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Accusations about Israeli censorship of the media went mainstream in the US recently when the New York Times published an opinion piece headlined: The Israeli Censorship Regime is Growing. That Needs to Stop..

In the piece Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), wrote: “The high rate of journalists’ deaths and arrests, including a slew in the West Bank; laws allowing its government to shut down foreign news outlets deemed a security risk, which the prime minister has explicitly threatened to use against Al Jazeera; and its refusal to permit foreign journalists independent access to Gaza all speak to a leadership that is deliberately restricting press freedom. That is the hallmark of a dictatorship, not a democracy.”

As well as restrictions on media access to Gaza, particular broadcasters face other restrictions. At the start of April Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had proclaimed he would “act immediately to stop” Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera’s operations inside Israel.

Israel’s parliament passed a bill allowing it to close Al Jazeera’s office in Israel, block its website and ban local channels from using its coverage. However ongoing ceasefire negotiations with Hamas, brokered through Qatar, were perhaps a bulwark against haste. The company is still broadcasting from Israel, but its future status is uncertain.

At the annual International Journalism Festival in Perugia on April 17-21, one of Al Jazeera’s former Gaza-based correspondents Youmna ElSayed, spoke of the dangers of covering the war as a Palestinian journalist, including the belief that she, along with others, had been targeted by the Israeli military. “Journalists were under fire from day one,” she said. Despite having little equipment and the destruction of media offices, “We did what we could to show the world what was really going on,” she said.

The CPJ said on April 20 that at least 97 journalists and media workers were among the more than 34,000 people killed since the war began.

ElSayed regretted leaving Gaza but said it was her only choice to save the lives of her children. She said: “This entire world would have known nothing, seen nothing of what has been happening in Gaza … if it wasn’t for those Palestinian journalists.”

She claimed that international journalists had given up on forcing the Israeli army to let them into Gaza. “This is something that is unprecedented and has not happened anywhere else in the world. But yet, international journalists have given up on that right.”

Access to Gaza

However, journalists’ organisations and the correspondents themselves have been lobbying for access to Gaza for months now. But the Israeli government appears to be not giving way.

The BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen, also speaking in Perugia, confirmed that it had been a really difficult story to cover, principally, “because the main meat of it – which is what’s happening in Gaza, we can’t get close to”.

From a production point of view, he said sometimes it feels like, “climbing through mud trying to generate the material that’s necessary to put together a report for television news”. He added it was very hard “to be a TV reporter on a story that you can’t see yourself”.

The Israeli government says the number of international journalists given press accreditation to work in Israel since October 2023 is 3,400. This has given journalists access to the West Bank and enabled coverage of settler violence against the local Palestinian population, but not to Gaza.

But as I wrote in November, the only permitted trips into Gaza have been via Israel Defense Forces-controlled embeds (where the journalist travels with the military and therefore their ability to see or cover stories is restricted).

A rally commemorating Palestinian journalists who have been killed in Gaza, held in Prague, Czech Republic, on January 10 2024.
CTK/Alamy

CNN’s Clarissa Ward was the first foreign journalist who made it into Gaza without the army, and she did this by accompanying an aid convoy supported by the United Arab Emirates in December 2023. During this two-hour trip to Rafah, where 2.3 million residents are now based, the area was bombed and she filmed operations in a field hospital, and talked to doctors and injured children.

With 20 years of war reporting under her belt, she concluded: “Like Grozny, Aleppo and Mariupol, Gaza will go down as one of the great horrors of modern warfare.”

From outside the country, media outlets keep trying to check and verify information on the bombings from the IDF by using geo-location and AI software to scan satellite imagery for bomb craters and destruction. In December this enabled the New York Times to conclude that “during the first six weeks of the war in Gaza, Israel routinely used one of its biggest and most destructive bombs in areas it designated safe for civilians”.

Israeli media coverage

Within Israel, the media are mostly publishing the IDF version of events unchallenged. According to Israeli journalist and activist Anat Saragusti: “Hebrew-speaking Israelis watching television news are not exposed at all to what’s going on in Gaza. We don’t see atrocities, the rubble, the destruction and the humanitarian crisis. The world sees something completely different.”

Meanwhile, the left-wing newspaper Haaretz (published in Hebrew and in English) has been threatened with financial penalties for “sabotaging Israel in wartime” through its more nuanced journalism. According to reporter Ido David Cohen, writing in December, it is the television news channels that present the most extreme example of censorship, as they have “devoted themselves to national morale, exclusively relying on official military statements and completely ignoring Palestinian casualties”.

In the same article, cultural commentator and academic David Gurevitz claimed the numbers of Palestinians killed remains an abstract concept for many Israelis: “The Israeli audience isn’t capable of accommodating two kinds of pain together, seeing and identifying with the human victim of the other side as such, and the media follow suit.”

This argument was backed up this month by Israeli journalist Yossi Klein who wrote: “The most taboo number in Israel is 34,000. You can’t talk about it, you can’t mention it, and if someone speaking on a panel accidentally blurts it out, they should add, disdainfully: ‘according to Palestinian sources’.” Läs mer…

Recent reports of a series of drone strikes on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) have demonstrated the serious safety and security concerns at Europe’s largest nuclear power station. It has not been confirmed who is responsible for the strikes. Both Russia, which occupied ZNPP in March 2022, and Ukraine have pointed the finger at each other.

But Russia has recently announced plans to restart the plant. This would greatly increase the danger of a nuclear accident, as operating reactors allow much less time before an accident occurs if they are damaged or their safety systems are interrupted. The pressure and temperature inside an operating reactor are also much greater, creating the potential for large explosions and the widespread dispersal of radioactive material.

Read more:
Ukraine war: the dangers following Russia’s attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

The drone strikes started on April 7, in the first direct military action against ZNPP since November 2022. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors deployed to monitor the site reported three drone impacts. Fortunately, none resulted in structural damage to critical nuclear safety or security systems.

The IAEA board of governors held an emergency meeting on April 17, passing a motion to call for the immediate return of control of the plant to Ukraine and the urgent withdrawal of unauthorised military and other Russian personnel.

