Australians and New Zealanders will be the first gamers in the world to play R-rated video game Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA6) – and employers are being warned it could mean some staff don’t turn up to work on Friday November 20.

Game developer Rockstar Games is planning a staggered, late-night, global release on November 19, rather than a simultaneous launch. This means gamers across the Tasman will start playing GTA6 hours before most other places, including Miami in the United States, which inspired the game’s “Vice City” setting.

GTA6 has already made an estimated US$600 million in pre-sales revenue, even a month before its release. The game is widely forecast to set new record multi-billion-dollar sales worldwide.

In July, one US Army battalion offered a special four-day leave pass for soldiers to play the game as soon as it’s released, in return for re-enlisting for at least another two years with the army. At least 20 soldiers are confirmed to have taken the deal.

Meanwhile, social media has been awash with videos and posts about people planning not to turn up to work on November 20. Australia’s Fair Work Ombudsman even put out a GTA6-themed post this month, in anticipation of extra unpaid leave requests.

So what are the rules for taking leave in Australia or New Zealand?

Leave rules in Australia

If you are an employee covered by Australia’s Fair Work Act, you accrue different types of leave, which you can access in different circumstances.

Annual leave can be taken for any reason, provided that you have agreed with your employer about when you will take it and you have leave accrued.

If too many employees want to take leave on the same day, an employer might need to say no. They need to make sure they have enough staff to keep their business operational. So if you want time off on November 20, the best course of action is to book annual leave well in advance to avoid potential disappointment.

Paid personal leave, which includes sick leave and carer’s leave, is only available where an employee is sick or injured and unfit for work, or is caring for a member of their family or household due to illness, injury or unexpected emergency. Playing a game would not qualify for these types of leave.

Other types of potential paid leave – like compassionate leave or parental leave – also wouldn’t apply for time out to play GTA6.

An employee can also request unpaid leave. But unlike annual leave, you do not have a right to take unpaid leave except in limited circumstances. These circumstances include community service leave for jury duty, or a voluntary emergency management activity like fire fighting.

There is also a right to take unpaid parental or carer’s leave. But, as the Fair Work Ombudsman has made clear, the global release of a video game is not an unexpected family or household emergency.

It is important to be honest when taking leave. Claiming leave that you are not entitled to is misconduct, which might lead to disciplinary processes.

It just isn’t worth the risk. Apply early for annual leave and avoid uncomfortable questions at work.

Leave rules in New Zealand

The rules are similar if you’re working in New Zealand. If you have accrued annual leave, you may use it for whatever you wish, including time off for the release of GTA6. Your employer cannot unreasonably refuse your request.

But if you haven’t got an annual leave entitlement – for example, if you haven’t worked for the full 12 months in a new job yet – it is common for employers to allow their employees to take their annual leave “in advance”. This isn’t a right, but you can ask and potentially agree to it with the employer.

Sick leave is generally only available if you are unable to work due to health reasons or you are caring for someone else.

“Pulling a sickie” to play GTA6 could result in disciplinary action — or even dismissal if your employer finds out.

Some employers allow “wellbeing leave” as a contractual right. Staying home to play GTA6 might fall within the scope of this type of leave, depending on the wording of the contract or policy. These often allow for “anything that improves mental wellbeing” such as hiking, spa days or doing some kind of community service.

You can also request unpaid leave. As in Australia, you don’t have a general right to this, so you need to negotiate it with your employer.

Whatever leave you want to take, it’s important to remember the obligations of “good faith” — including being honest and communicative — apply to both employers and employees when making arrangements for leave.

If you are tempted to stay home to play the video game, and you’re in Australia or New Zealand, now you know how to do that – without risking your job by breaking the law in real life.

Shae McCrystal receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Dawn Duncan 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/want-to-take-leave-or-call-in-sick-to-play-grand-theft-auto-6-heres-how-not-to-break-the-law/

Western Australia is a unique part of Australia in many ways. It gets a special deal on the distribution of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). Its flora, fauna and cultural attributes are extraordinary.

And it has the lowest rate of gambling harm in the country.

Our recently published research on the gambling behaviour of Western Australians reinforces this.

It demonstrates that although Western Australians gamble as much as anyone else in Australia, they experience far fewer gambling problems.

Lessons from Western Australia

WA does not permit pokies (also known as electronic gaming machines) outside of a single casino in Perth. Unlike the rest of Australia, where pokies in pubs and clubs are ubiquitous, these social spaces in WA are pokie-free.

Western Australians, though, are keen lottery gamblers. But despite accounting for 10% of the amount spent on gambling in Australia, lotteries contribute around 1% of our gambling problems.

Pokies are a different kettle of fish: recent Australian research demonstrates poker machine gambling accounts for more than half of Australia’s gambling spend and a similar proportion of gambling problems.

Our analysis of data from the multi-year Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey shows overall gambling participation is higher in WA than in the rest of Australia (48% against 37%).

HILDA data also suggests Western Australians spend about the same as people in other states when it comes to gambling, but gambling problems in WA are about half those in other states.

The big question is why.

The pokie paradox

A 2023 paper found these differences can be explained by lower levels of pokie use.

We set out to confirm these conclusions and to use a multi-year dataset that allows us to differentiate gambling behaviour over time, and to estimate comparative participation, levels of gambling severity, and gambling expenditure across different products.

Different gambling products are known to have different harm profiles.

At the top are poker machines and casinos (including their online versions). Even people who gamble only on pokies (and many use multiple gambling products) are much more likely to experience problems than people who use only one other gambling product.

Wagering in both online and traditional forms is next on the harm scale. Lotteries are right at the bottom, along with bingo. This is now well established.

What matters is accessibility. In WA, pokies are not widely available – they are used by fewer people (2% compared to an average 9% in other states).

Pokie expenditure is also lower: Western Australians average a monthly spend of $2.83 compared to $11.44 elsewhere, while average lottery expenditure is higher ($28.70 monthly compared to $17.09).

But gambling harm in WA is significantly lower than other areas of Australia because so few people play the pokies.

What does all this mean?

There are several interesting implications of our study. The first is, the “architecture” of a gambling environment can make a huge difference to the gambling harm inflicted on a community.

Because pokies are high-impact products (fast spins can lead to impulsive gambling and they are particularly addictive and harmful), restricting access to them makes a huge difference to the gambling harm profile of communities.

As pokies are concentrated in areas of high disadvantage, having so many pokies in other states increases disadvantage in already disadvantaged communities. WA escapes this problem.

Can we ‘unscramble the egg’?

Today, pokie gambling is almost ubiquitous in Australia, and governments appear to have largely given up on serious reform proposals.

After major reforms were announced in Tasmania, New South Wales and Victoria, all were subsequently deferred.

In 2010, the Gillard government attempted similar national reforms at the behest of independent MP Andrew Wilkie. These, too, were abandoned.

In all cases, the considerable power of the pokie lobby appears to have overwhelmed the original intentions of reforming governments.

This suggests unscrambling the egg of pokie-derived harmful gambling presents a major challenge – one for which few Australian governments appear to have much appetite.

Indeed, most of the significant reforms proposed by the Murphy inquiry into online wagering have also been brushed aside by the Australian government, although a few have been implemented in part.

Gambling reform is hard.

One of the strategies that some Australian jurisdictions are pursuing is to reduce the number of pokies in their jurisdiction.

On the surface, it seems the WA example supports this approach. Unfortunately, going from a lot of pokies to slightly fewer is not backed by evidence. A 2022 study using data from Italy and Finland indicated reductions in pokie numbers have to be very significant to reduce associated harms.

Tinkering at the edges would not do the job.

What are some other options?

If they can’t emulate WA, how can the rest of Australia modify accessibility to achieve reduced gambling harm?

Precommitment – the system proposed and abandoned by the Australian, NSW, Tasmanian and Victorian governments – may help to some degree.

Reducing hours of operation, especially after midnight would help.

Reducing the concentration, or density, of pokies in disadvantaged communities (if seriously done) may provide some benefits.

Nonetheless, the example of WA provides a salutary lesson as we encounter rapidly evolving gambling forms.

Charles Livingstone has received funding from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the (former) Victorian Gambling Research Panel, and the South Australian Independent Gambling Authority, the Australian and New Zealand School of Government and the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education. He has also received funding from non-government organisations for research about poker machine gambling. He has received travel and co-operation grants from the Alberta Problem Gambling Research Institute, the Finnish Institute for Public Health, the Finnish Alcohol Research Foundation, the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Committee, the Turkish Green Crescent Society, the Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand, Monash University and the Public Health Advocacy Centre of Northeastern University Law School. He is a member of the Lancet Public Health Commission into gambling and the World Health Organisation expert group on gambling and gambling harm.

Buly Cardak has received research funding from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation (VRGF).

Heng Jiang has received funding from Australian Research Council and Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation (VRGF).

Nicola Thomas has received research funding from the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation (VRGF).

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/wa-has-less-gambling-harm-than-the-rest-of-australia-theres-one-simple-reason/

When you’re struggling with your mental health, visiting your GP for a mental health treatment plan can be an important first step.

These plans indicate a diagnosed mental health condition (such as depression or anxiety) and allow you to access up to ten subsidised psychotherapy (or “talk therapy”) sessions through Medicare’s Better Access Initiative.

