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If you’re a fan of all things space, you’ve doubtless heard about the “devil comet”, which has been captivating keen-eyed observers in the northern hemisphere for the past few weeks. Now it’s our turn, as comet 12P/Pons–Brooks is creeping into view for the southern hemisphere.

Before you get too excited, let me quash your hopes. Comet Pons–Brooks is visible to the naked eye, but only if you know where to look. It will look like a fuzzy glowing patch, but nonetheless promises some amazing photo opportunities for the coming weeks.

Even better, it may serve as a celestial warm-up act for an even more special comet later in the year.

Here’s everything you need to know about Pons–Brooks, and how to get the best view.

Why do people call it the ‘devil comet’?

Named after two astronomers who independently discovered it in the 19th century, Comet 12P/Pons–Brooks (its full, official name) was last visible in 1954.

It takes around 71 years to orbit the Sun, making the comet’s visits to the inner Solar System a rare treat for us here on Earth.

At its heart (its nucleus), Pons–Brooks is a dirty snowball around 34 kilometres in diameter. As the comet came swinging back towards us in its orbit, astronomers spotted it back in 2020. At that time, the comet was almost 1.8 billion kilometres from the Sun, and lay dormant.

As the comet kept falling inwards toward the Sun, its surface temperature began to rise, making it “active”. Exposed ices started to sublime, turning directly from solid to gas. This activity is how a comet gets its tail: the nucleus becomes shrouded in a diaphanous “coma” of dust and debris from its sublimated surface, which is then blown away from the Sun by the solar wind.

Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) captured in 2020 with a long, blurry tail clearly visible.
Serrgey75/Shutterstock

But comet 12P/Pons–Brooks didn’t activate gently and smoothly. Instead, it produces several large outbursts of activity, each time, emitting vast amounts of gas and dust in a very short period of time before settling down again.

In the first of those significant outbursts, on July 20, 2023, the comet brightened by a factor of a hundred times, shedding an estimated ten million metric tons of dust and ice.

The solar wind pushed the resulting dust, gas and debris away from the Sun, giving the comet an unusual appearance. To some, the comet looked like the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. To others, it looked vaguely demonic – sporting the cometary equivalent of horns.

The moniker of “devil comet” took hold in media articles and appears to have stuck – even though the comet’s horned appearance is now a thing of the past.

Comet 12P/Pons–Brooks on July 27, 2023, showing the unusual horned appearance that led to its ‘devil comet’ nickname.
Juan Iacruz/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA

Where (and when) should I look?

Over the last few days, the first confirmed sightings of 12P/Pons–Brooks have come in from around Australia. It is currently visible low in the western sky after sunset, albeit almost lost in the glow of twilight.

In the next few weeks, the comet will slowly climb higher in the evening sky. The two videos below show the location of the comet’s head at 6:30pm from mid-April through to mid-June, as seen from Toowoomba and Melbourne.

Visibility of comet 12P/Pons–Brooks, as seen from Toowoomba, from mid-April to mid-June 2024.

Visibility of comet 12P/Pons–Brooks, as seen from Melbourne, from mid-April to mid-June 2024.

Remember, the comet is a diffuse object, rather than a single point of light. The head is where the comet is brightest (centred on its nucleus). The comet’s tails point away from the Sun – so will rise upwards from the western horizon in the evening sky.

While the comet is visible with the naked eye, you really need to know where to look. The best bet is to search with binoculars. Make sure to wait until the Sun is well below the horizon. Once you find the telltale blur of the comet, you will know where to look, and can switch to see if you can spot it with the naked eye.

For me, the most exciting time with Pons–Brooks will come during the first two weeks of May. At that point, the comet will be passing underneath the constellation Orion, which will serve as a signpost.

That period will be prime astrophotography season, so I expect to see many spectacular images of the comet’s tails cutting through the celestial hunter, shining next to the spectacular nebulae dotted throughout Orion’s body.

Read more:
Want to get into stargazing? A professional astronomer explains where to start

But wait… there’s more!

While comet 12P/Pons–Brooks currently basks in the limelight, a potentially great comet is currently moving sunward, promising a spectacular show later this year.

That comet, C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS), was discovered in January 2023, and astronomers soon realised it has the potential to become truly dazzling.

Comet behaviour is hard to predict, so take the following with a pinch of salt, but things still look really promising.

Current predictions suggest Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will be at least as bright as the brightest stars in late September and early October this year. During that time, it will pass almost directly between Earth and the Sun. It might even briefly become visible in broad daylight at that time.

In the days following that chance alignment, the comet will gradually become visible in the evening sky and could be an incredible sight, up to a hundred times brighter than Pons–Brooks at its best.

So, with any luck, the current apparition of 12P/Pons–Brooks is merely the warm-up act, with an even greater spectacle to come later this year. Fingers crossed! Läs mer…

A multi-billion dollar stadium precinct has been proposed for Auckland, one of three proposals in front of Auckland Council for a new stadium in the city. The council is also considering revamping Eden Park. But is a new stadium really value for money for Auckland ratepayers?

Large stadiums are sold as an economic boon for cities. But the reality is these multimillion-dollar investments tend to require significant investment from local and regional councils.

These stadiums are often opposed by sections of the communities asked to pay for them. And once built, they stand empty most of the time.

Why then do local governments keep proposing them? The answer lies in the lofty promises from those supporting the projects – and the questionable calculations used to get them over the line.

For the love of the game

Rugby Union is the principal user of large stadiums in New Zealand. When the game was still amateur, it was expected to build and maintain its own stadiums. For example, Carisbrook in Dunedin was initially built by the Otago Rugby Football Union, while Eden Park was built by various Auckland sports associations.

But with the professionalisation of rugby in 1995 the expectation changed. Taxpayers and ratepayers started paying significant amounts for construction of rugby and “multi-use” stadiums.

Two large (over 30,000 capacity) new stadiums have been built in New Zealand since 1999 (Wellington’s Sky Stadium and Dunedin’s Forsyth Barr Stadium), with one more currently under construction (Te Kaha in Christchurch). And there is the proposed Auckland stadium, currently in front of a council working group.

Read more:
Note to governments: sports stadiums should benefit everyone, not just fans

Out of the four, only Wellington’s Sky Stadium has been designed to be used for both rugby and cricket. The others have a fixed “natural grass” rugby pitch as their main arena.

