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Students expressing solidarity with Palestinians and protesting Israel’s war in Gaza have set up encampments on campuses around the UK. Around 15 encampments have emerged in Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Warwick Manchester and others. They’ve also emerged in other countries including France and Ireland.

Broadly, students are calling for transparency over and divestment from universities’ financial links with Israeli companies (particularly those involved in the arms industry). They are demanding university leaders cut ties with Israeli universities, increase resources (including scholarships for Palestinian students and make long-term commitments relating to the rebuilding of higher education in Palestine.

The encampments follow similar action at more than 140 universities in the US. There, scenes of police arresting protesters have sparked intense debate about when (if ever) it is permissible to limit the free expression of students.

Read more:
US student Gaza protests: five things that have been missed

Universities have a difficult balance to strike between protecting student speech rights and ensuring campus safety.

In the US, public universities (as “arms of government”) are prevented from interfering with free speech under the constitution’s first amendment. While this doesn’t apply in the same way to private universities, most have agreed to uphold policies that closely resemble it. These rights must be balanced against reasonable considerations about the time, place and manner of the speech, as well as civil rights laws against harassment.

The UK does not have the same free speech protections, but many university leaders have made clear that their institutions support freedom of expression. They have reminded students of their duties to ensure that protest activities remain lawful and do not risk the safety of others.

They have encouraged students to follow university policy, and be mindful of other students, staff and members of the public. This generally means that they should not obstruct their access to work or get in the way of their education.

Rishi Sunak met with 17 vice-chancellors and representatives from the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), seeking reassurance that any antisemitism arising from the protests would be swiftly dealt with. And the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, called for vice-chancellors to “show leadership” to ensure that campuses are a safe place for all students.

Are the protests legal?

Protests that take place on university campuses in the UK are considered legal exercises of the right to freedom of expression. The rights of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly are protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, which is enshrined in UK law under the Human Rights Act.

These rights are further reinforced by a 1986 UK education law, which requires universities to take “reasonably practicable” steps to protect freedom of speech on campus. This includes permitting and facilitating the right to protest.

There are notable exceptions. In England and Wales, speech that incites violence is considered unlawful, as is harassment on the basis of protected characteristics (race, religion, sexuality and so on). The law is slightly different in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Expressed support for one of the UK government’s 79 proscribed organisations (including Hezbollah and Hamas) is also criminalised by the Terrorism Act.

Some student protesters are demanding university commitment to rebuilding higher education in Gaza.
ZUMA press/Alamy

When it comes to semi-permanent occupations, duties to facilitate freedom of expression will be in tension with universities’ obligations to keep students and staff safe. Sally Mapstone, the president of the vice-chancellors’ group Universities UK, said universities “may need to take action” if encampments interfere with the ability to take exams, graduate or go about other business.

In the past, universities have ended occupations by applying for a “possession order” from the High Court. This can lead to students being removed by bailiffs, as happened in March 2023 when the University of Bristol evicted students taking part in a rent strike.

In April 2024, Bristol Students Occupy for Palestine ended a four-week occupation of the university’s executive management building after they were served with a possession order.

Any universities that take this route would need to show that they have considered protestors’ freedom of expression and assembly rights, and that these have been outweighed by other competing obligations.

The encampments could also risk breaching the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Act and the Public Order Act, introduced in 2022 and 2023. These controversial laws limit noisy protests and make it unlawful to cause “public nuisance”.

They also ban protests that cause serious disruption to the life of the community, including by tunnelling, locking-on and taking part in slow-walking protests. Again, any interventions (from either the university or the police) must be weighed against the freedom of expression rights of protesters.

Successful negotiations

So far, some of the protests have been successful. Management at Goldsmiths, University of London agreed to protesters’ demands, including investing in a number of scholarships for Palestinian students and reviewing the university’s investment policy. The encampment at Trinity College Dublin has ended after the university agreed to divest from “Israeli companies that have activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and appear on the UN blacklist in this regard”.

The University of York has also agreed to divest from weapons manufacturers. Other universities have established meetings between protesters and management, though most negotiations are still in the early stages.

Apart from upholding their legal obligations, universities should maintain open lines of dialogue with protesters. Doing so is not only essential from a safety perspective, but ensures that all are able to exercise their rights effectively. So far, most universities have been clear about their commitment to free expression, acknowledging lawful protest as a fundamental component of university life.

The free exchange of ideas will often make some people feel uncomfortable. But speech which harasses or threatens others is not only unlawful, it prevents them from taking part in university life as equals. Universities must also offer accessible channels of complaint for students and staff who have experienced abuse from others on campus. Läs mer…

When we think of fossils it is usually of dinosaurs, or perhaps the beautiful spiral shape of an ammonite picked up on a beach during a summer holiday. We see fossils as ancient relics of the deep past that allow us to marvel at the history of life on Earth, of animals that walked or swam many millions of years ago, of the giant trees that became buried and crushed to form coal.

Fossils are an essential record of life on Earth that demonstrate long periods of stability, punctuated by episodes of rapid or even catastrophic change. Their value is both abstract, as a window into the past, and societal, enabling us to think about what might happen to life in the future.

Many textbooks describe how fossils form, but few refer to the fossils that are accumulating now, in sediments at the bottom of a local lake or river, in a peat bog, or along a beach. The remains of animals, plants and other life forms that are beginning the road to petrifaction in such places are sometimes referred to as “sub-fossils”, as though they are halfway to becoming part of the geological record. However we classify them, they record profound changes already happening to all life on Earth – the biosphere.