But what happens next?

Our recently published research suggests whether you actually see a psychologist may depend on where you live.

We found those living in low-income neighourhoods were much less likely to receive psychological care soon after receiving a plan, compared to those in wealthier neighbourhoods.

And in the decade between 2014–23, this gap widened substantially – particularly for children.

Even with subsidies, mental health care can be expensive

While private psychologists can choose their own rate, the suggested fee for a 45–60 minute consultation is A$330. But the Medicare rebate is set at $149.05 for a clinical psychologist – and even less for general psychologists – meaning the gap you pay can be substantial.

Read more:
Need to see a psychologist? How to find one that’s right for you

High out-of-pocket costs, long waits and limited local services can prevent people from getting the care they need.

In the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2024–25 Patient Experience Survey, about one in four people who needed to see a psychologist reported delaying or going without care because of the cost.

Financial barriers to mental health care were more common in disadvantaged areas.

What we did and what we found

We wanted to understand how large the income-related gaps in psychological care are across Australia.

We used de-identified tax and Medicare data to study 5.4 million Australians who received a GP mental health treatment plan between 2014 and 2023, to look at whether they went on to receive Medicare-subsidised psychotherapy (talk therapy) within three months.

This included services delivered by eligible psychologists, social workers and occupational therapists.

In one study of adults, we found substantial regional differences in access: in 2023, psychotherapy use within three months of receiving a GP mental health treatment plan ranged from approximately 28% in parts of regional New South Wales and South Australia to 60% in inner Perth.

But we also wanted to look at whether income-related gaps had changed over time, and whether children are affected differently from adults.

In another, related study, we looked separately at children under 18 and adults aged 25–54, and compared neighbourhoods with different average incomes.

In 2023, only 32% of children in the lowest-income neighbourhoods received psychotherapy within three months of receiving their plan, compared with 55% in the highest-income neighbourhoods. For adults, the figures were 40% versus 55%.

The gap has widened

A decade earlier, rates of psychotherapy use were higher across the country and the income-related gaps were smaller.

In 2014, 56% of children and 53% of adults in the lowest-income neighbourhoods received psychotherapy within three months of getting a plan. This compared to 70% of children and 61% of adults in the highest-income neighbourhoods.

Over the following decade, uptake fell across all groups – but more steeply in low-income neighbourhoods.

As a result, the income gap widened, especially for children. The divide grew particularly sharply during the COVID pandemic.

Among children in the lowest-income neighbourhoods, the proportion receiving timely psychotherapy fell from more than half (56%) in 2014 to around one-third (32%) in 2023.

We also find a growing “reverse” pattern for medication. Lower-income people are increasingly likely to receive antidepressants without psychotherapy, suggesting a shift toward lower-cost treatment pathways.

This is concerning, especially for children, for whom psychiatric medication without psychotherapy is not typically recommended.

What’s behind this widening gap?

We checked whether the widening income gap could be explained by an increase in diagnoses of complex conditions, such as ADHD and autism, or by the rapid expansion of telehealth in 2020.

But when we analysed these factors separately, the income gap remained – whether or not people had also seen a psychiatrist or paediatrician for a complex condition, and whether they’d received psychotherapy via telehealth or face-to-face.

Rising costs are a more plausible explanation. Between 2014 and 2023, the average out-of-pocket cost of a first therapy session rose from about $44 to $90 for children, and from $35 to $80 for adults. These amounts are adjusted for inflation and expressed in 2023 dollars.

The price increases are consistent with demand for mental health care growing faster than providers’ capacity to offer appointments, particularly during the COVID pandemic.

When demand outpaces supply, waiting times can lengthen and fees can rise. People on lower incomes have less capacity to absorb these higher costs.

Expanding capacity takes time. Training new psychologists takes years, while shifting psychologists from other sectors may create shortages elsewhere.

Read more:
Australia has an ongoing GP shortage. Why can’t we just train more GPs?

The regional differences we observed also point to uneven access: where psychologists work matters, as well as how many there are.

So, what would actually help?

Reducing out-of-pocket costs should be a priority. This could include increasing Medicare rebates, introducing targeted subsidies for low-income families, or expanding low-fee and no-gap service models.

Bulk billing may also have a role. Recent reforms have strengthened incentives for GPs to bulk bill, particularly in regional and rural areas. A similar approach could be considered for psychological services, though we need to first carefully evaluate whether these GP reforms have worked.

Improving access will also require building a bigger workforce. Expanding training places, addressing bottlenecks in supervised placements, and supporting early-career psychologists could help increase capacity while maintaining high standards of training and clinical care.

In rural and regional areas, this could mean targeted programs to attract and retain psychologists where shortages are greatest. These could include extra funding for providers in those areas, relocation payments, or waiving higher education loans.

For people with milder symptoms, lower-intensity options such as guided digital therapy or suitable group programs may help reduce pressure on individual therapy services.

Read more:
How does Medicare’s new Mental Health Check In work? Is this low-intensity CBT likely to help?

Ultimately, Medicare-subsidised psychotherapy was designed to make mental health care more accessible. Our findings show access has declined and become less equal.

Reforms should prioritise reversing this decline for people in low-income neighbourhoods, especially children.

Danusha Jayawardana receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

David Johnston receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Nicole Black receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Anh Trinh receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/seeing-a-psychologist-is-becoming-more-unequal-and-our-map-shows-the-gap/

In Australia, the days are growing longer and summer is fast approaching. But a very strong El Niño – a natural weather phenomenon that drives variations in temperature and winds across the Pacific – could make this summer a sweltering one.

This raises the question: are we ready for extreme heat?

Our new research examined how Australia’s Greater Sydney region is preparing for surging temperatures and more frequent heatwaves. In particular, Western Sydney is known for its stifling temperatures, at times being the hottest place on the planet.

We found this city-wide approach involves much more than simply telling people what to do when temperatures soar.

A societal problem

Many Australians know how to cope with hot weather. We drink plenty of water, close blinds and curtains, stay indoors when the sun is at its strongest and regularly check on family, friends and neighbours.

This is good advice. However, not everyone can act on it.

For some people, staying cool is much easier said than done. Not everyone can afford to keep the air conditioner running. Not everyone has a well-insulated home, particularly those living in older homes. Not everyone is well-connected to their neighbours and wider community.

This raises several crucial questions:

• how can we protect those most vulnerable to extreme heat, including the elderly, pregnant women and people with existing health conditions?

• how should we design houses, streets and neighbourhoods to reduce heat exposure in the first place?

• where else can residents go if they need relief from soaring temperatures?

Read more:
Europe is battling a record-breaking heatwave. What’s making it so severe?

Preparing a city for heat

Our latest research took a closer look at how one city is preparing for extreme heat.

The Greater Sydney Heat Taskforce, established in 2023 and led by the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils and Resilient Sydney, aims to help nearly 5.6 million Sydneysiders cope with rising temperatures.

This taskforce brought together 373 representatives from more than 40 organisations across government, health, emergency services and other sectors. Over an 18-month period, these representatives developed the Greater Sydney Heat Smart City Plan. The plan was launched in December 2024 and is now being implemented.

The plan sets out 40 recommendations for action between 2025 and 2030. These cover topics such as raising awareness about heat-related risks, designing cooler homes and neighbourhoods and protecting vulnerable communities.

The plan also underscores the need for better coordination of services and emergency responses. Unlike floods and bushfires, which trigger specific, established emergency actions, extreme heat has historically fallen between different areas of government.

As researchers working within the taskforce, we examined how the Heat Smart City Plan helped bridge these gaps and identified ways to turn its recommendations into action.

Here are our three main findings.

Coordination is key

To create an effective plan, the Greater Sydney Heat Taskforce had to overcome organisations working in silos. For example, health agencies focus on heat-related illness, while councils manage how public spaces and planning authorities shape the built environment. This means responses to heat risk are often fragmented. By contrast, the Heat Smart City Plan helped organisations build trust, clarify responsibilities and identify gaps in governance.

Communities must be involved

By engaging community groups, including Sweltering Cities and the Western Sydney Community Forum, the taskforce built community experiences into the plan. This boosted support for initiatives like Extreme Heat Awareness Day.

Collaboration alone isn’t enough

Long-term funding, clear responsibilities and ongoing support from local institutions are key to the success of any city-wide heat plan. The Heat Smart City Plan identifies the lead organisation responsible for turning recommendations into action. We found this encouraged organisations to take ownership and incorporate heat preparedness into existing planning, emergency management and climate adaptation frameworks.

The NSW government, for instance, is exploring how urban greening, improved shade and heat-sensitive building design can be incorporated into planning through its draft State Environmental Planning Policy.

Read more:
A solution to cut extreme heat by up to 6 degrees is in our own backyards

More work needed

The Greater Sydney Heat Smart City Plan is a step forward, but the challenge now is turning its ambitions into practical, lasting changes across government and industry.

Promising initiatives already exist. The Australian Red Cross’s TeleRedi program, currently run in South Australia and Western Australia, sees volunteers check in on vulnerable people during dangerous weather.

In Blacktown, libraries and other air-conditioned public facilities offer places to escape the heat, as outlined in the council’s Beat the Heat guidance.