According to information released under a Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act request, there have been just 30 major events at the Forsyth Barr rugby stadium in Dunedin since 2014 – three a year. And there are no major live music acts set to perform there in the next 18 months.

The last major concert was Pink, who performed at the stadium last month. Ed Sheeran cited the shape of the stadium – rectangular rather than oval – as a reason for skipping the city on his 2023 world tour.

Costs and benefits

While Christchurch’s Te Kaha has been ratepayer funded from the outset, the consortium behind one of the proposed stadiums in Auckland claims there will be zero cost to ratepayers.

But a feasibility report commissioned by former Auckland mayor Phil Goff on the possibility of a new stadium raised questions about the cost for Auckland ratepayers, how much they would be expected to pay, and what sort of profit would be gained from a new stadium.

Whether it is there from the outset or creeps in later, the case for funding from the community is usually based on “economic impact analysis”. This argument is based on taking a large event and claiming everything the attendees do and spend in the town that day is as a direct outcome of the stadium being there.

This figure is then increased via what is known as an “economic impact multiplier” to create a topline figure in support of the stadiums. The exact calculations behind this figure are not always made clear.

However, this headline figure is flawed. Any local attendee would normally have spent the money in the community anyway, for example. And events may have been held in the community at existing venues before the new stadium was built.

Since the professionalisation of rugby in 1995, ratepayers have been tasked with contributing to large sport stadiums.
Hannah Peters/Getty Images

Borrowing and interest costs

The cost of the debt that is incurred to build these stadiums is also high.

Te Kaha, which cost NZ$683 million to build, was promoted as having an annual $50 million positive economic for the region once it opened. But at the same time, Christchurch ratepayers are expected to pay the majority of the construction costs ($453m), while the crown invested $220m.

A significant part of the council investment was borrowed, meaning ratepayers will also be paying for the interest on this debt.

Read more:
Offside: The secret deals involving public money for sports stadiums

Rates increases have become a key source of funding for Te Kaha. The stadium was solely responsible for a 2% increase in Christchurch rates this year – about $94 for an average ratepayer, increasing to $209 during the 2027-28 financial year.

As Auckland councillors consider the proposed waterfront stadium, the city’s leaders need to consider both the cost and the benefit of the development – not just the headline economic impact.

For ratepayers expected to foot some or all of the bill, rates increases and other infrastructure needs could outweigh the benefits of a place to watch sport. Läs mer…

You may have heard of Ozempic, the “miracle drug” for weight loss, but did you know that it was actually designed as a new treatment to manage diabetes? In Canada, diabetes affects approximately 10 per cent of the general population. Of those cases, 90 per cent have Type 2 diabetes.

This metabolic disorder is characterized by persistent high blood sugar levels, which can be accompanied by secondary health challenges, including a higher risk of stroke and kidney disease.

Locks and keys

In Type 2 diabetes, the body struggles to maintain blood sugar levels in an acceptable range. Every cell in the body needs sugar as an energy source, but too much sugar can be toxic to cells. This equilibrium needs to be tightly controlled and is regulated by a lock and key system.

In the body’s attempt to manage blood sugar levels and ensure that cells receive the right amount of energy, the pancreatic hormone, insulin, functions like a key. Cells cover themselves with locks that respond perfectly to insulin keys to facilitate the entry of sugar into cells.

Unfortunately, this lock and key system doesn’t always perform as expected. The body can encounter difficulties producing an adequate number of insulin keys, and/or the locks can become stubborn and unresponsive to insulin.

All forms of diabetes share the challenge of high blood sugar levels; however, diabetes is not a singular condition; it exists as a spectrum. Although diabetes is broadly categorized into two main types, Type 1 and Type 2, each presents a diversity of subtypes, especially Type 2 diabetes.

These subtypes carry their own characteristics and risks, and do not respond uniformly to the same treatments.

To better serve people living with Type 2 diabetes, and to move away from a “one size fits all” approach, it is beneficial to understand which subtype of Type 2 diabetes a person lives with. When someone needs a blood transfusion, the medical team needs to know the patient’s blood type. It should be the same for diabetes so a tailored and effective game plan can be implemented.

This article explores four unique subtypes of Type 2 diabetes, shedding light on their causes, complications and some of their specific treatment avenues.

Severe insulin-deficient diabetes: We’re missing keys!

In severe insulin-deficient diabetes, beta cells limit production of the keys that unlock cells to allow entry of sugar from the blood.
(Lili Grieco-St-Pierre, Jennifer Bruin/Created with BioRender.com)

Insulin is produced by beta cells, which are found in the pancreas. In the severe insulin-deficient diabetes (SIDD) subtype, the key factories — the beta cells — are on strike. Ultimately, there are fewer keys in the body to unlock the cells and allow entry of sugar from the blood.

SIDD primarily affects younger, leaner individuals, and unfortunately, increases the risk of eye disease and blindness, among other complications. Why the beta cells go on strike remains largely unknown, but since there is an insulin deficiency, treatment often involves insulin injections.

Severe insulin-resistant diabetes: But it’s always locked!

In severe insulin-resistant diabetes, the locks start ignoring the keys, triggering the beta cells to produce even more keys to compensate.
(Lili Grieco-St-Pierre, Jennifer Bruin/Created with BioRender.com)

In the severe insulin-resistant diabetes (SIRD) subtype, the locks are overstimulated and start ignoring the keys. As a result, the beta cells produce even more keys to compensate. This can be measured as high levels of insulin in the blood, also known as hyperinsulinemia.

This resistance to insulin is particularly prominent in individuals with higher body weight. Patients with SIRD have an increased risk of complications such as fatty liver disease. There are many treatment avenues for these patients but no consensus about the optimal approach; patients often require high doses of insulin.

Mild obesity-related diabetes: The locks are sticky!

In mild obesity-related diabetes, the locks are ‘sticky,’ making it difficult for the keys to open the locks.
(Lili Grieco-St-Pierre, Jennifer Bruin/Created with BioRender.com)

Mild obesity-related (MOD) diabetes represents a nuanced aspect of Type 2 diabetes, often observed in individuals with higher body weight. Unlike more severe subtypes, MOD is characterized by a more measured response to insulin. The locks are “sticky,” so it is challenging for the key to click in place and open the lock. While MOD is connected to body weight, the comparatively less severe nature of MOD distinguishes it from other diabetes subtypes.

