Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Andrew Armitage, Professor of Optometry and Optometry Course Director, Deakin University

Getting a tattoo can be a thrilling, albeit painful, experience.

About one-third of Australians have a tattoo, with many getting inked as a rite of passage.

However, a small but increasing number of Australians are being diagnosed with a rare tattoo-related eye condition. It’s known as tattoo-associated uveitis and can cause permanent vision loss.

So what is this condition? And what do tattoos have to do with eye health?

How might a tattoo impact my eyes?

Tattoo inks used in Australia and other countries may contain toxic chemicals, which have been linked to the development of certain cancers.

This is a concern from a regulation perspective. That’s because Australia, compared to other jurisdictions, has less strict rules around what ingredients go into tattoo ink. The European Union, for example, bans many of the inks that are allowed in Australia.

From a health perspective, the vast majority of people don’t react to these chemicals. But in some cases, they may trigger a harmful immune response. This happens when a person’s immune system recognises the ink as being dangerous and starts attacking the tattoo site. This can cause inflammation, both of the tattooed skin and other parts of the body.

Inflammatory cells from a tattoo may breach the blood-ocular barrier, which is a wall-like structure designed to protect the inside of the eye. If that happens, inflammation can spread to various parts of the eye.

This includes the uvea, the middle layer of the eye which helps it focus on nearby objects. The uvea also contains the coloured part of the eye, the iris.

If your uvea becomes inflamed, you may develop the rare condition known as tattoo-associated uveitis. Symptoms include sudden pain, red eyes, and increased sensitivity to light. In severe cases, this condition can lead to glaucoma, which refers to several eye diseases caused by damage to the optic nerve, or scarring on your eye. Both complications can cause blindness, if left untreated or if treatment is delayed.

Who’s most at risk?

In a 2025 study, a group of Australian eye health experts examined 40 known cases of tattoo-associated uveitis reported between 2023 and 2025. With these new cases, the number of global cases has doubled since 2010. Tattoo-associated uveitis is still a rare condition. But scientists say it may be more common than we think, with some describing it as a public health issue.

In this 2025 study, researchers found tattoo-associated uveitis consistently caused inflammation at the tattoo site. Patients experienced inflammation anywhere between three months and ten years after getting a tattoo.

A 2026 review of related studies suggests larger tattoos and tattoos made of black ink were more likely to cause tattoo-associated uveitis.

Existing research suggests tattoo-associated uveitis affects men and women equally. But people with over-active immune systems may be more likely to develop uveitis. This is especially true for people with existing medical conditions such as multiple sclerosis and certain kinds of arthritis and bowel disease. And there is evidence to suggest people with sarcoidosis, a condition which mainly causes inflammation in the lungs, may be at greater risk of developing tattoo-associated uveitis.

Can you treat it?

Yes, but treatment may not work for everyone.

We can treat milder cases with steroid eyedrops. These eyedrops work by suppressing the activity of immune cells which cause the inflammation. Steroid eyedrops also help strengthen the blood-ocular barrier, which prevents harmful substances from entering the eye.

But in most cases, ophthalmologists need to inject steroids into the patient’s eyeball. This ensures the steroids go directly to the most inflamed area, where they can act quickly and effectively. Patients may also need to take immunosuppressive medications such as methotrexate or adalimubab over a period of months or even years.

However, treatment doesn’t always work. Even after having treatment, about 75% of patients experience temporary vision loss and 17% experience permanent visual loss. Many also develop cataract and glaucoma, both conditions which can lead to permanent vision loss or blindness.

So if you have a tattoo and notice any swelling at the tattoo site, you should speak to an optometrist as soon as possible. You should do the same if you experience any vision problems, such as sudden pain or redness in your eye. If your optometrist finds you have tattoo-related uveitis, they can refer you for treatment or to see an ophthalmologist.

We still have a lot to learn about tattoo-associated uveitis. And the popularity of tattoos, particularly larger designs made of black ink, means the number of Australian cases may continue to rise.

– ref. What’s the link between tattoos and vision loss? 2 optometrists explain – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-link-between-tattoos-and-vision-loss-2-optometrists-explain-276049

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Donovan Castelyn, Senior Industry Fellow – Taxation and Director of the UTAS Tax Clinic, University of Tasmania

Newly elected Nationals leader Matt Canavan has proposed allowing couples with dependent children to split their income for tax purposes.

In simple terms, the total income of a couple could be divided between both parents before calculating tax. Similar structures already exist internationally, such as in France and Germany.

Supporters say the change would make the tax system more “family-friendly”, by recognising that many families share resources and financial responsibilities. They also say the current system can disadvantage households in which one parent temporarily leaves the workforce to care for children.

Critics say it could reinforce an outdated “male breadwinner” model and reduce incentives for women to participate in paid work.

Understanding the debate requires looking at how income splitting works and where it already exists.

What is income splitting?

Income splitting refers to arrangements where income that might otherwise be earned by one person is distributed across multiple taxpayers, typically within a family.

This matters because Australia taxes people using progressive income tax rates. As income rises, the tax rate applied to the upper part of their income increases.

Spreading income across more than one person can therefore reduce the total tax paid by a household.

For example, an Australian resident taxpayer earning A$200,000 a year pays a higher proportion of tax than if that income was split between two people each earning $100,000. That gap is what Canavan’s proposal aims to address.

Some households already use income splitting

Australia does not formally allow couples to split income. But some legal structures can produce similar effects.

One example is a family trust. A trust is a legal arrangement where a trustee, such as the parent(s) or nominated company, manages assets or income for beneficiaries, such as a spouse or children.

