MIL-OSI Export

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shannon Bosch, Associate Professor (Law), Edith Cowan University

Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, this week passed legislation that would vastly expand capital punishment in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The changes, made via an amendment to Israel’s penal law, allow for executions without proper appeal, pardons or meaningful judicial discretion.

According to media reports, 62 of 120 Knesset members voted in favour of the bill on Monday, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and 48 voted against. The remainder absented themselves from the vote or abstained.

UN experts and Amnesty International have warned these new death sentencing rules would apply almost exclusively to Palestinians.

It would, they argue, entrench discrimination already identified by the International Court of Justice as amounting to apartheid. UN experts said of the bill:

Since Israeli military trials of civilians typically do not meet fair trial standards under international human rights law and humanitarian law, any resulting death sentence would further violate the right to life […] Denial of a fair trial is also a war crime.

This development is a significant change for Israel, which has not executed anyone for more than 60 years. It reverses decades of global movement towards abolition, while normalising executions in an occupied territory.

Death penalty as the default

These changes were made via legislation brought by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and his far-right Otzma Yehudit party.

The Penal Bill (Amendment ― Death Penalty for Terrorists) amends both Israeli civil law (applicable to Israeli settlers) and Israeli military law (applicable to Palestinians) in the occupied West Bank.

The law states, according to a Deutsche Welle media report:

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank convicted of terrorism in military courts will face a mandatory death sentence or, in the wording of the bill “his sentence shall be death, and this penalty only.” Only if the court determines that there are “special reasons” can it then commute the death sentence to life in prison.

Under this change:

• prosecutors do not need to request the death penalty
• the defence minister may submit an opinion to the judicial panel of three military officials who only need a simple majority to impose the death penalty
• judges need to record exceptional reasons for imposing a life sentence over the death penalty
• avenues for appeal would be tightly restricted
• there would be no possibility of a pardon
• people sentenced to death would be detained in isolated facilities that would have restricted visitor access, with legal counsel only by video link
• executions (by hanging) would take place within 90 days of the final judgement.

Another yet-to-be-passed bill that may still be brought before the Knesset – the Prosecution of Participants in the October 7 Massacre Events Bill – would also see more death sentences handed down.

It establishes ad hoc military tribunals with retrospective jurisdiction to prosecute those accused of participating in the October 7 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.

These tribunals would:

• consist of a retired district court judge and two officers qualified to serve as judges
• be authorised to depart from ordinary rules around evidence and procedure
• be able to impose the death penalty via a simple majority, without prosecutors requesting it.

Appeals and clemency mechanisms would again be extremely limited.

Taken together, the two amendments significantly expand the scope of capital punishment in Israel. They also remove many procedural safeguards.

Supporters argue capital punishment could deter future attacks and preclude hostage-taking for prisoner exchanges.

Yet, historically, Israel’s intelligence services have opposed death sentences. They have argued it may encourage armed groups to kidnap Israelis as bargaining chips to prevent executions.

International humanitarian law

Critics have argued the new changes place Israel in breach of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

As critics point out, Israel’s new death penalty rules limit access to legal counsel. They also:

• restrict appeals
• allows trials before ad hoc military tribunals for new capital offences
• mandate executions be carried out within 90 days.

This all runs counter to international humanitarian law.

Significant legal concerns are raised by Israel enforcing new capital offences in the occupied territory after the International Court of Justice concluded Israel’s occupation violates international law and must cease.

These concerns are compounded by longstanding criticisms of Israeli military courts in the occupied West Bank, where conviction rates for Palestinian defendants reportedly exceed 99%.

International human rights law

Under international human rights law people should be guaranteed equality before the law and protected from discrimination.

But the changes passed by the Knesset this week subject Palestinians to death sentences as the default, while Israeli citizens accused of killing Palestinians would appear before civil courts. Here, capital punishment would be discretionary and far more limited. This entrenches a discriminatory system.

Critics argue this amounts to collective punishment against Palestinians, which is prohibited under the Geneva Convention.

The European Union has warned that executions through hanging would also violate the absolute prohibition on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Taken together, the two new amendments normalise state-sanctioned executions and violate Israel’s obligations under international law.

– ref. New Israeli law could mean death penalty by default for Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks – https://theconversation.com/new-israeli-law-could-mean-death-penalty-by-default-for-palestinians-convicted-of-deadly-attacks-279458

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/03/31/new-israeli-law-could-mean-death-penalty-by-default-for-palestinians-convicted-of-deadly-attacks-279458/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Austin Haynes, PhD Candidate, School of Arts and Media, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Hollywood science fiction blockbuster Project Hail Mary, starring Ryan Gosling, opened to generally positive reviews and strong box office receipts, but in Aotearoa New Zealand it made news for another reason.