To minimize complications, treatment should include maintaining a healthy diet, managing body weight, and incorporating as much aerobic exercise as possible. This is where drugs like Ozempic can be prescribed to control the evolution of the disease, in part by managing body weight.

Mild age-related diabetes: I’m tired of controlling blood sugar!

In people with mild age-related diabetes, both the locks and the beta cells that produce keys are tired, resulting in fewer keys and stubborn locks.
(Lili Grieco-St-Pierre, Jennifer Bruin/Created with BioRender.com)

Mild age-related diabetes (MARD) happens more often in older people and typically starts later in life. With time, the key factory is not as productive, and the locks become stubborn. People with MARD find it tricky to manage their blood sugar, but it usually doesn’t lead to severe complications.

Among the different subtypes of diabetes, MARD is the most common.

Unique locks, varied keys

While efforts have been made to classify diabetes subtypes, new subtypes are still being identified, making proper clinical assessment and treatment plans challenging.

In Canada, unique cases of Type 2 diabetes were identified in Indigenous children from Northern Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario by Dr. Heather Dean and colleagues in the 1980s and 90s. Despite initial skepticism from the scientific community, which typically associated Type 2 diabetes with adults rather than children, clinical teams persisted in identifying this as a distinct subtype of Type 2 diabetes, called childhood-onset Type 2 diabetes.

Read more:
Indigenous community research partnerships can help address health inequities

Childhood-onset Type 2 diabetes is on the rise across Canada, but disproportionately affects Indigenous youth. It is undoubtedly linked to the intergenerational trauma associated with colonization in these communities. While many factors are likely involved, recent studies have discovered that exposure of a fetus to Type 2 diabetes during pregnancy increases the risk that the baby will develop diabetes later in life.

Acknowledging this distinct subtype of Type 2 diabetes in First Nations communities has led to the implementation of a community-based health action plan aimed at addressing the unique challenges faced by Indigenous Peoples. It is hoped that partnered research between communities and researchers will continue to help us understand childhood-onset Type 2 diabetes and how to effectively prevent and treat it.

A mosaic of conditions

Type 2 diabetes is a mosaic of conditions, each with its own characteristics.
(Lili Grieco-St-Pierre, Jennifer Bruin/Created with BioRender.com)

Type 2 diabetes is not uniform; it’s a mosaic of conditions, each with its own characteristics. Since diabetes presents so uniquely in every patient, even categorizing into subtypes does not guarantee how the disease will evolve. However, understanding these subtypes is a good starting point to help doctors create personalized plans for people living with the condition.

While Indigenous communities, lower-income households and individuals living with obesity already face a higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes than the general population, tailored solutions may offer hope for better management. This emphasizes the urgent need for more precise assessments of diabetes subtypes to help customize therapeutic strategies and management strategies. This will improve care for all patients, including those from vulnerable and understudied populations. Läs mer…

This year, organizers of Earth Day are calling for widespread climate education as a critical step in the fight against climate change.

A new report, released in time for global attention for Earth Day on April 22, highlights the impact of climate education on promoting behaviour change in the next generation.

Despite people’s deep connection to their local environment — whether it’s blackouts in Toronto caused by raccoons, communities gearing up for a total solar eclipse lasting only minutes, chasing northern lights or hundreds of Manitoba kids excited about ice fishing — there remains inertia in climate action.

Sparking global momentum and energy in young people can go a long way to addressing climate change now and in the near future, says Bryce Coon, author of the report and Earth Day’s director of education.

How knowledge becomes ingrained

Educators aspire to prepare learners for the global challenges of the times. Teachers have become increasingly concerned about best practices for supporting their charges as young people express anxiety about environmental futures.

In his report, Coon outlines the benefits of climate education, starting with supporting educators to impart “green muscle memory” — habits, routines and attitudes young people develop to perform eco-friendly actions repetitively and consistently. This, he notes, contributes to alleviating climate-related despair and anxiety.

Bicycles are lined up as a public bike-sharing system is launched in Toronto in 2011.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Pat Hewitt

Similarly, Finnish researchers use biking as an analogy to describe the process by which knowledge becomes ingrained in people’s memory. Just as all of the parts of a bike need to work together for the bike to ride smoothly, so does climate education need to draw upon many different components for climate education to effectively influence new habits. The bike model advocates ways of learning that consider knowledge, identity, emotions and world views.

Young people have come to flex their green muscle memory when they load reusable water bottles each day. That small action has become a part of the daily routine for millions of families, and when added together reduces plastic litter.

According to a 2022 survey by the Canadian charity Learning for a Sustainable Future (LSF) and Leger Research Intelligence Group, Canadians have increased awareness of climate change and have become concerned about climate action.

Many believe governments should do more, including making climate education a priority. The survey received responses from 4,035 people including educators, students and parents. More than half of the survey respondents were from Ontario (25 per cent) and Québec (29 per cent).

Challenges with climate education

However, inclusion of climate education in formal school curricula has come with its own set of challenges.

In the survey, 50 per cent of educators nationally agreed that a lack of time in their course or grade to teach the topic of climate change is a barrier. Educators in Ontario reported a lack of classroom resources as a barrier when integrating climate change education within the curriculum.

Read more:
6 actions school systems can take to support children’s outdoor learning

Children write messages on a fabric during a rally to mark Earth Day at Lafayette Square, Washington, in April 2022.
(AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

Evidence is building about the benefits of implementing and expanding climate education. A 2020 American study documented how students enrolled in a year-long university environmental education course reported pro-environmental behaviours after completing the course.

Extrapolating the impact on learners to a wider scale, the researchers argued scaling climate education had the potential to be as effective as other large-scale mitigation strategies for reducing carbon emission, like solar panels or electric vehicles.

More recently, research has demonstrated the value of how learning in climate education can lead youth to seek green choices, take green action and make green decisions. The United Nations has declared climate education “a critical agent in addressing the issue of climate change” as climate education increases across different settings and for various age groups.