Under Australia’s trust tax rules, income is generally taxed in the hands of the beneficiaries who are entitled to it.

Because beneficiaries may include spouses or adult children, trust distributions can sometimes spread income across family members and produce tax savings.

Some commentators, such as independent MP Allegra Spender in her tax white paper, argue this means wealthier households already have access to income-splitting strategies that wage earners do not. This is the case where the main wage earner is engaged in a profession such as law, accounting and most trades, and creates an incentive to be self-employed.

Current restrictions and anti-avoidance rules

Australia’s tax system contains rules designed to stop income being shifted simply to reduce tax. These include rules to:

1. discourage diverting income to children under the age of 18. In these circumstances, the beneficiary is usually subject to a higher tax rate.

2. restrict certain benefits or entitlements where income mainly comes from someone’s own labour, such as a contractor.

ATO scrutiny

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) recently stepped up scrutiny of some income-splitting arrangements, particularly those that involve trusts or business structures used to distribute income to family members on lower tax rates.

Importantly, the ATO does say ordinary family or business dealings are unlikely to trigger these rules. But where income splitting appears designed to primarily reduce tax, anti-avoidance provisions may apply.

Varying rates of tax

Advocates of income splitting often point out that two households with the same total income can pay very different amounts of tax depending on how the income is earned. Allowing income splitting, they argue, would reduce that difference and make the system more neutral between single-earner and dual-earner families.

Critics raise several concerns.

One is distributional fairness. Because income splitting reduces tax by shifting income from higher tax brackets to lower ones, the largest benefits tend to go to higher-income households.

Another issue is gender equity. In many households women are still more likely to be the second income earner or to take time out of paid work for caring responsibilities.

Household-based taxation would increase the effective tax rate on that second income – thus reducing the incentive for the secondary earner to (re)enter the workforce.

Bigger policy questions

The proposal ultimately raises broader questions: should the tax system treat individuals or households as the main unit of taxation?

Australia has historically taxed individuals rather than families. But other parts of the broader tax and transfer system already consider household income when determining eligibility for benefits or subsidiaries. This includes the family tax benefit and Medicare levy surcharge.

The Nationals’ proposals therefore represent more than a technical tax change. They involve a shift in how the tax system defines fairness between individuals, families and different working arrangements.

Bottom line

Income splitting sits at the intersection of tax policy, family policy and labour market incentives.

Supporters see it as a way to make the tax system fairer for families that share income and care-giving responsibilities. Critics worry it could increase inequality and weaken incentives to workforce participation, particularly for women.

As a result, the debate over income splitting is unlikely to disappear any time soon. It reflects a deeper question about how modern tax systems balance fairness, economic participation and support for families.

– ref. Matt Canavan is keen on income splitting. Here’s what it would mean for couples – https://theconversation.com/matt-canavan-is-keen-on-income-splitting-heres-what-it-would-mean-for-couples-278204

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Uri Gal, Professor in Business Information Systems, University of Sydney

In the past few months, a wave of tech corporations have announced significant staff cuts and attributed them to efficiency gains driven by artificial intelligence (AI).

Companies such as Atlassian, Block and Amazon have announced they would lay off thousands of employees due to increased reliance on AI.

The narrative these companies offer is consistent: AI is making human labour replaceable, and responsible management demands adjustment.

The evidence, however, tells a more nuanced story.

The automation story is partly true

Genuine disruption is visible in specific corners of the labour market, though the scale of that disruption is commonly overstated. Research from Anthropic published earlier this month shows that although many work tasks are susceptible to automation, the vast majority are still performed primarily by humans rather than AI tools.

Moreover, some occupations are more exposed to displacement than others: computer programmers sit at the top of the list, followed by customer service representatives and data entry workers. Yet even within the most exposed occupations, AI use is still limited.

The aggregate economic data reflects this reality. A 2025 Goldman Sachs report estimated that if AI were used across the economy for all the things it could currently do, roughly 2.5% of US employment would be at risk of job loss.

That’s not a trivial number. However, the report notes that workers in AI-exposed occupations are currently no more likely to lose their jobs, face reduced hours, or earn lower wages than anyone else.

The report does note early signs of strain in specific industries. Goldman Sachs identifies sectors where employment growth has slowed that align with AI-related efficiency gains. Examples include marketing consulting, graphic design, office administration and call centres.

In the tech sector, US workers in their 20s in AI-exposed occupations saw unemployment rise by almost 3% in the first half of 2025. Anthropic’s research also found that job-finding rates (the chance of an unemployed person finding a job in a one-month period) for workers aged 22–25 entering AI-exposed occupations have fallen by around 14% since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022. This is a tentative but telling signal about where the pressure is being felt first.

These are meaningful signals, but they are sector-specific and concentrated – not the evidence of sweeping displacement that corporate announcements often imply. That gap between the evidence and the rhetoric raises an obvious question: what else might be driving these decisions?

What is the motive?

The timing and framing of the layoffs attributed to AI layoffs warrants closer examination. Corporate restructuring, over-hiring during the post-pandemic boom as demand for online services soared, and pressure from investors to demonstrate improved profit margins are all forces operating at the same time as genuine advances in AI.

While these are not mutually exclusive explanations, they are rarely acknowledged alongside one another in corporate communications.

There is a powerful financial incentive for companies to be seen to be embracing AI aggressively. Since the launch of ChatGPT, AI-related stocks have accounted for about 75% of S&P 500 returns.

A workforce reduction framed around AI adoption sends a signal to investors that a straightforward cost-cutting announcement does not. A company making AI-related innovations looks a lot better than one sacking staff due to declining revenues or poor strategic decisions.

