The MV Hondius, a Dutch cruise ship with a deadly outbreak of hantavirus, was on its way to the Canary Islands on May 7, 2026, after evacuating three ill passengers for treatment.

The World Health Organization confirmed the outbreak on May 4, noting a total of seven infections, with three deaths since the outbreak began in early April. An eighth case was confirmed on May 6.

Because of the illness’s one- to eight-week incubation period, additional cases may still be identified. Health officials around the world are monitoring passengers who disembarked from the ship in the early days of the outbreak in late April. Health officials emphasize, however, that the risk to the public from the outbreak is low.

I’m a medical epidemiologist – here’s what you need to know about the virus and how the outbreak is playing out.

What is hantavirus?

Hantavirus isn’t just one virus but a group of closely related viruses found throughout the world. Their natural reservoir is rodents, such as wild mice, rats and moles. Infected rodents don’t get symptoms, but the virus replicates in their cells. It sometimes spills over into other animals, including humans, and can cause severe disease and even death.

There are two general types of hantaviruses. Old World hantaviruses, typically found in Europe and Asia, generally affect the kidneys. Their mortality rate in people is 15% or less.

New World hantaviruses, such as the one causing the outbreak on the Hondius, occur in North and South America. The best-known strains of this type are the Andes virus, the strain that was confirmed in the cruise ship outbreak, and the Sin Nombre virus, which likely caused the death of Betsy Arakawa, Gene Hackman’s wife, in March 2025.

These viruses generally affect the lungs and are fatal in about 40% of cases. Symptoms start with a flu-like illness and can progress quickly to intense inflammation in the lungs that leads to lung and heart failure.

A person with a hantavirus infection may experience symptoms anywhere from a week to eight weeks after exposure. There is no treatment; doctors can offer only supportive care, such as hydration, artificial respiration or dialysis.

How do these viruses spread?

Cases of hantavirus infection are rare. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 890 cases in the U.S. from 1993, when surveillance began, through the end of 2023.

The vast majority of cases occur in China, with thousands of cases caused by Old World hantavirus strains occurring annually.

Most often, people become infected with these viruses by inhaling aerosolized urine or droppings from infected rodents. Imagine a cabin infested with mice infected by the virus – sweeping the cabin would shake up dust from the mouse urine and droppings, distributing it through the air and enabling people to inhale the viral particles. There’s a smaller risk of getting ill through direct contact, such as by being bitten by an infected rodent or by touching its saliva.

The worry on the cruise ship is human-to-human transmission. Epidemiologists had previously found hints that the Andes virus may be transmitted from one person to another under certain circumstances, such as close, sustained contact in close quarters, like a small cruise ship.

What do investigators think happened on the cruise ship?

The Hondius, now carrying close to 150 passengers, started out in Argentina on April 1 and was sailing north on a 33-day journey.

There were no reports of rodents on the ship, so it’s unlikely the illness started there. According to news reports, the people who first got sick had been touring Argentina and Chile for months beforehand. Researchers speculate they likely got infected during an activity in which they were exposed to a rodent carrying the disease or its excrement.

Given these viruses’ weekslong incubation period, these people may have been feeling fine when they boarded the ship, before eventually falling ill. They may have then spread Andes virus to others through breathing shared air or other close contact in close quarters.

What happens now?

The ship is now traveling to Spain, and multiple patients are being evacuated along the way.

Also, researchers are tracking 29 people who disembarked from the ship on April 24, before the outbreak was identified. People who had significant exposure will likely be quarantined to watch for symptoms and be isolated if symptoms develop.

Residents of three U.S. states are being monitored. Dutch officials announced on May 7 that a flight attendant who was not a passenger but briefly interacted with a passenger was hospitalized with possible hantavirus symptoms.

Is the situation dangerous?

Health officials can’t rule out that additional hantavirus cases may emerge in the cruise ship outbreak, but beyond the ship the risk remains low. That’s because most cases of hantavirus, including Andes virus, are acquired directly from rodents or their excrement and not from other humans.

It’s important to note, however, that even on vacation, people should pay attention to risks for infection – particularly as they may be very different from the ones they’re used to at home.

Daniel Pastula does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Over many seasons, I’ve observed a pair of masked lapwings hatch their chicks in a natural wetland close to my home. Nature did not prime these parents to care for their young. My lapwing neighbours would walk their downy chicks into the open and fly away when noisy miner birds approached. The weeks-old young were left to defend themselves from vicious, swooping attacks.

As I walked the wetland each day, I counted the young with a heavy heart: one day there were four, the next there would be two and a week later there were none.

In 2023, the first clutch of lapwing chicks survived into adolescence and I told everyone I knew.

I learned more about motherhood from witnessing these parenting failures – for example, the need to love, remain proximate, protect from predators and respond in instances of distress – than in anything I had encountered in all my years as a professional philosopher. Sure, I’d taught the standard arguments for and against abortion in ethics and given classes in bioethics on pregnancy management and maternal autonomy, but these topics had little to do with motherhood itself.

One of the reasons for this was that until I was readying myself for a child of my own, motherhood had not been salient to me as either a personal or philosophical question. The more significant reason was that motherhood – and the maternal body – rarely presented itself as a philosophical topic for exploration in the many classes and seminars I attended as a student and later, as an academic.

Yet in a tradition where life and health have spurred profound philosophical reflection – I have in mind Pascal’s migraines and Nietzsche’s breakdowns – how can the soul and body splitting event of childbirth be an unremarked upon subject of philosophy?

Since antiquity, women have written philosophical texts and discussed philosophical topics. But through a centuries-long process of erasure, their philosophical concerns and their contributions to the discipline have been ignored and later, forgotten.

From the time of Aristotle, women were seen as subordinate to men. In philosophy, too, the norms of reason, the nature of philosophical inquiry and the topics of investigation were defined in opposition to anything feminine.

It is little surprise, then, that writings about the intense psychological, emotional, and identity transformations that take place during gestational and postpartum motherhood were largely sidelined within the discipline.

Yet a few remarkable women overcame misogynistic epistemic and disciplinary barriers to produce work that was recognised as philosophy, including some writing touching on the maternal experience.

Maternal empowerment

For Lady Damaris Masham, raised among Platonists in Cambridge in the mid-17th century, motherhood was a significant topic of moral and political philosophy.

According to Masham, the education of women and the development of their rational abilities was key to discharging the moral responsibilities of motherhood. Only through receiving a sound education could women effectively mother their children.

More than this, the responsibility to parent, she argued, should fall to women since the task “cannot be perform’d but by Mothers only”. Though this sounds regressive to our ears, Regan Penaluna, a contemporary philosopher and journalist, suggests it was a radical argument for domestic matriarchy. For Masham, men could not be entrusted to such a significant domestic and civic responsibility. The stability of society depended on well-raised children.

In this way, Masham’s views are a positive contrast to many of her male contemporaries, who ignored mothers, argued the origin of children’s dysregulation could be traced to women, or turned women’s bodies into sites of fear and contestation. (One noteworthy counterexample is 17th-century French philosopher François Poulain de la Barre who writes sympathetically about mothers’ responsibilities, their pains, and their wisdom).

Masham would invert many of these stereotypically male ideas to show maternal empowerment was needed for all to live well in this life.

Her two philosophical works, Discourse Concerning the Love of God and Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life, were published anonymously, though occasionally misattributed to John Locke. He, too, wrote on parental responsibility. Masham, whose reflections on parenting were more incisive and radical, was largely ignored until recent decades.