Educators finding ways

More and more educators are taking steps to find ways to teach climate education in schools. Emily Olsen, an educator and now a doctoral candidate at Penn State University, began to explore climate education in greater depth after surviving the Almeda wildfire in Oregon that claimed her fiancé’s family home.

This wildfire’s severity can most likely be attributed to drier-than-normal conditions brought on by climate change in her then-town of residence.

Following the Almeda Fire, a staircase stands among rubble at a residential complex in Talent, Ore., in September 2020.
(AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Due to Olsen’s lived experience, developing community resilience to the effects of climate change influences her approach to studying climate education. As an instructor for several undergraduate-level courses, Olsen focuses on equipping budding educators with the skills and knowledge to incorporate climate education in their classrooms.

Read more:
Wildfires in Alberta spark urgent school discussions about terrors of global climate futures

All aspects of curricula

Embedding climate education into all aspects of curricula can take a variety of approaches in and outside of the classroom.

In mainstream public education, climate education is becoming more common in Canada, but there is variation across provinces and territories. Environmental education has been packaged in different forms, including broadening school curricula with inclusion in science, but also subjects including English, math and art.

Teacher training as well as complementary programming is also being offered to meet demand.

Integrated education that taps into the “heart, head and hands” of young people can spread behaviour change at a broader level. Educators might find other opportunities, such as with climate-related challenges, experiential learning and project-based learning, all of which can have lasting impacts and promote behaviour change. Läs mer…

What comes to mind when you read the slogan “I love Canadian Oil and Gas”? Energy independence? Royalties for government coffers? Good jobs for Canadian workers?

Canada’s oil and gas sector is in the throes of profound change driven by shifting consumer demand and global commitments to dramatically lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The oil and gas industry, and Conservative politicians, are actively resisting these changes through calls to “Axe the Tax” and a focus on protecting “good jobs” — efforts which aim to tie the future prosperity of oil and gas workers with the industry’s survival.

But are industry and politicians sincere in their affection for oil and gas workers? Or, are energy workers merely a convenient vehicle to shield the industry from change that many Canadians believe is inevitable?

Our research offers a very different view and in our recent book, Unjust Transition: The Future for Fossil Fuel Workers, we examine the case of the Co-op Refinery Complex in Regina to show how industry is using the coming low-carbon transition to force deep concessions from its workforce.

Picket lines

From December 2019 to June 2020 Federated Co-operatives Limited (FCL), which owns the Co-Op Refinery Complex, locked out its workers — represented by Unifor Local 594 — in a gruelling standoff that resulted in important concessions, especially to these fossil fuel workers’ pension plans.

We found the company used expanding pipeline capacity and Canada’s emission reduction policies to justify its push to force workers to take concessions.

Then-FCL President Scott Banda even gave a shout out to United We Roll (UWR) activists during a speech at a gas station in February 2020, three months into the lock-out. Local 594 members were threatened with violence by some of the UWR activists on social media.

The strike came to an end in June 2020 after a six-month lockout when Local 594 members ratified an agreement with FCL.

The ‘United We Roll’ convoy of semi-trucks prepares to leave Red Deer, Alta., in February 2019, on its way to Ottawa.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

“Just” transition?

Canadian politics are increasingly being defined by the struggle over climate policies. Just this month federal Conservatives, conservative provincial governments and protesters came out strong against the increase to the Trudeau government’s signature climate policy — the price on carbon.

The Liberal government has faced significant backlash against its other climate policies as well, including the oil and gas emissions cap.

Referring to the government’s climate policies, Bill Bewick of Fairness Alberta wrote “compromising the prosperity of future generations of Canadians to enrich and empower autocratic leaders is not just.” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has similarly lampooned plans for a “just transition” for oil and gas workers as “unjust.”

It seems the notion of an unjust transition is gaining ground as political parties, industry associations and an increasingly mobilized fossil fuel workforce argue that climate policies are unduly targeting fossil fuels while there is still strong world demand.

Conservatives position themselves as the voice of fossil fuel workers, who they cast as victims of carbon pricing and other federal environmental policies. Shuttered factories and their laid-off employees are victims of Liberal anti-oil policies, industry proponents insist.

Politicians like federal Conservative MP Andrew Scheer and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe have proudly attended rallies organized by United We Roll and Canada Action to show their support for fossil fuel workers and their “grassroots” advocacy groups.

Read more:
How ideology is darkening the future of renewables in Alberta

This moniker of “unjust transition” references and counters the discourse of “just transition,” a concept that first emerged in the 1980s as a labour-led framework aligning ecological justice with the plight of workers who might be disrupted by new environmental regulations aimed at phasing out harmful industrial practices.

Today the just transition is advanced by those advocating for climate policies that “leave no one behind.” Canada’s Bill C-50, “an act respecting accountability, transparency and engagement to support the creation of sustainable jobs for workers and economic growth in a net-zero economy,” was first proposed as a “just transition” bill before it was tabled in 2023 and rebranded as a sustainable jobs act.

However, efforts including downsizing, consolidation, efficiency measures and automation have consistently shown oil and gas companies to be a bigger threat to oil worker jobs than government (Liberal, or otherwise) policies. In our book we highlight how FCL, for example, vilified the very workers who take part in the refining of raw resources as being obstacles to transition and financial sustainability.

Members of Unifor Local 594 hold signs during a rally outside the Co-op Refinery in Regina, Sask. in December 2019.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Michael Bell

Questions unanswered

Time and again governments, local police and courts advanced the interests of industry over those of unionized workers. That FCL was able to maintain billions in revenue while extracting concessions at the bargaining table, and at the same time argue that worker pension plans are unsustainable, says much about the leverage fossil fuel corporations hold over the region.

“At stake was the loss of the union, (it) was them just breaking us and just like, breaking us financially so that we couldn’t fight anymore,” said one Local 594 worker we spoke to.

Canada faces an essential, existential question. Will the trajectory of the fossil fuel sector be one of a “just transition” toward a less carbon-intensive economy with the needs of oil and gas workers maintained front and centre? Or, will the inevitable winding down of extractive fossil fuel industries lead to acrimonious labour relations and social injustice?

Taken together, the attacks by FCL on the union and its pension plan, represent an unjust transition, whereby attempts to break the collective power of labour are part of the rhetoric of the “net-zero” future.

