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Opinion: Youth mental health must be a defining issue for Colorado’s next governor
Colorado can be a national leader in supporting young people’s mental health. A new coalition of state advocates and organizations is a start.
Offbeat Trade Idea Connects New OLB to Vikings
The Minnesota Vikings might have a slight roster deficiency at outside linebacker after trading Jonathan Greenard to the Philadelphia Eagles […]
Influential Women in Business honorees share how they rewrote the rules
Three influential women leaders are redefining what leadership looks like in Baton Rouge.
YOLO for GOP members? What unencumbered Republicans could mean for Trump's agenda
In a Republican-led Congress defined by deference to President Donald Trump, there's a small but steadily growing cohort who have found themselves more willing to break with the White House.
Trump-backed housing bill clears House after GOP defies Senate pressure campaign
Lawmakers passed a bipartisan housing bill backed by Trump that aims to make housing more affordable and restrict large investors from buying homes.
E11EVEN Expands Its Signature Entertainment Experience Across Miami, Toronto, and New York During this Summer's Fútbol Tournament
Globally recognized for redefining nightlife through its one-of-a-kind 24/7 ultraclub format, E11EVEN Miami will expand its cultural footprint this summer with a multi-city entertainment initiative during the World Cup. The brand will activate in Miami, Toronto, and New York with a series of match screenings and parties from June 11 through July 19.
E11EVEN Expands Its Signature Entertainment Experience Across Miami, Toronto, and New York During this Summer's Fútbol Tournament
/PRNewswire/ -- Globally recognized for redefining nightlife through its one-of-a-kind 24/7 ultraclub format, E11EVEN Miami will expand its cultural footprint...
Hardest stretch on Broncos' schedule is easy to spot
The hardest stretch on the Broncos' 2026 schedule is easy to spot, and it could define the team's season.
Omar Farha Receives Inaugural Reticular Science Prize
The honor is for major advances in the design, discovery, and application of molecularly defined materials.
A new Middle-earth open world game is coming from Kingdom Come developers
Warhorse is heading into Tolkien territory for a new Lord Of The Rings-adjacent game. Read more at Empire.
James Wood's inside-the-park grand slam powers Nationals in rally past Mets
A misplay by a Mets outfielder making his MLB debut allowed Wood to reach home without a play at the plate. The Nationals rallied from a 5-0 deficit for the win.
Senate advances bill aimed at ending Iran war as Cassidy, after primary loss, flips to support it
The Senate advanced legislation Tuesday that seeks to force President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Iran war, as a growing number of Republicans defied the president's wishes.
Time to redefine healthcare “quality”
AI assistants and innovative health insurance plans are transforming how consumers and employers find their way to high-quality care.
Defining An Intelligent Business
Some thoughts on data quality, semantic layers, human adoption, and practical strategies for building intelligent businesses
Watch live: Rethinking Psychedelic Treatment for America’s Mental Health Crisis
Psychiatry is at an inflection point — and the stakes are high. Mental illness costs the U.S. economy more than $280 billion annually, drives veteran suicide rates, and places mounting strain on ev…
Voters in six states head to polls with Kentucky’s Massie facing Trump’s fury
Contest seen as latest test of president’s grip on GOP as he urges voters to reject one of the few senior Republicans who has defied him
Spurs-Thunder Game 1: 12 numbers that defined Victor Wembanyama's and San Antonio's historic double-OT victory over OKC
GOP Rep. Thomas Massie defiant as Trump seeks to oust him in primary: "I'm going to win"
Massie said the president is worried about his preferred candidate Ed Gallrein's chances in the Kentucky race.
World Health Assembly opens with focus on equity, resilience, and global health cooperation; Region of the Americas plays active role
Geneva, Switzerland, 18 May 2026 (PAHO) — The Seventy-ninth World Health Assembly (WHA79) opened today at the Palais des Nations, bringing together delegations from more than 190 countries to define global health priorities and advance discussions on some of the world’s most pressing health challenges.
Reimagining mental health: Stanford Medicine experts chosen to lead precision task force
Stanford Medicine’s Leanne Williams was chosen to lead the Precision Mental Health Commission to redefine and streamline how psychiatric conditions are diagnosed and treated. She’s pushing for a data-driven approach that begins with brain imaging.