‘I fear for my health’

As for Masham, a key philosophical topic for the 18th-century philosopher, mathematician, and physicist Émilie du Châtelet was women’s autonomy and access to education. In a book titled the Discourse on Happiness, du Châtelet examined the conditions that enabled or precluded women’s happiness, given the opportunities they were often denied.

She argued education and the feelings this gave rise to played an outsized role in women’s capacity to achieve worldly satisfaction. Finished in the months before du Châtelet became unexpectedly pregnant, she writes in the Discourse,

only study remains to console [a woman] for all the exclusions and all the dependencies to which she finds herself condemned.

Condemned, it seems, is how du Châtelet felt. Pregnant with her fourth child at 42, du Châtelet’s physical and social conditions were an organising principal of her life at this time.

In this period, she was singularly focused on completing her path-breaking commentary on Newton’s Principia. The dread of unfinished work, the social consequences of having a child with her lover, and the fear of a deadly pregnancy – “I fear for my health, and even for my life” – led her to work voraciously.

In her second trimester, she reported working 18-hour days. In the days before giving birth, she finalised the proofs for her commentary and sent these to the Bibliothèque du Roi, the national library, for their preservation.

A relatable anxiety about the postpartum period and an awareness of how life would change – either she would die in childbirth or need to reckon with how she might continue to work – are an ever-present topic in her correspondence from the time.

Writing to her lover Jean François de Saint-Lambert before the birth of their child, du Châtelet tells of profound pain and sadness: “my stomach is so terribly low, I feel such pain in my back. I am so sad this evening.”

The depth of this feeling is made clear when she returns to the subject at the close of her letter, dated to late August, 1749.

I am too unwell, I have an insupportable backache, and am prey to discouragement in the mind and in my whole person.

For the author of a Discourse on Happiness, it is little wonder her physical circumstances impacted her mental health and her intellectual work was a source of nourishment.

Of course, we see none of these musings in du Châtelet’s published work from this time. Why should a work of physics contain reflections on her pregnancy? This would make no more sense than for my own journal articles on epistemology to reveal the details of my birth plan. (Like du Châtelet’s, mine was “for myself and baby to live and be well.”)

But as historians of philosophy, we have long explored the social, intellectual and material conditions in which works were produced.

This is especially important in the context of uncovering the work of female philosophers. Understanding these conditions often underscores how remarkable their feats were. Astonishingly, du Châtelet’s translation and commentary, which became the standard text in France and galvanised support for Newtonianism, was finalised at a time during her pregnancy when I could do no more than watch Scandal and eat chips.

Sadly, our experiences would differ in other respects. Ten days after sending her manuscript and six days after giving birth, du Châtelet died of complications from childbirth.

Beyond the solitary thinker

If du Châtelet’s published work was silent on the topic of motherhood, where, then, are our writings on the experience of carrying, birthing and recovering?

Medieval mystic Margery Kempe conveys her experience of pregnancy illness and postpartum psychosis in her 14th-century eponymous work, The Book of Margery Kempe.

Pregnancy, labour and the early days of motherhood left her full of sickness and despair, and bereft of her “reason and her wits.” In painfully vivid terms, Kempe describes a long physical and psychological recovery, which catalysed a religious conversion.

Kempe is a rarity. The maternal body has seldom been discussed in philosophy, yet many central topics would take radically different shape if it were both the subject and object of inquiry.

For Mary Midgley, a mid-20th century British philosopher, Descartes’ scepticism and its resolution as cogito ergo sum (“I think therefore I am”) set epistemology on a centuries-long path of trying to relate the knowing self to the world beyond it.

In her terms, the task of philosophy from the early modern period to the 20th century was to create the “narrow shaky gangway between the two towers of the Knower and the Known.”

But the unassailable, solitary thinker that served as the foundation of Descartes’ philosophy requires, Midgley writes,

an account of human knowledge which women’s whole experience falsifies […] I wonder whether [he] would have said the same if [he] had been frequently pregnant and suckling.

Maternal experience, consciousness, relationality and the embodied self vitiate Descartes’ scepticism and solipsism. Reading Midgley, one wonders just how many philosophical puzzles would dissolve were philosophical inquiry to begin from the maternal, rather than the male, body.

Still, despite Midgley’s incisive reflections, a BBC editor cancelled her radio appearance in the mid-1950s on the grounds that her remarks were a “trivial, irrelevant intrusion of domestic matters into intellectual life”. (A script of this radio appearance was recently unearthed in her home in Northumbria and made public some 60 years after it was first written.)

Matrescence

Throughout the history of Western culture, women’s pregnancies and postpartum experiences were written about, but hardly ever from a woman’s perspective and scarcely in positive terms. As Quill Kukla, a contemporary American philosopher, has argued, pregnant and newly maternal bodies were a source of intellectual and visceral anxiety to the people – mostly men – that wrote about them.

Unlike male bodies, women’s bodies were thought to be unbounded due to their capacity to produce life and nurture it postpartum. If women did manage to write about their experience on the sly, their philosopher contemporaries rarely believed these curious themes to be within the bounds of philosophy, proper.

Moreover, it is not until very recently that we had a term to convey the experience of people who have given birth: matrescence. Coined in 1973 by medical anthropologist Dana Rapheal, this watershed term captures a period of “mother-becoming” in which the social and biological transformations brought about by childbearing and/or raising effect myriad changes to a person’s physical, emotional, social and inner life.

These take place alongside changes to the activities a person undertakes and the relationships they form. Any sleep-deprived new mother who has found themselves squeezed and prodded in the brightly lit office of lactation consultant, as I did, can attest to how strange and estranging this social and physical transformation can be.

And while not everyone experiences the maternal transformation Rapheal describes – mothers need not have given birth and there are many ways to mother – it’s nevertheless remarkable to note the long absence of these experiences from our intellectual discourse.

Of course, I’m not alone in feeling the experience of matrescence was hidden from public view. Lucy Jones, author of the bestselling Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood writes that until she became a mother she had never seen a painting of childbirth, heard a song about pregnancy, read a book about the loss of self in early motherhood or watched a play about maternal mental illness.

Given the incidence of postpartum anxiety and depression among new parents, this is all the more damning.

From du Châtelet’s fears to Kempe’s despair, from Masham’s advocacy to Midgley’s criticism, we inherit a fragmented but persistent tradition of women insisting motherhood is significant. The recent emergence and widespread success of books exploring matrescence suggests we are on the cusp of a cultural shift.

Matresence need not remain hidden from view or whispered in mothers’ groups: it deserves its place in our intellectual, artistic, and public imagination.

How, then, can our discipline explore the metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic, conceptual, linguistic and political dimensions of pregnancy, labour and motherhood to make sense of our rich but diverse experiences?

If philosophy is to be a way of life, what does it need to become to serve mothers in their exploration of the transformation they experience?

We owe it to ourselves to uncover voices from the past that whispered their maternal experience, to explore narratives of matrescence and to reexamine philosophy’s taken for granted topics in this new light. Refusing to accept its historical neglect, making mother-becoming a subject of philosophical inquiry, is a long overdue and necessary act of imaginative and intellectual resistance.

Laura Kotevska does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

If you scroll through social media for long enough, you’ll probably find videos claiming that listening to songs tuned to “A 432Hz” can provide an amazing sense of calmness or healing.

It’s even claimed that listening to music tuned to this frequency can align your internal frequencies to those of the universe. It’s an alluring idea – that simply listening to music tuned in a specific way could improve your health.

But does it have any scientific basis?

An ancient idea

Firstly, what does it even mean if songs are tuned to A 432Hz?

Hertz (or Hz) is a measurement of frequency, or the number of times sound waves vibrate per second. Sounds are transmitted as waves through the air which hit our eardrums to create the sensation of hearing. The more quickly those sound waves are vibrating, the higher the pitch of the note.