These initiatives are not complicated or new. But making them available where needed requires long-term funding and coordination across housing, infrastructure, health and emergency services. Only then can we protect lives and communities in a warming world.

We’d like to thank Kerry Robinson (Greater Sydney Heat Taskforce Chair), Judith Bruinsma and Kelly Gee (Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils, WSROC) and Melinda Dewsnap (Resilient Sydney) for facilitating the taskforce, alongside all its members. We particularly recognise the late Charles Casuscelli, former CEO of WSROC, whose leadership was instrumental in driving this work forward.

Read more:
Extreme heat is harming remote First Nations communities. It’s time we listen to them

Nicky Morrison received funding for this research through Project Mezze, a joint initiative of Western Sydney University and the University of New South Wales. She also receives research funding from the NSW Decarbonisation Innovation Hub, Environment Protection Authority, Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, Urban Development Institute of Australia, Business NSW and local councils.

Patrick Harris receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australian Research Council and Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

Vanita Yadav receives funding from the Australian government’s Centre for Australia India Relations to support her research work in agribusiness and international trade.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/we-must-prepare-entire-cities-for-extreme-heat-our-new-study-reveals-how/

A thread on Reddit features a photograph of a poster advertising the National Gallery of Victoria’s upcoming triennial, an image from Ayoung Kim’s multi-channel video installation, Delivery Dancer’s Arc: Inverse (2024).

In the image, a Korean woman is running through a crowded futuristic cityscape in a riding suit and gloves. It is drawn from the video piece about women working as gig-economy delivery drivers in dystopian Seoul besieged by an artificial intelligence that drives them to compete with one another, monitors their labour and skews their sense of time.

The work is made with AI, computer-generated imagery (CGI), video game engines and live action footage.

The Reddit comments are disparaging of the use of generative AI. They do not distinguish between art made with generative AI and AI replacing the artist entirely. They question the gallery’s decision to advertise a work foregrounding AI as an artistic medium.

There is an irony here. The comments rally against a world where AI takes over labour. But Young’s work also attends to this very problem.

The issue appears to pivot on her decision to use generative AI as an artistic medium.

AI saturation

AI infrastructure governs our everyday lives: used in warfare, driving our social feeds, analysing our facial expressions, pilfering the data we upload for harvesting by a handful of tech companies who profit from our cloud capital.

Our data feeds the datasets of commercial generative AI platforms, which saturates the internet with “AI slop”. And we cannot seem to opt out.

It is no surprise Reddit commenters are dismayed by the appearance of art made with generative AI. If art and creativity are also replaced by AI, then what of social life is left untouched by its creep?

Yet their dismay conflates AI replacing the artist, and an artist choosing to work with the technology.

So does an artist’s intention matter?

Media theorist Joanna Zylinska is careful to distinguish between two types of art made with generative AI.

She likens popular AI art to a mind numbing game of Candy Crush: when an artist uses generative AI solely for what it can do, to celebrate its capacity to turn data into visual spectacle.

Critical AI art comes down to the artwork’s capacity to make the implications of the technology visible. This includes its infrastructure, impact on labour and even understanding what it means to be a human.

The role of the gallery

Art institutions worldwide are increasingly focusing on the impact of AI on art and creativity.

Some of these works are heavily critical of AI’s extractive nature.

But art institutions are reliant on corporate sponsorship, visitor engagement and media metrics to secure funding. An artist’s political critique can also become a marketing tool, an icon, or a hero image.

Ayoung Kim’s generative AI poster, taken out of context, is a reminder of this predicament.

Theorist Victor Burgin is suspicious of the role of art galleries in offering a critique of AI. He says art that is critical of AI requires a backstory which cannot take place simply by looking at the work itself.

For Burgin, art’s resistance lies elsewhere, in resisting stereotype, cliche and the ideas ingrained in popular visual culture.

Read more:
AI ‘dreams’ up new realities. How does this impact the way we understand our own dreaming?

Understanding the implications of AI through art

As people become more distrustful of AI replacing artistic labour, and with AI encroaching on many facets of the creative industries, it is imperative we have conversations about what artistic experimentation with AI can offer.

As a creative researcher, I am interested by the way my encounter with a technology shapes my capacity to know it. As a photographer, I think about generative AI as a technology that evolved from the datasets of the world’s photographs. This also means generative AI inherits photographic ways of seeing and remembering the world.

Generative AI taps into a desire for users to visualise anything – from nudes, to Hollywood stars, to seeing the dead live again.

By the time text-to-image platforms arrived in 2021–22, this desire could be realised with as little as a linguistic prompt.

That is the marketing rhetoric, and led me to create a work about an event that was fundamentally impossible to see: my mother before she became my mother.

Read more:
I had no photos of my mother’s pregnancy and migration, so I found a way for AI to help fill in the gaps

I wanted to know whether the billions of pilfered images could produce a single image of my mother.

Given the prompt, the exercise was designed to fail. I didn’t want to resolve that paradox, but to use the problem as a way of considering the connections between visual language and image labels embedded in AI systems.

Since making that work, I have grappled with the ethical implications of using generative AI as an artist. AI slop is one facet of my hesitation; the politics of opting out is another. And I keep asking myself, is there a space for the creative practice of art to help us understand and think about AI systems?

A creative practice with generative AI begins by repurposing its systems and working against what they are optimised to do. It means embracing what AI fails to capture and working against its logic. This can include prompting for aspects of social life that resist measure or algorithmic aggregation, such as affects and sensations.

Artistic experimentation, in this instance, may be one of the few places where we can encounter the limits of AI’s insidious encroachment.

Sara Oscar 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/could-thoughtful-ai-art-counter-the-rise-of-ai-slop-why-creatives-today-face-a-paradox/

Real tans come from UV-triggered pigment production in living skin; that same UV exposure increases the risk of skin cancer.

Bronzers are simply coloured coatings that sit atop the skin and can be washed away.

How, then, to create a fake tan that stays put, without exposing people to UV light and skin cancer risk?

The trick is not to get brown pigment into the skin directly. Brown pigments are usually large molecules, which do not penetrate the skin barrier easily.

Instead, fake tan products smuggle in something much smaller, then generate the pigment chemically once it is already inside the outer skin layer.

How to smuggle in a molecule

The outermost layer of skin, the stratum corneum, is dead skin cells embedded in lipids (fats). While it is an excellent barrier, some small molecules can still get through.

The active ingredient in most fake tan products is dihydroxyacetone, or DHA – a tiny sugar molecule found naturally in our bodies. It’s closely related to glycerol (or glycerin), the sweet, syrupy compound found in foods, cough syrups and skincare products.

Glycerol is in moisturisers and many personal care products; it helps keep skin hydrated. It’s also small enough to move through the outer skin barrier reasonably well.

Just like glycerol, DHA can diffuse into the outermost layers of skin. But instead of helping skin retain water, it reacts chemically with free amino acids and proteins in the stratum corneum, forming brown pigments.

So unlike bronzers or makeup, DHA does not simply sit on top of the skin.

The DHA molecule itself is small enough to enter the outer skin layer, where it then generates larger brown pigments that are trapped within the skin as they form.

You are, in a sense, toast

This sugar + amino acids combination is the same broad class of chemistry that happens in cooking.

When sugars react with amino acids under heat, you get what’s called the Maillard reaction. This chemical reaction is responsible for the browning of toasted bread crusts, biscuits and seared steak.

Fake tan is essentially a low-temperature version of this process happening slowly in your skin.

You are, in a sense, toast.

That characteristic fake tan smell comes from the same chemistry. As DHA reacts with amino acids in the skin, it produces volatile molecules – including aldehydes and ketones – that rapidly evaporate into the air. Similar compounds are generated when you brown food during cooking.

So if fake tan smells a bit “biscuity” to you, that’s why.

Heat, sweat and skin oils can intensify the smell, so fake tan scents often become more noticeable overnight or after exercise.

Red, orange, yellow, green tones

DHA tends to produce orange-brown tones, especially on pale skin (I’m sure you can think of someone who’s had this issue).

To counteract this, formulators often add green or olive pigments, which neutralise excess orange and produce a more natural-looking tan.

Some products also contain erythrulose, another sugar-based tanning ingredient that develops more slowly than DHA. It can produce redder or more natural-looking tones.

But there are some problems even experienced tanners frequently encounter.

Problem #1: patchy on

The fake tan danger zones are elbows, knuckles, ankles, and the base of the palms. These regions have thicker, rougher and drier skin, meaning they contain more protein within the dead skin cells for DHA to react with. Product also tends to collect in skin creases and folds.

Warmer areas may also react faster, because chemical reaction rates generally increase with temperature. The result? Patchy overdevelopment in warm spots such as armpits.

One solution is to use an occlusive moisturiser or barrier cream – such as Vaseline – on certain regions before application, reducing how much DHA reaches the skin.

Problem #2: patchy off

Fake tan only stains the outermost layer of skin. As those dead cells naturally flake off, the colour disappears unevenly. Friction from clothes, sweat, dry skin and local differences in skin shedding all contribute to the classic “leopard print” fade.

Skin is not a perfectly uniform sheet. Human skin already contains subtle biological patchiness in sweat production, oiliness and cell turnover.