To build a just future for workers and the environment, energy sector unions should consider becoming both environmental actors and stewards of good jobs as part of a genuinely “just transition.” Labour must also be included at the policy tables when governments and employers are making decisions about the future of fossil fuels.

The path designed by powerful oil and gas interests is not one that puts workers or communities first. Only the workers themselves can push for these changes. Läs mer…

The Sure Start programme was launched in 1999, with centres set up in communities across England to offer support to the most disadvantaged families.

These centres had significant investment and a broad remit that focused on improving the lives of families. They offered support for families with children aged up to five, as well as high-quality play, learning and childcare experiences for children.

They also provided healthcare and advice about family health and child health, as well as development and support for people with special needs. But after 2010, funding was cut significantly and many of the centres closed.

Now, a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has laid out some of their benefits. The research found that access to a Sure Start centre significantly improved the GCSE results of disadvantaged children.

This builds on other research that has shown that Sure Start also had significant long-term health benefits. This research suggests that at its peak, Sure Start prevented 13,000 hospitalisations of children aged 11-15.

These findings come as no surprise to those who, like me, worked in the early Sure Start local programmes and saw the value of their family-led ethos. In my current role at Sheffield Hallam University, I am the director of a nursery and early years research centre which maintains this approach – and my research with colleagues has shown the benefits that it brings to both parents and children.

How Sure Start worked

There was no set model for how Sure Start local programmes should deliver the services they offered. This led to delivery plans being developed with the local community. The support offered was tailored to the challenges that local families were facing.

I was lucky enough to be the community development worker for a small children-and-families charity that led an early Sure Start local programme. As this developed, it kept the community at its heart. At its peak, the programme combined a 60-place day-nursery, a women’s health project, and training for parents. Health visitors and midwives working on the sames site provided wraparound support for children and families.

During this period, I was constantly struck by the huge changes that families made in their lives after receiving the support they needed at the time they needed it. I believe this was partly due to the early programmes having nurseries on site. This created a daily point of contact with families, building trust and relationships which then supported families’ – and particularly mothers’ – engagement with other services.

Having access to early years provision meant that special needs were identified early, and children had access to support services before they reached school age. This was a positive factor highlighted in the IFS report.

Learning from Sure Start

The nursery and early years research centre I now direct was opened by Sheffield Hallam University during the pandemic in a disadvantaged area. This project is the result of a partnership with Save the Children UK.

Drawing on the successes of Sure Start, the nursery was established with the motto “changing lives through relationships”. It had the explicit aim of building trust with families so that we can understand their challenges and work on solutions together.

Nursery worker and child at the Meadows Nursery, Sheffield.
Sheffield Hallam University, Author provided (no reuse)

The university runs the nursery, and together with Save the Children provides additional support to parents. This includes a breakfast club, training and volunteering opportunities, and links to health and wellbeing support. We also direct people to the services offered by the local authority family hub, which is based on site.

This “one-stop shop” approach means there is a team that can offer support across a range of issues, without families having to re-tell their stories to different agencies each time.

There are numerous case studies of parents making changes in their lives through the support at the nursery. A number of our parents have developed the confidence to train as community researchers, for example, while some are training to deliver a nurture course to other parents in the community. One of our parents who has experience of homelessness is now advising homeless charities.

I have always been convinced of the benefit of Sure Start’s approach, and the recent IFS findings add further evidence of its value. The families that we work with are facing multiple challenges, from food and fuel poverty to insecure work and housing. Now would seem to be a critical moment for this approach to be brought back, so that a future generation of children can benefit. Läs mer…

Since coming into power, the coalition government has adopted a simple but shrewd see-how-fast-we-can-move political strategy.

However, in the health sector this need for speed entails policy risks that could come back to bite the government before the next election.

The biggest such risk comes from the disestablishment of the Māori Health Authority-Te Aka Whai Ora. This required an amendment to the Pae Ora Act, pushed through under urgency, to remove all references to the Māori Health Authority and its relationships with other entities from the law.

Unlike other law changes (such as the repeal of New Zealand’s smokefree law), the dismantling of the Māori Health Authority had been clearly signalled during the election campaign and in the coalition agreements.

Few people doubted the government would follow through. But it has exposed itself to unnecessary risks and the speed of change could become a liability.

More health sector confusion

There was no practical need for the amendment to be passed under urgency, without the scrutiny of the select committee process.

This approach may provide an electoral sugar hit for the coalition parties, but it could also sow the seeds for practical and political difficulties in health policy later in the parliamentary term and beyond.

While the parts of the act referring to the Māori Health Authority have been excised, the act retains its primary focus on reducing health inequities. The planning, reporting and accountability requirements still reflect this policy direction.

To date, health minister Shane Reti has avoided using the words “equity” or “inequities”, instead preferring a generic focus on improving health outcomes, including for Māori. But the planning and decision making mandated under the legislation still require government health agencies to address health inequities.

The amendment has also delayed the establishment of “localities” – 60 to 80 local networks of government and community health organisations that co-design and deliver community-based services. Under Pae Ora, all regions were to have localities established by July this year and plans produced by July 2025. This timeline has now been pushed out by five years.

The government may well decide to make further amendments to Pae Ora, but in the meantime, the gap between its rhetoric and the policy priorities embedded in the legislation creates an existential bind for the Ministry of Health and Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora.

Read more:
Ending the ‘postcode lottery’ in health is more than a technical fix – it means fundamentally reorganising our systems

Many structural changes introduced by the former Labour government in 2022 remain. Despite having misgivings about the re-centralisation of the health system, the government has not reversed the merging of 20 District Health Boards into Health New Zealand.

Minister Reti has also indicated that iwi Māori partnership boards will have a significant role in the health system. But with the removal of the Māori Health Authority and hitting the pause button on localities, it is not yet clear what this role will be.

Health targets, such as reducing the time people have to wait in emergency departments, were first introduced more than a decade ago.
Shutterstock/Medical-R

Health targets rebooted

Other changes resemble initiatives introduced during the last National-led government in 2009, including specific health targets.

The health targets involve specified performance levels, such as ensuring that 95% of patients visiting emergency departments are seen within six hours.

When these targets were last tried during the 2010s, some reported improvements such as fewer deaths in emergency departments were real. Others were achieved by gaming the system.

