By Julian Woolford, Head of Musical Theatre, GSA, University of Surrey
The Wicked Witch of the West is back in part two of the film adaptation, of Wicked. Part one recounted the musical’s first half and with an interval of a year, audiences can now find out what happened to Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) after she learned to fly and set off on a mission to save the animals of Oz from the Wizard’s (Jeff Goldblum) vilification
The Legally Blonde light-heartedness of Shiz University is in the past and the second part, Wicked: For Good, has moved into more sinister political territory. This story emphasises the Wizard’s…
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By Tahani Mustafa, Lecturer in International Relations, King's College London
Over the years, a charge that has repeatedly been levelled at the state of Israel is that is operates an “apartheid state”. And it’s easy to see why Israel’s opponents return to this argument.
The country’s regime of institutionalised separation and discrimination in occupied Palestine appears to meet the definition of apartheid under international law as set out by the United Nations in 1976. The international convention on the suppression and punishment of the crime of…
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By Alex Hinton, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University - Newark
President Donald Trump’s base has supported him through countless controversies. But they split from him over the release of the Epstein files. Why does MAGA care so much about this issue?
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image The logo of the Malian Armed Forces (FAMA), Bamako, Mali, February 15, 2025. © 2025 GOUSNO/AFP via Getty Images A quiet desert night in northern Mali turned deadly when an apparent military drone launched its explosive munition on a tent, leaving an entire family dead. The strike was a recent example of Malian military operations killing civilians and may amount to a war crime.The November 13 strike at about 9:30 p.m. on the village of Tangatta, in Mali’s northern Timbuktu region, killed seven civilians, including five children ages 7 to 15, from the same ethnic…
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By Aaron Spitler
“Many problems can be traced back to the data used to train models, which is often rife with stereotypes and misconceptions about LGBTQ+ people,”
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By Daniel Tornero Prieto, Profesor de Biología Celular y Director del Laboratorio de Células Madre Neurales y Daño Cerebral, Universitat de Barcelona
Alba Ortega Gascó, Investigadora postdoctoral Neurociencias, Universitat de Barcelona
Santiago Ramos Bartolomé, Biotecnólogo y Antropólogo Biológico, Universitat de Barcelona
Every year, millions of lives are suddenly, swiftly transformed by a stroke, which occurs when a blood vessel travelling towards the brain becomes obstructed, causing neurons to die off. Strokes are among the leading causes of disability in adults, and it is estimated that one in six people will suffer one at some point in their lives.
The human brain is by far the most complex organ in our bodies. Its sophisticated cellular architecture…
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By Andrea Rigon, Professor, Politecnico di Milano, and, UCL
The UK has announced much harsher rules for asylum seekers including the prospect of more deportations for those whose applications fail. The US is trebling the size of its deportation force. The EU is doubling…
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By Catherine Norton, Associate Professor Sport & Exercise Nutrition, University of Limerick
Once the clocks have gone back and darkness falls before many of us even leave work, the rhythms of winter can feel heavier — shorter days, darker evenings, and often, later dinners. But shifting when we eat during the winter could make these months a little easier on our bodies and minds.
Our bodies operate on circadian rhythms – internal 24-hour clocks that regulate sleep, metabolism, digestion and hormone cycles. These rhythms…
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By Vincent Charles, Reader in AI for Business and Management Science, Queen's University Belfast
Tatiana Gherman, Associate Professor of AI for Business and Strategy, University of Northampton
On a sunny morning on October 19 2025, four men allegedly walked into the world’s most-visited museum and left, minutes later, with crown jewels worth €88 million (£76 million). The theft from Paris’s Louvre Museum – one of the world’s most surveilled cultural institutions – took just under eight minutes.
Visitors kept browsing. Security didn’t react (until alarms were triggered). The men disappeared into the city’s traffic before anyone realised what…
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By Piers Forster, Professor of Physical Climate Change; Director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate, University of Leeds
Jessica Seddon, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Deitz Family Initiative on Environment and Global Affairs, Yale University
Despite rapid progress in clean energy and electric vehicles, the world is still warming faster than ever. The good news is that we already have powerful ways to reduce the warming rate – if governments look beyond carbon dioxide and focus on a broader set of pollutants.
We are writing this from the UN’s Cop30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, where much of the attention is rightly on the carbon dioxide cuts that we need to avoid long-term warming. But we could make faster progress by also tackling a different…
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