Fake tan simply makes this texture more visible. Exfoliating might help before and after DHA application, for different reasons. Exfoliating before can remove excess dead skin, making the skin more even for DHA uptake. Exfoliating after the tan starts fading can help remove the stained dead skin cells more evenly than natural shedding processes would.

Problem #3: waiting time

The DHA reaction takes time. Even “one hour tan” products do not fully develop in one hour; they simply contain enough DHA, or enough penetration enhancers (such as dimethyl isosorbide) that sufficient material enters the skin quickly before rinsing. Also, pH levels can also be carefully tuned to speed up the browning chemistry without degrading the DHA itself.

But there are trade-offs. Faster formulas can develop less evenly, smell stronger or produce more orange tones.

Unless you plan on climbing into an oven to speed things up, your best option may be to simply relax, and let the chemistry do its work.

Anna Wang has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Alfred P Sloan Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. This funding related to fundamental science research involving lipid bilayer membranes.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/how-does-fake-tan-work-and-why-does-it-sometimes-smell-biscuity/

In his Oct. 10 Saturday Night Live (SNL) monologue, American comedian Shane Gillis joked that women at the gym dress like “whores” these days. The backlash was swift and widespread, in the news and across social media. Critics zeroed in on the sexualization of women who are simply trying to exercise without being harassed or judged.

While that’s fair, much of the criticism overlooked another problem. The objections often came down to this: these women aren’t sex workers, so they shouldn’t be called “whores.” That response leaves the insult itself intact, along with the assumption that being compared to a sex worker is degrading.

However well-intentioned, Canadian actor Dan Levy, for example, argued on Instagram only that wearing short shorts to the gym doesn’t make women “whores,” it makes the men calling them that misogynists.

The normalization of stigma toward sex workers runs deep. Everyday language, media coverage and public conversations all contribute to stigmatizing attitudes toward sex workers and to social norms that can fuel discrimination and exclusion. When we object to women being called “whores,” we can unintentionally reinforce the idea that being compared to a sex worker is an insult.

Gillis also joked about looking lesbian and gay, adding homophobia to the mix. Sex work stigma and homophobia have this in common: both are rooted in ideas of sexual immorality and deviance.

Stigma toward sex workers matters

Sex workers around the world experience profound health and social inequities. A recent series in The Lancet Public Health documents their disproportionate exposure to violence, unsafe working conditions and poor health outcomes. The series traces these sustained inequities to stigma and the criminalization of sex work.

Canada is no exception. Canada’s sex work laws, such as the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA), criminalize purchasing sexual services even though selling one’s own sexual services generally is not.

This can make it harder for sex workers to screen potential clients because it limits how they can communicate with them and negotiate their safety. For instance, clients may be reluctant to share their identifying information due to fear of being arrested, in turn making it harder for sex workers to verify their identity, check references and learn about potentially dangerous clients.

Fear of police surveillance can also drive sexual transactions into more isolated settings, making it harder for sex workers to access help if needed. Criminalizing third-party involvement can also create barriers to safety arrangements, such as working with others to screen clients.

So where does this stigma come from? And why is calling a woman a “whore” still considered an insult?

In his 1963 book Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, sociologist Erving Goffman described stigma as a social process through which certain people are labelled and discredited. Among them were people judged as “immoral,” like sex workers and lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer people.

But stigma is more than a set of negative attitudes. It’s also about power: who has access to resources and opportunities, who is valued and who is seen as deserving of dignity and respect.

Feminist scholar Gail Pheterson explored how this plays out for women in her work on “whore stigma” more than 30 years ago. She argued that the label “whore” is used to control women’s sexuality by sorting women into groups of those considered respectable and those judged immoral, dishonourable or sexually deviant.

It’s crucial to note that a woman does not even have to be a sex worker to be labelled a “whore.” Any woman perceived as violating gendered expectations of how to dress, act or express her sexuality can be.

This brings us back to Gillis’s joke. The women at the gym are not being called “whores” because their occupation is to sell sex. Gillis uses sex work as shorthand for sexual deviance. The joke only works if being compared to a sex worker is accepted as degrading. And this is the problem.

In other words, it is possible to challenge the sexism reflected in the policing of some women’s bodies and still overlook the gender-based stigma toward the women whose identities are being used as an insult.

The connection to homophobia

Gillis’s jokes about looking gay or lesbian draw on the same logic. While homophobia and stigma toward sex workers have distinct histories, both are rooted in social expectations about whose sexuality is considered acceptable.

Researchers call the devaluation of people based on same-gender attraction, identities, relationships and practices “sexual stigma.” It extends well beyond insults and negative attitudes. Sexual stigma shapes laws, health care, employment, opportunities and social relationships. It also limits people’s ability to live safely and openly, with dignity and full rights.

Multiple forms of stigma can also intersect. Queer sex workers, for example, may face stigma and discrimination related to both their sexual identity and their occupation.

Reclaiming a slur versus using one

A joke premised on the idea that being gay, lesbian or a sex worker is embarrassing or shameful does more than fall flat. It reproduces wider social beliefs about who’s acceptable and who’s not.

Interestingly, some sex workers have reclaimed the term “whore” to resist stigma and express pride. But there is a difference between a marginalized community reclaiming a stigmatizing label and outsiders using it to demean.

Read more:
Was that joke funny or offensive? Who’s telling it matters

The backlash against Gillis’s SNL monologue raises an important question: can we challenge the policing of women’s bodies without reinforcing stigma toward sex workers?

We can — and we should. Women deserve to exercise without being sexualized, judged or harassed. Sex workers deserve the same dignity, safety and respect.

When we fight against women being called “whores,” we should ask whether we are mainly concerned because these women aren’t sex workers. This becomes a problem if it means accepting that a sex worker is someone unworthy of respect.

What we need to talk about more as a society is not just that women at the gym are being compared to sex workers. It’s that being compared to a sex worker continues to be used as an insult.

Carmen Logie receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Canada Research Chairs, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Kathleen Deering receives funding from the US National Institutes of Health and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/the-problem-with-shane-gilliss-joke-isnt-just-sexism-its-sex-work-stigma/

Following widespread looting sprees and acts of violence occurring on the sidelines of the October 17 student protests, so-called “casseurs” seem to be the centre of attention. But the term, which comes from the French verb casser or “to break”, poses more questions than answers. The sociologist Paolo Stuppia examines the unprecedented situation many cities across France are having to contend with, and the complex combination of collective action whose motivations are unclear and the social media’s extreme agility.

The Conversation: How unprecedented are the scenes of looting that we witnessed on the sidelines of the October 17 demonstrations?

Paolo Stuppia: What may be unprecedented is the extent of the destruction of private property and the goods that have been stolen. It should be clear, however, that not all the looters can necessarily be sorted into identifiable groups, at least politically.

Indeed, as the politician Xavier Crettiez, the sociologist Isabelle Sommier and the historian François Audigier emphasised in 2021 in their joint project Violences politiques en France, the targets of acts of violence that are considered to be politically motivated can be determined both by technical constraints and the militant culture of the people involved. Let us recall Italy in the 1970s when autonomous activists spoke of “self-reduction” (the act of seizing goods or essential services), Maoists in France spoke of proletarian reappropriation. Their raid on Fauchon’s luxury grocery store on place de la madeleine and the redistribution of goods to slums and workers’ hostels that ensued went down in history as their biggest claim to fame.

Can we go as far as to say that the October 17 looting sprees were politically motivated? Even if we do not have all the details concerning the profiles of the people arrested, videos posted on social media and stolen goods being resold online tend to rule out the idea. That said, at least some of the targets were chosen haphazardly. While some are symbols of capitalism, like luxury stores, insurance companies, banks, multinationals, others included a number of more localised stores, small shops selling toys or video games; for example, which are rarely targets for such incidents.

If, especially since the alter-globalisation movement, we have seen the emergence of damage to property, primarily targeting symbols of capitalism and multinationals, in particular; this phenomenon goes hand in hand with “off the cuff” incidents by groups without any political affiliation, who join demonstrations to “get in on the act” in such a way that we are unable to determine whether it’s just a way of letting off steam or if it’s driven by a goal of redistributing goods – this weekend we witnessed some scenes of goods being redistributed, such as food being given to the homeless.

What do we know about casseurs’ profiles? When did they appear in the demonstrations and when did the term first appear in the media?

P.S.: Historically, the first research article on the casseur phenomenon can be traced back to the sociologist Gwenola Ricordeau. In France in the 1990s, as was the case during the student and high school movement of 1998, Ricordeau noticed that young people came to demonstrations to commit acts of vandalism or to mug people without having anything to do with the causes behind protest movements. They were driven by opportunism and also a desire to break up the monotony of everyday life.

The fact of disqualifying people by designating them as “criminals on the street” therefore ultimately leads us to riot-like phenomena, with or without the “looting” element, which are part of the continuity of “suburban revolt” or “city riots” which have gradually developed in working-class neighbourhoods since the second half of the 1970s. As we demonstrated alongside the sociologist Valérie Becquet in our book Géopolitique de la jeunesse, it forms a collection of pejorative and disqualifying terms pertaining to a so-called “dangerous youth”.