It is also worth distinguishing between two kinds of workforce reduction. In the first, AI genuinely increases productivity to the point where fewer workers are needed to produce the same output. In the second, staff reductions are not a consequence of AI, but a way to fund it.

Meta illustrates this distinction. The social media giant is reportedly planning to lay off as much as 20% of its workforce, while simultaneously committing US$600 billion to build data centres and recruit top AI researchers.

In this case, the workers being let go are not being replaced by AI today; they are subsidising the AI bet their employer is making on the future.

The more plausible future

The big picture is likely one of transformation rather than elimination. According to a recent PwC report, employment is still growing in most industries exposed to AI, although growth tends to be slower than in less exposed sectors.

At the same time, wages in AI-exposed industries are rising roughly twice as fast as in those least touched by the technology. Workers with AI skills command an average wage premium of about 56% across the industries analysed.

Together, the data points toward a flattening of the traditional workplace pyramid rather than mass displacement. Firms require fewer junior employees for routine analytical and administrative work, while experienced professionals who deploy AI tools effectively become more productive and command greater value.

AI is a consequential technology and will have a significant impact in the long term. What is in doubt is whether the dramatic, AI-attributed workforce reductions announced by individual companies accurately reflect that trajectory, or whether they conflate genuine technological change with decisions that would have been made regardless.

Making this distinction is not merely an academic exercise. It shapes how policymakers, educators and workers themselves understand the nature of the disruption they are navigating.

– ref. Tech companies are blaming massive layoffs on AI. What’s really going on? – https://theconversation.com/tech-companies-are-blaming-massive-layoffs-on-ai-whats-really-going-on-278314

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ry Holland, Research Fellow in Microbial Ecology, Monash University

Winter in Antarctica is long and dark. Temperatures remain well below freezing. In many places, the Sun sets in April and does not rise above the horizon again until August. Without sunlight, photosynthetic life such as plants, mosses and algae cannot make energy.

But that’s not to say all life stops.

In a new study published in The ISME Journal, my colleagues and I show that Antarctic microbes make energy from the air at temperatures as low as –20°C. This finding improves our understanding of how life survives at temperature extremes in Antarctica – and how climate change will affect this important process.

How to make energy from air

In 2017, scientists showed that a large number of Antarctic microbes can generate energy from atmospheric gases present at very low concentrations.

This process is called “aerotrophy”. By using enzymes that are very finely tuned to “sniff out” the hydrogen and carbon monoxide in the atmosphere, these microbes have found a way to make energy from the air itself – a huge advantage in Antarctica’s nutrient-poor desert soils.

What remained unknown until now was the temperature limits of this process. Could aerotrophy be a way to power the continent’s soil communities through the winter?

Taking the lab down south

Measuring how quickly these microbes consume such a small amount of fuel can be difficult.

From 2022–24, we collected surface soil samples from different areas across East Antarctica and analysed them in our lab.

We measured how quickly they can use the atmospheric gases. We also extracted all the DNA from the soil microbes and sequenced it. This tells us what microbes are present, what genes they have, and what they are capable of using as energy sources.

We showed aerotrophy happening in the lab at representative summer (4°C) and winter (–20°C) temperatures. This means hydrogen and carbon monoxide are a viable food source not just over the summer months, but year-round. What was even more surprising though, was the upper temperature limit.

Soil temperatures in Antarctica rarely rise above 20°C. Yet we found microbes in these soils that continued to generate energy from hydrogen up to a staggering 75°C. It seems as though microbes in Antarctic soils are well adapted to the continent’s cold temperatures, but not restricted to them. It’s a bit like seeing a penguin thrive in a tropical jungle.

We also wanted to see this process occurring in Antarctica itself, so two years ago we brought the lab down south. We collected fresh soil samples, sealed them in the glass vials, and took gas samples.

For the first time, it was clear that under real-world conditions these soil microbes were still munching their way through hydrogen.

The primary producers of Antarctica

DNA sequencing has showed us that the vast majority of microbes in Antarctic soils encode the genes to gain energy from hydrogen. Many of these bacteria also have genes to take carbon from the atmosphere.

These aerotrophs are “primary producers”, generating new biomass from the air itself.

In most land-based ecosystems, photosynthesis is thought to be the bottom of the food chain. Photosynthesis takes energy from sunlight and carbon from the atmosphere and turns it into yummy organic compounds.

It’s what makes plants grow. Plants are primary producers that are eaten by herbivores, which are then eaten by carnivores.

In Antarctica’s desert soils, photosynthesis is relatively rare. Instead, we hypothesise that aerotrophy fulfils the primary producer role in many places.

This makes sense because, unlike sunlight-dependent photosythesis, we now know that aerotrophy can happen year-round. Another benefit is that it doesn’t require liquid water, whereas photosynthesis does.

Hydrogen in a heating world

Aerotrophy clearly has an important role in Antarctic ecosystems. So next, we wanted to determine how global warming might affect this process.

Under low-emissions scenarios, we predict a 4% increase in how quickly aerotrophs use atmospheric hydrogen. Under very high-emissions scenarios, this increase rises to 35%. The numbers are similar for carbon monoxide.

Although hydrogen isn’t a greenhouse gas itself, it is important because it affects how long some greenhouse gases, including methane, hang around in the atmosphere.

Soils (including the microbes that live in them) are responsible for 82% of all hydrogen consumed on Earth globally. In other words, they are a hydrogen sink. This is a crucial component in the global hydrogen cycle.

