and they can keep foods separate, preventing soggy snacks

• small stackable tubs can be used for yoghurt, fruit chunks, boiled eggs and veggie sticks. Look for clear containers (so kids know what’s inside) with leak-resistant lids

• reusable and washable fabric or silicone snack bags for sandwiches, crackers and other dry snacks like popcorn and mini muffins.

4. Avoid these items

Avoid cling film, plastic bags and foil. Also avoid supermarket snacks in individual plastic wrappers – such as popcorn or bars.

5. Make it manageable

We know preparing school lunchboxes can be demanding for families. So if you are going to make some changes, it’s OK to start small. You don’t need to prepare everything from scratch everyday. A starting point could be using more reusable containers and portioning bulk-bought foods.

Neha Lalchandani 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. Swap muesli bars for homemade popcorn: 5 ways to pack a lower-waste lunch box – https://theconversation.com/swap-muesli-bars-for-homemade-popcorn-5-ways-to-pack-a-lower-waste-lunch-box-273808

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/swap-muesli-bars-for-homemade-popcorn-5-ways-to-pack-a-lower-waste-lunch-box-273808/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary Bushell, Clinical Associate Professor in Pharmacy, University of Canberra

Fish oil, also known as omega-3, is one of the most popular dietary supplements. It’s often promoted to protect the heart, boost mood, reduce inflammation and support overall health.

But how much of this is backed by science, and when might fish oil supplements actually be worth taking?

A long history

People have been taking oils from fish for centuries.

Modern interest surged in the 1970s when scientists studying Inuit diets discovered omega-3 fatty acids and their heart-protective effects.

By the 1980s, fish oil capsules were being marketed as an easy way to get these healthy fats.

What’s in fish oil?

Fish oil comes from oily fish such as salmon, sardines, tuna, herring and mackerel. It’s rich in a special type of fat called omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), mainly EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid).

These omega-3s play an important role in how our cells function. Every cell in the body is surrounded by a thin, flexible layer called a cell membrane. This membrane works like a protective skin: it keeps the cell’s contents safe, controls what moves in and out, and helps cells communicate with one another.

Omega-3s don’t build the membrane itself, but they slot into it, becoming part of its structure. This helps the membrane stay fluid and flexible, allowing it to work more efficiently, especially in tissue that relies on fast, precise signalling, such as in the brain and eyes.

Because we can’t make enough omega-3s on our own, we need to get them from food or, sometimes, supplements.

How are fish oil supplements made?

After fish are caught, their tissues are cooked and pressed to release oil. This crude oil is purified and refined to remove impurities including heavy metals such as copper, iron and mercury.

During processing, the oil may be concentrated to boost its EPA and DHA content.

The purified oil is then encapsulated in soft gels or bottled as liquid oil.

Some supplements are further treated to reduce odour or the familiar “fishy” aftertaste.

Fish oil and heart health

Omega-3 fatty acids are best known for their role in heart health, particularly for lowering triglycerides, a type of fat in the blood that, when elevated, can increase the risk of heart disease.

A 2023 paper pooled 90 clinical trials with more than 72,000 participants and found a near linear relationship between dose and effect. That doesn’t mean “more is always better”, but higher doses tended to produce bigger improvements in heart-related risk factors.

It found you need more than 2 grams per day of EPA and DHA combined to meaningfully lower triglycerides (by 15 to 30%). This is most relevant for people with existing heart disease, high triglycerides, or obesity.

But it’s important to read the label. A “1,000 mg” fish oil capsule usually refers to the total oil weight of the oil, not the active omega-3 content. Most standard capsules contain only about 300 mg of combined EPA and DHA the rest is other fats.

At lower doses, changes in blood fats were modest. The same analysis suggested low-dose fish oil may even nudge LDL or “bad” cholesterol up slightly, while having only a small effect on triglycerides.

A 2018 trial tested a high-strength purified EPA product (4 grams per day) in people already taking statins to lower their cholesterol. Over five years, it prevented one major heart event (heart attack, stroke or urgent procedure) for every 21 people treated. However this was a prescription-only pharmaceutical-grade EPA, not a standard fish-oil capsule.

In Australia, fish oils are sold in pharmacies, health food stores and supermarkets. Some concentrated products are available as “practitioner-only” supplements via health professionals.

The same purified EPA used in the 2018 trial is now available in Australia as Vazkepa, a prescription-only medicine. It was added to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) in October 2024, making it more accessible for high-risk patients.

For otherwise healthy people, the evidence that standard fish oil supplements prevent heart attacks or strokes is much less convincing.

What about arthritis and joint pain?

Fish oil has mild anti-inflammatory effects.