In standard concert tuning, the note A above middle C is tuned to 440Hz. A 432Hz tuning simply means the pitch of that A and all the other notes in the music are tuned a little lower than normal.

Some argue 432Hz is closer to natural harmonic frequencies than 440Hz and that using this tuning is therefore better for wellbeing.

The idea that sounds or music can heal or even align us with the cosmos is not new. Long before social media, the ancient Greeks linked sound to the frequencies of the universe. Pythagoras proposed musical notes were governed by simple numerical ratios, the same ratios he believed underpinned the cosmos itself.

Later, medieval and Renaissance thinkers built on these ideas with the concept of “music of the spheres” – the idea that sound could be used to align us with the vibrations of the planets in a kind of cosmic harmony that influenced human emotions and wellbeing.

No magical effect

Although the concept of cosmic alignment is intriguing, there’s little scientific support for the idea that specific frequencies have any magical effect on wellbeing.

In one study from 2019, researchers played movie soundtracks tuned to 440 Hz to participants on one day and to 432 Hz on another day, finding that after listening to the 432 Hz tunings participants had slightly decreased heart rate and blood pressure. However, the study was limited by a very small sample and non-randomisation of participants, making it difficult to separate true frequency effects from expectancy or general relaxation responses.

Modern research suggests the effects of sound or music on wellbeing are less about any single special frequency, and more about how we perceive and interpret sound.

Some have theorised the use of frequencies that correspond to specific brainwave patterns such as delta waves (0.5–4Hz, associated with deep sleep), or alpha waves (8–12Hz, associated with relaxed wakefulness), can make the brain synchronise to those frequencies and achieve a relaxed state.

However, research in support of this theory is inconclusive. One study from 2017 found no changes in electrical activity in the brain after hearing such frequencies presented as binaural beats.

Binaural beats themselves are another form of sound that many claim can have miraculous effects on wellbeing. When two slightly different frequencies are played separately into each ear, the brain perceives a rhythmic pulse at a rate equal to the difference between the two frequencies. This is called a binaural beat.

There is some evidence that our physiological systems (such as breathing and heart rate) synchronise to any beat that we hear. This can help lower our levels of arousal or alertness.

That’s why most of us tend to be attracted to slower, calmer sounding music when we want to relax, for example, since the slower beat helps slow our breathing and heart rate and make us feel sleepier or calmer.

Focusing on your own response

Does that mean binaural beats have any special therapeutic effect? Not really.

A recent study found binaural beats can increase relaxation and alter brain activity. But crucially, similar effects were also observed with other types of moving or spatialised sounds. The authors concluded the benefits were likely driven by general auditory features rather than the binaural beats themselves.

It all comes down to individual preferences and perceptions. For example, binaural beats are frequently associated with meditation or mantras. And it could be this association which enhances the supposed wellbeing effects of binaural beats for some people.

Similarly with music tuned to A 432Hz.

Our brains tend to interpret sounds as expressions of emotional states. When humans are relaxed, our voices are usually lower in pitch than when we are excited or agitated.

Thus, notes of a lower pitch are sometimes perceived as more relaxing than notes that are higher pitched. Again, this doesn’t mean there is anything special or magical about 432Hz tunings – just that for many people, lower pitched notes seem calmer. The same effect could be achieved by listening to other music or frequencies with a lower pitch.

So while 432Hz might sound soothing to some ears, it’s not a shortcut to cosmic alignment. Rather than thinking about the numbers, focus on really becoming aware of your own response. Notice how different sounds make you feel, what slows your breathing, eases your body, or lifts your mood.

When it comes to wellbeing, what works is what works for you.

Sandra Garrido is the CEO of MoodyTunes, a music-based smartphone app for youth mental health.

For a brief period, film and TV piracy in Australia seemed to be somewhat under control.

When Netflix launched in Australia in 2015, it provided a service the local media sector had lacked for years: instant, affordable and extensive access to a broad library of movies and series.

A decade later, that optimism has somewhat faded. Audiences now navigate an increasingly fragmented streaming market, spanning Apple TV, Binge, Disney+, HBO Max, Netflix, Paramount Plus, Prime Video, Stan, and sports services such as Kayo Sports. The list goes on.

And as the number of streaming platforms grows, so too do subscription costs. In 2025, Australians spent almost A$4 billion on streaming subscriptions, with the average household paying around $42 per month, up 18% on the previous year.

These costs are pushing viewers towards alternatives such as Stremio – one of several media aggregation apps through which viewers can access pirated content.

Australia’s long piracy history

Australia has historically recorded some of the world’s highest piracy rates for film and TV.

In 2015, the ABC reported 29% of Australians aged 18–64 illegally downloaded movies or TV shows – and 54% aged 18–24 did so regularly.

Much of this stemmed from frustrations with content access. Australian audiences have faced delayed release windows, geo-blocking and expensive pay-TV exclusivity deals. For many, piracy was a workaround for a distribution system that felt restrictive and outdated.

One example was when Foxtel secured exclusive Australian rights to Game of Thrones, forcing viewers to subscribe to its services to access the show. It’s no surprise that in 2015 Australia accounted for 11.6% of global illegal sharing of the show’s fourth season – with Melbourne being the top city globally (3.2%).

Back in 2015, I and other analysts argued blocking websites and targeting users would be less effective than increasing affordability and access through legitimate channels.

Streaming reduced friction (initially)

Industry surveys from 2014–15 showed piracy rates beginning to decline after Netflix’s launch. One study found the share of Australians engaging in online piracy dropped by 4%.

Netflix was widely viewed as a “game-changer” in the fight against piracy. Rather than navigating unreliable websites and waiting for downloads, viewers could pay a relatively low monthly fee to access extensive libraries of content.

But the streaming landscape has since shifted dramatically. Libraries are now fragmented across competing services, with films and series jumping between platforms as licensing agreements change.

Viewers have to maintain several subscriptions to legally access a broad range of content. Many can’t afford this.

Enter Stremio

This is the environment in which apps such as Stremio, as well as Nuvio, Kodi and Plex, have gained popularity.

Stremio was developed by Bulgarian company Smart Code OOD in the mid-2010s. Rather than hosting films or television shows itself, this free media aggregation platform lets users organise content from multiple services, both legal and illegal, through a single interface.

Apple, Foxtel, Google and many Smart TVs already offer similar aggregation services, allowing users to browse content across multiple streaming libraries through a single interface. Both Apple TV and Foxtel’s “All in One Place” approach are designed to simplify navigation across fragmented services, while still requiring users to hold the relevant subscriptions.

These systems are responding to consumers’ growing frustration with streaming fragmentation. But using them to access a wide variety of content still incurs high costs.

Meanwhile, content aggregator apps are generally free (or cheap). However, they also support third-party add-ons that can connect users to peer-to-peer torrent networks. This is where they enter legally and ethically complex territory.

The apps themselves are not inherently illegal. However, using them to access copyrighted content through torrent streams will generally constitute copyright infringement under Australian law.

Australia’s anti-piracy framework, particularly Section 115A of the Copyright Act 1968, allows copyright holders to seek Federal Court orders blocking websites primarily designed to infringe copyright.

But the legal responsibility surrounding platforms such as Stremio is complex, because multiple actors are involved. Stremio provides the interface. Third-party distributors supply the copyrighted material. And users access the content through add-ons.

In practice, copyright holders have typically targeted “distributors” and “access points”, such as torrent sites like The Pirate Bay.

But Stremio is an aggregation interface – not a content host or distributor – so it does not fit neatly into these categories.