Local audiences were surprised, and seemingly delighted, by the movie’s soundtrack featuring a song in te reo Māori, alongside tracks by the Beatles and Harry Styles.

The waiata (song) in question is a version of Pō Atarau, sung by the Turakina Māori Girls Choir, a bittersweet song of farewell. In a film about a human and an alien learning each other’s language and coming to care for each other, it is also remarkably fitting.

Known and loved by many, Pō Atarau first appeared in the mid-1910s when Māori words were added to the tune of a popular piano piece known as the Swiss Cradle Song composed by Australian Clement Scott.

The waiata circulated within Aotearoa as Pō Atarau or Haere Rā and was often included in cultural performances for tourists. Visiting Rotorua in the 1940s, British actress and singer Gracie Fields heard the song sung at the home of tourist guide Rangitīaria Dennan.

It soon shot to worldwide fame, performed in English as The Māori Farewell or Now is the Hour, recorded by various artists including Fields, Bing Crosby and Vera Lynn. But despite the song’s extraordinary popularity, most people know little about the woman credited with its lyrics and adapted tune, Erima Maewa Kaihau (1879–1941).

In her day, Kaihau was a well-known composer and singer. She was one of the first Māori composers to have her songs published and to gain wide recognition in the Pākehā (European) world.

But she was also a woman with considerable political mana (authority). A kind of cultural “broker”, she used her music and voice to foster understanding between Māori and Pākehā.

My research involves reconstructing Kaihau’s story and music. As an opera singer, I have sung her songs many times. And as a poet and translator working in te reo Māori, I return often to her hauntingly evocative words.

Being a Pākehā New Zealander, Kaihau also offers me an example of how song and literature can be used to foster connections between the Māori and Pākehā worlds in general.

But she has been strangely overlooked despite her talent and significance. I have discovered forgotten manuscripts and unpublished songs by Kaihau that have lain unnoticed or miscatalogued in archives across the country.

By piecing her story back together, I want to show what her music and life can tell us about how wāhine Māori used waiata as tools of diplomacy – to express their own mana, and to build relationships between peoples.

Between worlds

For those who take the time to listen to her, Kaihau offers a vision of what it means to live with and to love one another on these islands we call home.

Born in 1879 with the name Louisa Flavell, she grew up in Whangaroa in Northland. Part of a prominent Pākehā-Māori family, she belonged to the Ngāpuhi iwi (tribe) in the north and to the Ngāti Te Ata iwi around Waiuku near Auckland.

She traced her descent from prominent ancestors from both tribes, including her great-grandfather Ururoa, a rangatira who signed the 1835 Māori Declaration of Independence.

As a teenager, Maewa (the name she most often chose to be known by) and her family moved from Northland to live with relatives in Waiuku, where they discovered most of their ancestral land had been confiscated. Like neighbouring Waikato, this was a Māori community still reeling from the Crown’s invasion and land confiscations in the 1860s.

She later married Hēnare Kaihau, a politician and rangatira of Ngāti Te Ata who was chief advisor to the Māori King Mahuta. She attended political hui (meetings) alongside her husband and occasionally on her own – always impeccably dressed, and often one of the only wāhine (women) present.

We don’t know when Kaihau started composing, but her earliest published songs were printed in 1918. Many of her songs focused on unhappy lovers, but she also composed and published a number of songs of welcome and farewell used when foreign dignitaries visited Aotearoa.

In 1926, she even performed her songs for famed Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who was performing in New Zealand at the time. In 1927 she welcomed the Duke and Duchess of York with her song The Huia. In 1930, she farewelled and welcomed the wives of successive governors-general with her own compositions.

Kaihau’s work as a cultural guide flowed in both directions. In 1900, for example, she took King Mahuta (who spoke almost no English) to watch a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Gondoliers – one can only imagine what he made of it.

Waiata diplomacy

Kaihau’s songs work as a kind of musical diplomacy. As a wahine Māori, to perform them allowed her to assert her right as tangata whenua to undertake the work of welcoming and farewelling.

Several of her published songs feature cover illustrations of Māori women waving off European-style ships.

Kaihau’s waiata also offer a vision of bicultural cooperation. Her lyrics draw freely from the poetic conventions of both Māori and European literatures. Her songs about unhappy lovers evoke the pre-European genre of waiata aroha as much as they echo English parlour songs of the day.

It is this quality of Kaihau’s music that Ngāi Tahu author Becky Manawatu noted when she referenced Akoako o te Rangi in her 2019 novel Auē. Manawatu has described the song as “strange and beautiful” and admitted she originally assumed it was composed by a Pākehā due to its peculiar style.