Drones strike targets

Attacks have included a drone strike on the oxygen and nitrogen production facility, two on the training centre and a drone shot down above a turbine hall. The training centre, which was first attacked by Russian forces in March 2022, is a useful target for anyone seeking to emphasise the threat posed by the plant without actually sparking a disaster. It is clearly part of the power plant, yet is isolated and likely contains little to no nuclear material, meaning the risk of resulting nuclear accident is relatively low.

Europe’s largest nuclear power station: Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine.
Rokas Tenys/Shutterstock

Who launched the attacks has yet to be determined – and their intention remains unclear. The IAEA has repeatedly stated that there can be no benefit to any party from a nuclear disaster at the plant. But the unstable security situation at the plant may hold value for Russia as it could be used to pressure Ukraine and its international allies to accept an resolution to the conflict that favours Moscow. Ukrainian personnel still working at ZNPP have claimed that Russia has turned the plant into a military base.

During the second half of 2022, after ZNPP was captured by the Russians, the plant was subject to regular shelling, for which – as has happened recently – Russia and Ukraine blamed each other. Since Russia gained control of ZNPP, Ukrainian staff have remained at their posts to prevent accidents, despite indications of mistreatment, kidnap and even torture by Russian occupiers.

Like any modern nuclear power plant, ZNPP possesses a wide range of safety and security features, allowing it to weather occasional relatively minor attacks – such as the ones launched so far in this conflict. But it is far from invulnerable. A major attack would have the potential to cause a serious nuclear accident.

Huge risk of disaster: IAES director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, says recent attacks on ZNPP significantly increase the risk of a major nuclear accident.
EPA-EFE/Max Slovencik

The IAEA continues to call for restraint and for all military activity to be halted in the vicinity of the plant.

A risky restart

The Russian president Vladimir Putin has reported to the IAEA that he wishes to see ZNPP restarted. But the skeleton crew of Ukrainian experts who have remained at the site, and have been coerced into accepting Russian passports and signing Russian contracts, would not be sufficient to do this safely. Meanwhile any Russian nuclear experts charged with restarting the plant would be challenged to understand the specifics of ZNPP, given the many changes made to it since its construction.

Ukrainian staff recently placed the final ZNPP reactor into a state of “cold shutdown”. This means the cooling water in the reactor is below 100°C and at atmospheric pressure. This is safer than the previous state of “hot shutdown”, but a restart would be far worse than either of these. If the reactor or associated equipment and its containment were to be breached, cooling water and potentially nuclear material could be ejected with great force into the atmosphere and spread over huge distances.

ZNPP has struggled through the past two years with unreliable access to cooling water, back-up electricity, staff numbers and more. Putting ZNPP, a plant still on the front line of an armed conflict, into operation would therefore be highly risky.

Critical safety systems and resources at the plant are severely strained. The plant relies on access to large volumes of cooling water to remove heat from its nuclear fuel, even in shutdown conditions. The destruction of the Kakhovka dam last year greatly reduced the ability of ZNPP operators to draw cooling water from the Dnipro River.

Is there any benefit that makes this risk worthwhile? It does not appear so, primarily because there is very little demand for the energy the plant could produce. The nearby population has largely evacuated, and Ukraine currently refuses to accept power from Russia. That said, Russia has recently redoubled its efforts to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and may be trying to engineer a situation where Ukraine has to accept energy supplied from power plants in regions of the country occupied by Russian forces.

Another possibility is that Putin, who has an eye for the historical gesture, wants to reactivate the plant in time for the 40th anniversary of its connection to the Soviet power grid in December 1984. In either case, the risks seem hard to justify.

Another noteworthy anniversary is on April 26. Chernobyl Remembrance Day commemorates the world’s worst nuclear disaster, which occurred in 1986 in what is today Ukraine. Thirty-eight years later, Moscow officials are risking creating another major nuclear disaster for the Ukrainian people. Läs mer…

Today’s NHS faces severe time constraints, with the risk of short consultations and concerns about the risk of misdiagnosis or delayed care. These challenges are compounded by limited resources and overstretched staff that results in protracted patient wait times and generic treatment strategies.

Staff can operate with a surface level view of patient data, relying on basic medical histories and recent test results. This lack of comprehensive data interferes with their ability to fully understand patient needs and compromises the accuracy and individualisation of diagnoses and treatments. Such a healthcare approach, characterised by these limitations and engagements, could aptly be termed “shallow medicine”.

The American cardiologist and scientist Eric Topol introduced the concept of “deep medicine” in his 2019 book Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again. He critiques the US’s shallow medicine model, offering insights from his clinical and personal experiences.

Deep medicine holds the potential to revolutionise medical diagnostics, the effectiveness of treatments, and operational considerations. Topol presents artificial intelligence (AI) as the transformative solution to these systemic shallow issues. He outlines what he calls the deep medicine framework as a comprehensive strategy for the incorporation of AI into different aspects of healthcare.

The framework of deep medicine is built upon three core pillars: deep phenotyping, deep learning and deep empathy. These pillars are all interconnected and adopting this framework could enhance patient care, support healthcare staff and strengthen the entire NHS system.

Deep phenotyping

Deep phenotyping refers to a comprehensive picture of an individual’s health data, across a full lifetime. A deep phenotype goes far beyond the limited data collected during a standard medical appointment or health episode. It includes things such as a person’s genetic code, the entirety of an individual’s DNA, and information about the body’s microbes or microbiome.

It encompasses what’s known as the “exposome”, the things in the environment that a person is exposed to during life, such as air pollution. It includes markers that reveal details of the metabolic processes going on in a person’s body and the proteins their body is expressing, as well as other biological measures and metrics. It comprises a person’s electronic health records, including their medical history, diagnoses, treatments and lab results.