Along many riverbanks in Europe, Himalayan balsam and American ragweed grows, and in the river itself there are Asian clams and zebra mussels. You may encounter giant African land snails in the Hawaiian Islands, Amur River clams in San Francisco Bay, and Mediterranean mussels along the Atlantic coast of South Africa – and even hippos in Colombia.

Himalayan balsam is established as an invasive species in Europe and North America.
Amy Wrisdale

Displaced by human actions

All these species, and thousands more, have been displaced by human actions – sometimes deliberately, as with the hippos, but often unintentionally, as with the clams. Species have been interchanged like this across our planet for thousands of years.

But the pattern became more clearly visible from the 16th century onwards, with the exchange of plants and animals between the Americas and Eurasia and Africa. A cornfield in England expresses this, as do cows in the Americas.

While some of these patterns of change on land and at sea are now obvious, even at a casual glance, the fossil patterns that reveal the full scale of these changes requires painstaking analysis of recent sedimentary layers. Some organisms, a soft-bodied worm for example, leave no physical fossil trace, though their presence may still be inferred from preserved DNA molecules. Other organisms, such as a marine mollusc – or a hippo – have a real chance of being fossilised because they have hard skeletons, and they associate with water bodies where sediment layers accumulate.

Future fossil?
Marc Dumont / Shutterstock

A distinct step change in Earth’s history

Many patterns of recent ecological change can be documented in the modern fossil record. For example, in the Hawaiian Islands, sediment layers entomb native snail shells – and then the layers above show these snails being replaced by non-natives, including the giant African snails. The pattern is distinctive, because it records the beginnings of a global homogenisation of fauna and flora that is often associated with striking changes in the abundance of indigenous organisms.

San Francisco Bay is just one example. There, over 200 non-native species have arrived since the American gold rush. They include the Amur River clams from East Asia and the tiny Trochammina hadai – a single-celled amoeba-like organism with a shell – brought in from the seas around Japan. T. hadai and the clams, and many others, arrived in the boom in cross-Pacific trade that followed the end of the second world war.

On land, bones of chickens, domestic cattle, sheep and pigs far outnumber those of wild animals in nascent geological deposits, marking a huge change in the vertebrate fossil record that has been accumulating. Such examples are part of a pattern that is playing out across the world.

Read more:
How chickens became the ultimate symbol of the Anthropocene

To a palaeontologist studying the fossil record that is forming today, these patterns identify a distinct step change in Earth’s history, driven by us in our ever-more interconnected and homogenised world.

The new palaeontology of the 20th and 21st centuries reveals that our actions are significantly disrupting the biosphere, just as massive volcanic eruptions and huge meteorite strikes did in the geological past. It’s an ignominious group to join – and only humans have done this with full awareness of their actions.

How our impact on the biosphere plays out in the coming decades will be reflected by this new fossil record, one that increasingly begins to resemble those ancient, planet-changing perturbations. Läs mer…

There is a fine line between creativity and self-destruction. Apple’s new crush advert, which shows items linked to creative pursuits being pulverised to make way for the new iPad Pro, tried to find that line but instead appears to have made a rare mis-step. It has angered a lot of people in the process. Apple has now apologised and said it no longer plans to air the ad on TV.

Creative destruction is a term coined in the 1940s to describe revolutionising the economic structure from within – destroying the old one to make way for the new. Creative destruction is an essential factor of capitalism and, in Apple’s case, it used to be previously commonplace with the cannibalisation “by design” of products by new developments.

The advert seems to be a response to criticism about the lack of innovation due their incremental and iterative approach to product development in recent years. However, does their their latest offering just reinforce those claims?

To truly innovate, companies have to make tough decisions about whether to serve the current customer base with what they already do and are known for, or change to make way for the needs and wants of a new generation. In doing so, however, they risk alienating their current customer base.

Destruction of the human experience?

When done well, creative destruction brings both customer bases along on the journey and transitions smoothly from one to the next. Apple’s iPad crush advert illustrates the company’s attempt at creative destruction both metaphorically and physically. In trying to be relevant to the younger audience by reflecting last year’s hydraulic crushing trend on TikTok, Apple unwittingly tapped into the generational divide. In doing so, it seems to have alienated both customer bases.

Dripping with nostalgia-triggering symbolism, the advert starts with the metronome, indicating time is ticking on physical pursuits. The record player starts up, crooning about time and “being down and all alone”, panning out to a wide shot of the tools of “classic” creative and leisure pursuits. It’s these items that have been at the centre of the furore, with actor Hugh Grant describing it as the destruction of the human experience, “courtesy of Silicon Valley”.

The advert moves from analogue hobbies like music, painting, graffiti and sculpting, to digital pastimes, showing Pac-Man, Angry Bird trinkets and DSLR cameras – all crushed under the metaphorical pressure of change. Even emojis, rejected by many young people, and therefore one of the clearest triggers of generational differences in the digital age, get the crushing treatment.

Target audience

This is where I argue that the advert shifts from passive to active aggression. It leaves both audiences in its metaphoric and actual dust. Then it clumsily ends on messaging that undermines everything that has gone before, about the iPad being the slimmest version so far. It fails at being innovative and is instead a reflection of a product iteration. Is thinner and stronger enough when you have pitted the digital natives against the analogue generations and those stuck in the middle?

The core Apple customers remember the joys of analogue and digital pursuits, with American baby boomers, generation X and millennials citing Apple as their favourite brand. Apple has topped the Interbrand Best Global Brands list year on year. However, I found the children and grandchildren they buy Apple products for are left feeling the ad is irrelevant and late to the crushing trend.

I showed this advert to a group of gen Z learners who are also working full-time – Apple’s future target consumer – to gauge their opinion. The first response was not one of admiration for the technology or innovation. It was one of contempt at a brand that had made a clumsy attempt at recreating a trend, like that uncle at the wedding trying to be down with the kids.