Scientists Created a Subatomic Particle That Defies Our Understanding of Physics
The eta prime meson held together without one of the fundamental forces of the universe.
NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy to Combine, Creating the World’s Largest Regulated Electric Utility Business and North America’s Premier Energy Infrastructure Platform Benefiting Customers
JUNO BEACH, Fla. & RICHMOND, Va., May 18, 2026--NextEra Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NEE) and Dominion Energy, Inc. (NYSE: D) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement to combine in an all-stock transaction.
Guardiola's final farewell?
It's the beginning of a defining week for Manchester City and Pep Guardiola, with Monday and Tuesday deciding whether the Premier League title race goes to the wire or comes to an abrupt halt. Arsenal face already-relegated Burnley later and City know they are likely to need to collect three points at Bournemouth on Tuesday, otherwise it will all be over. City have already won the FA Cup and Carabao Cup this season, but can they make it a domestic treble?
LGBTQ+ comedians are redefining roasts as an art form in West Hollywood
Gay comedian Andrew Stier wanted to foster a community of queer comics when he moved to L.A., so he made a comedy show. What he got was a growing production revealing queer people are meant to roast.
Best Sports Business Cities: Methodology
Explore the Best Sports Business Cities methodology, powered by 540,000+ data points and 120+ executive insights, detailing rankings, event weighting, market definitions, and indexing factors.
Louder than noise: Noam Bettan let music, not politics, define his performance
Israelis can take pride in Bettan, who represented the country with professionalism and restraint, blocking out all the outside noise to deliver a stellar performance.
Jo Rae Perkins discusses Oregon politics ahead of Tuesday’s Primary
Jo Rae Perkins is the definition of a perennial candidate.
Albany Mayor Applyrs looks ahead in budget gap update
On Saturday, the mayor said her administration has been able to find almost $6 million in savings to address a $19 million operating deficit.
'Hearts will be back' - fans defiant after title agony
Hearts fans, we asked for your opinions after the devastating 3-1 loss to Celtic that meant the league title stayed in Glasgow for another year. Celtic's title celebrations briefly cover the cracks unveiled by Hearts - that the Old Firm's dominance is over. Finished the game with too many defensive players which meant we couldn't react to going behind.
Andrew Welsh-Huggins shares fun facts about geese, nicknames, more
Columbus-based author Andrew Welsh-Huggins recalls his first story, defines what makes a writer successful and divulges his nickname.
GM's LS7 V8: The Corvette Engine That Defied Small-Block Limits
The GM LS7 is the biggest-displacement small-block V-8 ever in a production car, and it only ever featured in the Corvette C6 Z06 and the fifth-gen Camaro Z/28.
Now What? With Carbon Pricing Eroded and Pipeline Politics Advancing, Here Are the Pathways for Climate Success
At the end of a whirlwind week of news on carbon pricing and electricity strategy, capping a madcap year of pretty much non-stop, dramatic change, the word across much of Canada’s climate and energy transition community is that climate policy in this country has been shredded. Eviscerated. Hit with a sledgehammer by policy rollbacks that have pushed the country’s 2050 net zero target “well out of reach”. That means it’s never been more important to look for the rays of hope and glimmers of possibility. To glimpse the seeds of the next set of strategies to get Canada’s climate pollution under control and the country into the accelerating global dash away from fossil fuels. And then, once we’ve spotted those possibilities, get on with the hard, day-to-day slog of trying to make them a reality. Nothing takes away from the frustration and the deep disappointment so many climate and energy hawks are expressing, the sense of betrayal by the author of Value(s) and the former UN special envoy for climate action and finance. But we knew two things as the week drew to a close. We’re looking at the world as it most definitely is. And we don’t get to give up finding the pathways to confront climate change and deliver faster, deeper carbon cuts that leave no one else behind. So really, the first question we all have to ask ourselves is: What’s next? Subscribe All the Oxygen in the Room The outpouring of anger and grief over the carbon pricing deal between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been absolutely understandable. So much of the climate community poured years, more than a decade, into dragging the current federal pricing regime across the finish line, then defending it from a deluge of three-syllable rhymes after the Trudeau government proved utterly incapable of delivering its own message. The policy foisted on us by neo-classical economists took up all the oxygen in the room, burned through years of climate response time that we won’t get back, while cornering climate hawks into the position that the best response to the crisis