It’s also worth noting that while users accessing unauthorised streams may be breaching copyright law, enforcement against individual users remains relatively uncommon in Australia.

Piracy as a user-experience problem

Streaming services once reduced piracy by offering convenience, access and affordability. In other words, they provided a better experience than illegal torrenting.

But the streaming landscape has changed. With viewers facing growing costs and “subscription fatigue”, content aggregators apps will become increasingly attractive, regardless of whether the sources are legitimate.

This should raise concerns for the industry.

If streaming fragmentation continues at the current rate, piracy may no longer be seen as a fringe activity operating outside of mainstream media consumption. It may become the only practical response to a system that has become restrictive, expensive, and difficult to navigate.

Marc C-Scott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Across Australia, Year 6 families are doing the rounds of high school open nights, information evenings and tours.

Perhaps in your area, you don’t get a choice of schools. Maybe you and your child have already made up your mind about next year.

Or maybe the decision is more difficult. Your child may be torn between the school their best friend is going to and the one their cousin or parent loved. Maybe you’re the one losing sleep over it.

Choosing a high school can seem enormous. It’s six years of your child’s life, at an age when so much is changing. And the choice can feel so much more fraught when neighbours, friends and family are heading in different directions.

So how do you cut through the noise and work out what actually matters?

Here’s something to take the pressure off

Australian research suggests there is no such thing as the “best” high school. What matters far more than a school’s reputation is the fit between the school and a particular child.

As the Australian Education Research Organisation has shown, even in high performing schools, students sit right across the achievement distribution. In other words, there is no “average” school with “average” students. In every school, there are students who perform well, in the middle and at the lower end of the scale.

The differences within schools – which teachers your child gets, which classes they sit in, who they sit beside – often matter more for learning and wellbeing than the differences between schools.

For example, Australian analysis of international reading data found 82% of the variation in Australian 15-year-old performance came from differences within schools, not between them.

So instead of asking which is the best school, try asking which school will help my child thrive? There are several elements that can help you determine this.

Belonging and relationships

Australian research has consistently shown a strong sense of belonging at school predicts engagement, attendance, mental health and achievement.

For students who “don’t fit the mould”, students from rural communities, students with diverse cultural backgrounds, finding the right school can be even more important.

Belonging is often the difference between thriving and feeling invisible. Our recent review found relationships, recognition of individuality and feeling genuinely known mattered most when it came to student wellbeing.

How does the school structure connection? Are there study groups, year coordinators, mentors, Year 12 buddies? Will an adult actually know your child by name?

What happens in the senior years?

Schools are not interchangeable when it comes to what they offer in the senior years. Some are heavily ATAR-focused, others have rich vocational pathways, strong arts or sports programs, or trade options.

A child who lights up doing hands-on work needs a school where metalwork or hospitality is treated as a real pathway, not a “fall back”. Australian research shows vocational subjects can sit alongside ATAR study, they don’t have to be either/or.

Ask how subject choices are made in the senior years. Also about extension options for kids who race ahead, and support programs for those who need more time with their academic work.

Values and culture

Most schools’ websites talk about values such as respect, resilience and excellence. The real question is whether the culture matches the marketing.

How does the school respond when a student makes a mistake or does the wrong thing? Is there a restorative response (a structured conversation that focuses on understanding the impact caused and repairing relationships) or just punishment? Research suggests punishment alone rarely changes behaviour, but understanding the impact on others, and being part of the solution, often does.

What happens around bullying? Research consistently points to whole-school approaches as the most effective response. This means leaders, teachers, support staff, students and families are involved, not just the leader responsible for bullying. Look for an easy to find, clear, public anti-bullying policy. Also look for staff who can describe what they actually do when bullying is reported, not just what the policy says.

How is mental health supported? Are there specific programs and approaches? Research shows academic outcomes are also connected to students’ wellbeing and behaviour.

Other questions to take with you to open days

• Tell me about a student who struggled, how did you support them?

• How do you handle friendship conflict?

• What does a typical Year 7 day look like?

• How will I hear from you about my child during the year?

Some final thoughts

Beyond talking to teachers, try to talk to current parents and students. Stop and ask the awkward questions.

And bring your child into the conversation. Adolescents who feel they had a real say in choosing their school tend to have a smoother transition to Year 7.

Meanwhile, remember, a great school for one student may not suit another. This is about finding out what will work best for your child.

Tania Leach does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Should some of Australia’s more than 1 million family and small business trusts face higher taxes in future, bringing them closer to what ordinary wage earners already pay in income tax?

We’re about to find out on Tuesday night.

Trusts are widely used by farmers, family businesses, professionals, property investors and high-income households because they can provide flexibility, asset protection and succession planning benefits. They can also be used to reduce people’s income tax.

Over recent weeks, there’s been mounting, well-sourced media speculation that the Albanese government will revisit a Labor policy from 2019 for a flat 30% tax on some trust payments.

Speaking at a national tax summit last year, leading tax researcher Miranda Stewart pointed out that while some Australians had the money and means to set up trusts to reduce their tax bills, “Your average punter is having tax taken out of their pay every fortnight”.

But what is a trust? What proposals for change are being seriously considered ahead of Tuesday’s budget? And which Australians are most likely to be exempt from any changes that may be on the way?

1.8 million Australians benefit from trusts

Some individuals own assets – such as money, land, shares or a business – on their own.

But another common way to own those same assets is through a trust, most commonly a “discretionary trust”.

A trust acts like a bucket. Assets or businesses are placed inside that bucket, and the income earned from them is managed by a person or entity known as the trustee.

The income of the trust can then be distributed at the trustee’s discretion to people known as beneficiaries, who are often family members.

Trusts are more common than many people realise, and there is a significant amount of money involved. According to the most recent Treasury figures,

Around 1.8 million individuals (11% of tax filers) reported a total of around $71.3 billion in trust net income in 2022–23.

How trusts are used

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) says most trusts are used in legitimate ways. For instance, if you own a family farm and you want to oversee who’ll inherit your land, machinery and more, trusts can make that easier to manage.

But research prepared for the ATO in 2019 estimated Australia could be losing at least A$1 billion a year through aggressive trust-related tax planning by wealthy individuals.

How trusts can lower people’s tax bills

One reason trusts have become politically contentious is that they can allow income to be split between family members on lower tax rates.

For example, a worker earning A$100,000 as a salary would currently pay about A$22,788 in income tax (including the Medicare levy).

But according to modelling in independent MP Allegra Spender’s recent tax white paper, if the same $100,000 income is earned through a family trust and distributed evenly between two adults, including a non-working spouse, that tax bill could fall to around A$13,576.

That difference arises because Australia’s progressive tax system applies lower tax rates to lower incomes. By splitting trust income among multiple beneficiaries, some families can reduce the amount that is taxed at higher marginal rates.

What’s being talked about ahead of the budget?

The federal government has not officially confirmed it’s considering changes to how trusts are taxed.

But the idea behind Labor’s previous trusts proposal – announced in 2017 and sounding similar to speculation ahead of this budget – is to try to level the playing field with salary and wage earners.

According to one news report, if Labor proceeds with a plan to introduce a 30% flat tax on all discretionary trust payments to adult beneficiaries, it could bring in $4–$5 billion in revenue over the next four years.

Why farmers and others are likely to be exempt

Back when Labor proposed a 30% tax on trust payments before the 2019 election, there were planned carve-outs – meaning not everyone would have to pay.

These included exemptions for charitable trusts, deceased estates and testamentary trusts (established under wills), along with hardship concessions.

Farmers were also exempt under Labor’s 2019 proposal. And there’s a reasonable case for why they should be.