While they agreed that the crushed things fit into the iPad Pro, this wasn’t a positive message, with comments about sustainability issues and waste.

Human behaviour and perception lean towards building meaning from stimuli due to our context and understanding. Everyone will view the advert through their lens of experience, with musicians feeling triggered by the metronome and instruments, and artists by the sadness of paint moving to spray cans and then digitised altogether.

In a time when we increasingly need to come together, this advert pushes the audience apart and also runs contrary to the song that overlays the piece (All I Ever Need is You by Sonny and Cher).

The advert misses the mark in so many ways, and while creative destruction is the driver of change and innovation, consumers old and new need to be taken on the journey. While the current customer holds this brand dear and is now aware of the new features, the brand-building work looking towards the future fails.

Is it authentic to the Apple brand loyalists? Yes. But if it is trying to move in a new direction, signalling change and the passing of what has gone before, it fails to do so. It’s a lesson to all businesses that if they want radical change they must ensure that they walk the walk rather than tinkering at the edges. Otherwise, they risk drifting into irrelevance and becoming a nostalgic item like the things they are crushing. Läs mer…

Independent US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s health is in the spotlight again – this time relating to a neurological issue.

In a 2012 deposition recently reviewed by the New York Times, the politician revealed that in 2010 a worm got into his brain “ate a portion of it and then died”.

Kennedy had been suffering from cognitive difficulties. Doctors initially suspected that he had a brain tumour, but it turned out to be a parasite infection – specifically, a pork tapeworm larva lodged in his brain.

This particular parasite (Taenia solium) is mainly found in low-income countries where people live close to livestock, including parts of southern Africa, Latin America and Asia. Cases in the US are reported to be in the hundreds per year. It is also an incredibly rare infection to encounter in Europe.

Humans are the main host of mature tapeworms, but they need help from other intermediaries to spread. Once the tapeworm is attached to the human intestinal wall using the hooks and suckers on its head, it grows and matures by absorbing nutrients in the gut, forming hundreds of “proglottids” (segments) that are a few millimetres long. A tapeworm can grow to four metres in length.

A tapeworm head.
IanDagnall Computing / Alamy Stock Photo

Hermaphrodites

A couple of months after infection, these proglottids become pregnant because tapeworms are hermaphrodites. Each proglottid contains 300-500 testes and three ovary lobes, and when released into the digestive tract contains between 50,000 and 60,000 fertile eggs. These will be excreted, where they can be observed as pumpkin seed-sized masses within the faeces. This may be the only indication of active infection in humans.

Tapeworm larvae can survive outside of their human hosts. If pigs graze on vegetation that is contaminated with human faeces containing the eggs or larvae (known as cysticerci), these are then taken up into the pig.

Once in the pig’s stomach and intestines, the digestive enzymes release the cysticerci from their outer lining, enabling them to penetrate the pig’s body tissues and move around where they will cause cysticercosis – the active infection.

They set up camp in all the major muscles of the pig, including the heart, as well as the liver, kidney, lungs and brain.

Once infected, the pigs are typically slaughtered before the cysticerci mature into adult tapeworms. So when the meat of an infected animal is eaten and not cooked properly, these cysticerci do the same to the human. They penetrate the intestinal wall and get into the bloodstream where they journey to reside and grow under the skin as a huge lump, in the eye, liver, heart and lungs and the brain.

Infection spreading through the body is known as cysticercosis. When the brain becomes infected, it is called neurocysticercosis.

Pork tapeworms don’t eat brain tissue, but they do absorb its nutrients.

A person with a tapeworm infection would initially have few or no symptoms. And any initial symptoms would mirror those of other common tummy bugs: nausea, pain, diarrhoea and changes in appetite.

At this stage, the condition is hard to diagnose. However, eggs may be seen in the faeces by eye or microscope, or the tapeworm may be observed when a camera is inserted into the bowel from the rectum for other procedures. Sometimes the eggs block the appendix, causing appendicitis.

However, once the larvae reach the brain causing neurocysticercosis, several potentially serious, life-threatening symptoms may emerge. Larvae cause small cysts to form, which can be picked up on brain scans.

It is these cysts that cause symptoms, compressing neurons that can lead to defects in brain function, seizures and death.

Infections are usually treated with antihelminthic drugs, such as niclosamide and praziquantel. Both have broad activity against various tapeworms. Anti-inflammatory drugs may also be used. Surgery is the last option when patients don’t respond to any of the drugs.

It’s all pretty grizzly, so if you don’t fancy a worm setting up camp in your brain, there are simple things you can do to avoid this situation, the most important being maintaining good hand hygiene. Wash your hands well after going to the toilet and after handling raw meat. And cook meat thoroughly. Läs mer…

If you visit the National Gallery you will see a number of wonderful renaissance paintings by Northern Italian masters. At the time of their acquisition, in the gallery’s early days, these painting were not, however, highly sought after.

Initially, the focus for the National Gallery’s collection was set by Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, the gallery’s first director. For Eastlake, the collection needed to showcase the masters of the Italian renaissance, reflecting popular tastes in the 19th century.

This canon of the greats comprised the coveted masters such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Botticelli. These were artist who had been celebrated in Giorgio Vasari’s seminal collection of artists’ biographies, Le Vite. Vasari had effectively created the A-List of artists every major collection of value felt they had to include.

By the time Eastlake was collecting art for the newly established National Gallery, however, many of the best works of these artists had long been acquired and few were available on the market. Eastlake’s collecting had to focus on the 15th and 16th-century works he could get hold of. As a result, The National Gallery acquired an exceptional collection of Northern Italian paintings and in the process rewrote the canon of renaissance art beyond Vasari.