In people with inflammatory arthritis (such as rheumatoid arthritis), omega-3s can reduce joint tenderness and morning stiffness.

These benefits, however, require higher consistent doses, usually around 2.7g of EPA and DHA per day. This is the equivalent of around nine standard 1,000mg fish oil capsules (containing 300 mg of EPA and DHA) daily for at least eight to 12 weeks.

Can fish oil improve mood?

Some studies suggest omega-3s, particularly those higher in EPA, can modestly reduce symptoms of clinical depression when taken alongside antidepressants.

A 2019 review of 26 trials (involving more than 2,000 people) found a small overall benefit, mainly for EPA-rich formulations at doses up to about 1 gram per day. DHA-only products didn’t show clear effects.

That doesn’t mean fish oil is a mood booster for everyone. For people without diagnosed depression, omega-3 supplements haven’t been shown to reliably lift mood or prevent depression.

How much can you take?

For most people, fish oil is safe.

Common side effects include a fishy aftertaste, mild nausea and diarrhoea. Taking capsules with food or choosing odourless or “de-fishified” products can help.

Prescription strength products such as Vazkepa (high-dose EPA) are also well tolerated, but they can slightly increase the risk of irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation) and bleeding.

Up to 3 grams per day of combined EPA and DHA from supplements is generally considered safe for most adults.

Higher doses for specific medical conditions should be taken under medical supervision.

So, should you take it?

The Heart Foundation recommends Australians eat two to three serves of oily fish a week. This would provide 250–500 mg of EPA and DHA per day.

If you don’t eat fish, a fish oil supplement (or algal oil if you’re vegetarian or vegan) can help you meet your omega-3 needs.

If you have heart disease (with high triglycerides) or inflammatory arthritis, fish oil may offer extra benefits. But dose and product type matter, so speak with a health professional.

For most people, though, two or three serves of oily fish each week remain the simplest, safest and most nutritious way to get omega-3s.

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Read more:
Should I take a magnesium supplement? Will it help me sleep or prevent muscle cramps?

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Mary Bushell 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. Should I take a fish oil supplement for my heart, joints or mood? – https://theconversation.com/should-i-take-a-fish-oil-supplement-for-my-heart-joints-or-mood-267976

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/should-i-take-a-fish-oil-supplement-for-my-heart-joints-or-mood-267976/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt Absalom, Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies, The University of Melbourne

If you watch American cooking shows, you’ve likely experienced “salad confusion”. You see a chef preparing what looks like rocket, but they call it arugula.

It’s the same plant (Eruca sativa). It has the same peppery bite. So why do English speakers use two completely different names?

The answer isn’t just a quirk of translation. It is a linguistic fossil record revealing the history of Italian migration.

The name you use tells us less about the vegetable and more about who introduced you to it.

A Latin word with a double life

It all starts with the Latin word eruca.

Crucially, this term had a dual meaning. It referred to the vegetable, but also meant “caterpillar” – maybe because the plant’s hairy stems resembled the pests often found on brassicas.

As the Roman Empire faded and Vulgar Latin (the language of the vulgus, or the common people) evolved into the Romance languages, this single word split along two paths.

The Northern route: aristocratic ‘rocket’

As the word travelled north through Italy, it morphed from eruca into the Northern Italian diminutive ruchetta.

From there, it crossed the Alps into France, becoming roquette.

By the 16th century, French culinary influence was dominant in England. The first written record appears in 1530, in John Palsgrave’s text L’esclarcissement de la langue francoyse (Clarification of the French Language – said to be the first grammar of French for English speakers), translating roquette to “rocket”.

By 1597, English botanist John Gerard was describing “garden rocket” in his large illustrated Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes, cementing it in the British lexicon.

This terminology travelled with the First Fleet. In Australia, “rocket” was a colonial staple, not a modern discovery. Planting guides in the Hobart Town Courier from 1836 list rocket alongside other brassicas, such as cress and mustard, as essential kitchen garden crops.

This is why people in Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand say “rocket”. For these speakers, the word followed an aristocratic, pre-industrial path.

The Southern route: migrant ‘arugula’

In the United States, the word “arugula” didn’t arrive in books; it arrived in pockets.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, millions of Italians emigrated to the US. This was a mass migration of the working class, predominantly from Southern regions like Calabria and Sicily.

These migrants spoke regional languages, erroneously called dialects, rather than Standard Italian.

In the South, eruca had evolved differently. We can trace this in historical dictionaries: Gerhard Rohlfs’ monumental Dictionary of the Three Calabrias (1932–39) records the local word as arùculu.

Similarly, Antonino Traina’s Sicilian-Italian dictionary (1868) lists the variant aruca.