There are a lot of factors that determine how microorganisms will respond to climate change. Temperature is just one of them. This study is an important piece of the puzzle as scientists figure out how resilient Antarctica’s unique microbal ecosystems are.

– ref. Microbes in Antarctica survive the freezing and dark winter by living on air – https://theconversation.com/microbes-in-antarctica-survive-the-freezing-and-dark-winter-by-living-on-air-276384

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aaron Gilbert, Professor of Finance, Auckland University of Technology

As well as checking the news for updates on events in the Middle East, many New Zealanders are also nervously checking their KiwiSaver balances.

What they see is more than a snapshot of their own savings, it’s a window onto world events – in particular the rough ride stock markets are having as the price of oil spikes because of the US-Israeli attack on Iran.

Oil, for better or worse, is the lifeblood of the global economy, a crucial ingredient in many products and the fuel that moves goods around the planet.

A reduction in supply – or even the expectation of reduction – pushes oil prices up. Since the Iran crisis, it has risen from around US$60 per barrel to more than $100, with some analysts saying it could reach $150.

When transport costs rise, prices rise with them and inflation and interest rates follow. Households spend less, businesses sell fewer goods and services, and potentially cut jobs.

Lower economic activity means lower company profits. Higher interest rates reduce future growth. When geopolitical crises erupt, investors become nervous and demand a higher return for taking risk.

Put those forces together and the result is usually the same: falling share prices. Because KiwiSaver funds are heavily invested in local and global share markets, many New Zealanders are likely seeing their balances fall as well.

Take the long view

So what should KiwiSaver investors do? Nothing – seriously. If watching your balance drop is causing anxiety, the best response might simply be to stop looking. But it’s also important to remember stock markets are resilient beasts.

This is not the first time markets have faced an oil shock. The 1973–74 OPEC oil crisis led to fuel rationing, soaring inflation and economic disruption not seen since the 1920s.

Stock markets around the world – including in New Zealand – felt that pain, with the Dow Jones and the NZ share market both falling by roughly 40%.

But markets recovered. Returns remained weak for much of the 1970s, but over the following decades global share markets went from strength to strength.

The first Gulf War in 1990 had a similar, though smaller, effect: rising oil prices, higher inflation and falling share prices. Once again, markets eventually recovered.

For most of us, KiwiSaver is a long-term investment. Even if you are approaching retirement, most people will live several decades beyond it. Unless you need the money today, what happens in markets this month matters far less than what happens over the next ten or 20 years.

On that timescale, the current crisis will likely be a blip that barely registers. Even the pain of the 1970s barely stands out when you look at a 100-year chart of the S&P 500 index against its long upward climb.

Volatility – like we are seeing now – is the price investors pay for higher expected returns in the long run. It is felt most by investors in “growth” and “aggressive” KiwiSaver funds, which are heavily invested in shares.

But those higher-risk funds have historically produced higher returns. Since KiwiSaver was introduced in 2007, investors have lived through the global financial crisis, COVID, trade wars and a period of very high inflation. Each caused markets to fall and created uncertainty for investors.

Yet the cumulative return on a typical KiwiSaver growth fund since 2007 is around 240% – far higher than could have been earned in safer investments over the same period.

The upside of volatility

Volatility is our friend when it comes to investing. It just doesn’t feel good while we are experiencing it. In fact, falling markets can sometimes help long-term investors.

KiwiSaver contributions are invested regularly – usually every payday. Most funds invest those contributions immediately rather than trying to guess the “best” time to enter the market.

That is probably a good thing, because there is little evidence that fund managers can reliably time the market.

When prices are high, your contributions buy fewer shares. When prices fall, the same contribution buys more.

Consider a KiwiSaver member contributing around $100 a month. If your fund was to invest in a single company with a share price of $10, you can would buy ten shares. If the next month the price falls to $5, that same $100 buys 20 shares.

When prices eventually recover – as they usually do – you benefit from owning more shares than you otherwise would have.

This process is known as “dollar-cost averaging”, and it underpins one of the most reliable sayings in finance: it is not timing the market that matters, but time in the market.

Despite all the gloomy predictions and short-term pain right now, for KiwiSaver investors this is largely background noise.

And let’s face it, if global share markets ever did collapse permanently, leaving KiwiSaver balances worthless, retirement savings would probably be the least of our concerns.

– ref. The Iran crisis is hitting KiwiSaver balances – but market volatility can work for you too – https://theconversation.com/the-iran-crisis-is-hitting-kiwisaver-balances-but-market-volatility-can-work-for-you-too-278297

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Seymour, PhD Candidate in International Relations, Nottingham Trent University

In the two weeks since the US and Israeli strikes on Iran began, Donald Trump’s war aims have fluctuated between crippling Iranian military capabilities and toppling the regime that has ruled there since 1979. But despite the success of the initial strikes, which killed the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, many analysts believe that air power alone will not be sufficient to bring about regime change.

They say this objective would be impossible to achieve without combat troops on the ground, a move that most US military and political leaders have long opposed. Instead, one idea that seems to be circulating in Washington is to support an invasion by armed Kurdish groups in Iraq and western Iran to destabilise the Islamic Republic from within.

Trump publicly backed away from this idea on March 6, telling reporters: “I don’t want the Kurds to go into Iran … The war is complicated enough as it is.” But, given Trump’s trademark inconsistency and the unpredictable nature of this conflict, an armed Kurdish uprising remains a distinct possibility. Such a scenario could have consequences that extend far beyond Iran.

The Kurds are an ethnic group with their own language and culture who have lived in a mountainous area of the Middle East for centuries. Nowadays, they number around 30 million and live in a region that spans parts of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The Kurds are widely considered to be the world’s largest stateless people because they do not have a country of their own.