It seems fitting then that one of the paintings from their collection of Northern Italian renaissance masters be paid closer attention as we celebrate the gallery’s 200th year.

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo’s (1480-1548) Mary Magdalene is one of my favourite in the gallery’s permanent collection. Paolo Pino, one of Savoldo’s contemporaries, wrote in his Dialogo della Pittura (Dialogue on Painting, 1548) that Savoldo made “truer pictures of reality than those made by Flemish masters”. And that is high praise indeed because nobody in the 16th century was more celebrated for reality and verisimilitude than the great Flemish masters such as Jan van Eyck.

Savoldo’s Mary Magdalene dates to 1535 and is an extraordinary image in so many ways, but is easily overlooked. Unlike many contemporary images, it isn’t a monumental altarpiece, but simply shows one solitary woman on her way somewhere, concealed under a plain cloak with just a flash of a red sleeve adding some colour.

The detail of a red sleeve can be seen poking out beneath Magdalene’s shimmery cloak.
National Gallery, CC BY-NC

It is an extraordinary piece of storytelling. The context is Easter Sunday, and the miracle of Christ’s resurrection, the highlight and focus of the Christian liturgy. Usually, images depict the main event of the Resurrection, with a focus on the glorious body of Christ with Mary’s role reduced to that of a passive witness.

Savoldo though puts Mary Magdalene front and centre of his half-length portrait and showcases the faith, devotion and intelligence of his female protagonist by giving her agency and an active role to play in the mysteries of the Easter story. He depicts her in a dazzling shimmering cloak at twilight, with all the choices and decisions that will shape this symbolic day ahead of her.

This article is part of our series marking 200 years of the National Gallery. These articles use highlights from the gallery’s collection to tell unsung stories of British history.

In painting her like this, Savoldo departed from the traditional way of showing Magdalene, and practically reinvents her role in the story. He gives agency to his female protagonist. His is not the traditional, overtly sexualised, buxom Mary with flowing hair and overly sumptuous rich red dress. He puts her in a central position, not in a supporting role. She takes centre stage.

The portrait recalls the Renaissance practice of painting images of exceptional men (“Viri illustri”) who serve as inspiration to inspire exceptional and virtuous behaviour. Magdalene does not usually make that cut as her story is, after all, that of the reformed prostitute who rehabilitates herself through long years of austere penance.

Savoldo’s Magdalene instead is a young, but confident, beautiful and assured woman who redeems herself – and in doing so becomes a role model for women who may have sinned in the past. She and these sinning women in turn have their faith and the ability to use faith for redemption.

Read more:
National Gallery 200: an intriguing Victorian painting of the gallery by a little-known artist

What Savoldo paints is an exceptionally exciting image that captures contemporary 16th-century debates on what “modern faith” should look like. This came against the context of the call for reform of religious practices after the German priest and theologian Martin Luther’s protestant proclamation of the 95 Theses and prior to the debates of the Catholic Council of Trent that determined what orthodox images and faith should look like.

Savoldo’s glorious image shows the Magdalene at the dawn of an exciting day. It’s a metaphor for the dawn of a new age of faith and possibilities where the shape of things to come is yet to be determined. Look at the fluidity of her wonderful cloak that could reflect and show everything and anything but what it will look like once the light has set, we just don’t know yet. Savoldo, gently but firmly, teaches us to look again and see something new in a seemingly familiar image.

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo’s Mary Magdalene can be seen in The National Gallery’s permanent collection in room nine. Läs mer…

Amid persistent calls from the United States and other countries that Israel needs to make it easier for life-saving aid to reach Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military closed two of the region’s few operating border crossings in Rafah, a southern Gazan city, on May 7, 2024.

Responding to political pressure and alarm, Israel then reopened a different border crossing into Gaza, called Kerem Shalom, on May 8.

These border crossings are crucial for aid workers and deliveries of food, fuel and other supplies, especially as commercial imports have stopped entering Gaza. The amount of aid going into Gaza each day has varied since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza. But the overall number of aid trucks flowing through the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings is down 75% from before the war, according to the United Nations. Aid workers say they are unable to meet Palestinians’ needs in Gaza, even with the aid air drops and boat shipments that the U.S. and other countries are doing.

I spent 20 years as the president of Oxfam America, an international humanitarian organization, and have overseen humanitarian responses to some of the biggest crises of the past three decades, from the war in Kosovo to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know from experience that the major aid organizations know how to run large, well-integrated operational responses to emergencies like Gaza. However, this is not happening, in part because Israel is not giving aid groups what they need to do so.

Palestinians receive flour distributed by Turkey at a UNRWA center in Gaza City on May 8, 2024.
Mahmoud Isa/Anadolu via Getty Images

The needs in Gaza

After seven months of conflict, the international community has not set up the kind of well-coordinated response it would normally provide during a crisis.

There are several reasons why enough aid deliveries are not quickly entering Gaza. First, Israel controls all of the border crossings into Gaza and does intensive searches of trucks for security reasons, slowing down the deliveries. Even if aid does cross into Gaza, it does not mean the goods will reach people in need.

There have also been reports of people dying and being injured when trying to collect aid packages that are air-dropped, as well as Hamas and other groups intercepting aid deliveries and either hoarding the items or selling them at high prices on the black market.

In early May, northern Gaza passed a critical threshold and is now entering into a “full blown famine,” according to the United Nations.

Bombings in Gaza have destroyed water and energy systems, leaving 95% of the population without access to clean water.

