The Conversation

South Africans are wearily attuned to governments’ Orwellian misuse of language. So perhaps they should not be unduly surprised that the government of the US has imported 49 Afrikaners and labelled them as “refugees”. The claim is that they are escaping from the persecution of Afrikaners – and white people more broadly – in South Africa today. But there is no evidence whatsoever that Afrikaners or white people more generally are subject to genocide.

After 18 months of punishing airstrikes, raids and an increasingly restrictive siege in Gaza, the United Nations on May 20, 2025, issued one of its most urgent warnings yet about the ongoing humanitarian crisis: an estimated 14,000 babies were at risk of death without an immediate influx of substantial aid, especially food. Aid delivery continues to be inconsistent and well below what was necessary for the population, culminating in a dire warning by U.N. experts in early May that “the annihilation of the Palestinian population in Gaza” was possible without an immediate end to the violence.

A writing professor sees artificial intelligence as more of an opportunity for students, rather than a threat. That sets her apart from some of her colleagues, who fear that AI is accelerating a glut of superficial content, impeding critical thinking and hindering creative expression. They worry that students are simply using it out of sheer laziness or, worse, to cheat. Perhaps that’s why so many students are afraid to admit that they use ChatGPT.

U.S. consumers often pay more for gluten-free products, yet these items typically provide less protein and more sugar and calories compared with gluten-containing alternatives. That is the key finding of a new study, published in the journal Plant Foods for Human Nutrition.

The top 10 cities in 2025 were London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, Washington DC, Copenhagen, Oslo, Singapore and San Francisco. The top three all do particularly well in human capital, which includes features like educational and cultural institutions. They also score highly on international profile, which looks at indicators of global interest, such as the number of airport passengers and hotels.

The United States has long led the world in cancer research. It has spent more on cancer research than any other country, including more than US$7.2 billion annually through the National Cancer Institute alone. But that legacy is under threat. Funding delays, political shifts and instability across sectors have created an environment where basic research into the fundamentals of cancer biology is struggling to keep traction and the drug development pipeline is showing signs of stress.

Hydrogen will play a significant role in achieving net zero carbon emissions by replacing natural gas in industrial and domestic heating. But it remains difficult to see how hydrogen can compete with electric vehicles, as the bulk of the car, bus and light-truck market looks set to adopt battery electric technology, which are a cheaper solution than fuel cells.

For more than 150 years, almost all people who were born within U.S. territory automatically received citizenship – regardless of their parents’ immigration status. President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order on birthright citizenship – stating that children born in the U.S. to parents who are not in the country legally, or who are not permanent residents, cannot receive citizenship – threatens to upend this precedent. The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the case on May 15.

The mere inclusion of abbreviations, although seemingly benign, start feeling like a brush-off. In other words, whenever a texter chops words down to their bare consonants, recipients sense a lack of effort, which causes them to disengage. It’s a subtle but pervasive phenomenon that most people don’t intuit.

Dramatic shifts in US policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) carry deep economic consequences. Beyond the immediate harm to trans individuals, these policies pose threats to multinational companies that have long defended inclusive workplace values. Their leaders must now navigate a cultural minefield where staying silent risks public backlash, while openly supporting trans employees can invite legal and political complications. The business repercussions of this moral issue could affect everything from brand reputation to talent retention.

The 1930s witnessed not only an economic crisis, but also a transformation of the international system fuelled, in part, by misguided political and trade decisions. This historical lesson, as the current case of Trump’s tariffs demonstrates, continues to be ignored by leaders who prioritise short-term populist measures over global economic stability.

People struggle to express tolerance for different moral values – for instance, about sexual orientation, helping the poor, being a stay-at-home mother and so on. In study after study, people are less willing to help, share with, date, be roommates with and even work for people who have different moral values. Even children and adolescents express more willingness to shun and punish moral transgressors than people who do something personally obnoxious or offensive but not immoral.

Three Mile Island was the site in 1979 of a partial meltdown at the plant’s Unit 2 reactor. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission calls this event “the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history,” although only small amounts of radiation were released, and no health effects on plant workers or the public were detected. Unit 1 was not affected by the accident. University of Michigan nuclear engineering professor Todd Allen explains what restarting Unit 1 will involve, and why some other shuttered nuclear plants may also get new leases on life.

Under current law, when the trust fund is empty, Social Security can pay benefits only from dedicated tax revenues, which would, by that point, cover only about 79% of promised benefits. Another way to say this is that when that trust fund is depleted, the people who rely on Social Security for some or the bulk of their income would see a sudden 21% cut in their monthly checks in 2036.

The Republican Party’s long-standing goal of ending federal funding for NPR, the nation’s public radio network, and PBS, its television counterpart, may be near. Across the country, 1,500 independent stations affiliated with NPR and PBS air shows such as “Morning Edition,” “Marketplace,” “PBS NewsHour,” “Frontline” and “Nova.” Some 43 million people tune into public radio every week, and over 130 million watch PBS every year, according to the networks.