Deep learning

The philosophy underpinning deep phenotyping is to combine this diverse data to enable more accurate and speedy diagnoses, precise and effective treatments, and to advance predictive and preventative medicine strategies. However, the sheer volume and complexity of the collected data pose significant challenges for analysing it all. This is where deep learning – an area of AI that seeks to simulate the decision-making power of the human brain – is so valuable. Deep learning uses an algorithm called a neural network that uses computers that are connected to one another to share information, a bit like nerve cells, or neurons, in the brain.

AI could potentially improve how diagnostic tools are used.
Elif Bayraktar / Shutterstock

Advances in neural network algorithms, technology, and availability of digital data have enabled neural networks to demonstrate impressive performance. For instance, they have enabled the rapid and accurate analysis of medical images, such as X-rays and MRIs. They can generate reports and predict disease progression and outcomes for the patient.

AI is proving valuable in drug discovery and the identification of chemical markers from the body, such as those that can signal the presence of cancer. They can control instruments used in robotic surgery. In addition, AI technology like that behind ChatGPT can process medical literature and patient records to help make complex diagnoses. They can automate writing tasks, such as note taking and data entry.

Deep empathy

Integrating AI systems could help streamline operational tasks in health services like the NHS. These include bed management and hospital workflows. However, the development of AI technologies should not be haphazard – rather it needs to be targeted at real clinical needs and designed to foster better relations between patients and staff. This is the pillar of deep medicine known as deep empathy.

Healthcare has increasingly become a discipline where the human touch, once its cornerstone, is overshadowed by a relentless pursuit of efficiency. Healthcare staff face an increased burden of administrative tasks. This can reduce the time they devote to each patient, eroding the essence and potential benefits of compassionate care.

Staff need the sensitivity and time to respond to the emotional and psychological needs of patients and their families. This nurtures a supportive and compassionate care environment, and strengthens the human connection at the heart of healthcare.

AI solutions can be designed to reduce the administrative burdens for staff, opening up more opportunities for meaningful patient interaction. By removing these barriers, we allow for a greater focus on direct patient care, helping improve the quality of the service provided and, hopefully, patient satisfaction.

There is also a transformative opportunity to rethink efficiency, putting relationships between patients and staff at the core. It envisions a future where healthcare staff excel in both technical skill and emotional intelligence, enabling them to meet the psychological needs of patients with genuine understanding and compassion. Läs mer…

The financial crisis of 2008 showed just how much the world depends on banks being well run. Since then, regulators have been given new powers to keep some of the biggest institutions on a much shorter leash to stamp out risk, greed and corruption.

But this approach hasn’t worked everywhere. On April 11 2024, a businesswoman
in Vietnam was sentenced to death for taking out US$44 billion (£35bn) in fraudulent loans from one of the country’s biggest banks.

Truong My Lan took the money – most of which is unlikely to be recovered – out of Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) by bypassing a Vietnamese law that prevents anyone from owning more than 5% of a bank’s shares. By using hundreds of shell companies (among other methods) she ended up owning more than 90% of the bank.

Meanwhile, the loans that she took out (worth just under 10% of Vietnam’s GDP for 2024) made up 93% of the bank’s entire lending portfolio. On several occasions she withdrew huge amounts in cash, which she stored in her basement.

Lan is expected to appeal the court’s verdict. But on a basic level, this extraordinary case of fraud exposes the inherent vulnerabilities of banks, which use deposits to fund loans. Put simply, for every £10 deposited, a bank could lend up to £9 to fund mortgages or corporate loans, keeping just £1 as a reserve to allow for withdrawals.

But while depositors can theoretically withdraw their money whenever they want, if they demand a particularly large amount of cash, the bank may not have enough in reserve to cover it. After Lan’s arrest in 2022, SCB faced a bank run (when large numbers of customers try to withdraw their money) and the bank has been under state control ever since.

To avoid this kind of situation, banks in most countries are carefully regulated. And since the global financial crisis, many are required to hold higher levels of capital and liquidity to absorb losses in times of stress.

The scale of fraud and corruption that took place at SCB highlights the devastating impact that a corrupt environment can have on the financial sector. Different studies show that corruption can adversely affect the stability of banking, reduce lending and increase the probability of banking crises.

Vietnam has been facing the challenges of corruption for a long time, and the SCB trial was an important part of the so-called “Blazing Furnace” campaign that targeted politicians and business leaders as part of an attempt to eradicate corruption from the Vietnamese government and economy.

But it may not be that simple.

There is an argument that in some cases, corruption can actually have social benefits – that it can “grease the wheels” of an otherwise stagnant economy. Some have argued that what happened with SCB is fairly widespread (on a smaller scale) in the Vietnamese economy, and that the significant economic growth the country has experienced in recent years (the economy has tripled in size since 2010) is largely thanks to high levels of corruption.

This idea is backed up by research which suggests that corruption is not always economically destructive, but can in fact play a supportive role.

The theory is that in places of slow-moving administration and endless red tape, corruption can occasionally speed things along, bypassing the inefficient limitations of bureaucracy.

Corrupting influences

In some cases then, corruption can lead to businesses and institutions functioning more efficiently. Projects get started, jobs are created, contracts are awarded. Things get done.

Restrictive red tape.
Lightspring/Shutterstock

That’s not to argue for more corruption of course – just to illustrate that its effects can be more nuanced than we might think. And we should remember that the regulatory world itself can be corrupted too.

While financial regulation which targets corruption may be effective, when authorities have too much regulatory power, this can breed corrupting practises. Research suggests that it brings about opportunities to receive payment for regulatory favours, subsidies and government contracts.

It has even been argued that regulations put in place after the global financial crisis in the US, specifically aimed at preventing another crisis, created new risks of increased corruption.

But international cooperation can help. Advanced economies such as the UK, US and EU are all members of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision where regulatory guidelines for the banking sector are adopted collectively. This protects the member states – and their citizens – against corruption by establishing shared standards, monitoring each other’s procedures and exchanging information.