There’s a fairly standard playbook for how aid organizations respond to humanitarian crises like the one playing out in Gaza. In most cases, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, a designated U.N. office that focuses on humanitarian affairs and is typically called OCHA, takes the lead in defining what exactly different U.N. agencies should do to help people in a crisis.

The World Health Organization, World Food Program and other U.N. agencies all have their own specialties – be it health, housing, hunger, education or other issues. The U.N. agencies coordinate their work, while OCHA also assigns an international nonprofit organization to help each U.N. agency share their workload with other international and local nonprofits.

In most emergencies, there is clear coordination among international aid agencies from day one. This is a well-oiled machine with decades of experience in meeting people’s immediate needs in some of the world’s most challenging circumstances.

Aid work in Gaza is different

However, Gaza does not align with this typical system of aid work.

In Gaza and the West Bank, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, or simply UNRWA, has been the main U.N. agency that has been focused only on providing a full suite of services to Palestinians since the late 1940s, when Israel was created and many Palestinians were pushed out into what are now the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank.

Over the years, UNRWA’s role has evolved from meeting Palestinians’ basic needs for food and water, for example, to also providing health care and education. While other U.N. agencies like the World Health Organization work in Gaza, UNRWA is by far the largest aid organization there – and after Hamas is the second-largest employer in Gaza.

Both the Israeli and Egyptian governments have long recognized UNRWA as the main coordinator for trans-border aid shipments, especially those for other U.N. agencies and nonprofits that work with it.

While the UNRWA was accustomed to operating a large humanitarian operation in Gaza before the war, the agency is not equipped or staffed to help provide housing for the more than 1.7 million people in Gaza who have had to flee their homes.

Additionally, Israel and the UNRWA have a long, complicated relationship that came to a peak in March 2024, when Israel said that it would stop working with the agency altogether because of allegations – which have not been independently verified – that UNRWA staff participated in the Oct. 7 attacks and held hostages captive.

Israel no longer working with the UNRWA creates new logistical challenges that prevent a coherent, organized humanitarian response in Gaza. This may force other U.N. agencies to suddenly take over UNRWA’s long-established roles in Gaza.

Border closings and other challenges

Israel’s intermittent closing of border crossings into Gaza – and continued long delays for arriving aid trucks – is another crucial factor that is hampering aid delivery.

Aid experts also say that the number of aid trucks entering Gaza, which in May 2024 reached an average of 180 per day through the two main crossing points combined, is inadequate to address the hunger crisis.

Achieving what’s actually needed, they say, would require many more trucks, an influx of aid workers, training of Palestinian medical personnel to treat people suffering from malnutrition and gastrointestinal diseases, the restoration of medical facilities and, above all, an end to the military conflict.

Meanwhile, international nonprofits and their staff are facing their own safety challenges. At least 224 aid workers, most of them Palestinians, have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. Indiscriminate bombings of residential neighborhoods have forced other aid workers to move their families multiple times to find safety and shelter, making it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs.

UNRWA workers distribute flour rations and other supplies to people at a warehouse in Rafah on Dec. 12, 2023.
Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images

Possible reforms

I think there are certain things that the U.N. could do to help make it easier for aid deliveries to reach people in Gaza.

First, OCHA could step in to better coordinate all of the relevant U.N. agencies that may need to join or take on a larger role in the Gaza humanitarian crisis.

I also think that the U.N. could insist that Israel help create safe and secure conditions for a well-coordinated and comprehensive U.N. response. This includes guarantees to open additional border crossings as needed, and increase the number of daily aid deliveries – especially food – as well as ensuring more consistent access and supplies.

Professional humanitarians are prepared to sacrifice ourselves to preserve and protect the dignity of all, both Israelis and Palestinians. History has taught that the only lesson from all wars is that no one really wins and millions suffer quietly well into the future.

Humanitarians’ job is to find and create safe spaces and save as many lives as we can, with the experience and resources at our disposal. We carry no weapons and rely entirely on respect for international humanitarian law and other rules of war to ensure our safety as we carry out this dangerous mission. But in order to carry out this work, we need access and minimally safe and secure conditions that let us do our jobs. Läs mer…

AlphaFold 3, unveiled to the world on May 9, is the latest version of an algorithm designed to predict the structures of proteins – vital molecules used by all life – from the “instruction code” in their building blocks.

Predicting protein structures and the way they interact with other molecules has been one of the biggest problems in biology. Yet, AI developer Google DeepMind has gone some way to solving it in the last few years. This new version of the AI system features improved function and accuracy over its predecessors.

Like the next release in a video-game franchise, structural biologists – and most recently – chemists have been waiting with impatience to see what it can do. DNA is widely understood as the instruction book for a living organism but, inside our cells, proteins are the molecules that actually carry out most of the work.

It is proteins that enable our cells to sense the world outside, to integrate information from different signals, to make new molecules within the cell, to decide to grow or to stop growing.

It is also proteins that enable the body to distinguish between foreign invaders (bacteria, viruses) and itself. And it is proteins that are the targets of most drugs that you or I take to treat disease.

Protein Lego

Why does protein structure matter? Proteins are large molecules consisting of thousands of atoms in very specific orders. The order of these atoms, and the way that they are arranged in 3D space, is crucial to a protein being able to carry out its biological function.

This same 3D arrangement also determines the way in which a drug molecule binds to its protein target and treats disease.

Imagine having a Lego set in which the bricks are not based on cuboids, but can be any shape. In order to put two bricks together in this set, each brick will need to fit snugly against the other without any holes. But this isn’t enough – the two bricks will also need to have the right combination of bumps and holes for the bricks to stay in place.