When Italian immigrants established market gardens in New York, they sold the produce using their dialect forms. They weren’t selling the French roquette; they were selling the Calabrian arùculu.

Over many years, this solidified into the American English “arugula”.

For decades, arugula was an “ethnic” ingredient in the US, underscoring its origins as “an unruly weed that was foraged from the fields by the poor”. It wasn’t until a New York Times article on May 24 1960 that food editor Craig Claiborne introduced it to a wider audience.

Noting it “has more names than Joseph’s coat had colors”, he used the New York market term “arugula” alongside rocket in his recipes, inadvertently codifying it as the standard American name.

There is perhaps a sense that “arugula” might come from Spanish, given the influence of words like cilantro in American culinary terminology.

In Spanish, Latin eruca evolved into oruga which is uncannily similar to “arugula”. But, linguistically things are a little more complex.

While the Spanish word maintains the reference to the plant it also retains the Latin term’s double meaning: a salad vegetable and a caterpillar.

According to Bréal’s Law of Differentiation, named for the linguist Michel Bréal, languages detest absolute synonyms. If a word has two meanings, the language will intervene somehow. Indeed, today’s Spanish speakers prefer to call the plant rúcula. If you were to ask for an ensalada de oruga in Spain today, you’d probably get odd looks and, maybe, a caterpillar salad.

What about ‘rucola’?

So where does the word rucola – seen on menus in Rome today – fit in?

While the Anglosphere was splitting into rocket and arugula, Italy was undergoing its own linguistic unification. Standard Italian rucola is another diminutive which gradually won out over other regional variants.

Philologically, rucola represents a middle ground. Its rise in usage in Italy in the second half of the 20th Century eclipsed competing terms like rughetta, ruchetta or ruca.

Rucola now has international reverberations. The preferred term in Spanish is modelled on it, it appears in many other European languages and it is making inroads in the English lexicon.

From peasant weed to political symbol

By the 1990s in the US, the “peasant weed” had completed a remarkable social climb. It became a political shibboleth for the American “liberal elite” (most famously during Obama’s Arugula-gate in the 2008 presidential election campaign).

Meanwhile, in Australia, rocket popped up as the ubiquitous garnish of the cafe culture boom found on everything from pizza to smashed avo.

The divide is a reminder that language is rarely accidental. When an Australian orders “rocket,” they echo a 16th-century exchange with France. When an American orders “arugula”, they echo the voices of Southern Italian migrants in 1920s New York. And when someone uses “rucola” perhaps it’s a way of evoking Italy’s mythical, UNESCO-awarded gastronomy.

Matt Absalom 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. Rocket or arugula? How a salad vegetable mapped the Italian diaspora – https://theconversation.com/rocket-or-arugula-how-a-salad-vegetable-mapped-the-italian-diaspora-272059

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/rocket-or-arugula-how-a-salad-vegetable-mapped-the-italian-diaspora-272059/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Renwick, Professor of Physical Geography (Climate Science), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

It has been a month of umbrellas rather than sunscreen across much of New Zealand, with persistent rain, low sunshine and deadly storms dominating headlines and daily life.

For many people, it has felt like midsummer never really arrived. Is it simply bad luck, or is there something more going on?

As with most aspects of our climate and weather, the answer isn’t straightforward. It reflects the interplay between New Zealand’s geography, warmer-than-average ocean temperatures, large-scale regional climate patterns and long-term global warming.

What the data shows – and why it’s been so wet

Climate observations back up what many New Zealanders have been feeling this month. Across northern regions in particular, sunshine hours have been well below average, while rainfall totals have been far above normal.

In central Auckland, a weather station in Albert Park had recorded around 244mm by January 27 – nearly three times the (1981–2010) average for the month. At Mount Maunganui, the month-to-date total had climbed to roughly 385mm, more than four times the norm.

Similar patterns have been seen in many parts of the upper North Island, with repeated heavy rain events, high humidity and prolonged cloudy spells. The result has often been soggy soils, swollen rivers and increased risks of flooding and landslides.

While each storm that affects New Zealand is different, many of the systems visiting the country this summer share some common features. Several have originated in the tropics, subtropics or the north Tasman Sea before drifting south toward New Zealand. These systems typically carry warm, moisture-laden air – and the potential for intense rainfall.

When these moist air masses interact with cooler air from the south, or encounter New Zealand’s rugged topography, conditions become ripe for heavy rain.

As air is forced upwards over hills and mountain ranges – particularly along the Coromandel Peninsula, Bay of Plenty, East Cape and Gisborne regions – moisture condenses rapidly, producing very high rainfall totals. This is why northern and eastern parts of the country so often bear the brunt of these subtropical events.