This situation dates to the end of the first world war, when the Ottoman empire collapsed. Kurdish leaders at that time hoped to establish their own state, having lived for 400 years under Ottoman rule. But instead their homeland was divided between several new countries that emerged from the defeated Ottoman state. This left Kurdish communities split across international borders.

Around 10% of Iran’s population is Kurdish and many live in the country’s north-west near the borders of Iraq and Turkey. The Kurdish region of Iran has long been the least economically developed part of the country and Kurdish political parties are outlawed. Armed Kurdish groups have periodically clashed with the Iranian state, demanding greater autonomy or independence.

The Kurdish question is even more sensitive in Turkey, which is home to the largest population of Kurds in the world. Since 1984, the Turkish state has been locked in conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), an armed group that has fought to establish an independent Kurdish state. This conflict has killed more than 40,000 people in the past four decades.

For the Turkish government, the possibility that the US may support Kurdish fighters in neighbouring Iran is therefore not just a foreign policy issue. Turkish leaders worry that strengthening Kurdish armed groups elsewhere in the region could embolden similar movements inside Turkey itself.

In the recent past, Turkey has launched military incursions into the Kurdish regions of Iraq and Syria. It has also fought a brutal counterinsurgency against PKK fighters inside its own borders. These actions show how strongly Turkish leaders oppose any notion of Kurdish independence anywhere in the region.

American support for Kurdish fighters has caused tension between the US and Turkey in the past. Turkey strongly opposed the partnership between Washington and Syrian Kurdish forces during the fight against the Islamic State militant group in Syria in the late 2010s. It argued that some of these Kurdish groups were linked to the PKK.

Turkey’s relations with Israel have also been strained by the Kurdish question. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has accused the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of undermining the transitional Syrian government by aiding Kurdish groups there. The Kurdish issue has clearly become a major source of tension between Turkey, a key member of the Nato alliance, and the west.

So far, Turkey has largely remained neutral in the Iran war. Despite their regional rivalry, Turkish and Iranian leaders share concerns about Kurdish separatist movements and have sometimes cooperated to contain them. In the past, security forces from both countries have coordinated efforts against Kurdish militant groups operating along their shared border.

Turkish and Iranian officials have also exchanged intelligence and carried out military operations against Kurdish fighters moving between the two countries. And both governments strongly opposed the 2017 referendum on independence that was held by the Kurds in northern Iraq. Over 92% of votes were cast in favour of independence.

Iranian regime change

For Turkey, the collapse or fragmentation of the Iranian state would be deeply worrying. It could create exactly the conditions Turkish leaders fear most: armed Kurdish groups operating across a much longer and more unstable border.

Another concern is the possibility of a new refugee crisis. Turkey already hosts nearly 4 million Syrians following the civil war that began there in 2011 – the largest refugee population in the world. This has become a major political issue inside Turkey.

If conflict or state collapse in Iran – a larger and even more politically complex state than Syria – triggers large-scale displacement, many more refugees could head west towards Turkey. Such a scenario would place considerable political and economic pressure on the government.

Washington may see the Kurds as a useful way to confront the Iranian regime without deploying American troops. But such a strategy could create new tensions elsewhere in the region. For Turkey, Kurdish militancy is not simply a foreign policy issue but a core national security concern.

If the Iran war ends up empowering Kurdish armed groups or destabilising Turkey’s border, Erdoğan may yet feel compelled to respond. This could open up another front in an already expanding regional conflict.

– ref. Why the next escalation in the Iran conflict could be between the US and Turkey – https://theconversation.com/why-the-next-escalation-in-the-iran-conflict-could-be-between-the-us-and-turkey-278341

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Willis, Professor of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California

I teach a course on AI and filmmaking at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and lately, rather than planning each session well in advance, I’ve been structuring the class the night before. I’ll browse platforms like X, Substack and YouTube, selecting the most provocative articles and video clips to present the following morning.

It’s a testament to how quickly artificial intelligence’s relationship to filmmaking is evolving: Each week brings new – often startling – developments.

The next morning in class, my students and I debate the ethics, aesthetics and the storytelling changes taking place in these collaborations with AI.

And we’re not alone: Throughout Hollywood, everyone – aspiring actors and filmmakers, stars, screenwriters and studio execs – seems to have a take on what’s coming next. But I think three trends in particular are going to be hot topics of conversation at this year’s Oscars parties.

Nothing uncanny about this clip

In February 2026, a 15-second AI-generated video clip of Tom Cruise battling Brad Pitt on a burned-out highway overpass went viral.

Depending on the viewer, the video elicited either admiration, outrage or existential hand-wringing.

Created by Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson via a generative-AI tool called Seedance 2.0, the video marked yet another milestone in the propulsive growth of AI tools.

Seedance 2.0 – which was developed by ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok – is now one of the many AI tools available to create short-form video clips. But unlike most AI-generated videos, Pitt and Cruise don’t look creepy, uncanny or animated in the clip, which almost perfectly mimics live-action footage. The appearance of two A-list stars in a fairly realistic scene created by a relatively unknown director using stolen likenesses jolted the industry.

The backlash was swift. Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter, claiming that the video was generated from a dataset that most likely includes Disney’s copyrighted characters. The actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, pointed to the video’s “blatant infringement” of the actors’ likenesses, as well as their voices.

“SAG-AFTRA stands with the studios in condemning the blatant infringement enabled by Bytedance’s new AI video model Seedance 2.0,” the guild wrote in a statement. This practice, the guild added, “undercuts the ability of human talent to earn a livelihood,” while disregarding “law, ethics, industry standards and basic principles of consent.”