Farmers are typically asset rich – such as in land and machinery – but cash poor. They also tend to have more volatile incomes than many other types of business.

However, any time a new tax is designed with built-in exclusions, you can expect to see pushback from other groups.

For many of the 1.8 million Australians who received income from trusts, Tuesday night’s budget speech will now be mandatory viewing.

Donovan Castelyn receives funding from the Australian government under the National Tax Clinic Program to support the delivery and operation of the University of Tasmania Tax Clinic. He previously co-founded the Curtin Tax Clinic but is no longer involved in its governance or operations.

After weeks of blockades by Iran and the United States in the Strait of Hormuz, it’s clear the narrow waterway is now pivotal to the outcome of the conflict.

The US has begun to escort ships through the narrow passage, but behind the military manoeuvring lies a deeper development: energy security in the Persian Gulf is in a state of profound flux.

As well as the desire by both Iran and the US to control the global flow of oil, gas, helium and fertilisers from the region, the United Arab Emirates (a key US ally) has withdrawn from OPEC in what’s been called a major blow to the oil cartel.

On top of this, Iran has announced plans to introduce tariffs in the Strait of Hormuz as a form of reparations for the damage caused by the war.

If imposed, these tariffs are estimated to be worth between US$40 billion and $50 billion a year to Iran, and would potentially allow it to mitigate the impact of US economic sanctions.

Crucially, tariffs would be a way to cultivate stronger relations with China because they would be denominated in Chinese yuan, not US dollars. This has the potential to significantly alter regional and global power balances.

In fact, such payments have reportedly already been made by vessels going to China, India and Japan, with the Iranian parliament working to formalise the process. (Iran has also begun accepting payments in cryptocurrency.)

50 years of dominance

If Iran can continue to charge these tariffs it could tilt regional influence away from the US towards China and Asia by eroding the historical dominance of the petrodollar.

Essentially, the petrodollar system has seen the pricing and trading of oil in US dollars. The term dates from the 1970s when the US asked Saudi Arabia to exclusively price its oil in US dollars in return for military aid.

This spread across OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), becoming the benchmark of the global oil trade, bolstering the US dollar as the global reserve currency and underwriting US power.

Oil-producing nations amassed huge petrodollar surpluses – too much to invest only in their own economies – which were funnelled or “recycled” back into US securities and stocks, and other countries’ sovereign wealth funds.

They have become the primary source of revenue for OPEC members, as well as non-member oil exporters Qatar and Norway. This ties these countries to Washington and gives the US significant financial leverage in global affairs. The flow of petrodollars helps finance US deficits and reduce US borrowing costs.

A new paradigm?

If major regional players such as the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia pay Iranian tariffs in “petroyuans”, economist Antonio Bhardwaj has said, it would mark:

the systematic erosion of the petrodollar system and the emergence of the petroyuan as a credible, institutionally embedded alternative framework for settling global energy transactions.

It’s a sizeable “if”, but the introduction of tariffs would also pose a dilemma for countries that supported Iran in the conflict (implicitly or explicitly) and those that didn’t.

As internatinoal relations analyst Pakizah Parveen has written, we would see the emergence of:

a bifurcated global oil market: barrels from compliant parties would move through Hormuz in yuan. In contrast, non-compliant parties would incur significantly higher costs in dollar-denominated barrels.

Such a choice would affect major US allies such as Pakistan, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines, all of which have faced severe economic pressures as a result of the upheavals in the Gulf and Middle East.

Paying tariffs in petroyuan would draw them towards China and play into Beijing’s narrative of being a reliable and more stable economic force. It also mirrors Russia’s request for payment in yuan for its oil since 2025.

Decline of the petrodollar

It would be premature to argue Iranian tariffs will lead to a general “de-dollarisation” of the world economy. But they may be a step towards a devaluing of the US dollar.

By extension, any move by other countries away from the US dollar is a move away from dependence on the US financially and politically. It would also aid China’s push to internationalise the yuan.

For the first time since 1996, global central banks hold more gold in their reserves than US debt securities. The BRICS group of countries may move further away from US influence, with China, India and Brazil having all reduced their US holdings in 2025.

Overall, Iranian tariffs denominated in yuan would be another sign of an emerging multipolar world in which US preeminence is no longer a given. It would mean more strategic flexibility for all countries, great and small, but also more uncertainty.

Chris Ogden is affiliated with the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

Ted Turner, who died on April 6, 2026, was bright, shrewd and, most of all, lucky. The cable TV visionary proved to be in the right place, at the right time, to change television and video news forever.

Most of his big gambles, on things such as the MGM studio and library, which led to the creation of the Turner Classic Movies channel, paid off handsomely.

But Turner will be remembered mostly for the creation and development of the Cable News Network – CNN – which launched in 1980 and made our knowledge of distant events instantaneous and our world more comprehensible. In this sense, Turner’s legacy extends beyond television. He changed our conception not only of journalism but also of our world.

Turner’s obituaries note his record-setting philanthropy, his impressive conservation efforts and his campaign to make the world safer by securing post-Soviet Union era nuclear weaponry. Over the course of his 87 years, Turner proved an outstanding yachtsman, an active and involved sports team owner and a quotable maverick in the business world.

Yet as a scholar of broadcast history – and a former CNN employee – I think Turner’s ultimate legacy is a bit more atmospheric than measurable.

He changed the media ecology in profound and lasting ways. CNN’s arrival disrupted an established media environment, in which broadcast journalism routines and audience viewing habits had become standardized by the ABC, CBS and NBC TV networks.

The ramshackle early CNN, with its farcical “world headquarters” housed in a former Atlanta-area country club, was derided as the “Chicken Noodle Network” by veteran network journalists. But by the mid-1980s it had established profitability, and by 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Gulf War, it assumed a singular position in America’s – and the world’s – information environment.

CNN had matured to respectability, and Turner was recognized as a visionary by Time magazine, which named him 1991’s Man of the Year. His idea had blossomed into a new arena for global information sharing, and his cable network fully competed with the established broadcast channels on big stories throughout the 1990s.

Right place, right time, right team

Turner’s cable TV news revolution required significant collaboration. The fulfillment of his vision needed luck, inherited money, innovative new technologies, supportive partners and even federal regulatory intervention.

For example, had Newton Minow’s Federal Communications Commission not pushed Congress to pass the All-Channel Receiver Act of 1962, American TV manufacturers would likely never have placed the UHF dial on their sets. That UHF dial made additional local TV competition possible by allowing more stations to broadcast.

In 1970, Turner purchased UHF Channel 17 in Atlanta, which he named WTGC for “Turner Communications Group,” and UHF Channel 36 in Charlotte, North Carolina, which he named WRET for “Robert Edward Turner,” and began building his broadcasting empire.

By the mid-1970s, the cost of satellite distribution to cable system operators had decreased to such an extent that Turner realized – and seized – an opportunity to nationally distribute his local station. He worked with satellite and cable system operators, building early relationships that would prove beneficial to everyone in the cable industry as it developed over the 1980s and ’90s.

In 1979 and 1980, he used these relationships to build the first 24-hour TV network, but it was his internal hires that made the original channel function. To launch CNN, Turner hired veterans of the TV news business, including Robert Wussler, who had previously been president of CBS Sports and the CBS Television Network. And he hired Reese Schonfeld, who had previously founded the Independent Television News Association, a national syndicator of pooled local TV programming.

It was Turner’s vision, investments and established partnerships that made CNN possible. But the creation of the network proved a team effort requiring managerial competence and veteran television production experience.