The regional patterns loading the dice

One background factor this summer has been the lingering influence of La Niña, part of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) system that dominates climate variability across the Pacific.

During La Niña, atmospheric pressure tends to be lower than normal over Australia and the north Tasman Sea, and higher than normal to the south and east of New Zealand. This effectively flips our usual weather pattern on its head, reducing westerly winds and increasing the frequency of easterly and northeasterly flows.

Those northeasterly winds draw warm, humid air from the subtropics toward New Zealand. Because our temperatures are highly sensitive to wind direction, even small shifts can have large effects.

La Niña also tends to be associated with warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures, which have again been observed around New Zealand. So, when northeasterly winds blow across these warmer waters, they pick up additional heat and moisture, further fuelling heavy rainfall potential.

Another background driver that constantly shapes New Zealand’s weather and climate is the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), which describes the north–south movement of the westerly wind belt that circles Antarctica.

A positive SAM phase, which has dominated much of this summer, tends to bring higher pressures over the South Island and southern New Zealand. This allows storms from the subtropics more room to drift south and linger near the North Island.

Climate change as an intensifier

Overlaying these regional drivers is the broader influence of climate change, which is steadily warming both the atmosphere and the oceans surrounding New Zealand.

As the planet heats, the atmosphere can hold more moisture – about 7% more water vapour for every 1°C of warming. This means that when storms do develop, they have more fuel available, increasing the potential for heavier rainfall and stronger winds.

Climate change does not cause individual weather systems, nor does it directly control large-scale climate patterns like ENSO or the SAM. But it acts as a powerful intensifier.

Event-attribution studies in New Zealand to date have shown climate change can increase the total rainfall from intense storms by around 10–20%.

But for the most intense downpours – when the atmospheric “sponge” is wrung out most vigorously – rainfall intensities can increase by as much as 30%, depending on the frame of time being looked at. These short, extreme bursts of rain are often what cause the greatest damage.

There are still important uncertainties. Scientists are actively researching whether climate change will alter the frequency or strength of La Niña and El Niño events, but so far there is no clear answer. The same is true for long-term trends in the Southern Annular Mode.

What we can say with confidence is that background warming is shifting the risk profile.

As global temperatures continue to rise, the kinds of extremes we’ve experienced this season are likely to become more common. The biggest unanswered question is how quickly we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit how severe these impacts ultimately become.

James Renwick receives funding from MBIE and the Marsden Fund for climate research.

– ref. NZ’s sodden January explained: what’s driven this month’s big wet? – https://theconversation.com/nzs-sodden-january-explained-whats-driven-this-months-big-wet-274416

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/28/nzs-sodden-january-explained-whats-driven-this-months-big-wet-274416/

By Haya Ahmed

In Gaza today, university scholarships have taken on a whole new meaning. No longer are they a step towards self-development, educational attainment or an academic experience in a different country.

For a whole generation of Gazan students, a foreign university scholarship has become a lifeline and one of the few remaining legal escape routes from the besieged territory.

Gaza’s students are not asking each other where they will study or which university programme is best; the question is existential: “Will I even be able to leave?”

In an environment that has become defined by war, trauma and uncertainty, a university education has taken on a whole new meaning, no longer just a human right or tool for building one’s future.

A university education is now a survival strategy.

The reality of higher education under siege
Over two million Palestinians in Gaza continue to live in exceptional circumstances, under an indefinite Israeli blockade interjected over the years by repeated wars and economic collapse.

The most recent war on the territory, which began after 7 October 2023, resulted in the complete destruction of Gaza’s education infrastructure.

While universities continue to operate partially, they do so among power outages, limited resources, damaged laboratories and libraries and poor internet access.

Language centres, where university-age Palestinian students would go to study for IELTS and TOEFL exams, two English proficiency exams for non-native speakers, which are prerequisites for many universities, were either destroyed or shut down as a result of the most recent war.

This has made meeting traditional admission requirements at foreign universities virtually impossible for many students.

“I had been preparing to take my IELTS exam for two years,” 24-year-old computer engineering graduate Samer Labad from Beit Lahia in North Gaza told The New Arab.

“The language centre I was studying at was completely destroyed in the war. Since then, there has been no stable electricity or internet.”

“How can we be required to meet [admissions requirements] when the tools for them no longer exist?”

More than a degree
Despite the difficult circumstances Palestinian students continue to live in, they have not given up on applying for scholarships in foreign universities. In fact, scholarship funding has increased over the last two years.

Since the most recent ceasefire, which went into effect on 10 October 2025, hundreds of Gazan students have continued to apply for scholarships, with 200 being successful so far.