In class, after watching the video, we explored the ethics of using someone’s likeness without permission, the challenges facing actors who build careers based on their unique ability to embody characters, and what the future holds for our understanding of acting.

If filmmakers can prompt fake actors to deliver precise performances, where does that leave human actors?

In with the old

Since 2023, the skyline of the Las Vegas strip has been dominated by an illuminated orb called the Sphere: an entertainment complex featuring a 360-degree LED screen covering 160,000 square feet (14,864 square meters). The Sphere recently surpassed 2 million tickets sold for a reimagining of the classic 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.”

The film, which premiered in August 2024, was shortened, its color was enhanced, and it was stretched to expand across the interior of the dome. AI was used to transfer the imagery from the film’s original, modest aspect ratio to the giant dome. This required generating new imagery around the edges of the original shots in what’s known as “AI outpainting.” The technology was also deployed to boost the original film’s resolution and to enhance certain scenes.

Some critics fretted that this fairly radical augmentation of the original classic would offend viewers. Instead, it has drawn them in droves to the Sphere, where they’ve been willing to shell out between US$100 and $200 per ticket.

Not bad for a movie about a girl from Kansas made in 1939.

Given the resounding success of “The Wizard of Oz,” experts expect producers to plumb the film archives for other potential hits and enhance them with AI before screening them in venues as varied as IMAX theaters and Cosm, another 360-degree dome with locations in Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta.

Or AI can simply be used to create material that was never completed for a historic film.

In fact, The New Yorker recently profiled AI media entrepreneur Edward Saatchi, who is working to recreate and reincorporate lost footage from Orson Welles’ 1942 feature “The Magnificent Ambersons.” While Welles was in Brazil shooting a documentary, executives at RKO Radio Pictures reedited the film without his approval after a poor preview screening. They cut around 45 minutes, replaced the original ending with a happier one and destroyed most of the footage that had been removed.

Saatchi’s idea is to build a dataset that includes the existing film, as well as scripts, notes, images and even new performances by actors. Then he plans to use his AI platform, Showrunner, to create new scenes from this data.

While Saatchi hopes to honor the director’s creative vision by producing the film he originally intended, his efforts open up some thorny questions.

Is it appropriate to take an existing artwork and revise it without the creator’s input? Isn’t there something sacrosanct about a film, the intentions of the director and the performances of the actors in a film’s original form? To what extent should these questions be overlooked if refashioning old movies will introduce them to new audiences?

Fewer opportunities?

There’s also an undercurrent of anxiety in my classes. What will happen, my students often wonder, once they graduate?

They’re worried that within a year or two, AI will have replaced entry-level film industry jobs, from concept artists to apprentice-level editors, before they’ve even had a chance to enter the workforce.

They have reason to fear.

In 2024, the Animation Guild published a sobering report claiming that by 2026, “creative workers will be facing an era of disruption, defined by the consolidation of some job roles, the replacement of existing job roles with new ones, and the elimination of many jobs entirely.”

Some of those predictions have borne out: 41,000 jobs in film and television have disappeared in Los Angeles County alone over the past three years.

But I’ve tried to counter the hard statistics with some stories of thoughtful practices.

For example, filmmaker Paul Trillo at the AI studio Asteria has talked about how he seeks to keep artists at the center of the process. When he detailed the company’s work on a music video for the singer-songwriter Cuco, he was keen to highlight the number of artists working on the project. Yes, AI tools were used. But they were integrated in a way that replaced the tedious work, not the creative practice.

“Rather than removing [artists] from the process, it actually allowed them to do a lot more so a small team can dream a lot bigger,” Trillo explains at the end of the video.

In January 2026, the management consulting firm McKinsey published a report that largely echoes Trillo’s positive outlook. It forecasts more adoption of AI throughout the industry. But it also points to ways that the technology could lead to different kinds of work and open up new possibilities. For example, as AI-generated scenes become commonplace, studios will need technicians who know how to blend real footage with digitally created worlds. And as AI lowers the cost of producing polished films and shows, it could allow more “micro-studios” and independent filmmakers to create professional-quality content.

At the same time, the report also quotes a studio executive who concedes that AI could represent “a more significant platform shift than we have ever seen before in our industry.”

So it’s no wonder my students, along with varied critics, commentators and industry professionals, are nervous.

However, from where I stand, I’m convinced that the industry will weather this radical disruption. It’s adapted to big changes in the past: the addition of sound in the 1920s, the threat posed by videotape in the 1980s and streaming in the 2000s.

In the end, people will always crave new, artfully told stories. While the filmmaking tools and job market may be in transition, that core need for storytelling is not going away.

– ref. As the Oscars approach, Hollywood grapples with AI’s growing influence on filmmaking – https://theconversation.com/as-the-oscars-approach-hollywood-grapples-with-ais-growing-influence-on-filmmaking-273766

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin University

Does the world need another biography of Rupert Murdoch? It depends what it has to say and who has written it.

Bonfire of the Murdochs, by journalist Gabriel Sherman, looks promising. He made his name with an exhaustively researched biography of long-running Fox News head and serial sexual harasser, Roger Ailes. The Loudest Voice in the Room (2014) has 98 pages of endnotes and a team of three fact-checkers. It was made into a series starring Russell Crowe as Ailes. Sherman was also the screenwriter of Donald Trump biopic, The Apprentice, which Trump fought hard to prevent being screened.

Promising credentials, yes, but what does Sherman add to the eight Murdoch biographies already published?

Review: Bonfire of the Murdochs by Gabriel Sherman (Simon & Schuster).