As a result, an extreme case such as the one observed in Vietnam is unlikely to unfold in the west. But continuous vigilance is required, as even the procedures and regulations put in place to maintain high standards are themselves susceptible to the kind of corruption they are designed to prevent. Läs mer…

Fallout is set in the Los Angeles “Wasteland”, 219 years after a global nuclear war devastated civilisation. Fortunately, the pre-war defence company Vault-Tec had developed a series of underground bunkers, called vaults, designed to ensure the continuation of American society in just such a scenario. Lucky, right?

The show follows three survivors. Lucy (Ella Purnell), a vault dweller leaves the safety of her bunker for the Wasteland to search for her missing father. Maximus (Aaron Moten), a rookie soldier in The Brotherhood of Steel, a paramilitary faction of surface-dwelling survivors, is sent on a mission to retrieve a pre-war artefact. And Cooper Howard (Walton Goggins), is a bounty hunter who has roamed the Wasteland for many years as a ghoul – a human mutated by radiation exposure – seeking a major prize.

The success of HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation in 2023 set a high bar for game-to-television adaptations. Fallout is a different kind of game though.

Where The Last of Us draws on source material from two games that already tell a structured, character-driven story, the five main Fallout games (alongside numerous spin-offs) are open-world role-playing experiences emphasising player choice. Each game has a main plotline, but their appeal is often found in exploration, side-quests and discovering information about the wider game world.

Translating this exploratory, player-driven experience into a linear television format has challenges. However, director Jonathan Nolan has said that he’s coming to this show as a fan, having been hooked on Fallout 3. And his deep understanding of the games is evident.

Watching the series as a fan of the games, I can see that essence of gameplay is woven into the scenarios, characters and cinematography. The show expands and develops the Fallout universe and lore, satisfying long-time fans while telling a compelling, standalone story accessible for newcomers.

Character creation and combat

While executive producer Graham Wagner wanted to refrain from overt use of game elements to avoid alienating non-gamers, game systems are cleverly embedded.

For example, in the game, Fallout players must create their character, assign values to different attributes and select secondary perks and skills, like faster weapon reloading or radiation resistance.

Lucy is introduced presenting herself as a candidate for marriage to a partner from a neighbouring vault. She mentions her repair, science, speech and rifle skills. Fans will appreciate this nod to character creation while the sequence still makes sense for non-gamers.

Howard Cooper (aka The Ghoul) is a bounty hunter who has been mutated by radition exposure.
Prime Video

The approach to combat is also similar. The games’ combat features something called V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec assisted targeting system) which freezes time, allowing players to target individual enemy body parts, before firing off shots in cinematic slow-motion.

The essence of V.A.T.S. is excellently captured in episode two’s shootout between the bounty hunter Cooper Howard (aka the Ghoul) and residents of the town of Filly. A combination of slow motion, bullet-tracking shot, and targeted attacks on heads and limbs will feel very familiar to fans. Howard’s character also seems to have opted for the “Bloody Mess” character perk judging by the exploding body parts.

You have discovered Vault 4

The season midpoint sees Lucy join forces with Maximus, a soldier of the Brotherhood of Steel faction. This pairing up mirrors the recruitment of companion characters in the games. Here, the series steps away from the “main questline” to pursue a side-quest. Seeking supplies, the duo venture into a ruined medical centre, promptly falling through a trapdoor into Vault 4.

A particularly memorable encounter for me from Fallout 3 was discovering Vault 108, where I was set upon by vault dwellers, all gleefully and eerily calling out the name “Gary”. Unpicking 108’s backstory was unsettling, darkly amusing and thought-provoking – a combination perfectly summarising the Fallout universe.

Watching Lucy and Maximus (mainly Lucy – Maximus is distracted by slippers and popcorn) unpick Vault 4’s story captures that same journey. From confusion to abject horror to empathy, delivered alongside some of the best comedic moments of the season, it’s wonderful to watch. This side-quest is a high point of the season, capturing the pleasure of discovering the weirdness of the world of the games while giving viewers a refreshing change of pace.

Before the bombs fell

The pre-apocalypse world is one of the most intriguing aspects of Fallout for me. The opening sequence of Fallout 4 gives a brief glimpse of this world but there is precious little opportunity to experience it first-hand in the games.

The games combine storytelling via character dialogue with epistolary narrative, a mode of storytelling using documents like letters, diaries and, now in our digital age, emails. Fallout makes extensive use of discoverable messages on computer terminals in the many ruined buildings across the Wasteland.

These frequently offer fascinating insight into the lives of people before the bombs fell. Yet I always wanted to see more of this pre-war US and get a look behind the curtain at just how the end of the world played out.

The flashback sequences in the new series are therefore a real treat for fans. They ooze the polished, optimistic, retro-futuristic vision of the US that Fallout 4’s introduction teases while maintaining a sense of conspiracy and unease bubbling away under the surface.

The plastic smiles, slick suits and can-do all-American demeanour of Vault-Tec employees and commercials are laid on thick. Meanwhile, television and radio broadcasts in the background describe key events in Fallout history, adding context for fans and joining together different aspects of Fallout lore. The time dedicated to these flashbacks is a real series strength, building to a franchise-defining revelation in the finale.

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While some might think that family-run farms are a thing of the past, they are in fact the dominant business model in Europe. In 2020, they accounted for slightly more than 9 in every 10 of the EU’s 9.1 million farms.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), family farming plays a key role in making our food and agricultural systems more inclusive, sustainable, resilient and efficient. As custodians of landscapes, wildlife, communities and cultural heritage, family farmers factor in social and emotional considerations in their decisions in a way that big profit-driven agrobusinesses do not. So how can we not only best keep them alive, but help them thrive?

Our recent research gives some clues. In particular, it shows that while policy makers often focus on relieving young people from the obstacles they might face when taking over the family farm, such as rising land prices, red tape and professional hardship, relationships between the two generations are just as important, if not more.

Growing challenges

The family farming model is facing a crisis. Between 2020 and 2010, the EU saw the number of its farms drop by approximately 3 million. The vast majority of those lost were family-owned.