According to international independent educational initiatives, last year, dozens of students successfully left the Strip to enrol and begin their scholarships abroad. This increase in applications for foreign scholarships does not come from a desire to emigrate, but from the search for safety and psychological stability.

Yasser*, a 26-year-old computer science graduate, recently secured a scholarship for his Master’s degree in Germany.

“I did not only apply for this scholarship because of my love for computer science, but because I felt like my life in Gaza is on hold: work, marriage, my future.” he said.

“This scholarship has enabled me to regain a sense of control over my life.”

He added: “How do you explain to university admissions teams that you’re applying not only so you can learn, but so you can live?”

The surge in demand for scholarships post-October 2023
Israel’s most recent war on Gaza changed the relationship between Gaza’s students and foreign university scholarships forever.

Students no longer viewed a foreign scholarship as a future possibility or nice-to-have, but a necessity for survival in an emergency.

Alaa Al-Turk, an accounting graduate from Al-Jalaa in North Gaza, said when Israel’s genocide broke out in October 2023, his plans to apply for a foreign scholarship transformed from being long-term to imminent.

“In October 2023, I felt like time had run out. I thought, ‘Either I get out [of Gaza] now, or I stay in a danger zone indefinitely.’”

Social experts believe this sharp surge in applications for foreign scholarships since October 2023 reflects a shift in the role of education in Gaza, from a natural path to self-development to a means of emergency survival.

Scholarships not only enable young Palestinians to attempt to leave Gaza legally, but psychologically, they are being used as an attempt to regain control over their destinies.

International universities step in
Understanding the exceptional circumstances Palestinian students face, some international universities in the UK, Germany, Italy, Turkïye and some Scandinavian countries have taken steps to facilitate the admission of students from Gaza.

These steps include offering scholarships specifically for Palestinians from Gaza or easing admissions requirements, particularly language requirements. Some have accepted applications from Gazan students without TOEFL and IELTS exams.

“I was so afraid the university would not accept me because I did not have a language certificate,” said 22-year-old English graduate Layan Al Mashharawi from Shuja’iyya in East Gaza.

“They conducted a lengthy interview with me and told me they knew the issue isn’t my language level, but where I live.”

In the UK, the University of Manchester, the University of Birmingham and SOAS in London have eased admissions requirements for Palestinian students from Gaza as part of the Chevening Scholarships programme, including relaxing language and document requirements.

In Ireland, universities such as Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin have accepted Palestinian students from Gaza onto their programmes, with special humanitarian and academic arrangements.

The University of the United Arab Emirates offers Palestinian students from Gaza full scholarships.

Independent initiatives such as Scholarships for Ghazza and the Gaza Scholarship Initiative have played a large role in connecting Gazan students with these universities.

A scholarship does not always lead to an exit
Obtaining a foreign scholarship does not automatically mean an exit from Gaza. The bigger challenge is actually leaving the Strip.

Gaza’s border crossings are open only for limited periods, and they are sporadic and irregular. There are complex coordination lists and security approvals, making it a highly stressful process.

Every delay to crossing the border puts Palestinian students at risk of losing their scholarships, and every border closure places them back at square one. Many live for months in a state of limbo, waiting for academic acceptance and geographical isolation.

“I was living between two suitcases,” said political science student Noor Hijazi from Deir-El-Balah in central Gaza.

“One packed and ready for travel, and the other for the life I would have to return to if I failed to leave Gaza. This waiting was more stressful than the studying itself.”

Meanwhile, 27-year-old Master’s student Mahmoud Awad from Khan Younis in South Gaza almost missed the start of his degree.

“The university sent me a starting date three times, and each time I explained to them that the problem wasn’t my visa but my inability to leave Gaza. I was afraid I would lose my scholarship because of something that was beyond my control,” he told The New Arab. 

When university admission becomes a commodity for survival
With the near-total closure of Gaza’s borders and lack of safe and legal routes out of the territory comes the rise of a disturbing new phenomenon: purchasing acceptance into a university programme not for study but to leave the Strip.

It is not a topic students will talk about openly; those who spoke to The New Arab asked to have their identities protected not for fear of legal repercussion, but because of the moral stigma.

Behind this phenomenon lies a reality more complex than mere cheating. It comes with legal and financial risks, and those who benefit are the middlemen.

Twenty-nine-year-old Karim* said: “I wasn’t looking for a university, I was looking for a door. I applied for official scholarships the traditional way and was unsuccessful.

“The waiting was mentally killing me. At the end, I paid for acceptance into a university just so I could leave.”

Another student, 27-year-old Heba* said: ” I knew I might not be able to continue my studies, but staying in Gaza was no longer an option. I wasn’t buying a university education; I was buying a chance at survival.”