CNN’s success was never assured. The channel continually lost money in its initial years. But the idea of 24-hour TV news being delivered to paying subscribers, through their cable system operators, proved so valuable that as early as 1981, two CBS executives secretly jetted to Atlanta to meet with Turner and Wussler about purchasing the network.

“I’ll sell you CNN,” he told them. But the deal floundered when the CBS executives would not accept anything less than 51% ownership – and control – of the channel. “You want control? You don’t buy control of Ted Turner’s companies,” he explained. “Forty-nine percent or less.”

Only four years later, Turner would turn the tables and attempt to take over CBS.

Turner came very close to living long enough to see CBS and CNN under a single ownership. CBS’ parent company, Paramount Skydance, is closing in on the purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, the corporation that owns CNN.

Yet today, these two once hugely profitable news operations have been subsumed within massive multinational corporations, with their legacy brand equity providing as much value to their ownership as their journalism. Turner had long bemoaned the managerial fate of his cable news channel, which he sold to Warner Bros. in 1996.

Success invites criticism, establishes a legacy

Turner is one of the few figures in American media history who left a clearly identifiable legacy. There was a media world that existed before CNN and the one that came after. CNN’s success gave rise to competitors such as MSNBC, Fox News and others.

These channels simultaneously differentiated themselves from CNN while constantly measuring themselves against their older rival. But Turner’s original vision was distinct from the panel programs and punditry that’s now replaced original reporting from around the world.

Turner wanted to own and operate a global news organization where the news would always be the star, and where, like the classic wire services, professional reporting would be instant and accurate. And he wanted to make a fortune while doing it.

When he finally succeeded, critics began to complain about what journalist and academic Tom Rosenstiel called “The Myth of CNN” in a cover story in The New Republic in 1994. Scholars bemoaned CNN for its privileging good visuals over context and depth. They argued that its foreign coverage failed to maintain sufficient independence from the U.S. government.

Dictators and terrorists around the world learned to exploit CNN to get their messages across to the American public. In this sense, CNN’s neutrality, once a source of respect and credibility, could also undermine it by making the channel easily exploitable.

Billions of people around the world now take for granted the profusion of news access to anywhere on earth, at any time of day or night. That world was unimaginable before Turner’s work to make CNN conceivable and then real.

His legacy is not simply a series of cable channels but an entirely new way of thinking about information retrieval and access. Think about that the next time you scroll past video clips from London, Tokyo, Beirut or Mexico City, or check out breaking news videos from Ukraine or Tehran. And thank Ted for making such a world possible.

Michael J. Socolow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Victory Day in Russia, which marks the surrender of Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union, has long held particular importance in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Yet this year the May 9 celebration – usually replete with extensive parades across the country and a demonstration of military hardware in Moscow – is expected to be significantly pared down. That’s due to Kyiv’s ongoing long-range military capabilities. For the first time in two decades, Russian officials have said, there will be no lavish display of tanks and missiles.

The reality for Putin is that the war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year, continues to be a grueling drain on Russian men, its economy and resources – and may continue to be for some time.

That was underscored by the European Union’s April 23 approval of a US$106 billion loan package to Ukraine. The aid, which will be a boon to Ukraine’s war-torn economy, had been stymied by EU-member Hungary under its former president, Viktor Orban, who was ousted in April 12 elections.

The resumption of EU aid and the removal of a pro-Moscow European voice at the EU represent major blows to Russia’s regional strategy. Perhaps trying to reset the narrative, Russia declared it would mark this Victory Day with a two-day ceasefire with Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded by saying his country would also observe a ceasefire, starting two days earlier on May 6.

But there remain few immediate signs of a breakthrough in the conflict – and Russia appears chiefly interested in negotiating Ukraine’s future not with Kyiv but with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has been sympathetic to Russian interests.

As a scholar of contemporary politics in Eastern Europe, I see that as part of a pattern of Russian miscalculations and consistent denial of the will of citizens in democratic societies in Eastern Europe. Indeed, it reflects a dominant imperial mindset among Russia’s political elites, which the Kremlin has not altered since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Losing hold of the old Soviet bloc?

While formally recognizing the independence of former Soviet republics in 1991, Moscow has continued to treat those countries as part of its sphere of influence.

For more than 25 years, Russia has pursued a hybrid approach of influencing former Soviet countries, along with others in Eastern Europe. That has included supporting electoral fraud, economic machination, media manipulation and use of force and violence.

Indeed, suspected Russian interference in politics and elections has been a frequent occurrence in Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Romania and most recently Hungary.

But Hungary and Armenia are recent and powerful examples that show the limits of Russian operations. Orban’s loss in Hungary immediately dislodged Russia’s most powerful point of leverage in European politics.

Meanwhile, in Yerevan on May 5, Armenia hosted a bilateral summit with the EU where the country established stronger economic and defense ties to the bloc. It was a stark diplomatic event for the country that has long been a junior ally of Russia’s but which has increasingly moved away from Moscow.

Ukraine: A test of Russian policy

Yet Ukraine remains the focal point of both the extent and limits of Russian external interference.

Putin has been attempting to have a loyal proxy government in the country ever since being spurned by Leonid Kuchma – the second president of Ukraine, who was in office until 2005 – who proclaimed that “Ukraine is not Russia.”

In Ukraine’s 2004 presidential elections, Putin’s Kremlin threw its substantial resources behind Kuchma’s prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, who was seen as more friendly to Russian interests.

Since then, its relationship with the country has been one of external interference. Putin’s message throughout has been clear: The West, in its fights against Russia, has sought to colonize and destroy Ukraine by supporting nationalist forces against Moscow’s interests.

Facing consistently strong Ukrainian civil society and sovereignty movements, Russia found it difficult to fully implement its goals through political subversion or influence. So Moscow increasingly turned to military options.

In March 2014, Russia moved to annex Crimea and began a war in Ukraine’s eastern border regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

That war in the east ground on for years, until in 2022 Putin made the decision to double down yet again, this time opting for a full invasion. The goal of the war was in Putin’s own words to “de-militarize” and “de-nazify” Ukraine. Yet, four years later, Putin’s desire for regime change has not yielded the desired results.

The human cost of Russian pursuits

Over the past year, Trump’s commitment to a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, without first establishing a durable ceasefire, has moved the U.S. position toward Putin’s. That has included Trump’s support for Ukraine territorial concession as the grinding war continues.

Without significant territorial gains, Russia has continued and intensified its campaign of mass airstrikes and drone attacks on Ukrainian population centers. Indeed, 2025 was the deadliest year since the start of the full-scale invasion; civilian deaths were up 26% in 2025 over the previous year.

In the especially cold winter of 2025-26, Russia consistently targeted the energy grids vital to the millions of Ukrainians. Across Ukraine, at the record-low freezing temperatures, people endured daily attacks by drones and artillery, while trying to survive without electricity, heat and running water.

The Kremlin’s plan to put maximum pressure on Ukrainian civilians in the hope that Ukrainians would start blaming their leadership for refusing peace on Putin’s terms has not worked. For its part, the Ukrainian leadership has refused Russia’s maximalist war aims while cautiously continuing a commitment to the U.S.-mediated peace process.

Zelenskyy’s approval ratings remain steady at around 60%. The public opposition to Moscow’s demands on territorial concessions have not budged either, with a majority of Ukrainians continuing to categorically reject territorial concessions. Those numbers have not changed significantly since 2024.

Yet, war and surviving it takes a toll. And the experience of the year of negotiations has left many disillusioned, with some 70% doubting that peace talks will lead to a lasting solution.

A murky future

The last rounds of U.S.-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine took place Feb. 16, 2026.

While Zelenskyy insists that the talks are not stalled, Russian’s top diplomat, Sergey Lavrov, has said the negotiations are not Russia’s top priority.