The term “casseur”, along with the derogatory term “racaille”, an old French term meaning rabble for example, widely resonated in the language of the media during the 2005 unrest to refer to a lumpenproletariat of young people who attacked both police and vandalised private property and a number of public services and property or street furniture, but whose actions were void of any political meaning.

If we take the theory of labelling, we can understand that the term “casseurs” is linked to the stigma attached to young people from working-class neighbourhoods. But there can also be a second meaning: the phenomena in which France’s Mouvance autonome (a movement drawing its influences from anarchism and situationism) that sets itself apart), is involved in scenes of outbreaks of violence and damage to property, even harm targeting individuals. However, we should first note that the movement has a history of claiming responsibility for its actions. The casseur stigma is also turned around and sometimes used with self-derision.

In 2006, during the protests over contrat première embauche or first job contract law, there were tensions between those who said “we aren’t” or “we don’t want casseurs”, others who said, “it’s the government and the employers – they are the casseurs”. And it was in this context that a banner that appeared in Rennes (in western France), ended up in Paris, claiming: “We are all casseurs.” As if to recognise the term for what it is: a historically vague label, covering different realities, and that the media has invited to every protest movement without fail over the past 30 years.

It’s a bit like the expression “black bloc”: “casseurs” is used to refer to people who resort to techniques that are out of order or who conjure up a considerable cause for concern among a certain part of public opinion, and yet the term remains very vague and is easily instrumentalised.

How is social media a gamechanger for law enforcement?

P.S.: There is a clear difference between fairly structured protest movements, even in an informal way, and the much more spontaneous use of social networks to stage action among young and very young people, such as filming themselves wearing football shirts as they leave Paris’ Place de la République.

We are facing a generation that is demonstrating a certain digital agility. There is a proliferation of platforms. In the days of the yellow vests, we were still largely using tools that came from the Internet of the 2000s, whether it was Instagram, Facebook, a bit of messaging, but not that much, and also Twitter. What we are now seeing is a new wave of social networks in action, with tools also designed to reduce control, like Snapchat, or Telegram, where content is extremely short-lived.

The question would then be: how do we adapt to these new ways of using social media? There is also the phenomenon of loops, which are difficult to infiltrate, with people who move very quickly and provide real-time support for those involved in the movements, on a rather confidential level. One of the hypotheses would be that, in this case, law enforcement is a bit helpless.

There is a quickfire of information, several levels of conversation, with public and private chatrooms, and more or less restricted groups. These real-time conversations are much more difficult to apprehend. Beyond messages that rapidly disappear on Snapchat, for example, a whole set of parameters specific to this universe must be taken into account: profiles feature scores related to the person’s activity; anyone who infiltrates is therefore almost immediately identifiable.

The combination of extremely agile social media and protesters’ mobility is very difficult to control. An example of this was the youth movements in Hong Kong in 2019-2020, which caused a lot of trouble for the authorities, even though it involved a police force with a tutelary government that could still be called authoritarian. Even they struggled to control the groups of young demonstrators operating via social networks, committing fragmented acts, with ten people in one place, ten at another, dispersing quickly. It makes you wonder how much of an information time lapse we are contending with . But that will be up to the parliamentary commission of inquiry to work out.

Interview by Aurélie Djavadi.

A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

Paolo Stuppia ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/frances-casseurs-why-the-term-fails-to-do-justice-to-the-extent-of-looting-and-spiralling-unrest/

Ecological grief is growing — and our current approach to climate change education isn’t keeping pace.

There has been a surge in climate emotion research globally, documenting widespread experiences of fear, grief, anxiety and hopelessness.

New findings suggest the way we approach climate change education may be harming young people rather than helping them to face this grief head on.

In this articles, we share insights from 39 young people about how they experience climate education in a rapidly changing world and how we can change it for the better.

Young people aged 16 to 34

International research has shown that youth want educational spaces that support discussions around the emotional impacts of climate change.

Our research with young people aged 16 to 34 backs this up while also revealing their desire for community-based climate conversations and approaches that focus on how they experience ecological crises.

In 2025, we held seven online discussion groups inspired by a “climate café” model designed to offer space for people to share their climate emotions.

Groups of up to nine young people from various places in Ontario were invited to tell us about everyday climate emotions and how they typically learn about climate change. We recruited participants via the University of Guelph’s research web page and through social media channels and community networks.

Participating youth self-represented using diverse identities and social locations.

Thirty-four of 39 participants identified as racialized. Three people among this group identified as both racialized and Indigenous from another country. The remaining five participants identified as white.

Some participants described learning about climate change by volunteering with community groups. Participants described learning about climate change in school as a one-off “unit” or “topic,” often given “surface-level treatment.”

Going beyond the ‘carbon footprint’

This reflects significant fragmentation between Canadian climate policy and provincial education curricula. Even in provinces and territories playing leadership roles in climate policy, education policy minimally addresses climate change.

Although the Ontario Ministry of Education has committed to embedding learning about the environment, many participants described an educational focus on individual habits alone, such as recycling. Many reported that classroom climate lessons were reduced to “carbon footprints.”

Popularized by British Petroleum, carbon footprint approaches reframe climate responsibility as a matter of personal lifestyle management and consumer choice rather than systemic transformation.

The carbon footprint encourages guilt and personal self-regulation, and for this reason has been critiqued as “petro pedagogy” — climate education either directly sponsored by or shaped by fossil fuel company interests that normalizes fossil fuel dependence.

Such approaches put the responsibility for change on individuals rather than on the broader drivers of climate injustice, such as fossil fuel extraction and capitalism.

One participant emphasized that carbon-footprint education levies “a disconnect between the practice and the theory” that “doesn’t really do justice to the climate.”

What happens when emotion is left out?

Climate education shaped by fossil fuel companies operates most effectively under the guise of neutrality — characteristically avoiding emotion and making climate lessons seem unbiased.

Read more:
How the oil and gas industry influences higher education

It considers the climate as a problem for later, not now. Such forecasting distances young people from present-day ecological realities. For example, recent wildfires in Canada have brought disproportionate emotional distress and cultural disconnection to First Nations, Métis and Inuit people.

As the United Nations notes, ecological grief is unevenly felt across communities. Yet, current educational approaches tend to ignore Indigenous worldviews, putting humans — rather than our relationships with and the well-being of land, plants and non-human animals — at the centre of the learning.

Research has found that while “neutral” educational approaches aim to motivate action, they may inadvertently generate guilt, disengagement or emotional withdrawal when young people are asked to confront crises beyond their control.

Young people in our study described feeling helpless, guilty, exhausted, overwhelmed and morally accountable for climate disasters.

As a result of their own ecological grief and depleted emotional capacity, many youth described coping with the climate crisis through avoidance. Some tried “blocking it out” or “cocooning” by, for example, avoiding watching the news or ignoring current events.

Beginning with grief

In our study, we bring young people’s suggestions to a focal point: climate education must move away from individual blame and include emotions.

When asked how they would like to learn about climate change differently, participants described a politicized form of climate education rooted in emotion and relationality.

They also want conversations to happen outside of the classroom, in their immediate communities. As one participant put it, this simply means being “on the same wavelength” as others experiencing nearby climate-related events.

Climate education that meets these criteria must be grief-facing. Beginning with grief means recognizing the disenfranchisement of climate emotions as part of the disproportionate impact young people feel when it comes to climate change.

Often climate emotions are seen as mental-health issues to be managed, rather than as reasonable responses to social and political failures. Yet, one participant in our study questioned this logic, asking:

“How can we ‘mental health’ somebody out of climate change? I don’t think that makes sense.”

Following the tenets of critical grief educational work, climate-based grief approaches begin by creating structured opportunities for students to share their experiences without demanding a “cure” for their difficult emotions.

Climate emotions can be recognized as expected and appropriate responses to the crises young people face.

A grief-facing approach situates current climate events within broader histories of colonialism and injustice that lead to its disproportionate impact. It also involves deep rest, which means making space for young people to withdraw — or “cocoon” — as necessary care when it comes to emotion overload.

Leading climate education with emotion

Perhaps most importantly, we have learned from young people that future climate learning can be scientific, but it must also be attentive to emotion and approached as a shared social, ethical and emotional challenge. This can happen in schools and the broader community.

Opening conversations with youth about the anxiety, grief, anger and other emotions may lead to broader research about climate change’s uneven impact.

Climate emotions emerge not only from anticipating human futures, but also from witnessing the loss of ecosystems, species and life — something young people are experiencing right now.

New forms of climate education, including grief-facing approaches, should involve those directly affected by these issues, including youth.

Kimberlee Collins receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Carla Rice receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Chelsea Jones receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/how-39-young-people-experience-climate-education-in-a-rapidly-changing-world/

Argentina is trying to stop a planned oil project near the Falkland Islands. On October 13, the government asked the International Tribunal for the Law of the Seas (Itlos), a court in Hamburg that deals with disputes over the sea, to halt the project. Argentina says the UK approved the drilling without its agreement and in breach of Argentina’s rights to the seabed.

The project, called Sea Lion, is a joint venture between UK and Israeli companies, and has been licensed to produce oil by the Falkland Islands government. The Sea Lion field holds an estimated 1.7 billion barrels of oil, 500 million barrels of which is assessed as recoverable.