Education should not be a corridor to survival
What Gaza’s university-age students are asking for is not emigration, but the ability to choose to study, travel and also return to Gaza without these options being a matter of life and death.

University scholarships should not be a ticket to survival, and education should not become a substitute for the basic human rights of freedom of movement and the right to live with dignity.

Until that happens, for Gaza’s students, foreign scholarships will remain more than an academic opportunity.

*Names changed upon request

Haya Ahmed is a doctor and freelance writer from Gaza. This article was first published by The New Arab.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/27/in-gaza-university-scholarships-are-now-a-matter-of-survival/

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

A week out from the resumption of parliament, the federal opposition is in a state of paralysis.

The Liberals have a full-blown leadership crisis. A majority of the party believe Sussan Ley can’t survive for long.

But leadership contenders Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie, both from the right of the party, don’t want to run against each other, dividing their factional support. They’re in a wrestle, each wanting the other to pull back.

Taylor trails his coat while keeping formally within the rules. He won’t confirm he is after Ley’s job, pleading shadow cabinet discipline when pressed. But he won’t rule anything out either.

The Hastie camp had a story in The Australian saying he had discussed with his wife the implications of becoming leader, and she was “fully supportive”. This was to clear away Hastie’s position of some time ago that he was not pitching for leadership for a while because of having a young family.

Hastie seems raring to go, Taylor is preferring to delay. Moderates argue the Nationals should not be rewarded for last week’s behaviour by the Liberals rushing into a change.

The stand-off lessens the chance of a vote next week, though the situation is febrile and so it is not impossible it comes to a head then. The Liberal Party will have its regular meeting on Tuesday morning.

Many in the Liberals and some in the Nationals think the most urgent issue is to have the split in the former Coalition repaired.

But Nationals leader David Littleproud says this won’t happen unless the three Nationals frontbenchers whom Ley forced to resign last week (after they broke shadow cabinet solidity over the government’s anti-hate legislation) are reinstated. Ley has refused to contemplate meeting that condition.

Liberals continue to lash out at Littleproud’s behaviour last week, leading to the fracture. Victorian Liberal Tim Wilson told Sky on Tuesday the Nationals leader “basically replicated the political consequences of Barnaby Joyce on a Braddon pavement [when an intoxicated Joyce was pictured lying flat out talking on the phone]. They’ve hit a flat. It hasn’t worked. What we need is leadership. We need responsible people standing up for the national interest and doing what’s right by Australia and Australians.”

Meanwhile Ley needs to reshuffle her frontbench by the time parliament resumes next week, to fill the positions vacated by the Nationals. She has stayed her hand to give some time for a possible rethink by the Nationals about re-forming the Coalition. But it would be odd to go into the sitting with multiple vacancies, and especially difficult when Senate estimates hearings loom the following week.

Littleproud has yet to nominate spokespeople for a “shadow” shadow ministry. Once he does that, it becomes harder to get the Coalition back together, even under a new Liberal leader.

On Thursday many Liberals will gather in Melbourne for a memorial service for Katie Allen, who was Liberal MP for Higgins in 2019–22. It’s a sad reality that during leadership crises, such gatherings can provide the opportunity for very political conversations. This occasion is likely to be no exception.

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: Dysfunctional federal opposition is in gridlock – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-dysfunctional-federal-opposition-is-in-gridlock-274028

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/27/view-from-the-hill-dysfunctional-federal-opposition-is-in-gridlock-274028/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steve Turton, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Geography, CQUniversity Australia

Millions of people in southeastern Australia are sweating through a record-breaking heatwave. The heat this week is likely to be one for the history books. The heat began on Saturday January 24th. On Australia Day, three sites in South Australia and two in New South Wales broke their all-time temperature records. Ceduna reached a whopping 49.5°C in the shade – just 1.2°C off the highest temperature ever recorded in Australia.

Today, temperatures have topped 49°C in northwest Victoria and South Australia for the first time on record, and many towns face days of heat over 40°C. Regions such as the Otway Ranges in Victoria are facing extreme fire danger. Renmark in South Australia has reached 49.3°C and Walpeup in Victoria has reached 48.7°C.

This is shaping up as the worst heatwave since the Black Summer of 2019-20. The intense heat that summer contributed to catastrophic bushfires which burnt 21% of the continent, an area still considered globally unprecedented.

Independent analysis found the last heatwave between January 5 to 10 was made over five times more likely by global heating. This current heatwave is substantially worse, but we’ll have to wait for attribution studies to understand how much global heating has contributed to its overall severity.

The sustained heat hitting the southeast will be widespread and prolonged. It’s likely more all-time temperature records will be broken this week, as the body of hot air stagnates over the south and southeast. People in exposed areas should heed warnings from the Bureau of Meteorology and advice from health and emergency response authorities.