Examples included falsifying data (stopping the clock) of when patients left the emergency department and placing untreated patients in short-stay units which were not subject to the target. We don’t yet know how the government plans to avoid such unintended consequences.

The government’s funding boost for security guards in emergency departments was temporary.
Shutterstock/ChameleonsEye

In another policy change, the government allocated NZ$5.7 million of temporary funding late last year for hospitals to contract more security guards in emergency departments. This was to address the growing problem of violence and aggression towards doctors, nurses and other emergency department staff.

But this is another example of a PR-driven approach. This earmarked funding has now ceased. Health New Zealand bears either the cost of continuing to fund security guards or the reputational risk of their reduced presence.

Other policy items include the expansion of the maximum age of eligibility for breast cancer screening from 69 to 74 and the commitment to develop a plan toward establishing a third medical school at the University of Waikato.

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New Zealand’s health restructure is doomed to fall short unless its funding model is tackled first

Both these policies will have reasonable support within the organisations responsible for them. But the extension of breast cancer screening will face challenges of workforce capacity and the rollout will be gradual.

Progress to date on the third medical school is the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the government and the university. If it goes ahead, it won’t have any impact before the mid-2030s.

The government may have already dented minister Reti’s chances of building positive relationships with health sector leaders and interest groups. The Māori Health Authority had widespread support from health sector groups. Alongside everyone else who had a view or an interest, these groups had no opportunity to have input on its disestablishment.

Along with the health sector groups’ vocal opposition to the u-turn on the smokefree legislation and the looming prospect of budgetary austerity, the coalition government has arguably already created a rocky relationship with the sector.

While governments often draw criticism from the health sector, few have done so quite this rapidly. Läs mer…

Since 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity has grown exponentially – and so has the formidable organisational machine of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These two factors will be key to delivering the BJP a likely third consecutive victory in the Indian general election, starting today.

While much ink has been spilled on Modi’s populist leadership and personality cult, the same does not hold for the party organisation that he and his close ally, Amit Shah, have developed over the past decade. Yet, this has been crucial to the party’s electoral success. How?

As part of my research on members of right-wing populist parties, I’ve conducted interviews with dozens of BJP party members and officials. (They spoke to me on condition of anonymity, so are only represented by their first initial here).

What I’ve found is the BJP’s grassroots organisation fuels its dominance at the ballot box in four key ways: 1) campaigning; 2) diffusion of Hindu nationalist ideology; 3) implementation of welfare programs; and 4) party survival.

A well-oiled campaign machine

Maintaining a large membership-based organisation provides the BJP with a campaign machine that has no equal in India.

Since 2014, Shah, the former president of the party and current Home Affairs minister, has conducted regular mass recruitment campaigns to help the party become what is believed to be the largest in the world. It claims to have some 180 million members.

The focus of this organisation is on the polling booth. During election campaigns, BJP grassroots members are assigned a booth where they collect as much information as possible on voters and then try to persuade them to vote for the BJP.

S., a Marathi soap business owner active in the BJP’s women wing, described their campaigning to me like this:

Each booth has ten women, and each woman is allotted 15 houses where they roam around for about three days [before election day]. They check who is there, if anyone has passed away. They check how voting will happen. They compile data on that and, on election day, since they have already known each other for a few days, they check in with these people – see if they have voted, if they are getting out to vote.

No other political party, including the Congress Party which dominated Indian politics for decades, can rely on this type of large membership and tight organisation. The BJP is effectively engaging in micro-campaigning on a nationwide scale, and so gaining a significant advantage in mobilising voters.

Voting in West Bengal state in the 2019 election.
Bikas Das/AP

Training members in Hindu nationalism

In addition, the BJP is the Indian party with the most well-defined ideological platform, which combines fervent Hindu nationalism with right-wing populism based on religious polarisation. Its grassroots organisation enables the BJP to socialise and train its members in this ideology.

My research on both BJP party voters and members shows how these people hold right-wing populist attitudes and worldviews that closely match the party’s platform.

In the case of grassroots members, these ideologies are ingrained through an extensive training network.

J., a doctor and BJP member from Surat (Gujarat), explained to me:

Once a year, for two to three days, there are experts on various subjects who come and train us. There are trainings for different things. The history of the BJP, the ideology of the BJP, the performance of the BJP.

S., a retired school principal, from the same city, said members are also taught “how to communicate with people – we should reach people’s hearts”.

This means that when they campaign in elections, BJP party members are adept at mobilising new followers based on the party’s ideological platform, which has been central to its success over the last decade.

Read more:
With democracy under threat in Narendra Modi’s India, how free and fair will this year’s election be?

Bringing welfare to the poor

Alongside Hindu nationalism, the expansion of welfare to hundreds of millions of low-income earners is another reason why Modi is so popular. He always makes sure to put the words “prime minister” before the names of welfare programs and print his face on handouts.

When it comes to welfare program implementation, however, it is BJP party members who do the heavy lifting. According to my interviews, this was the main activity of party members, whether in the form of cleaning the streets, distributing food or setting up bank accounts for the poor.

As P., a young consultant from Vadodara (Gujarat), told me:

Whenever there is any government scheme for the needy people, we go to them and make them aware. We try to be a bridge between the government and people.

This was the case, for example, of M., a Gujarati woman who helped set up self-help groups for women so that they could “stand on their own two feet”.

We teach them how to make wicks, to make sanitary pads, to make incense sticks.

These schemes are very popular among the Indian public. And evidence shows the beneficiaries were more likely to vote for the BJP in the 2019 general election.

Read more:
India elections: ’Our rule of law is under attack from our own government, but the world does not see this’

Party survival is a priority

Finally, the extensive grassroots party organisation enables the BJP to thrive by providing a steady source of candidates, officials and leaders.

Members affirmed that the BJP, contrary to other parties, is meritocratic when it comes to the distribution of offices. As N., a Marathi car shop owner, explained:

The BJP is not dominated by one family. All workers are considered equal, and ordinary workers can get promoted to higher posts.

Indeed, my research on dynasticism among Indian parties found that in the 2019 election, just 17% of the candidates fielded by the BJP were from a political family (as opposed to 27% in the Congress Party).