Argentina began arbitration proceedings against the UK on September 28 and gave London 14 days to stop the project. That deadline expired on October 12. The Argentinian government has now called on Itlos to issue “provisional measures” – emergency orders to protect each side’s rights, or prevent serious harm to the marine environment.

The UK’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, has rejected Argentina’s claims, insisting the UK will “vigorously” contest jurisdiction.

Itlos applies the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which governs the sea – not land. Yet rights at sea flow from owning the coast, which means that whoever holds the Falklands holds the seabed – and the oil – around the islands. Tribunals under the convention have no power to decide who owns land, and can’t settle sovereignty disputes.

Because rights at sea flow from land, every question about the oil in the dispute between Argentina and the UK has been dragged back into a near two-century argument over who owns the islands, as my colleague and I previously argued.

We proposed settling boundaries, resources and environmental protection on the basis of fairness, as Australia and Timor-Leste agreed in 2018 to share revenue from oil and gas in the Timor Sea.

What Argentina is asking for

Argentina’s request asks Itlos to order the UK to prevent Sea Lion from starting production while the arbitration is under way. The Argentinian government warns that commencing extraction would create “an irreversible fait accompli”.

To back its argument, Argentina is relying on a 2015 order in a sea-border dispute between Ghana and Ivory Coast. There, the tribunal allowed Ghana’s existing oil operations to continue but banned new drilling. So the question is whether – with Sea Lion’s development due to begin in early 2027 – the project could be halted in the same way.

The tribunal must also accept that the rights at stake are “plausible” – meaning there is a credible legal basis for them, even though the full case has yet to be heard. For Ivory Coast, this was simple. Nobody disputed that both countries had coastlines over which they had sovereignty. The only argument was over where the sea border between them should run.

For Argentina, it is an uphill battle. It insists it is not seeking a ruling on sovereignty, yet its request rests on “sovereign rights” over the continental shelf. It is hard to judge that this is a plausible claim without asking who owns the islands.

A bridge from Crimea?

In April, a tribunal hearing a dispute between Ukraine and Russian over coastal rights in the Black Sea close to the occupied Ukrainian province of Crimea found that Russia had breached the convention over the Kerch Strait bridge, which connects Russia with Crimea along with associated power cables and gas pipelines. Ukraine had brought the case in 2016, two years after Russia annexed Crimea, accusing it of usurping Ukraine’s rights in the surrounding waters – from drilling rigs to shipping lanes – and seeking compensation.

The tribunal found that Russia’s environmental assessments were inadequate and unpublished, and that it failed to cooperate in protecting the marine environment.

How could the tribunal say all this without deciding who owns Crimea? Because duties such as assessing environmental impact apply to activities under a state’s “jurisdiction or control”. What mattered was that Russia controlled the bridge, cables and gas pipelines. Who owns Crimea could be left for another day.

Could the same reasoning apply to Sea Lion? The UK answers for the islands internationally, and the convention requires states to ensure that activities under their jurisdiction or control do not cause pollution damage to other states. Argentina’s request cites a spill contingency plan by Premier Oil, Sea Lion’s former operator, which put the chance that oil from a blowout would cross into Argentine waters after 30 days at 30%. A tribunal could, without having to determine who owns the oil, consider whether the UK has assessed and shared such risks.

Should Argentina keep its hopes up?

The tribunal relating to Crimea held that the award was “appropriate declaratory relief”. This meant its formal, binding finding that Russia had broken the law was the sole remedy. Russia was not ordered to change its conduct or pay reparation for its environmental breaches.

So what are Argentina’s chances of success if it pursues an argument about the project’s environmental risk? Real, but the victory, if it comes, may not stop Sea Lion going ahead, and it won’t determine Argentina’s ownership of the Falkland Islands.

Even an interim order requiring the UK to assess and share the project’s environmental risks with Argentina would represent a win of sorts.

And with an election next year in which the incumbent president, Javier Milei, is struggling, and given how strongly most Argentinians feel about the issue, even a modest win could help the president.

Any order for Argentina and the UK to cooperate would bring London and Buenos Aires back to the same table over Sea Lion. A conversation about shared risks could be the first step towards sharing the resources.

Vicky Kapogianni 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/how-argentinas-javier-milei-hopes-to-exploit-a-dispute-over-falklands-oil-in-next-years-election/

More than 8,900 people aged under 30 were arrested for money laundering offences in England and Wales between 2020 and 2025. That’s more than six in ten of all money laundering arrests recorded during the period.

And our analysis of police data points to a growing problem that is not simply about young people committing financial crime. It also reveals how organised crime groups are recruiting young people as “money mules”. These are people who move or receive criminal funds on behalf of others.

The UK government already recognises the threat posed by money mule networks. The 2025 national risk assessment identified schools and universities as an emerging risk.

Students appear to be particularly vulnerable. The police officers we interviewed for our report said young people can be targeted because they may be under financial pressure, lack experience in managing money or be unaware of the risks of becoming involved in money laundering. International students were considered especially vulnerable, with officers reporting that some are targeted soon after arriving in the UK.

A money mule may be asked to receive funds into their bank account and transfer it elsewhere, sometimes in return for payment. They may not realise where the money came from or understand that what they are doing is a criminal offence.

Our analysis of data obtained from 36 police forces through freedom of information requests found 14,493 money laundering arrests between January 2020 and January 2025. Of these, 8,956 involved people aged 18 to 29. A further 776 under-18s were recorded by 35 forces.

These figures do not tell us how many of those arrested were students. Police forces do not routinely record student status, so age is only an imperfect indication of involvement in education. But the scale of youth involvement is clear.

Students are vulnerable to acting as a money mules because they face financial pressures, are engaged with social media and lack awareness of the legal consequences of acting as a money mule. Organised crime groups have exploited these factors by using fake job advertisements and online recruitment tactics that promise easy income in exchange for using personal bank accounts to transfer funds.

International students may be especially vulnerable due to their need for UK bank accounts and cross-border financial activity. As a result, students can become unwitting participants in laundering the proceeds of fraud and organised crime. As one police officer told us “as soon as international students land in the UK … they are inundated with messages about money laundering”.

The data also reveals large differences between police forces. Money laundering arrests were concentrated in some of the UK’s largest urban areas. However, this may reflect differences in the scale of organised crime, financial activity and police resources. It may also reflect differences in how forces record offences.

More broadly, our report suggests that the criminal justice system is better equipped to deal with relatively straightforward money laundering cases than the more complex networks behind them. This is important because focusing on the person who moves the money can obscure the people directing the operation.

Read more:
Money laundering plays a key role in every part of the illegal drugs industry – here’s how it works

Young people recruited as money mules may be involved at the lowest level of a much larger criminal enterprise. Some may knowingly participate. Others may be manipulated, exploited or persuaded that what they are doing is harmless.

Our report noted that universities can be exposed to money laundering in a number of ways including through payments of fees or donations – thus unknowingly facilitating money laundering by students.

Yet universities are not currently covered by the UK’s money laundering regulations 2017 in the same way as regulated sectors such as banks, lawyers and accountants. That means universities do not have the same general obligations to identify and report suspected money laundering.

Our previous research illustrated that universities are susceptible to money laundering due to large financial flows and receipt of cash payments for tuition and accommodation fees. That research also found that over 20% of universities do not provide any anti-money laundering guidance to their students.

In our interviews and surveys with regional organised crime units and the City of London Police, we found uncertainty about how the rules apply to higher education. This can leave police focusing on the person receiving or transferring illicit money, rather than on potential risks within the institution or the wider criminal network.

An inconsistency problem

Police interviewees described shortages of staff, specialist expertise and investigative resources. Some said economic crime could become a forgotten area when police forces are dealing with competing priorities.

Relationships between police forces and universities also varied considerably. In some areas, there were established local contacts and effective partnerships. In others, cooperation depended on individual relationships rather than a consistent national approach.

This fragmented response is particularly problematic when criminal networks operate across police force boundaries.

Read more:
Successive UK governments keep failing on fraud – and the problem is only getting worse

Our analysis does not suggest that universities are routinely being used to launder money. Nor can it establish how many students are involved in recorded money laundering offences. The available data has limitations, including differences in how police forces record offences.

But our findings point to a clear gap between the scale of the problem and the information available about it.

What should happen next?

Our analysis points to four priorities.

First, universities should be brought within the money laundering regulations. This would give higher education institutions clear responsibilities for identifying and reporting suspected money laundering.

Second, prevention needs to start earlier and be more targeted. Universities should include money-mule awareness in student induction programmes, alongside financial education and social media campaigns. International students, who may be unfamiliar with the risks and the UK banking system, should receive particular support.

Read more:
Universities and their students are vulnerable to money laundering – new research

Third, universities and police forces need stronger partnerships. Sharing information and building established links could help identify suspicious activity and patterns of recruitment before individual cases become part of a larger criminal investigation.

Finally, the Home Office should develop a dedicated national strategy for money laundering and money-mule activity in educational settings. A consistent approach would help address the uneven enforcement, resources and relationships between police forces that our report identified.

Our report suggests that tackling money laundering effectively means looking beyond the person whose bank account receives the money. Young people may be the most visible part of the problem. But they are not necessarily the ones at the heart of it.