What’s driving this heatwave?

The Pilbara region in northwest Western Australia is sometimes called the nation’s “heat engine”. This large, sparsely populated area is very dry. When heat hits Pilbara rocks and sands, it can quickly build up. Weather conditions are very stable, and Pilbara heatwaves can last weeks.

But that doesn’t explain how the heat gets to population centres in Australia’s south and southeast.

Over summer, there are often active monsoonal troughs (areas of low atmospheric pressure) over northern Australia. As the monsoon brings heavy rain and low pressure systems to parts of northern Australia, it pushes high pressure systems, known as heat domes, further south. This directs intense heat thousands of kilometres towards the southern, central and eastern parts of the continent.

Tropical monsoonal low-pressure systems in the north often work in tandem with slow-moving high pressure systems in the Tasman Sea or Great Australian Bight. The result is a weather pattern able to shift hot air masses thousands of kilometres to reach the southern states.

Blocking highs are strong high pressure systems which can sit in place for days or even weeks, blocking other weather systems from moving in. The blocking high pressure system responsible for the current heatwave is staying put in the atmosphere a few kilometres above New South Wales.

As winds blow from areas of high pressure to low pressure in the atmosphere, air is forced to flow down towards the surface. As the air descends, it compresses due to rising atmospheric pressure. Compression heats the air further, which can make heatwaves hotter and longer-lasting.

When conditions like this are in place, hot northerly winds often persist for days, funnelling more and more desert heat towards the coasts. This can cause temperatures to exceed 40°C in states such as South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and southern Queensland.

During this extreme heatwave, maximum temperatures in some southern towns are approaching 50°C – the sort of temperature once restricted to famously hot towns such as Marble Bar in Western Australia.

The official Australian record for the maximum temperature in the shade is 50.7°C, recorded at Oodnadatta (South Australia) in 1960 and Onslow (Western Australia) in 2022. This shared all-time record may be broken at several southeast inland locations this week as atmospheric conditions are amplified by the steady drumbeat of global heating.

During severe, prolonged heatwaves, intense daytime heat is accompanied by hot nights. The humidity can sometimes also increase due to tropical moisture being transported south. The combination of heat and humidity (measured as heat indices) is particularly dangerous to humans, livestock and wildlife.

Should this heatwave be named?

For decades, tropical cyclones hitting Australia have been given names. Should heatwaves similarly be given names to encourage people to take them seriously? Names can make weather hazards more memorable, helping people recall warnings, share information with neighbours and prepare more effectively.

This week’s heatwave would be an excellent candidate for naming. It is severe, breaking all-time records, long-lasting and widespread. It is also threatening major metropolitan centres with high populations, as well as major regional centres and nationally important agricultural districts. To date, there’s no sign authorities plan to name it.

Responding to future heatwaves

Climate scientists now widely agree average global temperatures will permanently rise 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels by the early 2030s. They may reach 2.7°C by the 2090s if global carbon emissions do not fall sharply.

This means future heatwaves are likely to strike more often and hit harder when they arrive.

We need to adapt to the increasing threats posed by more and worse heatwaves even as we work to cut emissions. Extreme heat is a public health issue, to say nothing of the threats it poses to our wildlife and livestock who have no escape.

Steve Turton has previously received funding from the Australian and Queensland governments.

– ref. Where did southern Australia’s record-breaking heatwave come from? – https://theconversation.com/where-did-southern-australias-record-breaking-heatwave-come-from-274417

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/27/where-did-southern-australias-record-breaking-heatwave-come-from-274417/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Simpson, Senior Lecturer in International Studies in the School of Society and Culture, Adelaide University

Five years ago, on February 1 2021, Myanmar’s top generals decapitated the elected government. Democratic leaders were arrested, pushed underground or forced into exile.

Since then, the economy has spluttered and foreign investors have headed for the exit. The only growth industries – mostly scam centres, drugs and other criminal activities – enrich those already well-fed.

The military junta has kept its stranglehold via draconian curbs on civil and political liberties. It has bolstered its fighting forces through ruthless conscription, including of child soldiers. They now face rebellions in almost every corner of the ethnically diverse country.

It helps that the military brass can still depend on international support from Russia. China, meanwhile, is playing a careful game to ensure its interests – including prized access to the Indian Ocean for oil and gas – are secured.

And US President Donald Trump’s second term in office has introduced newly unpredictable and detrimental elements to great power politics.

The US government last year cited “notable progress in governance and stability [and] plans for free and fair elections” as justification for removing the Temporary Protected Status designation for immigrants from Myanmar. Although a federal judge blocked this decision a few days ago, this may eventually force previously protected Myanmar citizens to return home.