Delivering BJP election signs across the Brahmaputra River ahead of elections at Nimati Ghat in Jorhat, India.
Anupam Nath/AP

Even though some BJP members did complain to me about candidates being “parachuted” in from other parties without having served their time, the BJP remains a party in which long-standing grassroots members can pursue a political career.

Maintaining a large membership also facilitates the BJP’s survival in the long run. In the words of P., the Gujarati consultant mentioned above:

Today the BJP is ruling because we have full-time workers. It’s one of the biggest strengths of the party. We have seen one Modi, but we have thousands of Modis. Läs mer…

Have you ever wondered if there are more insects out at night than during the day?

We set out to answer this question by combing through the scientific literature. We searched for meaningful comparisons of insect activity by day and by night. It turns out only about 100 studies have ever attempted the daunting and rigorous fieldwork required – so we compiled them together to work out the answer.

Our global analysis confirms there are indeed more insects out at night than during the day, on average. Almost a third more (31.4%), to be precise. But this also varies extensively, depending on where you are in the world.

High nocturnal activity may come as no surprise to entomologists and nature photographers. Many of us prowl through jungles wearing head torches, or camp next to light traps hoping to encounter these jewels of the night.

But this is the first time anyone has been able to give a definitive answer to this universal childlike question. And now we know for sure, we can make more strident efforts to conserve insects and preserve their vital place in the natural world.

More insects are out at night than during the day, on average.
Nicky Bay

Building a global dataset of sleepless nights

We searched the literature for studies that sampled insect communities systematically across day and night.

We narrowed these down to studies using methods that would not influence the results. For instance, we excluded studies that collected insects by using sweep nets or beating branches, as these methods can capture resting insects along with active ones.

Studies using light traps or coloured pan traps had to be excluded too. That’s because insects are only attracted to these well-lit traps when there’s low light in the surrounding environment, so they don’t work so well during the day.

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Instead, we targeted studies that sampled insects during the day and night with traps that specifically caught moving insects. These include pitfall traps (for crawling insects), flight interception traps (for flying insects) and aquatic drift nets (for swimming insects).

We also accepted studies using food baits such as dung, for some beetles or honey (for ants).

One of the most memorable studies we encountered sampled mosquitoes using (unfortunate) human subjects as bait. Another had devised innovative automatic time-sorted pitfall traps to minimise the labour required, as the specimens collected would automatically be delivered into different compartments at different times of the day.

But in most of the studies that we ended up including in our analysis, the data had been collected by entomologists who set up many traps before dawn, returned before sunset to collect the day’s samples and prepare more traps for the night, and finally, returned once more before dawn to retrieve the night’s samples.

To improve their estimates of insect activity, many studies reported data that spanned multiple days and field sites. The sacrifice of sleep in the name of science is a true testament to their dedication.

Common methods for sampling insects such as sweep-netting (top left) can capture insects that are inactive during the sampling period. In contrast, sampling methods that intercept moving insects such as flight-interception traps (top right), pitfall traps (bottom left) and drift nets (bottom right) enable better comparisons of insect activity between day and night.
Roger Lee, Eleanor Slade, Francois Brassard and Sebastian Prati

Eventually, we honed in on 99 studies published between 1959 and 2022. These studies spanned all continents except Antarctica and encompassed a wide range of habitats on both land and water.

What did we find?

We found more mayflies, caddisflies, moths and earwigs at night. On the other hand, there were more thrips, bees, wasps and ants during the day.

Many aquatic insects, such as mayflies, are more active at night.
Nicky Bay

Nocturnal activity was more common in wetlands and waterways. In these aquatic areas, there could be twice as many insects active during the night.

In contrast, land-based insects were generally more active during the day, especially in grasslands and savannas. We found the number of insects out and about could triple during the day in these habitats.

This may have something to do with avoiding predators. Fish tend to hunt aquatic insects during the day, whereas nocturnal animals such as bats make life on land more hazardous at night.

We also found insects were more active at night in warmer parts of the globe, where there are higher maximum temperatures. Insects are “ectotherms”, which means they are unable to regulate their body temperature. They are particularly susceptible to extremes in temperature, both hot and cold. This finding underscores the role of climate in regulating insect activity.

Given temperatures peak during the day, higher maximum temperatures may foster increased nocturnal activity as more individuals seek to avoid heat stress by working in the dark.

Insects lack the ability to regulate their body temperature. They’re more active when it’s warmer, but there are limits. Sometimes they just need to rest or avoid the heat of the day altogether.
Nicky Bay

Findings underscore the threats to nocturnal insects

Insects perform many vital “ecosystem services” such as pollination, nutrient cycling and pest control. Many of these services may be provided at night, when more insects are active.

This means we need to curtail some of our own activities to support theirs. For instance, artificial lighting is detrimental to nocturnal insects.

Artificial light, which can strongly attract and disorientate nocturnal insects, poses a significant threat to insect biodiversity and ecological functions.
Nicky Bay

Our research also points to the threat of global warming. In the hottest regions of the globe such as the tropics, the warming trend may further reduce the activity of nocturnal insects that struggle to cope with heat. To this end, we hope our study motivates day-loving ecologists to embrace night-time ecology.

Insects are among the most diverse and important organisms on our planet. Studying their intricate rhythms represents not just a scientific endeavour, but an imperative for preserving wildlife.

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Insects will struggle to keep pace with global temperature rise – which could be bad news for humans Läs mer…

Is Russian president Vladimir Putin guilty of the crime of aggression? In The Trial of Vladimir Putin, barrister Geoffrey Robertson answers that question by dramatising what might happen within the walls of a future courtroom.

The question of whether Putin is guilty of aggression is fairly straightforward. Robertson’s book discusses that issue in detail but does not grapple seriously enough with harder questions, such as whether it would be wise to try Putin in his absence – while he remains at liberty in Moscow – instead of physically in the dock.

Review: The Trial of Vladimir Putin – Geoffrey Roberston (New South)

To simplify the law only slightly: a leader who orders an invasion of another country is generally guilty of aggression except where the act is in self-defence or authorised by the United Nations Security Council.

In 2022, Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine. Russia claimed this was self-defence, but its arguments are made of cardboard, props from a pantomime staged for its allies and domestic audience. You only have to breathe on them to knock them over.

Robertson generally does a sound job of this, though he overlooks the most elaborately constructed of Russia’s cardboard arguments: the fiction that two parts of eastern Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, were independent countries that Russia intervened to assist.