of our lifetimes is a new tax…in an era of historic anti-tax sentiment. I mean, really—what could possibly have gone wrong? Against that history, let’s appreciate columnist Max Fawcett’s point that even a modest carbon pricing agreement with a government as off-the-wall libertarian/conspiracist as Danielle Smith’s—those adjectives are mine, not Max’s—is a win worth savouring (as long as Smith keeps her promises for a change). But part of living in the world as it is (no, I’m not letting that go) is to be clear-headed about what we can and can’t control. And one thing we get to decide, after seeing this week’s carbon price festivities take up all the oxygen yet again, is whether we want to keep letting that happen. Particularly when success down that road depends on a factor that no one with a climate agenda can control or influence—a provincial carbon pricing mechanism that has been manipulated and eroded beyond its lowest possible denominator. Thankfully, that’s not the way it has to go. Not when we have so many other powerful, practical tools at our disposal, including the ones still available to us through this abominable Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Canada and Alberta. Tools In Our Toolbox When I started roughing out this list, I didn’t expect it to grow to nearly a dozen bullet points. It’s probably still incomplete. Some of the greatest hits in today’s climate solutions toolbox include: • No Carbon Capture, No Pipeline: On Friday, Prime Minister Mark Carney explicitly stated that there’s been no change to the MOU provision that there will be no West Coast pipeline without an industry commitment to build its massive, $16.5-billion carbon capture and storage (CCUS) hub in Northern Alberta, and vice versa. The two megaprojects were joined at the hip when the MOU was signed Nov. 27, and the implementation agreement this week affirmed that they still are. A parade of independent analysts have spent years pointing to the economic and technical flaws in CCUS, while the industry kept postponing its investment decision until it could arm-twist the government for more “clarity” (by which it meant even more lavish taxpayer subsidies) on the project. Now the industry itself is running away from the CCUS hub and insisting the pipeline should proceed without it, but Carney doesn’t seem to be budging from a central tenet of the MOU to which Smith has signed on. • No Subsidies, No Investors: Climate analysts and advocates have quite rightly been hammering away at Carney and his team, insisting that any new capacity the industry wants to build must proceed without new subsidies. The government has responded with a growing collection of funding and financing mechanisms for the very wide menu of industrial development and nation-building projects they say they want to take on, and that menu always includes fossil fuel infrastructure. But it’s hard to see how even the combined fiscal clout of the federal and supportive provincial governments will deliver the financial backing private investors would need when the business case for new fossil fuel development is evaporating before their eyes. Particularly when… • No Market, No Demand, No Investors: As our friend Markham Hislop at Energi Media (our apparently sleepless friend, given the massive volume of great material he’s been churning out) points out this morning, the biggest vulnerability in any pipeline deal is the assumption that Asian buyers will want the oil or liquefied natural ga that our fossil industry is so keen to send them. Hislop writes in part: Ottawa and Alberta are effectively betting that countries like China and India will continue increasing oil imports for decades as their economies grow and energy consumption rises. That assumption underpins the entire economic rationale for expanding oil sands production and building billions of dollars in new export infrastructure. But Asian energy systems are changing rapidly… China, India, South Korea, and other major hydrocarbon importers are now investing hundreds of billions of dollars into electricity systems built around wind, solar, batteries, nuclear, hydro, and expanded transmission infrastructure. Domestic “energy sovereignty” is increasingly replacing the old energy-security model based on stable oil and gas imports. Those investments are expected to sharply slow oil demand growth and eventually reverse it, even as overall energy consumption continues rising. There are also refining constraints. Many Asian refineries and petrochemical complexes are already optimized to process discounted heavy crude from the Middle East and Latin America. That raises serious questions about how much additional Canadian bitumen Asian markets can absorb at profitable prices. Small wonder that there’s still no private sector investor for the project, despite Smith’s government desperately beating the bushes to put together a deal. For now, Alberta is acting as proponent and covering early start-up costs for a pitch to the federal Major Projects Office, which could actually turn into the next tough hurdle for Smith and her pipeline to jump. • Canada Day Looms: How ironic that Canada’s birthday this year could