By Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager, Professor of Critical Cultural & International Studies, Colorado State University
As recently as October 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump was heaping praise on Giorgia Meloni, telling the Italian prime minister how “beautiful” she was.
But what once looked like a political romance based on equal parts ideological alignment and strategic convenience is now reading like a classic breakup story.
In…
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By Valerie Morkevicius, Associate Professor, Political Science, Colgate University
Since the beginning of the Iran war, Pope Leo XIV has frequently called for peace, cautioning that the “delusion of omnipotence” makes military force seem preferable to diplomacy. Although U.S. Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, criticized some of the pope’s comments, a growing choir of Catholic voices has criticized the conflict by invoking the…
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By Thomas Tweed, Professor Emeritus of American Studies and History, University of Notre Dame
On the Fourth of July 1776, the congressional delegates in Philadelphia adopted the Declaration of Independence, then ordered that it be widely “proclaimed.” Couriers carried the printed version by stagecoach and horseback to every colony, where officials posted it and newspapers circulated it.
But the declaration was also meant to be read aloud. Thomas…
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image Members of the People's Party at a campaign rally at Samyan Mitrtown Hall in Bangkok, Thailand, January 11, 2026. © 2026 Teera Noisakran/Sipa USA via AP Photo (Bangkok) – Thai authorities will prosecute 44 opposition politicians for sponsoring a bill to reform Thailand’s lèse-majesté (insulting the monarchy) law, which could result in a lifetime ban from politics, Human Rights Watch said today.On April 24, 2026, the Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for Persons Holding Political Position accepted a case from the National Anti-Corruption Commission that alleges 44…
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By Amnesty International
Responding to news that the Commission of Inquiry’s report into the killings perpetrated during and after the 29 October 2025 general elections has been handed to Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, Flavia Mwangovya, said: “Victims’ families and members of the public must have an opportunity to […] The post Tanzania: Release Commission of Inquiry report into election-related killings to kickstart accountability process appeared first on Amnesty International. ]]>
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By Kai Riemer, Professor of Information Technology and Organisation, University of Sydney
Sandra Peter, Director of Sydney Executive Plus, Business School, University of Sydney
Meta and Microsoft are the latest software companies to announce big cuts to their global workforce. Both companies are also making big investments in artificial intelligence (AI).
The link seems obvious. Meta’s chief people officer, Janelle Gale, said the job cuts – about 10% of staff or almost 8,000 workers – serve to “offset the other investments we’re making”. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has previously spoken about a “major AI acceleration” with spending…
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By Margherita de Candia, Lecturer in Comparative Politics, King's College London
The Italian prime minister and leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, Giorgia Meloni, has made fostering ties with foreign leaders a central part of her political strategy. A few years before winning Italy’s 2022 general elections, she started cultivating ties with the US and European conservative world as part of a broader political rebranding effort aimed at projecting a more moderate image at home and gaining legitimacy abroad.
She subsequently became a familiar face within Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (Maga)…
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By John Stewart, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeoecology, Bournemouth University
Olivier Lambert, Researcher in Vertebrate Palaeontology, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences
Could new populations of seals and porpoises attract the descendants of some of the large shark species that were thriving in this region 4-5 million years ago?
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By Emma Linford, Honorary research associate, English literature, University of Hull
Shrinking into her yellowing wedding gown with the decay of her wedding breakfast around her, Miss Havisham, from Charles Dickens’s 1861 novel, Great Expectations, is one of the best-known characters in English literature.
Jilted on her wedding day by her unscrupulous fiancé, Havisham can be understood by modern readers as a victim of “romance fraud”, where in a fraudster manipulates someone under the guise of courtship for their own financial…
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By Aditi Upmanyu, PhD candidate in English Literature, University of Oxford
In his biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, written after her death, her husband William Godwin remarked of her travel writing: “If ever there was a book calculated to make a man fall in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.”
Today, however, Wollstonecraft is best known for a different work: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). While this landmark text helped lay the foundations of western feminist…
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