He also tackles the separate question of whether Putin is guilty of war crimes. These are crimes committed during a war, as distinct from the crime of unlawfully starting one. A challenging issue here is that Putin himself is not on the ground in Ukraine. Evidence would be needed that he is responsible in his role as a commander for actions carried out by subordinates.

One of the stronger elements of the book is Robertson’s explanation of where Putin might be tried. The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction to try him for war crimes, and in 2023 it issued a warrant for his arrest for the war crime of transferring Ukrainian children to Russia.

Can it also try him for aggression? In effect it cannot, for reasons that ultimately reflect the reluctance of countries to expose their leaders to prosecution. Instead, a special aggression tribunal would have to be established in the tradition of the trials of Nazis at Nuremberg.

Robertson takes his readers through each step of the process: the construction of a tribunal, the case against Putin, the case in his defence, a separate trial for war crimes, and the aftermath – including whether Putin should be executed, which is unlikely but which Robertson controversially argues “must be seriously considered”.

NewSouth

The book sometimes reads almost like a work of fiction, though phrased in the future tense: the prosecutor “will” argue this or that; there is “likely to be live evidence from witnesses”; “there will be a break at the end of this evidence to enable each legal team to prepare a final presentation”; the judges should reach a decision “within three months”.

It is not pure fiction; it is speculation informed by Robertson’s experience. The details he imagines will bring these potential future trials to life for readers who are less familiar than he is with the inside of a courtroom.

At the same time, a degree of banality enters here. Does Robertson really need to tell us three times that any judgements should be uploaded to the internet? Or four times that they should be translated into Russian and Ukrainian? This detail also contrasts with his less thorough discussion of the hard questions.

Read more:
In Russia’s war against Ukraine, one of the battlegrounds is language itself

Rhetorical devices

The International Criminal Court requires defendants to be physically present during a trial. But in theory a special aggression tribunal might be able to try Putin even if he is absent, depending on how the tribunal were set up.

Whether Putin should be tried even if absent is a hard question because there are arguments on both sides. On one hand, there is no global police force that can march into the Kremlin and handcuff him, so a trial in his absence is the only kind that seems likely to occur and might at least shift international opinion against him.

On the other hand, a trial in the defendant’s absence is often perceived as unfair, because the defendant does not have the opportunity to challenge the evidence against them or present their own.

Even if the judges were to satisfy themselves that in these circumstances it is fair, it would still enable Putin to portray the trial as unfair, as biased against him, as a Western sham – and that might have the opposite effect on international opinion, defeating the whole purpose.

Robertson does not spend enough time weighing these arguments against each other. Instead, he uses rhetorical tools such as hyperbole: if “international law is to have any meaning”, he writes, then a trial in the defendant’s absence “must be acceptable”. Does the validity of the entire legal system really depend on whether everyone agrees on this complex issue?

He is also somewhat dismissive of those who disagree: they have “a stubborn attachment […] to having the defendants present”. Elsewhere, he describes this attachment as “obsessive”.

Another example of a hard issue is the right to silence, which is seen as another aspect of procedural fairness. Robertson criticises this with the remark that it “entitles a man who has given orders to kill thousands to stand back and laugh”.

Geoffrey Robertson.
Elizabeth Allnutt/Penguin

The problem is not that Robertson’s views on these issues are necessarily wrong. They are complex issues about which people will disagree. It is that he gives the impression that the complexities do not exist.

Dismissive language is a more general feature of his writing style. Some will enjoy it; it will bother others. He reserves his most biting remarks for his fellow lawyers. They suffer from “the affectation of Latin citations and lengthy case precedents”. They are “long-winded”. Putin, who has a law degree, “is intelligent, as lawyers go”.

The implication is that Robertson is atypical among lawyers, someone who will sweep aside conventions and assumptions. In fact, the book contains a fair amount of Latin – tu quoque and a fortiori and so on – and only a few of his arguments are genuinely bold.

But if there is something to be said here, it is that not many experts take the time to explain how international law works in books for a wide audience. That is hugely valuable, especially in a period when expertise is often drowned out by falsehoods. These are sometimes spread intentionally to undermine democracies such as Ukraine or Western countries, and sometimes spread recklessly by the misinformed, the opinionated and the loud. Robertson has taken the time.

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An inside look at the dangerous, painstaking work of collecting evidence of suspected war crimes in Ukraine

The United Nations

One of the bolder elements in the book is what Robertson says about the United Nations. As he points out, five major powers – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – cannot be held accountable by the UN Security Council because they have the right to veto its decisions.

He makes the surprising claim that the “diplomats who designed the UN in 1945 did not appreciate this fatal flaw” – as if they handed out these vetoes absentmindedly, when in reality they made open-eyed political choices after hundreds of hours of negotiation and compromise.

Robertson asserts that the “most obvious, and obviously right, reform” would be to prevent one of these major powers from using its veto “if it had a conflict of interest”.

Certainly, there is a debate to be had about the vetoes. But has Robertson thought through the consequences of this “obvious” reform? One of them is that the Security Council could authorise, say, the United States to take military action against another nuclear-armed major power: is that outcome “obviously right”? Robertson does not elaborate.

He also argues that the UN should be able to expel Russia. The same logic might be used to justify expelling the United States, Britain and Australia, which were accused of unlawfully invading Iraq in 2003. Robertson compares the UN unfavourably with its predecessor, the League of Nations, which “expelled the USSR for attacking Finland”.

This is a strange comparison. The League of Nations is famous for its catastrophic failure. One of the several reasons for that failure was that by the second world war most major powers were not members. The UN was designed to avoid repeating its mistakes, to keep everyone inside the tent, on the theory that a global organisation that can achieve some things – even if not everything – is better than none at all.

Though these elements of the book are bold, they come across as a little politically naïve.

Readers who are alert to this and other weaknesses of the book will still learn a lot from its areas of strength, in particular the discussion of what a trial of Putin might look like, either in the unlikely event that he is arrested and physically brought to trial, or if enough countries accept Robertson’s view that he should be tried in his absence.

Those interested in this broad area of law, if not this precise topic, might also look at alternatives such as the thoroughly researched books of Philippe Sands. Läs mer…