Designing a new drug molecule is a bit like playing with this new Lego set. Someone has built an enormous model already (the protein target found in our cells), and the job of the drug discovery chemist is to use their tool-kit to put a handful of bricks together that will bind to a particular part of the protein and – in biological terms – stop it carrying out its normal function.

So what does AlphaFold do? Based on knowing exactly which atoms are in any protein, how these atoms have evolved differently in different species, and what other protein structures look like, AlphaFold is very good at predicting the 3D structure of any protein.

AlphaFold 3, the most recent iteration, has expanded capabilities to model nucleic acids, for example, pieces of DNA. It can also predict the shapes of proteins that have been modified with chemical groups that may turn the protein on or off, or with sugar molecules. This gives scientists more than just a bigger, more colourful Lego set to play with. It means they can develop more detailed models of reading and correcting the genetic code and of cellular control mechanisms.

AlphaFold 3 predicts the 3D structures of proteins and their interactions with other molecules.
Raimundo79 / Shutterstock

This is important in understanding disease processes at a molecular level and in developing drugs that target proteins whose biological role is regulating which genes are turned on or off. The new version of AlphaFold also predicts antibodies with greater accuracy than previous versions.

Antibodies are important proteins in biology in their own right, forming a vital part of the immune system. They are also used as biological drugs such as trastuzumab, for breast cancer, and infliximab, for diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

The latest version of AlphaFold can predict the structure of proteins bound to drug-like small molecules. Drug discovery chemists can already predict the way in which a potential drug binds to its protein target if the 3D structure of the target has been identified through experiments. The downside is this process can take months or even years.

Predicting the way in which potential drugs and protein targets bind to each other is used to help decide which potential drugs to synthesise and test in the laboratory. AlphaFold 3 can not only predict drug binding in the absence of an experimentally identified protein structure but, in testing, it outperformed existing software predictions, even if the target structure and drug binding site were known.

These new capabilities make AlphaFold 3 an exciting addition to the repertoire of tools used to discover new therapeutic drugs. More accurate predictions will enable better decisions to be taken about which potential drugs to test in the lab (and which are unlikely to be effective).

Time and money

This saves both time and money. AlphaFold 3 also provides the opportunity to make predictions about drug binding to modified forms of the protein target which are biologically relevant but currently difficult – or impossible – to do using existing software. Examples of this are proteins modified by chemical groups such as phosphates or sugars.

Of course, as with any new potential drug, extensive experimental testing for safety and efficacy – including in human volunteers – is always needed before approval as a licensed medicine.

AlphaFold 3 does have some limitations. Like its predecessors, it is poor at predicting the behaviour of protein areas that lack a fixed or ordered structure. It is poor at predicting multiple conformations of a protein (which may change shape due to drug binding or as part of its normal biology) and cannot predict protein dynamics.

It can also make some slightly embarrassing chemical mistakes such as putting atoms on top of each other (physically impossible), and in replacing some details of a structure with its mirror images (biologically or chemically impossible).

A more substantial limitation is that the code will – for now at least – be unavailable so it will have to be used on the DeepMind server on a purely non-commercial basis. Although many academic users will not be put off by this, it will limit the enthusiasm of expert modellers, biotechnologists and many applications in drug discovery.

Despite this, the release of AlphaFold 3 looks certain to stimulate a new wave of creativity in both drug discovery and structural biology more widely – and we’re already looking forward to AlphaFold 4. Läs mer…

It’s a season of political change in Mexico. On June 2, millions of Mexicans will head to the polls to elect a new president, state governors and members of federal and local congresses, municipality administrations and town councils. In total, the elections will see nearly 21,000 positions filled.

However, Mexico’s election season is also one of political violence. Between 2018 and March 2024, there were 1,709 targeted attacks, murders, assassinations and threats against people working in politics or government, or against government and party facilities. Most of these attacks occurred in the run-up to an election; this year will be no different.

In fact, if the current statistics are anything to go by, Mexico’s 2024 election season is likely to be the country’s deadliest on record. In the first two months of the year, 33 people involved in politics were assassinated. And that figure is rising steadily as the elections approach.

Violence against Mexican politicians is common. But the country’s powerful organised gangs step up political violence during election season as they look to ensure compliance from incoming candidates and secure business opportunities.

Mexico’s most famous political assassination took place 30 years ago, in the build-up to the 1994 general election. Luis Donaldo Colosio, a charismatic presidential candidate who vowed to reform the country’s historically autocratic political culture, was shot and killed during a campaign rally in the border city of Tijuana.

Luis Donaldo Colosio waving to reporters in Mexico City in 1993.
Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo

He was slain by Mario Aburto Martínez, an apparently non-political factory worker. But critics have long rejected the official finding that Aburto acted alone. They argue that drug cartel leaders and those with vested political interests were behind the assassination because they worried about a prospective crackdown on their activities.

Colosio’s reformist agenda advocated for a more leftward turn, away from pro-market privatisation policies. This undermined both the criminal fraternity and the established political order.

It’s not just high-ranking politicians that are at risk. Mexican politicians at all levels are repeatedly targeted by violence linked to organised crime, especially those who hold or seek regional positions. On April 20 2024, for example, two mayoral candidates were killed in separate attacks in different parts of the country.

One of them, Alberto Garcia, was running for mayor of San Jose Independencia in the southern state of Oaxaca. The victims of such violence are distributed throughout all political positions and parties. But the gangs most often target the candidate challenging the incumbent, fearing a change in the status quo.

Gangs have much to lose

Elections offer good business opportunities for Mexico’s criminal organisations. In the past, their economic interests were strictly confined to the production and retailing of narcotics. However, in recent years, they have diversified their economic interests and are now looking to exploit new opportunities.