The recent deportation orders targeting foreign students in the U.S. have prompted a heated debate about the legality of these actions, especially as many individuals were facing removal because of their pro-Palestinian advocacy. The current removal orders targeting student activists echo America’s long and lamentable past of jailing and expelling immigrants because of their race or what they say or believe – or all three.

Canada’s 2025 federal election will be remembered as a game-changer. Liberal Leader Mark Carney pulled off a dramatic reversal of political fortunes after convincing voters he was the best candidate to fight annexation threats from the United States. Canadians gave the Liberals their fourth mandate since 2015, although the race against the Conservatives was much closer than polls predicted. Nonetheless, only four months ago, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had a 25-point lead in public opinion polls and a fairly secure path to victory.

In his first 100 days, Trump asserted new control over the press, starting with those who cover him daily. In February 2025, his administration barred The Associated Press from the Oval Office for using “Gulf of Mexico” rather than adopting the president’s newly named “Gulf of America.”

On 28 April 1925, the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts opened in Paris. It was a landmark event in the evolution of art, architecture and design, and aroused great interest both for the works on display and for their impact.

Data that people provide to U.S. government agencies for public services such as tax filing, health care enrollment, unemployment assistance and education support is increasingly being redirected toward surveillance and law enforcement.

Poor sleep isn’t just about feeling tired − it’s linked to worsened mental health, emotion regulation, memory, academic performance and even increased risk for chronic illness and early mortality. At the same time, social media is nearly universal among young adults, with 84% using at least one platform daily. While research has long focused on screen time as the culprit for poor sleep, growing evidence suggests that how often people check social media − and how emotionally engaged they are − matters even more than how long they spend online.

A new study found that relatively low exposure to fluoride during the foetal stage (as a result of the mother’s exposure to fluoride) or in the child’s early years may affect their intelligence.

Rather than ridiculing the president’s taste, responses to the takeover would be better placed focusing on more fundamental questions about the role of the U.S. government in the nation’s artistic life. How can a national arts institution best reflect the country’s diverse range of people and interests? Prior to Trump, how well was the Kennedy Center doing at that?

One of the new administration’s early orders was for the Department of Interior to review all national monuments for potential oil and gas drilling and mining. At least two national monuments that President Joe Biden created in California are among the new administration’s targets. The avenue for many of these changes is rooted in one century-old law, the Antiquities Act of 1906, signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Deep-sea mining can pose a danger to what lives above it, in the midwater ecosystem. If future deep-sea mining operations release sediment plumes into the water column, as proposed, the debris could interfere with animals’ feeding, disrupt food webs and alter animals’ behaviors.

Declining sales, rising costs and a large debt burden of approximately US$300 million have threatened Hooters’ long-term outlook. A researcher looked into breastaurants and the toll they take on servers. Here are her findings.

After climbing for decades, the percentage of Americans with no religion has leveled off. For the past few years, the share of adults who identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” has stood at about 29%, according to a major study the Pew Research Center released Feb. 26, 2025. But this hardly means that the “nones,” or their impact on American life, are going away. In fact, their sheer size makes it likely that they will increase in political prominence.

The death of Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa (Arequipa, 1936 – Lima, 2025) marks the end of a Golden Age of Latin American literature. Just as there will not be another generation in Spain like that of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina, Góngora and Quevedo, in America there will not be another like that of Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, César Vallejo, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier and Carlos Fuentes.

The Supreme Court has now said the order to facilitate Abrego García’s return is proper. But the high court also said the district court judge should further clarify its order, being mindful of the president’s authority when it comes to conducting foreign relations. The Salvadoran government seems to be imprisoning Abrego García at the request of the U.S. government.

Foreign accents can have a big impact on the way we interpret meaning. In our increasingly globalised world, foreign accents are an inevitable part of communication, but studies suggest they can create barriers, not just in comprehension but also in perception of the speaker and social interaction.

Across the United States, many universities are dismantling DEI initiatives – closing and rebranding offices, eliminating positions, revising training programs and sanitizing diversity statements – while professors are preemptively self-censoring. While some universities may believe that compliance with the administration will protect their funding and independence, a few historical parallels suggest otherwise.

There is a broad fetishisation of manufacturing in many countries. One theory is that it is potentially ingrained in human thinking by pre-historic experiences of finding food, fuel and shelter dominating all other activities. But for Trump, the thinking is likely related to a combination of nostalgia for a bygone (somewhat imagined) age of manufacturing, and concern over the loss of quality jobs that provide a solid standard of living for blue collar workers – a core part of his political base.

Place names are more than just labels on a map. They influence how people learn about the world around them and perceive their place in it. Names can send messages and suggest what is and isn’t valued in society. And the way that they are changed over time can signal cultural shifts.

Thirty years ago in Israel, advocating for genocide could land you in prison. Not anymore. Israeli clerics and officials are openly calling for the systematic massacre of Palestinians–genocide–in Gaza. The Israeli legal system is ignoring the rhetoric.

The Democrats have been under intense pressure to find an effective way to challenge US President Donald Trump without control of either chamber of Congress or a de facto opposition leader. They may have just found one in New Jersey Senator Cory Booker.