Buoyed by high oil prices as a result of the U.S. war in Iran, Russia has pursued a spring offensive and not relinquished its demands on Ukraine’s territories.

Yet this demand remains a nonstarter for Ukraine and Zelenskyy. As the Trump administration embraces the Russian “land for security” plan, Russia and its allies are likely to continue to put pressure on Zelenskyy, portraying him as an obstacle to peace talks.

But especially given Moscow’s recent woes, from losing a reliable ally in Hungary to the related EU loan guarantee, it’s unlikely that a continued grinding war will convince Ukrainians to abandon their sovereignty – or serve Russia’s own security.

Lena Surzhko Harned does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

In his 1873 book On War, the great Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz wrote that: “War is the realm of uncertainty.” He would have been at home in Washington this week where Clausewitz’s “fog of war” appears to have descended on the White House, at times obscuring reality.

On Tuesday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, briefed reporters that the US plan was to get the Strait of Hormuz “back to the way it was: anyone can use it, no mines in the water, nobody paying tolls”.

This was, of course, the way things were before the war actually started.

But uncertainty about what this war was actually all about has been a hallmark of the past two months. When the conflict began on the last day of February, the US said it was about preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Although the US president, Donald Trump, added a layer of complexity by saying it was also about regime change.

Trump’s closest ally, the Israeli prime minister, added another later by insisting this was also about getting rid of Iran’s ballistic missiles and launchers and neutralising its proxies in the region.

Christian Emery, an expert in international relations at University College London – who specialises in US-Iranian affairs – sees this lack of coherence about what the war is for as underscoring “that this entire enterprise has been a colossal strategic failure”.

As things stand it now appears possible that an interim deal could well open the Strait of Hormuz to allow the global economy to return to something like normal. But the main reasons the US and Israel launched the war are unlikely to be resolved any time soon and the episode has proved to Tehran – and the rest of the world – that Iran can use its geography to its strategic advantage whenever it chooses.

Read more: Trump administration claiming a ‘win’ against Iran – here’s a report card

For Bamo Nouri and Inderjeet Parmar, experts in international security at City St George’s Unversity of London – who have been regular contributors to our coverage of the conflict – the episode has been an object lesson in the limits of power. The US and Israel exercised considerable military superiority to Iran and have used it to devastating effect. But this is not how conflict works in the 21st century.

The US and Israel were chasing different outcomes so there was no strategic coherence to their war aims. And they underestimated Iran’s durability under pressure. Iran didn’t need to win, just to endure. “As the war progressed” they write, “the fantasy of decisive victory collapsed under the weight of economic, political and strategic reality”.

Read more: Iran war has become a lesson in how power really works

Interestingly, the Trump administration is now saying that Operation Epic Fury finished about a month ago. US forces are now engaged in Project Freedom, a humanitarian operation to help ships stranded in the Strait of Hormuz to transit the waterway.

As Andrew Gawthorpe, an expert in US foreign policy from Leiden University, notes, this change of emphasis appeared to emerge as Republicans in Congress were insisting that the administration was legally obliged under the War Powers Act to seek authorisation for the conflict.

Gawthorpe believes the war’s unpopularity is allowing Congress to claw back some of the influence it had over the way the US uses its military.

Read more: US declares war in Iran ‘over’ to avoid row with Congress over whether it was legal

As we’ve noted before, the main theme of the past few weeks, since the US launched its blockade of Iranian ports to match Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, is which side can absorb more pain and pressure. US consumers are facing increased prices at the gas pumps which has fed through to a higher inflation rate generally.

But the headline US CPI increase of 3.3% last month is dwarfed by inflation in Iran which is reported to have hit 50%. It’s worth noting that it was inflation and the general economic malaise which kicked off the huge protests that wracked Iran in January.

More pressingly, Iran’s inability to export its oil thanks to the US blockade means that sooner of later it will need to close down its oil production. As engineers and oil production experts Nima Shokri and Martin J Blunt explain, this can be done, but it’s by no means easy and risks seriously damaging the wells.

Read more: Shutting Iran’s oil wells may be straightforward – but the consequences are not

Global affair

They’ll be watching this all very closely in Beijing of course. The US president is due to visit Beijing next week to meet Xi Jinping for the first time since the two met on the sidelines of the Apec conference in South Korea last October.

So it was interesting to see that Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, visited Beijing this week to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi. In normal times, China buys between 80% and 90% of Iran’s seaborne oil exports – and it has been very clear that it wants to see the Strait of Hormuz opened and “a complete cessation of fighting…without delay”.

But China-watcher Tom Harper of the University of East London, believes that Beijing can see advantages in the US getting bogged down in a fullscale war in the Middle East and might go as far as to offer military support to Tehran if that happens. While China has denied providing shoulder-launched Manpad missiles to Iran, Tehran is using its BeiDou satellite navigational system (a sort of Chinese GPS) to aim its missiles.

If you find these expert takes on an increasingly dangerous world useful, please consider supporting us with a donation.

Wang also said that China recognises Iran’s “legitimate right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy” – something it sees as a sovereignty issue. Which should all make for an interesting encounter between Trump and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping (if the trip goes ahead, that is).

Read more: China has played a key role in the Iran war – and will continue to do so

The surprise player in all this has been Pakistan, writes Natasha Lindstaedt, an international affairs expert at the University of Essex. But as Lindstaedt points out, Pakistan has a long diplomatic track record with both the US and Iran. In 1981, two years after Washington and Tehran severed relations in the wake of the revolution that brought the Islamic Republic into being, Pakistan established a dedicated section of its Washington embassy to handling Iranian affairs in the US.

Washington and Islamabad have had their ups and downs, but things have grown closer with Trump in the White House – and Pakistan has tried to do all the right things to court Trump, including nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize and joining his board of peace. Lindstaedt walks us through this intriguing ménage à trois.

Read more: How Pakistan became the primary mediator between the US and Iran

Feeding children can be challenging. It is sometimes hard to know if you’re getting it right.

We want the best for our children, and we often think that means making sure they eat the right amounts of the right foods. Research tells us that we also need to think about how we’re supporting children to eat, and the messages they receive about food.

With more children attending child care for the vast majority of their day, early learning settings are critically important for promoting children’s optimal growth and development during foundational years.

Opportunities for nourishment in these settings are especially important as more than one in four children experience food insecurity at home.

What does responsive feeding mean?

Children are born with the ability to recognize their own hunger and fullness.

Over time, this capacity may shift as cultural and social beliefs around feeding young children — and financial stress or food insecurity — can result in caregivers overriding children’s internal cues by controlling their food intake. This can involve pressuring them to eat, restricting food or using food to reward behaviour.

It takes time for young children to learn about different foods and textures. Some children are adventurous eaters who may be excited to try new foods and accept them more quickly. Other children may be naturally more cautious eaters and need support or extra time.

A responsive feeding environment allows children to communicate their feelings of hunger and fullness, and in this way encourages children to regulate their own eating.

When caregivers respect a child’s autonomy, children can build comfort with a wide variety of foods and textures. This allows children to practise self-regulation by responding to feelings of hunger and fullness, and develop a lifelong healthy relationship with food.

Responsive feeding in child care

We established the CELEBRATE Feeding project, which stands for Coaching in Early Learning Environments to Build a Responsive Approach to Eating and Feeding.

Our project has worked with child-care programs in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. It supports early childhood educators to build their confidence and skills in responsive feeding — while fostering the joy of eating through an environment that celebrates diversity and inclusion.

We developed the CELEBRATE Feeding Approach as a flexible framework to support key educator behaviours in priority areas of change. These areas include mealtime routines and how educators talk about food throughout the day.