Compared to the past, the transmission of family farms has become more complicated due to structural and societal challenges. The work is seen as demanding, and yet hardly pays. In 2019, farmers reported putting in an average of 55 hours a week in their primary job, compared with 37 hours for the average worker. Although some young people care passionately about carrying on the family farm, many would rather keep their professional and private lives separate. Our society’s tendency to denigrate the farming world – what the French call “agribashing” – also doesn’t help.

The European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) also creates its own set of problems. In a complex landscape, in which European countries’ agricultural sectors vary considerably according to economic, social, and environmental factors, the policy plays a critical role by seeking to harmonise member states’ policies and support farmers in areas such as food production, land management and stewardship. But the CAP has come under fire for its gruelling bureaucratic processes and long waiting times, which prevent many from enjoying its subsidies.

By awarding subsidies proportionally to farm size, it is also accused of favouring large farms over small and medium-sized ones. Because family farms are much smaller on average (11.3 hectares of agricultural area in 2020) than non-family farms (102.2 ha), they bear much of the brunt.

Such frustrations are increasingly reaching boiling point. This winter, farmers took the streets across Europe to protest against red tape and call for CAP reforms to make the subsidies system more transparent and accessible to those who need it most.

Making an impact

Despite these challenges, younger generations show enthusiasm for farming, whether or not they come from a family of farmers. As indicated by results of a survey about intention of students in agriculture engineering in Institut Polytechnique UniLaSalle to engage in agriculture entrepreneurship career presented at a UniLaSalle seminar in October 2021, the desire for “stimulating work” that cares for the environment drive many to the countryside.

For example, as part of a survey about gender issues in agriculture entrepreneurship in France, a 34-year old woman farmer said she felt:

“A fairly strong personal revelation that I want to take action […] because the agricultural sector is vitally important for society, for the world, for the role it has to play in tackling the challenges of climate change”.

Marianne Gamet, a third-generation member of a family of champagne producers, believes that “the new generation can make a difference”. She’s adamantly opposed to selling shares in the company to outside investors, and takes pride in a product that has been passed on from earlier generations.

To make farming sustainable, many opt to diversify their activity, turning to alternatives such as methane gas production, photovoltaics, agricultural tourism or even educational gigs. In our research, we came across examples such as:
– Cyprus-based oil oil company, Oleastro, which was the first to produce organic olive oil in the country, and broadened its customer base through an Olive Oil Museum, festivities, and workshops;
– The Golden Donkeys Farm, which develops milk products in Cyprus, including face cremes, liqueurs, delights, and chocolates and organises donkey rides in the farm and craft workshops;
– Les Délices du Jardin d’Ainval in France, which focuses on growing “forgotten” vegetables and organises farm and educational visits to students and other participants.

Last but not least, the entrepreneurial spirit associated with family businesses is a big draw for many young people.

Retiring at the right time

For transition within the family to be successful, a healthy relationship between predecessor and successors is key. This requires each party to understand the other’s expectations, as well as to effectively adjust roles and decision-making. Earlier generations also need to be able to support the post-transmission phase and withdraw from the farm at the right time. They need to prepare for the transition by creating the right conditions for the young generation to take over, in particular by switching to farming practices that appeal to them.

These adaptations include the organisation of work and, when appropriate, hiring employees to improve conditions on the farm by reducing drudgery and constraints. By delegating technical tasks, farmers can free up time for the strategic and sustainable aspects of the business. Elders also have an interest in reducing physically demanding work to show that farming requires a broad skill set compatible with many career opportunities.

Marius Voeltzel, a 32 years old producer of pulses in the Eure region in France and creator of the Pousses de là brand, illustrates this dynamic:

“My mother’s message to me and my brother has always been clear. If we want to set up our own business, we can take over part of the farm, but only if we have a project in mind that aims to contribute something new. This approach is stimulating for me, because it forces me to think about how I can make my own distinctive contribution to the farm. My mother has also been supportive, providing the necessary tools and physical help for my brother and me from the moment we arrived on the farm.”

Such words are proof that policy-makers ought to pay attention to valuing the entrepreneurial, organisational, and psychological dimensions of family farms just as much as administrative and financial support. In the long run, they stand as the lifeblood of our European agriculture. Läs mer…

When former President Donald Trump’s attorneys argue before the U.S. Supreme Court on April 25, 2024, they will claim he is immune from criminal prosecution for official actions taken during his time in the Oval Office. The claim arises from his federal charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, but also may apply to the charges he faces over hoarding classified documents after leaving office.

No Supreme Court has decided this question, nor has any of its rulings said definitively what counts as an official act and what does not. Numerous commentators have called on the justices to decide the case rapidly.

But to the justices, and to me as a scholar of American politics and law, perhaps no commentator is as persuasive as the Supreme Court itself – in particular, in a ruling from 50 years ago.

Back then, in a case connected to the deepening Watergate scandal, then-President Richard Nixon claimed that all of a president’s conversations during his term in office were confidential and could not be subpoenaed into evidence by a court, even if they contained information relevant to a criminal prosecution.

In 1974, the Supreme Court accepted, heard and decided Nixon’s claim within two months, with Chief Justice Warren Burger explaining it had done so “because the matters at issue were of urgent public importance.”

So far, the court has acted more slowly in Trump’s case, but may yet heed its own words of urgency from the past.

A slowly unfolding inquiry

By 1974, the Watergate scandal had dragged on for almost two years, tearing the country apart. It was sparked by a burglary of Democratic Party headquarters in Washington’s Watergate Complex in May 1972 and mounting evidence that Nixon had orchestrated a cover-up.

In the summer of 1973, the highly publicized Senate hearings on Watergate publicly revealed the existence of tape recordings of Oval Office conversations. Access to the tapes became critical to establishing what Nixon knew about the break-in and when he knew it.

In November 1973, political pressure forced Nixon to release seven tapes to Judge John Sirica, who presided over a federal grand jury investigating Watergate. Leon Jaworski, whom Nixon had appointed special prosecutor, used those tapes to secure indictments of seven of Nixon’s top advisers for their efforts to cover up the burglary. The indictments were made public on March 1, 1974 – but secretly, Nixon was named an unindicted co-conspirator.