However, far from being free and fair, the month-long elections that just concluded in Myanmar have been devoid of meaningful democratic practice.

They will entrench the junta and provide little more than a patina of legitimacy that anti-democratic major powers will use to further normalise relations with Myanmar’s military leaders.

Myanmar’s deeply flawed election

The multi-stage elections were being held in only a fraction of the country currently under the military’s authority. Elections were not held in opposition-held territory, so many otherwise eligible voters were disenfranchised.

As such, there is no serious opposition to the military’s proxy, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). Civil and political space is also heavily restricted, with criticism of the election itself being a criminal offence.

The main opposition would be the National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which has won by a landslide in every national election it has participated in since 1990. But it has been banned, along with dozens of other opposition political parties. Its senior leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi, have been imprisoned.

Citizens have been coerced into taking part in an election with only electronic-voting machines. This is against a background of expanded surveillance and pervasive fear.

Break up of Myanmar?

Despite recent military gains by the junta, supported by Russian military technology and Chinese government pressure, the lines of control may be starting to solidify into an eventual Balkanisation, or break up, of Myanmar into hostile statelets.

The prospects for a future federalised democratic Myanmar seem increasingly remote.

Since, the coup there are many areas now under full opposition control. Take, for instance, a recent declaration of independence by a breakaway ethnic Karen armed group. While they represent only one part of the Karen community in eastern Myanmar, this could well precipitate a flood of similar announcements by other ethnic minorities.

Other groups might declare themselves autonomous and seek backing from governments and commercial and security interests in neighbouring countries such as China, Thailand, India and Bangladesh.

Most neighbouring countries will be uneasy about any further fracturing of Myanmar’s territorial integrity. Some, however, see potential benefits. China, for example, supports some ethnic armed groups to protect its strategic economic assets and maintain stability and influence along its borders.

Will international rulings have any impact?

While the conflict continues at home, Myanmar’s military leadership is defending itself at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. It faces claims it committed genocide against the Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority, particularly during the massacres of 2017.

During the three-week hearings, the junta has argued its “clearance operations” were merely counterterrorism activities, despite the 700,000 refugees it created.

Given the disdain for international law shown by Russia, China and the Trump administration in the US, any finding against the junta will have limited practical impact anyway.

What next?

Meanwhile, some countries in the the ASEAN bloc appear to be softening their opposition to the junta.

Recently, the Philippines foreign secretary met with Myanmar’s senior military leadership in the country’s first month chairing the bloc. This highlights the conundrum faced by regional leaders.

In the years immediately after the coup, ASEAN sought to keep Myanmar’s junta at arm’s length. But a number of key ASEAN players, particularly the more authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia, would prefer to find a way to normalise engagement with the generals.

From that perspective, the flawed elections are a chance to embrace superficial democratisation and renewal.

This leaves the Myanmar people – millions of whom have fought hard against the coup and its negative consequences – with invidious choices about how to best pursue their independence and freedom.

There is little positive economic news on the horizon. The IMF projects inflation in Myanmar will stay above 30% in 2026 with a real GDP fall of 2.7%. This would compound an almost 20% contraction since the coup. The currency is worth around one quarter of what it was five years ago at the time of the coup.

In practice, this means many Myanmar families have gone backwards dramatically. An untold number are now entangled in illicit and often highly exploitative businesses.

The military’s proxy, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), will undoubtedly form government after the elections. But unlike the USDP-led government that formed after the similarly flawed 2010 election, this new administration is unlikely to pursue political and economic liberalisation sufficient to entice opposition forces to play along.

The people of Myanmar have now been betrayed and brutalised by the military far too often to believe their easy promises.

As a pro vice-chancellor at the University of Tasmania, Nicholas Farrelly engages with a wide range of organisations and stakeholders on educational, cultural and political issues, including at the ASEAN-Australia interface. He has previously received funding from the Australian government for Southeast Asia-related projects and from the Australian Research Council. Nicholas is on the advisory board of the ASEAN-Australia Centre, which is an Australian government body established in 2024, and also Deputy Chair of the board of NAATI, Australia’s government-owned accreditation authority for translators and interpreters. He writes in his personal capacity.

Adam Simpson 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. 5 years on from the junta’s coup, Myanmar’s flawed elections can’t unite a country at risk of breaking apart – https://theconversation.com/5-years-on-from-the-juntas-coup-myanmars-flawed-elections-cant-unite-a-country-at-risk-of-breaking-apart-272894

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/01/27/5-years-on-from-the-juntas-coup-myanmars-flawed-elections-cant-unite-a-country-at-risk-of-breaking-apart-272894/