Nicholas Ryder receives funding from the Joffe Trust.

Sam Mapston receives funding from the Joffe Trust.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/more-young-people-are-being-recruited-as-money-mules-by-organised-crime-groups-new-analysis-reveals/

In the BBC reality show The Celebrity Traitors, the Traitors – James Acaster, Maya Jama and King Kenny – were set an unusual challenge: murder a Faithful by making them yawn. Their plan was to bore their target into yawning, then deliver the line “Am I boring you?” to seal the murder.

The task plays on one of yawning’s strangest features: its ability to spread from one person to another. Seeing someone yawn can be enough to trigger a yawn of your own, sometimes even when you are not tired. But would the same trick work if the yawn were deliberately faked?

Yawning is found across the animal kingdom and scientists believe that the behaviour dates back hundreds of millions of years. Humans yawn, but so do apes, dogs, horses, reptiles, birds and even fish, although contagious yawning – catching a yawn from another individual – is found in far fewer species.

Why do yawns spread, and what does this tell us about how we respond to other people? Researchers have several theories, from social bonding to the brain mechanisms involved in recognising and copying others’ actions. These may help explain whether a convincing fake yawn can fool us – and whether the Traitors’ task was as easy as it sounds.

One idea is known as the social bonding hypothesis. Humans and many social animals often copy each other’s behaviour without realising it. We mimic facial expressions, gestures, postures and even accents. This unconscious imitation can help strengthen social connections and create a sense of belonging.

Contagious yawning may be another example of this social mimicry. Studies have found that people are more likely to catch yawns from family members, friends and people they know well than from strangers. Similar patterns have been noted in other social animals. Wolves, for example, are more likely to respond to yawns from individuals with whom they have stronger social bonds.

Researchers have also reported that social status can influence contagious yawning. Individuals may be more responsive to members of their own group or to higher status group members, but responses are often weaker towards unfamiliar outsiders. This suggests that contagious yawning may reflect underlying social relationships.

Mirror neurons and mental simulation

A second theory focuses on the brain mechanisms that help us understand the behaviour of others. Some researchers have linked contagious yawning to the activity of so-called mirror neurons. These become active both when we perform an action and when we observe someone else performing the same action, and may help us understand the actions, intentions and feelings of other people.

According to this view, seeing somebody yawn effectively primes our own yawning system, making us more likely to yawn in response. A related idea is that contagious yawning may be linked to emotional contagion, the tendency to share the feelings and states of others. In this account, contagious yawning is related to empathy: our ability to understand and respond to another person’s experiences.

Several findings support this possibility. Contagious yawning typically emerges around the age of four or five years, roughly the same period when children develop more advanced abilities to understand what other people are thinking and feeling – often termed “mentalising”.

Reduced contagious yawning has been reported in people with autism and in those with psychopathic traits. However, while this finding fits the popular narrative for these conditions, the picture is not straightforward.

In autism, reduced contagious yawning may not necessarily reflect reduced empathy. Some studies suggest that differences in attention, particularly spending less time looking directly at faces and eyes, may account for much of the effect. In other words, if someone is not closely watching the yawner’s face, they may simply be less likely to detect the trigger for contagious yawning.

So, are fake yawns contagious?

The answer is “sometimes”, but less effectively than is the case for genuine yawns.

If contagious yawning depends partly on automatic social and emotional responses, then a convincing fake yawn may still trigger the same brain mechanisms as a real one. After all, the observer often responds to the appearance of a yawn rather than knowing whether it is genuine.

However, if the yawn looks obviously artificial or exaggerated, key social signals may be missing. The observer may not unconsciously simulate the action or interpret it as a genuine expression of another person’s state. As a result, the contagious effect may be weaker or absent.

In short, contagious yawning appears to be about more than simply seeing an open mouth. It may reflect social connection, shared attention and subtle emotional communication. For that reason, a fake yawn may be contagious when it looks authentic, but an obviously fake yawn is less likely to trigger the social mechanisms that make real yawns spread from person to person.

For the Traitors, that leaves a tricky question: could they make their target yawn without making it obvious that they were trying to do so? Their success depended on exploiting a behaviour that is partly automatic – but not entirely predictable.

Stephen Jackson receives funding from the Medical Research Council, Parkinson’s UK, Action Medical Research, and Neurotrherapeutics Ltd.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/celebrity-traitors-neuroscientist-on-whether-you-can-really-make-someone-yawn-by-faking-it/

Prime Minister Andy Burnham recently announced the creation of a National Centre for Information Defence that will disrupt disinformation campaigns by states hostile to the UK. The centre will bring together security services, police, tech firms and government departments.

But this new centre will have its work cut out. State-backed adversaries are supported by huge amounts of money – Russia alone has an estimated US$2.15 billion (£1.63 billion) annual budget for information manipulation. And China spends more, at an estimated US$10 billion (£7.6 billion). This is alongside AI-generated deepfakes and covert digital operations.

Russia, China and Iran are mounting simultaneous, coordinated operations to try to destabilise democratic governments. The UK’s new agency will have to bridge government departments and partner with and temper big tech in order to respond effectively.

Read more:
What Andy Burnham can learn from Sweden about defending against Russian disinformation

In a recent podcast interview, Burnham said there had been clear Russian interference in the UK’s 2016 Brexit referendum. He later made a similar claim in the Commons.

Charges of Russian interference in elections around the world are nothing new. After the 2016 US presidential election, the Mueller Report concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion”.

And the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee criticised the government for failing to properly investigate Russian interference in British politics. However, before Burnham’s podcast interview, the UK government had not confirmed Russian interference in the Brexit referendum, despite allegations circulating in the media.

More broadly, the level of disinformation attacks aimed at the UK is worrying. The head of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, said that the UK is dealing with more threats from other states than during the cold war. He added that Russia was “aggressor number one” (but later clarified that Russia had not succeeded in influencing the Brexit referendum result).

Disinformation itself is as old as the hills – trickery is a fundamental instrument of geopolitical conflict. Election interference is also not new. But in the AI era, disinformation operates with unprecedented speed, precision and creativity. Modern disinformation misleads and spreads harm, operating in the shadows, and is specifically designed to fall beneath the threshold for war.

The rationale is simple: why bother lobbing weapons if you can destroy an adversary’s morale? A hostile state will spend more on disinformation if it means spending less on costlier conventional weapon systems. And states are less likely to be held accountable for any damage they cause.

The primary threats to UK democracy come from Russia, China and Iran – and to a lesser extent from North Korea.

Russia relies on a strategy called “reflexive control”. This involves trying to manipulate citizens in target countries into certain behaviour – such as voting in a way that benefits Russia. It seeks to paralyse political decision-making and fracture alliances, including Nato and the EU.

China approaches information conflict through its “three warfares strategy”. This refers to psychological, public opinion and legal domains. It could include attempts to shape narratives around China’s policies on trade, Taiwan or the origins of COVID; or it might use digital deception and intimidation to win support in disputes over borders or control of the South China Sea. The aim is to break resistance without fighting.

Meanwhile, Iran invests heavily in cyber-influence operations. It seeks to stoke dissent over Scottish independence, access and leak information on Iranian dissident journalists and attack infrastructure such as power plants. In this way, Iran could undermine regional stability, radicalise target groups and manipulate public debate.

North Korea uses similar tactics, but for espionage, disruption and theft. One example is believed to be the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017, which disrupted 61 NHS organisations including hospitals.

The UK’s vulnerability

The UK’s main adversaries target the democratic process itself. They view democratic institutions, election campaigns and referendums as a country’s “centre of gravity”. As such, disrupting elections threatens the very stability of a democratic country.

The UK’s vulnerability was laid bare in a 2021 report by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). The report revealed that Russian interference in British politics was widespread. Social media manipulation, illicit financial flows and cyber-operations were listed as tactics.

The report concluded that the UK had seriously underestimated the Russian threat. Notably, the intelligence services were accused of not investigating credible allegations of foreign interference during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and the 2016 Brexit vote. This reluctance to scrutinise foreign interference had created a space for hostile adversaries to exploit.

Since the UK showed support for Ukraine, the threat has worsened. Former national security adviser Lord Ricketts recently warned that the UK faces the threat of cyber-attacks on its banking systems, energy or water supplies as the Kremlin seeks to undermine public support for Ukraine.

The new Centre for Information Defence has to do more than just rebut disinformation. It also needs to expose target audiences to common manipulation tactics and deepfake media. Archetypes like Project Servator and See It, Say It, Sorted point the way to communicating this type of threat to the public.

Beyond public awareness, resilience requires stronger media ecosystems and digital platforms. Social media companies need to enforce stricter rules over algorithms and quicker removal of fake accounts.

Sanctions against individual perpetrators could include naming and shaming, freezing assets or travel bans. The 2023 National Security Act criminalised covert foreign interference, but the legislation needs to be enforced more robustly. Fines could encourage digital platforms to comply, but governments must also do more to freeze hostile states out of diplomatic relations. They could also coordinate condemnation through alliances such as Nato, the EU and the G7.