In a televised address in August 1973, President Richard Nixon denied involvement in Watergate. Less than a year later, he resigned the presidency.
Bettmann via Getty Images

A rapid series of court decisions

Based on evidence from logs of visits to the White House, Jaworski identified 64 additional tapes that likely contained relevant conversations and persuaded Sirica to subpoena them. Nixon’s team appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals. On May 24, 1974, Jaworski filed a request for certiorari before judgment, a rarely used legal mechanism asking the Supreme Court to get involved before the appeals court heard the case.

On May 31, six justices, including two Nixon appointees, granted Jaworski’s request and set oral arguments for July 8. One justice, William Rehnquist, recused himself because he had worked in Nixon’s Justice Department before being appointed to the court.

After oral arguments, all eight justices rejected Nixon’s claim of absolute executive privilege. They ruled there was probable cause that the subpoenaed tapes were relevant to a criminal case, found no indication that they would compromise national security, and were reassured that a judge would review them privately before divulging their contents.

The Burger court brimmed with big egos and petty rivalries. Nevertheless, all seven of its unrecused associate justices quickly joined the chief’s opinion, which was released on July 24. No additional concurring opinions muddied the legal waters.

Nixon had hoped that a divided court or an ambiguous ruling would allow further delay. But a unanimous ruling, penned by the chief justice he had nominated, convinced him to comply. “The problem was not just that we had lost,” he wrote in his memoirs, “but we had lost so decisively.”

Two days after the court’s ruling, on July 26, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee approved an article of impeachment against Nixon. One of its key pieces of evidence was one of the recordings the Supreme Court had ordered released. Called the “smoking gun,” it recorded Nixon directing his chief of staff to order the CIA to prevent the FBI from investigating the burglary. On Aug. 8, Nixon announced to the nation that he would resign the following day.

The Supreme Court had moved quickly, accepting the case at the earliest point it could have. That happened on May 31, with oral arguments 38 days later, on July 8. The court issued its ruling 16 days after that, on July 24. And just over two weeks later, Nixon was no longer president.

Former President Donald Trump says he is immune from criminal prosecution for official acts during his presidency.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Trump’s delays

As events in Trump’s case unfolded in 2023, there were parallels to Nixon’s situation. When District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan’s rejection of Trump’s immunity claim was appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in December 2023, special counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to grant certiorari before judgment.

During John Roberts’ time as chief justice, the Supreme Court has frequently agreed with those requests. But in Trump’s case, the justices declined to do so, offering no explanation.

It wasn’t until Feb. 6, 2024, that the appeals court forcefully rejected Trump’s claim of immunity. Smith again asked the Supreme Court to move the case along quickly – and on Feb. 28, the justices agreed to review it.

They scheduled oral arguments for 58 days later, on April 25. That is already more time than had elapsed between the Supreme Court accepting and deciding the case in 1974. And 1974 was not a year with a presidential election.

The importance of speed

I am not the only one who believes the Trump case is of similar – if not greater – importance to democracy.

The arguments in each of these cases challenge principles of the system the founders created, of a limited government with checks and balances on executive, legislative and judicial power.

It’s not yet clear how soon the Roberts court will rule, but in 1974, the justices appreciated “the public importance of the issues presented and the need for their prompt resolution”. Läs mer…

Across Portugal, a number of photography exhibitions are currently on display that commemorate the ousting of the Estado Novo, the dictatorial, authoritarian and corporatist political regime that had ruled the country since 1933.

The work of photographer Alfredo Cunha features prominently in many – he authored a book compiling the most emblematic images of this period. Many of those who organised the revolution are still alive today and have been present at events to mark the anniversary.

Mural commemorating the revolution on Avenida de Berna de Lisboa, painted in 2014 by the artists Add Fuel, Draw and MAR.
Fernando Camacho Padilla

The roots of the revolution

In April 1974, over a decade of colonial wars had left Portugal’s army fatigued, yet Marcelo Caetano – who succeeded prime minister António de Oliveira Salazar in 1968 – was still unwilling to let go of African territories. This led a section of the country’s army to rise up.

Carlos de Almada Contreiras, a captain in the Portuguese navy, played a prominent role in the revolution. It was he who instructed that the song “Grândola Vila Morena”, an ode to fraternity, be the signal to commence the military operation that morning.

De Almada Contreiras has said that the idea of using a song as a signal to the troops came from the coup staged by Pinochet in 1973, which they had learned about from the Libro Blanco del cambio de gobierno en Chile (White Paper on the Change of Government in Chile). This document had just been published by the Chilean armed forces to justify their actions against Salvador Allende’s democratic government on 11 September 1973.

Interestingly, the reforms implemented in Portugal from the revolution on 25 April 1973 to November of the same year bore many similarities to the Popular Unity movement in Chile (1970-1973), especially its agrarian reforms.

International support

Though the Portuguese revolution caused uproar and turmoil in Spanish society, there has been little reflection on Salazar’s relationship with Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Some researchers have recently published books on Spanish-Portuguese relations before and during the revolution which demonstrate its historical impact and relevance. María José Tiscar, for example, argues that Franco repaid Salazar’s help during the Spanish civil war with political, military and diplomatic support during the Portuguese colonial war (1961-1974), sometimes covertly.

Even less attention has been paid to Cuba’s role in the Carnation Revolution: while the Caribbean nation was not directly involved in the events, it did play an indirect part. From 1965 onward, Cuba provided support in training guerrilla forces from the colonial liberation movements fighting the Estado Novo, first in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, and then in Angola and Mozambique.

In addition, around 600 Cuban internationalists fought alongside the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) in Guinea Bissau against the Portuguese army, and a smaller group in Angola for a short period.

In 1969, Cuban army captain Pedro Rodríguez Peralta was captured by Portuguese paratroopers near the border with Guinea-Conakry, and was transferred to Lisbon shortly after. He remained there until the fall of the Estado Novo, when he was released and allowed to return to Cuba.

