Friday, June 12, 2026
More civilians were killed and injured in Ukraine in May than in any other month in the past four years, UN investigators said on Friday in their latest update.
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By Katie Field, Professor in Plant-Soil Processes, University of Sheffield
A new study provides a crucial baseline: the first global map of where these fungal networks are and how much of them exists.
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By Amani Maalouf, Senior Researcher & Integration Lead, University of Oxford
Illegal waste dumping in the UK is no longer a marginal nuisance. It is increasingly operating at an industrial scale, with serious consequences.
The reported dumping of around 30,000 tonnes of waste at a protected site of special scientific interest in Leicestershire is one recent example of how severe the problem has become. Similar concerns have emerged recently at the large illegal waste site near Kidlington, Oxfordshire, where shredded mixed waste was deposited close…
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By Pippa Catterall, Professor of History and Policy, University of Westminster
A new exhibition at the Opera Gallery London, is offering two very different – yet curiously complimentary – sets of artistic responses to nature. It highlights the work of Dutch sculptor Pieter Obels and French-Chinese painter Feng Xiao-Min.
This is Obels’s first major London exhibition for ten years. Born in 1968 and now based in Tilburg in his native Netherlands, Obels is a sculptor who works primarily with the kind of complex Corten steel structures…
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By Sophie Lovell-Kennedy, PhD Student/Durham Infancy and Sleep Centre Co-Manager, Durham University
New research finds that baby slings offer important benefits, but better safety information could help prevent rare deaths and injuries.
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By Luke Brunning, Lecturer in Applied Ethics, University of Leeds
The CEO of dating app Hinge recently suggested that generation Z, “struggling to have the confidence to put themselves out there”, needs AI to help them find love. Apparently, without AI tools, younger people will struggle to express who they really are.
From the fascinating rise and uncertain social impact of AI relationship apps, to the hype of dating app companies promising…
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Sadigov detained in Tbilisi, Georgia, 2024. © 2024 RFE/RL Azerbaijani authorities’ renewed detention of exiled journalist Afgan Sadigov raises serious concerns about transnational repression and the apparent manipulation of legal procedures across borders to silence a government critic. Several masked men in civilian clothing detained Sadigov in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku on June 8, according to Sadigov’s family and lawyer. Later that day, a court ordered him to be held in pretrial detention until July 30.Sadigov, editor-in-chief…
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image The Anstalten Rosersberg prison facility in Rosersberg, north of Stockholm, Sweden, on March 4, 2026. © 2026 Jonathan Nasktrand/ AFP via Getty Images The Swedish government has dropped its proposal to lower the age of criminal responsibility to 13 for serious crimes, Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer said on June 11. Instead, officials will present parliament with a proposal to lower the age from 15 to 14.While that is better than 13, it would still be the wrong move. Sweden should keep its current minimum age of criminal responsibility at 15.Victims affected by gang…
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image Delegates of the Standard-Setting Committee on Decent Work in the Platform Economy celebrate the Committee’s approval of the text of ILO Convention No. 193 on June 11, 2026, in Geneva. The Convention was adopted by the International Labour Conference plenary the following day. © Lena Simet/Human Rights Watch (Geneva) – The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) adoption of a new global treaty for decent working conditions in the gig economy is a major step toward protecting the rights of millions of workers worldwide, Human Rights Watch said today.At its 114th…
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By Magnus Marsden, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Sussex
The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan is about an institution tasked with the job of housing strangers – Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel. Through this hotel, which sits high on a hill, and the people within it, seasoned BBC journalist and current foreign affairs editor, Lyse Doucet, attempts tell an immersive history of the sweeping changes that have faced Afghanistan since it opened in 1969.
The book has won the third ever Women’s…
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