The first was Simon Regan’s business-oriented biography published in 1976. It has been forgotten, but not so George Munster’s A Paper Prince (1985), which laid out Murdoch’s deal-making modus operandi, nor William Shawcross’ 1992 semi-authorised work, which charted Murdoch’s creation of the first global media empire.

Michael Wolff’s The Man Who Owns the News (2008) painted the most vivid portrait of the Australian born media mogul. Flushed with the success of buying The Wall Street Journal, Murdoch agreed to more than 50 hours of interviews with Wolff and opened the doors of his notoriously secretive media empire to the Vanity Fair media columnist.

Wolff did report the Wall Street Journal takeover in detail, but he also retailed a breathtaking amount of industry and family gossip.

One example among many. He writes that Prudence, Murdoch’s daughter from his first marriage, gave him exasperated grooming advice after Murdoch botched a DIY makeover as he tried keeping up with Wendi Deng, his third wife who was the same age as his children.

“Dad, I understand about dyeing the hair and the age thing. Just go somewhere proper. What you need is very light highlights.” But he insists on doing it over the sink because he doesn’t want anybody to know. Well, hello! Look in the mirror. Look at the pictures in the paper. It’s such a hatchet job.

Murdoch’s response? He told her she needed a face lift.

Murdoch’s response to Wolff’s biography was that it needed more than a face lift – it should not have been published with the errors it had. He did not sue for defamation, however. Wolff has since become an even more controversial figure: he is embroiled in suit and counter-suit with Donald and Melania Trump over Wolff’s claims about Trump’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The long-running struggle for succession in the Murdoch family famously inspired the brilliantly coruscating fictional television series Succession (2018–2023). Sherman’s is the first biography to deal with its resolution, which happened only last September, when Rupert Murdoch and his eldest son, Lachlan, succeeded in changing the terms of an apparently irrevocable family trust.

The trust had been created when Rupert and his second wife, Anna, separated in 1998. (She died on February 17 this year.) It was her attempt to put a brake on Murdoch’s continual pitting of his children, especially his sons, against each other in the quest to succeed him as head of News Corporation.

It didn’t work. Rupert’s plan for Lachlan to lead the company, continuing its hard right position led by Fox News, eventually succeeded. To a greater or lesser degree, the other children from his first two marriages – Prudence, Elisabeth and James – loathed what Fox News had become and, reportedly led by James, were prepared to use their votes in the family trust to oust Lachlan after Rupert died.

In the end, though, they agreed to sell their shares in the family trust for US$1.1 billion each. Grace and Chloe, the two children from Murdoch’s third marriage, are part of a newly drawn family trust with their own shares in News.

The machinations behind this episode were reported last year in two extraordinary pieces of journalism, by Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times, who were leaked 3,000 pages of court documents about the case, and by McKay Coppins in The Atlantic magazine. He secured a long, revealing interview with James Murdoch, who was labelled in Rupert and Lachlan’s legal materials the “troublesome beneficiary”.

For those without subscriptions to these publications, my colleague, Andrew Dodd, and I discussed the case in The Conversation here and here.

An outstanding journalist

Sherman, another outstanding journalist, has been reporting on the Murdochs since 2008. Ailes threatened him with legal action and engineered a smear campaign over The Loudest Voice in the Room, as Sherman calmly detailed in “A Note on Sources” at the end of the book. It was Sherman who in 2016 broke the news about Fox News presenter Gretchen Carlson’s sexual harassment suit against Ailes that led to his ousting from the network.

In 2018, he revealed Murdoch came close to death after a fall on Lachlan’s maxi-yacht while sailing in the Caribbean.

Sherman also had the inside scoop on the end of Murdoch’s fourth marriage in 2022. The then 91-year-old mogul not only broke up by text with his wife, supermodel and actor Jerry Hall, but included in the divorce terms a demand she not give story ideas to the scriptwriters of Succession!

Hall later realised the marriage had ended, in Murdoch’s eyes, some time before, when he met Ann Lesley Smith, a 65-year-old former dental hygienist turned conservative radio host and follower of QAnon-style conspiracy theories. At a dinner at Murdoch’s ranch in Carmel, Smith gushed that Murdoch and Fox News were the saviours of democracy, and offered to clean his teeth for him.

Murdoch proposed to Smith in early 2023, but he soon called off the wedding after another dinner, where she told then Fox News host Tucker Carlson he was a messenger from God. Hall felt humiliated by Murdoch’s treatment of her but told friends she took satisfaction in making an effigy of him, tying dental floss around its neck and burning it on the barbecue.

All these disclosures, and gossip, are included in Bonfire of the Murdochs. Indeed, Sherman’s reporting, for New York and Vanity Fair magazines, forms a good deal of the book. If you have already read his lengthy articles, there is not much new here. But if you haven’t, or if you are confused by the countless deals and complex financial/political transactions of Murdoch’s seven-decades-plus career in media, this biography is well worth reading.

‘Destroyed everything he loved’

At 241 pages, it has the virtue, as well as the shortcoming, of being the shortest of the Murdoch biographies. Sherman has a gift for succinctly summarising key themes.

The first is that more than most, Murdoch’s media empire is secretive. Remember, his plan to change the family trust was supposed to be heard behind closed doors. We only know about it because The New York Times was leaked the court records, which revealed Murdoch’s testimony. As Sherman puts it: “Rupert crafted narratives in the shadows, but the courtroom would require him to do it in the open.”

Initially, it did not go well for Murdoch. Under cross-examination, his determination to get his way no matter what and his sexism towards his daughters was revealed.