Educators discovered their powerful impact through role modelling when they sit and eat the same foods as children.

When we support children in having control of what and how much goes on their plate, they build autonomy with their decisions about the food as well as physical and fine-motor skills.

Reducing pressure

Through CELEBRATE Feeding, educators reshaped their language to reduce pressure on children to eat more or less, or to eat certain foods.

This meant moving away from coercing, praising or rewarding children based on what they were eating. Children may take a bite when pressured to eat, but in the long-term this pressure can backfire and make them less willing to accept the food.

We encouraged educators to focus on more neutral language by avoiding labelling foods as good or bad, and not pressuring children to eat more or less of certain foods.

Table talk

Educators also engaged children in conversations at the table that were not just about food. Focusing on connection and fun at the table, rather than worrying about what children are eating, can especially help children who may be stressed at mealtime because of household food insecurity or because they have been labelled as difficult or picky eaters.

We want to create a safe, positive environment for children to enjoy a variety of foods and avoid attaching feelings of guilt and shame to food.

Read more: School lunches, the French way: It’s not just about nutrition, but togetherness and bon appetit

Encouraging food exploration

Educators were coached to provide repeated opportunities for children to explore foods, without the expectation to eat or taste. This was achieved through meals and play, gardening, cooking, sensory activities and food-related books, songs and materials.

Children explored food through sight, smell, touch and taste in positive and joyful ways to support their curiosity and confidence as competent eaters.

Shifting perspectives around eating

Changing our approach around food can be hard. As adults, our own personal values and beliefs around food have been shaped throughout our lives. Our cultural and social beliefs around food, financial stress or food insecurity influence what we say and do when we’re with children.

Engaging families in this process and keeping equity and inclusion at the forefront can help create food environments that support everyone.

One director of a child-care program told us that in every facet of a child’s life, educators viewed children as capable and confident except when it came to food. Participating in the CELEBRATE Feeding project was a game-changer for shifting perspectives for her and her team.

A perspective shift means that we need to trust that while adults’ concern for children’s nutrition is genuine and well-meaning, children are capable of practising self-regulation by responding to feelings of hunger and fullness.

Prioritizing curiosity and joyfulness

Educators have been overwhelmingly receptive to rethinking their approach to feeding children by prioritizing curiosity and joyfulness rather than coercion and obligation.

We are continuing to share these messages through professional development and resources on our website.

While it sometimes feels hard to get it right when feeding children, we encourage caregivers to take a breath and aim for connection at the table.

Creating trust, confidence and enjoyable food memories are perhaps more important for long-term health than one resentful bite of broccoli.

Jessie-Lee McIsaac has received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for the CELEBRATE Feeding project and other research. She has also received project funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Public Health Agency of Canada, Margaret and Wallace McCain Family Foundation, and the Nova Scotia Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. Her research program is undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chairs program. McIsaac is a board member of a non-profit child care centre in Nova Scotia. Our Celebrate Feeding intervention used the Nourishing Beginnings program from the Dairy Farmers of Canada as one training opportunity for educators. While Dairy Farmers of Canada is an industry group, Nourishing Beginnings was designed to align with evidence-based responsive feeding and child nutrition guidelines. The workshop offered to educators during our intervention was delivered by our Coaches (Registered Dietitians) with support from Dairy Farmers of Canada Dietitians. No team members received personal financial benefit from Dairy Farmers of Canada related to their work with CELEBRATE Feeding.

Julie E. Campbell receives research funding from the Government of Nova Scotia

Melissa (Misty) Rossiter received project funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and has been supported by a Jeanne and J.-Louis Lévesque Research Professorship in Nutrisciences and Health.

Many grocery shoppers know the routine: bring fruit and vegetables home, rinse them, dry them and hope they stay fresh long enough to be eaten. But fresh produce is delicate. Grapes shrivel, apple slices brown and berries can spoil quickly.

At the same time, many people worry about what may remain on the surface of fruit they buy, including pesticide residues.

Cleaning and freshness are usually treated as separate problems that require different treatments. Washing feels like a simple act of control. But it’s not quite that simple.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends rinsing produce under running water and says soap, detergent and commercial produce washes are not recommended. Water helps, but it does not solve every problem.

Our new study suggests those goals may be combined. We developed a dual-function biodegradable wash that is able to remove surface pesticide residues and form a thin protective layer to help fruit stay fresh for longer.

The timing matters. Around one quarter of fruits and vegetables are lost or wasted globally each year. For fresh produce, even small gains after harvest can matter because quality can change quickly during shipping, storage and daily use at home.

What’s inside and how does it works?

The wash developed in the study is made from starch nanoparticles, tannic acid and iron. Starch is a plant-based material often used in food science because it can form films. Tannic acid is a plant compound found in many foods and plants. Iron helps connect tannic acid into a fine network on the surface of the starch particles.

In plain terms, starch provides the base, tannic acid adds useful plant chemistry and iron helps hold the structure together. During rinsing, this structure can interact with some pesticide molecules on the fruit’s surface and helps wash them away.

When immersed, the same wash can form a very thin coating layer. This is not meant to be a heavy wax-like layer. It is closer to a light surface film that can slow water loss and help maintain appearance. That matters because people often decide whether to eat or throw away fruit based on how it looks and feels.

Removing surface pesticide residues

The cleaning results were strong. On apple surfaces, the wash removed more than 85 per cent of thiabendazole, compared with 48 per cent for tap water, 65 per cent for baking soda and 61 per cent for native starch.

Thiabendazole is a fungicide used on some fresh produce post-harvest. We also tested two other pesticides. The wash removed 93 per cent of the acetamiprid residues and 89 per cent of imidacloprid from apple surfaces. These results suggest the wash can work across more than one type of pesticide residue, rather than only one special chosen compound.

There is, however, an important limit. The study focused on residues on the fruit surface. Some pesticides can move into plant tissue while the fruit is growing, which makes them much harder to remove after harvest.

A better wash should not be understood as a way to erase all pesticide exposure. It’s a tool for reducing what’s on the surface of a fruit or vegetable.

Read more: Our study analysed pesticide use and residues across Europe. Here’s what we found

Keeping produce fresh longer

The second part of our study looked at freshness. Over 15 days, untreated grapes lost around 45 per cent of their weight, while grapes treated with our wash system lost only 21 per cent. Fresh-cut apples also lost less weight over 48 hours, dropping from 17 per cent in untreated samples to nine per cent.

Those changes can impact what people buy. Treated grapes looked fresher after storage, and apple slices stayed lighter for longer. That kind of change matters outside the lab because produce that looks dried out or browned is less likely to be eaten.

The coating also showed an ability to slow oxidation and inhibited a test bacterium in laboratory experiments. This doesn’t mean the wash has completed all the safety tests needed for consumer use. However, it does suggest the coating may do more than simply sit on the surface.

What this could mean in practice

For now, a realistic use for our wash would likely be in post-harvest processing plants, not kitchen sinks. Processing facilities can control washing time, concentration, water handling and disposal more carefully than households can. We estimated the raw-material cost is less than US$0.032 per apple. Meanwhile, we are actively working on developing a household spray formulation for consumer use.

More work is needed. The wash should be tested on more fruits and vegetables, under commercial conditions and through the regulatory steps required before real-world use.

Still, the idea is useful because it reframes the problem. A fruit wash doesn’t have to be only a rinse. It could clean more effectively and then keep working, helping produce stay fresh, appealing and more likely to be eaten.

The research discussed in this article received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

Ling Guo and Tzu-Cheng (Ivy) Chiu do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.