Several members of the armed wing of the Portuguese Communist Party, known as the Armed Revolutionary Action (ARA), were also trained in Cuba. The ARA committed several attacks and acts of sabotage in Portugal in the early 1970s.

A year after the final departure of Portuguese troops from Africa in 1976, the Portuguese far-right, with the support of the CIA, bombed the Cuban embassy in Lisbon, claiming the lives of two diplomats. This was done in revenge for Cuban actions against the Estado Novo.

Celebrating peace

Mural painted in 2017 by Shepard Fairey and Alexandre Farto (aka Vhils) commemorating the Carnation Revolution on Rua Senhora da Glória, in the Graça neighbourhood of Lisbon.
Fernando Camacho Padilla.

In recent weeks, Lisbon has been plastered with countless posters commemorating the 50th anniversary of the revolution. Images abound of young soldiers with carnations in their rifles, and of the joyous faces of those celebrating the fall of the Estado Novo. The city’s streets and boulevards are also adorned with many murals paying tribute to the events of 25 April 1974.

Such celebration is unique in Western Europe. No other country in the region has so recently experienced a revolution that gave way to its current democratic government.

Unlike other countries that had conservative dictatorships after the Second World War, the Portuguese Right shows little nostalgia for the days of António de Oliveira Salazar, or for the Estado Novo. This lack of nostalgia is reflected in actions such as the opening of archives housing the dictatorship’s documents to the public.

The only exception can be found among certain leaders of the extremist far-right party Chega, which recently had its strongest ever electoral performance in March this year.

Democratic revolution

Five decades after the revolution erupted, Portugal has followed a unique path to democracy.

Once the Estado Novo and its apparatus of oppression had been dismantled, power was swiftly handed over to civilians, and military officials ceased to hold political positions.

Portugal also fulfilled its pledge to grant full independence to its colonial territories. There were no attempts to establish a system of neocolonial rule which could have allowed the country to maintain political influence, or to grant Portuguese businesses control over sectors of the economy in former colonies. Läs mer…

Until three years ago nobody had developed a vaccine against any parasitic disease. Now there are two against malaria: the RTS,S and the R21 vaccines.

Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford and chief investigator for the R21 vaccine, tells Nadine Dreyer why he thinks this is a great era for malaria control.

What makes malaria such a difficult disease to beat?

Malaria has been around for 30 million years. Human beings have not.

Our hominoid predecessors were being infected by malaria parasites tens of millions of years ago, so these parasites had a lot of practice at clever tricks to escape immune systems long before we came along. Homo sapiens first evolved in Africa about 315,000 years ago.

Malaria is not a virus and nor is it a bacterium. It’s a protozoan parasite, thousands of times larger than a typical virus. A good comparison is how many genes it has. COVID-19 has about a dozen, malaria has about 5,000.

Additionally, the malaria parasite goes through four life cycle stages. This is as complex as it gets with infectious pathogens.

Medical researchers have been trying to make malaria vaccines for over 100 years. In Oxford it’s taken us 30 years of research.

How does the R21/Matrix-M vaccine work?

The four malaria life cycles are all hugely different, with different antigens expressed. An antigen is any substance that causes the body to make an immune response against that substance.

We targeted the sporozoites, which is the form that the mosquito inoculates into your skin. We were working to trap them before they could get to the liver and then carry on their life cycle by multiplying furiously.

Each mosquito injects a small number of sporozoites, perhaps 20, into the skin. If you clear those 20, you’ve won. If one gets through, you’ve lost. The bad news is you’ve only got minutes.

So you need extraordinarily high levels of antibodies that the parasite hasn’t seen before and hasn’t learnt to evolve against. Technologically it’s like having to design a car that’s 10 times faster than anything else on the road.

Luckily, there are no symptoms of malaria at that stage.

Read more:
Two new malaria vaccines are being rolled out across Africa: how they work and what they promise

A child dies every minute from malaria in Africa. Why are children more susceptible than adults?

Children under five years old account for about 80% of all malaria deaths in Africa. The age you’re most likely to die of malaria in Africa is when you are one year old.

For the first six months you are protected largely by your mother’s immunity and the antibodies she transfers during pregnancy.

If you survive to age two or three, and you’ve had a few episodes of malaria and you are still alive, you’ve got a bit of immunity. This improves over time.

Some children get up to eight episodes in three or four months. They get quite unwell with the first, and three weeks later they’re having a second bout and so on.

Natural immunity doesn’t work until you’ve had a lot of different infections and that’s why adults are generally protected against malaria and don’t become very unwell.

Without malaria, children would be healthier in general — the disease makes you susceptible to other infections.

What about the pace of vaccine rollouts?

We’ve been disappointed that it’s taken more than six months to roll out the R21 vaccine since it was approved in October last year. There are millions of doses of R21 sitting in a fridge in India.

There are a lot of organisations and processes involved in standard deployment that don’t seem necessary.

Compare that to a COVID-19 vaccine from Oxford and AstraZeneca that was approved on New Year’s Eve 2020 and rolled out in several countries the very next week.

In the same year malaria killed more people in Africa than COVID-19 did.

The first malaria vaccine, the RTS,S, has already been given to millions of children in a large safety trial and the uptake has been really high, so large coverage can be achieved in Africa.

How big a role will vaccines have in the fight to eradicate malaria?

We really think we have an opportunity now to make a big impact.

Nobody is quite sure how many of the older tools such as insecticides and bed nets we need to carry on with. The advice is to keep them all.

But mosquitoes are building resistance to insecticides. Anti-malaria medication only lasts for days and parasites are building up resistance against these drugs as well.

There are about 40 million children born every year in malaria areas in Africa who would benefit from a vaccine. The R21/Matrix-M has been designed to be manufactured at scale. The Serum Institute of India, our manufacturing and commercial partner, can produce hundreds of millions of doses each year.

Another real advantage is its low cost. At US$3.90 a dose the R21/Matrix-M appears to be the most effective single intervention we can deploy against malaria

Worldwide there is US$5 billion currently allocated to fight malaria each year.

We’re optimistic that if this money is spent sensibly we can make a big difference. Buying 200 million doses of the R21/Matrix-M vaccine would cost US$800 million.