I think Kaihau’s rich and unique songs, which paint with both Pākehā and Māori palettes, are a key to her role as a diplomat for Māoridom.

They speak of the ties that bind, and the affection expressed at parting, in ways that weave together Pākehā and Māori emotional vocabularies, creating something new.

What might Erima Maewa Kaihau have made of her famous waiata featuring in a sci-fi epic about alien contact? Given her efforts to create a musical language that speaks across worlds and languages, I imagine she would be pleased.

– ref. Her song features in Ryan Gosling’s hit movie, but Erima Maewa Kaihau was once a star too – https://theconversation.com/her-song-features-in-ryan-goslings-hit-movie-but-erima-maewa-kaihau-was-once-a-star-too-279326

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/03/31/her-song-features-in-ryan-goslings-hit-movie-but-erima-maewa-kaihau-was-once-a-star-too-279326/

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Flavie Waters, Research Professor, School of Psychological Science, The University of Western Australia

Have you ever been drifting off to sleep when suddenly you hear what sounds like a gunshot, a door slamming, or an explosion inside your head? You jolt awake, heart pounding, sit upright in bed, but the room is silent.

Nothing has happened – but it felt very real.

This experience has a dramatic name: exploding head syndrome.

Despite the alarming name, it’s not dangerous, not painful, and not a sign something is wrong with the brain.

What is it?

Exploding head syndrome is a type of sleep disorder known as a parasomnia.

Parasomnias are unusual experiences that occur while sleeping or during transitions between sleep and wakefulness.

In exploding head syndrome, a person “hears” a sudden noise that seem to originate from deep inside the head. It’s a sensory perception generated by the brain rather than an external sound.

It typically occurs when drifting in or out of sleep, most commonly when a person is drowsy and about to fall asleep.

People commonly describe a sudden bang or loud metallic noise, gunshots, an explosion, crashing waves, buzzing electricity, a door slamming, or fireworks.

Exploding head syndrome can be intensely frightening. The loud noise may be accompanied by other sensations, including a brief stab of pain in the head (though it’s normally painless), flashes of light, out-of-body sensations, or the sensation of electricity coursing through the body.

The episode only lasts for a split second or a few seconds, and typically disappears completely once the person wakes up. Some people experience only a single episode, while others may have occasional episodes or brief clusters before the condition settles.

Because the experience is so sudden and unusual, many fear they’ve had a stroke or seizure, or that something catastrophic has happened. Others interpret it as a supernatural or ominous event.

The distress is caused not by pain, but by confusion and the body’s alarm response. The brain is partially awake, disoriented, and briefly activates the fight-or-flight system.

What causes it?

We don’t know the exact cause, but researchers have proposed several theories.

Because episodes occur during the transition into and out of sleep, they may be related to the same processes that produce what are known as hypnagogic hallucinations (vivid sensory experiences you can get while falling asleep).

As we fall asleep, different parts of the brain gradually switch off in a coordinated sequence.

In exploding head syndrome, that process may be linked to the shutting down of neural systems that inhibit auditory sensory processing. Your brain may end up interpreting this as a loud sound.

A related theory proposes a brief reduction in activity of the brainstem, particularly the reticular activating system (which is involved in regulating transitions between wakefulness and sleep).

Exploding head syndrome typically does not involve pain, and is therefore different from headaches and migraines.

The syndrome’s distinct features also makes epilepsy an unlikely explanation for most people.

How common is it?

Exploding head syndrome is more common than you may think.

It occurs in at least 10% of the population, and around 30% of people will experience it at least once in their lifetime.

It can occur at any age, often after the age of 50. It may be slightly more common in women, but we don’t know why.

Exploding head syndrome is more likely in people who have other sleep disturbances, such as insomnia or sleep paralysis.

It is also associated with:

How is it treated?

Exploding head syndrome is harmless and not a sign of a serious brain problem. Episodes are usually brief, and may occur sporadically or in brief clusters before resolving on their own.

Once people are reassured the condition is not harmful and not a sign of brain damage or serious disease, episodes may become less frightening and frequent.

Medications are considered if episodes are frequent and very distressing but there haven’t been any large clinical trials that can guide treatment. Some sufferers have benefited from medications such as such as clomipramine but the evidence is limited, and more research is needed.

More commonly, treatment consists of reassurance and improving sleep habits. Some people report that addressing sleep problems such as insomnia, reducing tiredness and practising mindfulness and breathing techniques can help.

Generally harmless

In 1619 French philosopher René Descartes described having three dreams he regarded as a sign of divine revelation. In one, he heard a loud sound and saw a bright flash of light when he woke up. Some researchers have suggested what he was really experiencing was exploding head syndrome.