The second theme is the extent to which Murdoch will ignore the stated mission of his media outlets – report what is happening accurately – if it aligns with his commercial goals. During the global pandemic, while Fox News hosts fulminated about lockdowns and advocated dubious treatments like hydroxychloroquine, Murdoch followed the science and, Sherman reports, was one of the first in the world to be vaccinated, in December 2020.

“He was scared for himself and was very careful,” a person who spoke to Murdoch at the time recalled for Sherman. Questioned about the disconnect between his network’s coverage and his own behaviour, Murdoch would deflect responsibility for the presenters’ commentary, even though this seeming passivity contrasted sharply with his history of editorial interference.

As Sherman comments: “The hypocrisy revealed something essential about Rupert’s worldview: he had always been able to separate his personal beliefs from his business interests.” He adds that Murdoch thought then president, Donald Trump, grievously mishandled the pandemic but refused to use his position as head of Fox to pressure the president to treat it seriously.

Nor did Murdoch take any responsibility when a friend told him the channel was killing its elderly audience. According to one of Sherman’s sources, he replied: “They’re dying from old age and other illnesses, but COVID was being blamed.”

The biographer quotes other sources who say the quid pro quo was that Murdoch had successfully lobbied Trump in his first term to take action against Facebook and Google, who were winning advertising revenue from News (along with other legacy media companies) and to open up land for fracking, which was to boost the value of Murdoch’s fossil fuel investments.

The third theme is that Murdoch built the world’s first global media empire but has always run his companies as a family business, with him as the first and ultimate decision-maker. Nimbleness is the advantage of this approach. As with any autocratically run organisation, though, there are disadvantages. Among them is that no one has a perfect strike rate for success.

Along the way, talented executives such as Barry Diller, former chief executive at Twentieth Century Fox or Chase Carey, former top executive at 21st Century Fox, knew – or found out – that their path to the top was blocked not only by the company’s head, but by Murdoch’s desire to advance or protect family members. Murdoch once told shareholders complaining about nepotism: “If you don’t like it, sell your shares.”

From the 1950s, when Murdoch was the “boy publisher” of the afternoon newspaper he inherited from his father, the Adelaide News, he behaved, Sherman writes, as though “promises were like inconvenient facts: fungible when they got in the way of profit.” The newspaper’s editor, Rohan Rivett, was the first among several, alongside numerous politicians, who learnt this to their cost.

The fourth theme is that Murdoch has always wanted his children involved in his business, but only on his terms. “Growing up,” Sherman writes, “the children’s relationship to their father was expressed through the business, making them equate paternal love with corporate advancement.”

Where earlier writers have drawn parallels with Shakespeare’s King Lear, Sherman thinks King Midas is a more appropriate comparison.

Like the mythical monarch whose touch turned everything to gold, Rupert built a $17 billion fortune but destroyed everything he loved in the process. His media outlets stoked hatred and division on an industrial scale, and amassing that wealth required him to damage virtually anything he touched: the environment, women’s rights, the Republican Party, truth, decency – even his own family.

The weakest part

These are potent themes that resonate with those of us living in the country of Murdoch’s origin, which brings us to the book’s shortcoming. Australia features early on, but this is the weakest part of the book. Murdoch’s early years are well covered in Munster and Shawcross’s biographies and more recently have been given detailed attention in Walter Marsh’s Young Rupert (2023).

There are basic errors: The Daily Mirror in Sydney, which Murdoch bought in 1960, is misnamed The Mirror, while the Herald and Weekly Times Ltd., which he bought in 1987, becomes the Herald Times Group. Nor does it help that on the book’s final page, Sherman writes “Rupert was with his fourth wife while his children were scattered across the globe” – when Murdoch had discarded Jerry Hall in 2022 and was now married a fifth time, to Elena Zhukova.

Fourth, fifth? It’s easy to lose count. More seriously, in buying the HWT, Murdoch became the dominant newspaper owner in Australia, but his control did not account for 75% of the market, as Sherman writes. It is more like 60% to 65%, depending on whether you use circulation or number of newspapers as a measure.

Murdoch’s early years in Australia are briskly dealt with in chapter one, before he moves on in his relentless quest to acquire more media properties in the United Kingdom and the US. This is true as far as it goes, but once Murdoch does head north, his biographer loses almost all interest in how Australia is faring – even, or especially actually, after Murdoch acquires the HWT.

The same is true to a lesser extent with Sherman’s treatment of the UK. The phone hacking scandal is covered, of course, but not much else is once Murdoch arrives in New York in the mid-seventies.

What is lost, then, in Sherman’s compression, is context for events. Such as: where did the phone hacking culture come from? What lengths did News go to in denying the practice went beyond two “rogue reporters” or in obstructing official inquiries? Why have they since paid so much money settling with phone hacking victims, rather than going to court?

Missing, too, is any sense of the connections between Murdoch’s media outlets in the three main countries in which News operates. Has the hostile coverage of trans people been imported from Fox News to Sky News Australia? What affect has his media outlets’ campaigning against action on climate change had across these three countries?

These, and others, are relevant questions to ask about a global media empire. Rupert Murdoch may have handed over the company to Lachlan in 2023, but he led it for 70 years, he created its culture and he still wields influence. In case it passed you by, it was Rupert Murdoch – not Lachlan, according to the reports – who in February had a private dinner at the White House with US president Donald Trump.

– ref. Secrets, sexism and hypocrisy: Bonfire of the Murdochs reveals the family’s real succession drama – https://theconversation.com/secrets-sexism-and-hypocrisy-bonfire-of-the-murdochs-reveals-the-familys-real-succession-drama-275938