In Mexico, municipal authorities enjoy considerable economic power. They receive state and federal funding to undertake infrastructural projects in their areas, such as building roads, schools and hospitals. The gangs have begun to demand they be the purveyors of these projects, which can be mismanaged and the allocated funds siphoned off.

Studies have shown that drug cartels exert their will not only through political assassinations, but also by putting up their own candidates or financing the campaigns of candidates who will allow them to operate. If there is any opposition from rival candidates, it often leads to an open bloodbath.

This sentiment was acknowledged in early April by Mexico’s outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He said: “They [the cartels and criminal gangs] make an agreement and say, ‘this person is going to be mayor; we don’t want anyone else to register to run’, and anybody who does, well, they know [what to expect]”.

Another factor behind the accelerating political violence in Mexico is the fragmentation of the country’s criminal organisations. Previously, there was a clear vertical organisation of cartel hierarchy. This ensured that one particular cartel could put up its candidate for a specific political post with little meaningful opposition.

Mexican federal police forces maintaining order in the violent border city of Ciudad Juárez.
Frontpage/Shutterstock

However, Mexico’s main cartels have split into separate branches. As they have done so, they have come to meet greater competition and the fielding of candidates from opposite sides. This has led to more direct violence against political candidates contesting for the same post.

Simply put, the ongoing violence against politicians and political candidates in Mexico reflects the struggle for territorial consolidation and lucrative business opportunities among various organised criminal gangs.

Fears of earning the wrath of the criminal gangs often prevents well-intentioned politicians from running for public office. In some of the country’s most rural reaches, where organised criminal gangs are at their most powerful, the cartel’s preferred picks have in the past won races unopposed. And the wave of violence ahead of the 2024 elections has already forced dozens of candidates across multiple states to back out of their races fearing for their lives.

In a region of the world that is marred by coups, counter-coups and dictatorships, Mexico was always a shining example of a nation adhering to strict democratic credentials. That record now risks being tarnished by the violent intervention of criminal gangs in the country’s political processes. Läs mer…

A case of Lassa fever has been reported in Paris, France, sparking lurid warnings about the “horrific Ebola-like bug”.

So what is Lassa fever and are comparisons with Ebola fair?

Lassa virus (Lassa mammarenavirus) belongs to the Arenaviridae family and there are eight species of this family known to infect humans. What makes this group of viruses noteworthy are their relatively recent emergence as threats to human health (the first case was in Lassa, Nigeria, in 1969), the severity of disease they cause, and the fact that they are mostly transmitted to humans by rodents. And where you find people, you invariably find rodents.

As the name suggests, Lassa fever causes a high temperature, but also weakness, headache and “malaise” (a general ill feeling). These rather commonplace symptoms mean that cases are often misdiagnosed and are sometimes confused with malaria, which can mean worse outcomes for the patient and also more time for the virus to spread to other people.

While many people infected with Lassa virus experience no symptoms, in about 20% of infected people, more serious symptoms develop. These include encephalitis (swelling of the brain), shock and bleeding from the gums, eyes and nose.

About 1% of people who catch Lassa fever die. Although this figure is significantly higher in women in the last trimester of pregnancy.

Although there is no cure for Lassa fever, if a general (“broad spectrum”) antiviral such as ribavirin is given early enough, it can be quite effective at preventing serious disease. A Lassa fever vaccine is currently in phase 2 clinical trials – the penultimate phase of testing in humans.

Difference to Ebola

Lassa virus is often likened to Ebola because of the similar symptoms, but they are very different.

While many people have heard of Ebola and high-profile imported cases into non-endemic regions, such as Europe and North America, Lassa fever is relatively unheard of. Although both of these viruses are endemic to west Africa and can result in many of the same symptoms in people, an important difference is how they are transmitted.

Ebola virus is primarily transmitted from one person to another by body fluids such as sweat, spit, semen and blood. In other words, you’ve got to come into contact with infected fluids and these have then got to gain entry through a cut, by ingestion or, occasionally, sex.

Lassa virus, on the other hand, is almost always transmitted by rodents, in particular the common African rat (Mastomys natalensis).

It is now understood that Lassa fever is transmitted by these rodents when people accidentally ingest rat excrement or urine. It is also likely that dried rat urine or faeces containing the virus can act as a source of infection when it is inhaled, for example, when sweeping out a grain store.

Even more concerning, it has been found that other rodent species, such as the common rat (Rattus rattus) and the pygmy mouse (Mus baoulei) can also become infected with Lassa virus.

While the main animal reservoir has long since shown to be the common African rat, it is concerning that there is potential for other rodent species, especially those widely found on other continents, such as the common rat, to also act as carriers of this virus.

A Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps official sprays a woman’s hand with hand sanitiser during a Lassa fever outbreak.
NurPhoto SRL/Alamy Stock Photo

Another virus that is also endemic to Africa, mpox, has gained traction in spreading from person to person. We know this because the virus has distinctly evolved over the last seven years and spread to large numbers of people around the world, resulting in a “public health emergency of international concern” in July 2022.

Similarly, the number of reported outbreaks of Lassa fever in Africa has also increased, with almost yearly outbreaks reported in Nigeria. Unsurprisingly, we are now also seeing imported cases of Lassa fever elsewhere, such as the UK (2022) and Europe (2019, 2024).

An increase in the number of cases could result in a virus that transmits more easily from person to person as it has more chance to adapt, or a virus that can infect different rodent reservoirs if it establishes itself in other communities.

Add the complications of delayed diagnosis of Lassa virus in the community and climate change driving changes to rainfall patterns potentially altering the distribution of rodent species into a more urban environment, Lassa virus is another pathogen threat that needs to be carefully monitored. Läs mer…

Between the villages of Vierville-sur-Mer and Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes in Normandy, France, is a 5-mile stretch of beach that was once called Côte d’Or, or “golden coast.”