Despite its dramatic name, exploding head syndrome is harmless. For many people, the most effective intervention is understanding what it is – and knowing that it is not dangerous.

Although it is generally harmless, you should seek medical advice if episodes occur frequently, impact on your quality of life or are causing distress. Consult a doctor if they are painful, or associated with seizures, prolonged confusion, loss of consciousness or severe headache.

– ref. Exploding head syndrome: the surprisingly common condition with a terrifying name – https://theconversation.com/exploding-head-syndrome-the-surprisingly-common-condition-with-a-terrifying-name-276273

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/03/31/exploding-head-syndrome-the-surprisingly-common-condition-with-a-terrifying-name-276273/

By Margot Staunton, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

Fiji’s Health Minister Dr Ratu Antonio Lalabalavu has defended the government’s handling of the country’s HIV crisis.

HIV is surging in Fiji with at least 9000 people — or nearly one percent of the population — reported to be now infected.

There are concerns that the real figure could be significantly higher, with global health experts saying HIV is historically under-reported.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) believes the country has been gripped by an “escalating HIV outbreak”.

The island nation declared an HIV outbreak in January last year, with the government calling it “a national crisis” and regional health experts warning that it could spread across the region.

Dr Lalabalavu told Pacific Waves that despite the rising tide of infection the government’s response to the crisis had been “responsible”.

“Look at the [HIV] trend and how it started, it goes way back to 2017, 2018. We are the government that recognised it and now we are doing something about it.”

Budget allocation
The government allocated FJ$10 million (US$4.4 million) in last year’s Budget towards initiatives designed to tackle the problem, he said.

“From last year there have been government initiatives put in place to ensure that we do try and get this under control.”

“In 2025, Fiji recorded 2003 new diagnoses, up from 1583 in 2024, with the national rate diagnosis rising to 226 per 100,000, up from 13 per 100,000 in 2019 — a 17-fold increase,” he said.

“Men remain more affected, but the gap is narrowing, showing that infection is increasingly affecting women and families.”

On top of that, a new trend has emerged showing that the number of HIV-positive newborns is on the rise, according to the head of Fiji’s National HIV Outbreak and Cluster Response team, Dr Jason Mitchell.

Sixty babies were born with HIV last year, up from 31 cases in 2024 and more than 3 percent of women attending antenatal care in Fiji were testing positive for HIV, with the number slightly higher in the capital, Suva, Dr Mitchell said.

One baby is being diagnosed with HIV every week due to mother-to-child transmission, and one child is dying every month from advanced HIV disease.

Mother-to-child transmission
Mother-to-baby transmission is a growing concern, according to treatment support worker Dashika Balak.

“They (the mothers) test negatively initially but over the course of the pregnancy they acquire HIV,” Balak said.

“This is a new trend that we are seeing, because these women may not have risky behaviours but most of the partners are injecting drug users and in pregnancy people do have sex.”

Testing during pregnancy is now underway to reduce the risk of transmission to babies, she said.

Dr Lalabalavu has admitted that sexual promiscuity and drug use among youth in particular are huge contributing factors in the HIV epidemic.

Asked exactly how the government planned to address this, he said “a behavioural change programme” was needed to ensure that happens.

“It is part of the plan, you need good planning and a programme to ensure that is implemented across the board,” he said.

“It is not just something for the Ministry of Health, it’s for the various ministries, important stakeholders, the vanua, the church and the family in general.”

“We will have to tread carefully in terms of how it is accepted within the community, and also we need to look into the legal aspect of it. So we are in the final stages of ensuring that the programme is endorsed.”

Cultural and religious beliefs played a part in the sensitivity around the issue in Fiji, he said.

“First of all, you need to create awareness that by doing this we are not advocating for drug use. That is the challenge and the narrative that we need the general public are aware of,” he said.

“Right now we are looking at avenues to ensure that we get the message to important stakeholders such as the community, the vanua, and religious-based organisations that are here.”

“We want to tap into their capabilities so they can, together with the ministry, pass this message along to their congregations and to the public at large,” he said.

Echoing this, Mitchell told Fiji’s state broadcaster that introducing the programme would not be easy, given the negative reactions in the past when condom use and family planning were phased in.

He said health officials were accused of promoting promiscuity among youth, when they were responding to public health needs.

However, he stressed that the needle and syringe programme was crucial to reducing HIV and Hepatitis C infections in the country.

Needle sharing is described as widespread in group settings, leading to infection clusters within families and communities.

The Health Minister said he expected that by the time the programme went public, it would be well accepted by the people.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Evening Report: https://eveningreport.nz/2026/03/31/were-doing-something-about-it-fijis-health-minister-defends-hiv-response/