Being in the field I’m aware of other vaccines coming along. Some are targeting the blood stage and others the mosquito stage of malaria, which is very exciting. This looks like a great era for malaria control.

More than 600,000 people die of malaria each year. With low-cost, very effective vaccines being deployed we should be able to get this down to 200,000 or less by the end of this decade.

Then the endgame will be malaria eradication worldwide, which really should happen in the 2030s. Läs mer…

Rwanda, a small and landlocked central African country, has made remarkable socio-economic progress since the 1994 genocide in which an estimated 500,000 people died. But the country, as well as the rest of the world, remains divided over the achievements made and the direction taken over the past 30 years.

Supporters of Rwanda’s trajectory believe in the aspiration of its president, Paul Kagame, for the country to become Africa’s Singapore. Critics, in contrast, see disturbing characteristics it has in common with North Korea. This stark divergence of views also besets the scholarly community. Some experts acclaim Rwanda as a developmental state and one with high-modernist ambitions to use science and technology for its advancement. Others denounce it as an ethnocracy, a state dominated by one ethnic group, and one run by a hyper-authoritarian dictatorship.

My scholarship centres on the study of conflicts and violence framed along ethnic and religious boundaries, and in strategies that promote co-existence and cooperation in plural societies.

I have been writing on Rwanda and its genocide for over 20 years. In my more recent research, I turn my lens on the question of whether Rwanda’s distinctive approach to state-building can endure in the long term. I conclude that a contradiction exists at the heart of Rwanda’s state-building model, placing a question mark over the country’s future.

Rwanda’s legacy

The persistent polarisation over Rwanda is partly the legacy of the country’s civil war that culminated in genocide (1990-94). The violence deeply divided Rwandans. Disagreements persist on responsibility and accountability for the genocide. But it is also partly a matter of differing priorities. Those who value democracy, civil liberties, justice and reconciliation find much wanting in post-genocide Rwanda. In contrast, those who think effective state institutions, socio-economic development and political stability are more important disagree and view Rwanda more favourably.

There is also much more at stake in these assessments than just the fate of one small African state. Rwanda is a high profile case in debates on state-building and post-conflict reconstruction in Africa. African governments, foreign donors and academic experts are keen to understand the model’s potential for replication elsewhere.

The path Rwanda’s government is charting has few precedents. I propose a new term to capture its distinctiveness: securocratic state-building.

The term is intended to reflect two core ideas. First, it aims to convey the importance a regime attaches to security in the wake of deeply divisive violence. It is for this reason Rwanda’s military and intelligence officials hold important positions and power within the regime and why coercion underlies its governance model. The regime stands accused of the politically motivated arrest, detention and trial, as well as suspicious disappearances and deaths, of its critics.

It is not that the regime does not believe in liberty and equality; it is simply that it unashamedly prioritises security over both. Its laws criminalising “genocide ideology” and “sectarianism”, for example, silence potentially legitimate dissent.

Second, the term seeks to communicate commitment to a developmental but ideologically pragmatic agenda. Rwanda’s regime seeks to modernise Rwanda and it will pursue whatever policies will achieve this.

The question is whether its securocratic approach can endure in the long term. In an effort to answer this more empirically than speculatively, I conducted interviews over several years with thought-leaders and change-makers carefully chosen from across Rwanda’s principal societal and political divides to ascertain their views on the country’s achievements and trajectory.

The aim was to elicit the competing rationales that regime supporters and critics each gave for the grand strategic choices the regime had made after the genocide. I sought to assess these rationales against each other and for their internal coherence. The approach – narrative analysis coupled with active interviewing – is premised on the idea that some insight into Rwanda’s future stability may be gleaned.

The regime made three strategically crucial choices:

to establish “consensus” over competitive politics
to systematically de-emphasize the importance of ethnicity in society
to modernise the state and use it to grow and diversify the economy.

Supporters and critics

Strikingly, regime supporters cited the same two underlying rationales for each of these three choices: security and unity. They pointed to Rwanda’s two past experiences with competitive democracy (1959-62 and 1991-94), which had both been accompanied by ethnic violence. They highlighted the divisive and destructive power of ethnicity and argued it was best addressed by constructing an overarching national Rwandan identity. Finally, they claimed social stability could not be assured if Rwandans’ basic material needs were unmet.

Critics, however, offered different rationales. They claimed the regime avoided competitive elections because it was acutely conscious of its own illegitimacy. The senior partner in the coalition government, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, is dominated by the Tutsi minority and seeks to rule over the country’s Hutu majority. It could not win a truly free and fair election.

In social relations, detractors said the regime had sought to prohibit ethnic identification because it wished to obscure Tutsi hegemony. There would be public outcry if the full extent to which the minority was over-represented in government and business in Rwanda were known.

Lastly, in economics, critics argued the strategy pursued sought simply to entrench and enrich the ruling party. While the regime has diversified the economy, this has been achieved through investment by companies controlled by the ruling party. And while it has built capable state institutions, they are staffed by party loyalists.

Supporters and critics then have opposing understandings of why these strategic choices have been made. They suggest a depth of division and distrust between Rwandans that will likely persist long into the country’s future.

The bottom line

These competing rationales point to a fundamental tension at the heart of the Rwandan model. The regime’s preoccupation with security is at odds with its desire for unity.

It’s impossible to have “political consensus” without meaningful choice, yet choice is not compatible with coercion. Similarly, a post-ethnic society is not achievable if your choices reflect a fear of the enduring power of ethnicity in society. And, lastly, while Rwanda’s institutions are highly effective, they will lack independence and durability if you seek to appoint only those loyal to you and your vision.

Ultimately, the test of the success of Rwanda’s state-building model is regime succession. The current regime and its supporters view the regime’s continuity as a necessity. Yet every regime transition in Rwanda since 1896 has occurred outside the accepted institutional channels for change. Rwanda’s exit from violence should not be considered consolidated until there has been at least one genuine and peaceful transition of power. Läs mer…