Since June 6, 1944, however, this beach has borne a different name: Omaha.

Eighty years ago, on a day now known as D-Day, thousands of Allied soldiers crossed the choppy waters of the English Channel by air and sea to land on beaches and coastal areas of Normandy, France, to destroy the Nazi invaders and defeat Hitler’s regime.

Within the military collections of the National Museum of American History, where I am a curator of modern military history, several artifacts collected over the decades help tell the story of Omaha Beach and the invasion landings on D-Day.

A letter from a general

A paper given to the troops involved in the D-Day invasion carried words of exhortation and hope from Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower.
National Museum of American History

In the morning hours of D-Day, Pvt. Howard I. Moorefield of North Carolina was handed a piece of paper. As he later wrote in his museum donation, “most fellows read it and discarded,” but he chose to sign, fold and save his copy.

With the signature of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower at the bottom, the Order of the Day declared to all soldiers, sailors and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force: “You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you.”

Special equipment goes wrong

The U.S. Army issued new assault jackets to troops that helped hold additional supplies, but the garments proved a hindrance to fighting and surviving during the landing.
National Museum of American History

For soldiers of Company A of the 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division, the Order of the Day mattered less than what awaited them at Sector Dog Green on Omaha Beach. Awakened aboard their troopship around 2 a.m., the soldiers pulled on their equipment. The regiment had been overseas since October 1942, preparing for this critical day with carefully rehearsed drills and training operations.

Yet just days before the invasion, the men received new U.S. Army assault jackets, made to help the first wave of soldiers as they carried ashore ammunition, TNT, a first-aid kit and other equipment. Once loaded, each jacket added upward of 60 pounds onto each soldier’s load.

As Company A’s six landing craft began to head to Sector Dog Green, one of the craft began to take on water. As men entered the deep water, the assault jackets became anchors, the cotton straps swelling in seawater and making removal of the garment almost impossible. Dozens of men drowned while others staggered ashore, exhausted.

The troops in Company A had expected to find shelter on the beach, which they had been told would be pockmarked with holes from aerial bombing and naval rockets. But when the soldiers in the surviving five landing craft arrived on the beach at 6:36 a.m., they found smooth sand and nowhere to hide from the enemy.

In less than 10 minutes, German machine-gun fire, mortars and artillery all but destroyed Company A.

Other companies of the 116th would land on Omaha Beach at sectors Dog White, Dog Red and Easy Green. Wet, cold, frightened and pinned down by enemy fire, many soldiers shed the awkward assault jackets and did what they could to stay alive and get off the beach.

In the days after D-Day, assault jackets littered the beaches. One veteran of “Bloody Omaha” chose to send a vest back home to Virginia, the fate of its former wearer unknown.

Multiple waves of troops

One of the most famous of war photographer Robert Capa’s images, this one shows troops storming ashore on the morning of D-Day.
Robert Capa via National Museum of American History

Farther down Omaha Beach at Sector Easy Red, photographer Robert Capa arrived at the shore around 8:15 a.m. with the command group of Company E, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division.

As part of the 13th wave of the landings, he spent 30 minutes on the beach capturing images of the invasion before returning to the attack transport vessel USS Samuel Chase.

On June 19, five of Capa’s images graced the pages of Life magazine, bringing the invasion home to Americans.

A symbol of the fight’s significance

Along with his dog tags, one Jewish sailor wore a coin from British Palestine during his fight against the Nazis.
National Museum of American History

As Capa arrived back aboard the Chase, so did countless wounded men from the initial assault waves. Navy and Coast Guard personnel went right to work, including Walter Melville Weberbauer, a pharmacist’s mate first class from New Jersey.

As he aided the treatment of the wounded, the identification tags around his neck included a small copper coin – a British Palestine 2 mils.

Perhaps during prayer or just for luck, he rubbed the coin until the word “Palestine” all but wore away. As a Jewish man, Weberbauer’s fight with the Nazis understandably carried great significance in the waters off Omaha Beach.

The nation’s highest military decoration

The Medal of Honor awarded to Pfc. Francis X. McGraw for action in Europe in 1944. He landed on the evening of D-Day and fought through France into Germany, where he was killed in action.
National Museum of American History

As wounded soldiers kept arriving back aboard the USS Samuel Chase throughout the afternoon, Army leaders decided to land the remaining members of the 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, on Omaha Beach.

That evening, the men of Company H of the 26th disembarked from the ship and came ashore, including a machine-gunner, Pfc. Francis X. McGraw of New Jersey. Having already fought in North Africa and Sicily, Normandy would be McGraw’s third fight with the Nazis. Months later, on Nov. 19, 1944, near the German town of Schevenhütte, McGraw’s war would end.

For his one-man stand against a ferocious German assault, he would posthumously receive the Medal of Honor.

A record in the landscape

Sand from the Normandy beaches holds tiny fragments of metal, mostly iron, produced during the intense fighting.
National Museum of American History

In the days and weeks after June 6, Omaha Beach was transformed into a highway for Allied men and material entering Europe. This traffic changed even the sand itself.

Today, 4% of the sand at Omaha Beach is composed of tiny grains of iron, mostly microshrapnel produced during intense fighting on the beach and the subsequent buildup of forces.

These different items – a document, garment, photographs, identification tags, a decoration and sand – all remain indelibly marked by a time and a place.

Through the linkage of time, space and memory, these items weave together lives whose paths crossed, in the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in the “fight to end conquest … to liberate … to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all … people.” Läs mer…