Given the rapid evolution of AI and the blurring of boundaries between peace and war, a hesitant response is not enough. But to tackle the huge threat, the new centre needs to be well resourced – in funding, capability, human resources and leeway. Crucially, it should also focus on offence as well as defence. Boxers don’t simply parry opponents’ punches – they must land their own too.

Paul Baines is a Conservative Councillor at Charnwood Borough Council and Deputy Leader of the Charnwood Conservative Group.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/the-new-battleground-the-uks-disinformation-centre-faces-threats-on-multiple-fronts/

Anxiety. I always feel like I’m on edge. COVID, cost of living crisis, finances, current living arrangement. The majority don’t seem to care about COVID anymore and you can’t just ignore it, people are still dying from it.

Cara, whose name has been changed, described these concerns in our research into the continuing effects of the pandemic on people with intellectual disabilities. Her account shows how concerns about infection became entangled with uncertainty about everyday life.

The UK COVID-19 Inquiry’s care sector report, published on October 20 2026, focuses on how to improve support before another emergency. For people with intellectual disabilities, known as learning disabilities in the UK, that requires attention to how people live and the different kinds of support they need and receive.

The report’s first recommendation calls for pandemic planning at government, local and provider levels. But the formal recommendations are framed mainly in relation to care homes for older people and leave important details unspecified about how those plans should meet the needs of people with intellectual disabilities.

Our expert report to the inquiry, developed with input from people with intellectual disabilities and families, proposed more explicit commitments. These provide a starting point for addressing those gaps.

Protecting support for everyday life

People with intellectual disabilities have varied support needs. Our expert report describes most provision extends beyond residential care, including support for people living with family or in their own homes. Planning must also consider the services that help people participate in their communities.

Our study following adults through the pandemic found that access to day services had not returned to pre-pandemic levels by late 2022. Among adults interviewed directly, 37% had reported regularly attending before the pandemic; 26% were using some form of day service in the final research round.

These figures indicate why lifting restrictions did not necessarily restore people’s opportunities.

In our in-depth interviews, participants described losing independence and activities that were important to them. Future planning needs to address those consequences alongside infection control.

The inquiry’s first recommendation does not explicitly require protection of day services or community participation. In our expert report, we recommended planning to increase support during emergencies, while protecting access to community activities. Governments should explain how their response will achieve this.

Making health protection accessible

Public health advice is useful only if people can understand it and act on it.

Our expert recommendations called for information suitable for people with intellectual disabilities to be available at the same time as information for the general public. We also recommended prioritising the social care support people need to access healthcare, including vaccination.

The inquiry’s third recommendation requires accessible information about financial support schemes for care workers and providers. Its formal recommendations do not make an equivalent, explicit commitment to timely, accessible public health information for people with intellectual disabilities and their families.

Governments should build that requirement into pandemic plans. People with intellectual disabilities should help develop and test guidance before an emergency, with arrangements for updating it as advice changes.

Plans should also explain how people will receive practical help to follow that guidance or attend healthcare appointments. Publishing accessible advice cannot, by itself, resolve the loss of someone’s usual support.

Recognising intensive support needs

Families of people with profound and multiple intellectual disabilities described particularly difficult experiences in our research into their lives during the pandemic. They reported difficulties obtaining healthcare and support, alongside exhaustion and anxiety about the future.

The inquiry documents the loss of respite care and its consequences for unpaid carers. Yet its eight formal recommendations contain no dedicated requirement to maintain respite or other support for unpaid carers, or provide replacement care if a family carer becomes ill.

For people with profound and multiple intellectual disabilities, replacement support must be appropriate to their individual needs. Emergency arrangements should explain how someone’s care will continue if the people who usually support them become unavailable.

Our expert report recommended prioritising these individuals and their carers. Governments should make that priority explicit when implementing the inquiry’s planning recommendation, with resources to sustain support.

Including people outside existing services

Another gap concerns adults with intellectual disabilities who do not qualify for social care.

Our expert report called for better understanding of their lives and how their needs might increase during an emergency. Planning around existing social care recipients alone risks missing this large group.

Councils should work with people with intellectual disabilities and local organisations to establish accessible ways to seek help when circumstances change.

The How We Survive and Thrive commission, organised by Learning Disability England, has developed similar recommendations about maintaining support and involving people in decisions.

As governments implement the inquiry’s findings, people with intellectual disabilities and their families should help judge whether the resulting plans address their needs. Those plans must explain how support will remain available across different living arrangements, including for people who were managing without formal services before an emergency began.

Richard Hastings has received funding from the following for the research and other work described in this article: UK National Institute for Health and Care Research; UK Research & Innovation; the Baily Thomas Charitable Foundation; UK Covid-19 Inquiry.

Chris Hatton has received funding from: UK National Institute for Health and Care Research; UK Research & Innovation; Baily Thomas Foundation; UK Covid-19 Inquiry

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/covid-inquiry-four-ways-to-improve-support-for-people-with-intellectual-disabilities/

The arrival of cooler weather following a summer of heatwaves, is a timely reminder that the UK electricity system must be resilient to the effects of temperature extremes at both ends of the thermometer.

The Royal Meteorological Society has released a new report that highlights how recent weather conditions have influenced electricity generation, demand and the infrastructure that connects them.

Authored by experts from the society, the Met Office and multiple UK universities, the State of the Climate for the UK Energy Sector Report 2025-26 shows that more energy is being provided by weather-dependent renewable sources. But high and low temperatures will continue to put the energy grid’s capacity and infrastructure to the test.

Data from the National Energy System Operator (Neso) shows that renewable energy formed a higher percentage of overall energy generated in the UK over the reporting period (April 2025 – March 2026) than any other year on record. The proportion coming from the combination of solar and wind increased, providing more than 38% of the nation’s electricity. The proportion of gas-powered generation reduced to 25%.

However, the report highlights how extreme weather tests the resilience of the grid. The conditions that lead to very high and low temperatures create different challenges through increasing electricity demand, limiting generation and damaging network infrastructure. The UK’s energy network is having to adapt to cope with increasingly extreme temperatures. In cold conditions, the network is put under strain due to increased heating demand. This requires more energy at short notice, increasing reliance on non-renewable sources.

For those responsible for balancing the electricity system, including Neso, these weather extremes can create operational challenges. This makes it harder to match energy supply with demand.

Read more:
How the new Great British Grid could help households benefit from abundant and cheap renewable power

In early January 2026, strong northerly winds brought cold Arctic air, snow and ice into large parts of the UK. Initially these winds provided up to 20 gigawatts (GW) of power towards the system, a significant proportion of the demand.

But as the freeze reached its peak on the evening of January 6, the wind died down and wind generation fell to less than a quarter of the levels seen in the preceding days. Simultaneously, electricity demand peaked, with the increase in heating needs seeing demand peak an additional 5GW higher than the previous day.

Electricity supply and demand have to be kept in balance in real time. When demand rises or available generation falls, the energy system operator can maintain that balance by using additional generators to increase their output, for example. On this occasion, gas-powered electrical generation filled the gap by providing more than 25GW to the system at it’s peak.

This meant the demand was comfortably met, but this was an expensive strategy that meant the operator was paying up to £700 per megawatt-hour (MWh) for this generation. This was due to the higher cost of turning to gas generation, and the need for additional generation at short notice which costs more than generation that can be planned further in advance. This compares to the usual rate of just over £100 per MWh for the rest of January.

At the other end of the spectrum, hot temperatures are increasingly becoming more of a concern for the sector.

The summer of 2025 was the warmest on record at the time, with temperatures 1.51°C higher than average. During warmer temperatures, the network operator often limits the amount of power that transmission lines carry around the country to prevent components overheating. This reduces the risk of lines expanding more with heat which would make them sag and potentially short out on nearby vegetation or structures beneath.

Nevertheless, several faults in the network were attributed to heat causing infrastructure damage, leading to power cuts across parts of England, especially during two periods of heatwaves that occurred at the end of June and start of July.

In Europe, where temperatures also spiked, nuclear power plants were forced to limit output or shut down altogether because the water used to cool them with, taken from nearby rivers, was too warm. Increased temperatures and below-average rainfall also increased fire risks. The largest area lost to wildfire burning in the UK since satellite records began included a “mega-fire” in Scotland. Several of these fires led to localised power cuts across the country.

Preparing for future extremes

The UK’s new grid upgrade plan from the government, which aims to expand and modernise the British grid system to allow for connections to new generation sources and upgrades of current infrastructure, needs to consider the consequences of extreme temperatures. This includes ensuring that upgraded infrastructure can withstand the extreme heat we are now seeing more regularly in UK summers, as well as ensuring that capacity for transmission of electricity from generation sources to population centres is increased.

Delays to electricity grid upgrades risk higher consumer bills as the operator is required to pay wind farms to stop generating because electricity produced cannot be be carried to where it is needed, replacing it with more local gas-powered generation instead.

The resilience of the UK grid has stood up well to the challenges it faced from the weather in the past year. But maintaining that resilience requires continued investment and adaptation as the climate, energy needs of the nation and profile of energy generation all continue to change.

James Mollard is also an employee of, and receives funding from Royal Meteorological Society.

Matthew Wright 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/21/hot-and-cold-climate-extremes-push-uks-energy-system-to-its-limits-new-report-reveals/