become a major chokepoint for the provincial premier who’s been working so diligently to tear the country apart! The July 1 target date for Alberta’s pipeline proposal is baked into the MOU, was reaffirmed by the implementation plan, but it hadn’t dawned on me that it cuts both ways. As one very smart colleague wrote in an email yesterday, “they’ve thrown the ball into Alberta’s court to get the project proposal on the table really quickly and to have to do a whole pile of work to put together a massive, complicated project that would typically take years to assemble, and they’ve given them weeks to do it.” That makes July 1 a looming deadline that Smith won’t be able to run away from politically, especially with the separatists in her party and her caucus breathing down her neck. (See previous ref to off-the-wall.) But if Alberta comes in with a sloppy, incomplete submission, even after Carney bent over backwards to simplify the application process and the rules that govern it, it may be harder for the province or the industry to blame Ottawa and insist on the faster process they claim their investors are demanding. (Oh, wait—which investors would those be??) • We’ll See You In Court (Then We’ll See You Again): If Carney did cave, that would be just one more reason for Indigenous and other affected communities to take the government and the process to court—Just as Alberta First Nations did, successfully, in response to Smith’s half-baked separation referendum. Veterans of the Harper era have been warning that a shoddy process around fossil fuel infrastructure or other major projects will be a recipe for the very delays that process seeks to avoid. And now more than ever, with renewable energy and energy storage eating fossil fuels’ lunch in import markets around the world, a delayed pipeline or LNG terminal may be as good as a cancelled one. • Charged Up, Ready to Go: With its goal of doubling Canada’s electricity supply to meet a doubling of demand by 2050, the national electricity strategy that Carney unveiled Thursday has a lot to like. With its explicit language about speeding the shift from fuels to more efficient and affordable electricity, global investment and deployment patterns that already favour that shift, an emerging bidirectional power grid, the role of front-line options like rooftop solar and heat pumps, the emergence of electric vehicles as behind-the-meter energy storage, and the domestic jobs and manufacturing to make it all happen, the document doubles down on the essential cornerstone of a faster shift off fossil fuels. The strategy envisions a more prominent role for gas and nuclear power. But some of those provisions were already in the Clean Electricity Regulations that climate hawks are now fighting so hard to defend, inserted as a compromise in a futile attempt to mollify the industry and its political representatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan. But once again, gas will be a tougher sell when it’s more expensive and now so much more unpredictable than the clean alternatives. The new nuclear technologies are still speculative and deeply vulnerable to cost overruns. Increasingly, utilities, developers, and investors know it. Carney declared Thursday that “it doesn’t do us good to be sitting in court all the time with provinces. It doesn’t do us good to be talking past each other. What does do us good is to come together with specific projects.” There are no guarantees, but so much of the language and narrative-building in the electricity strategy suggests the lion’s share of those projects will be renewable. • The Party Has Already Started: The electricity strategy only rarely digs down to specific projects, but provinces representing three-quarters of Canada’s population are already embracing a faster transition. Hydro-Québec is working on a 10-year, $185-billion renewable energy and grid buildout by 2035. Ontario recently brought 10 provinces and territories together in a National Energy Corridor Agreement to boost interprovincial and -territorial transmission infrastructure. And the MOU implementation agreement commits Alberta to facilitate investment in renewable energy projects, a big step back from its continuing, punitive restrictions on renewables development. The electricity strategy envisions much of the financing and infrastructure that will be needed to pull those advances together into an integrated whole. • Delivering on Affordability: The MOU implementation plan has little or nothing to say about affordability (are you surprised?), but the electricity strategy does, with a top-line pledge to reduce home energy costs for seven out of 10 Canadian households by 2050, a total saving of $15 billion across the board. It’s just a start, but it puts affordability on the government’s narrative map. If they’re serious and deliberate about patching together a least-cost energy strategy, it’ll have little if any room for oil, gas, or nuclear—not with powerful evidence, for example, that electricity prices are higher when those prices are set by gas. • Smith Proves that Canada Works: By signing a deal that makes it harder to claim the federal government is blocking a new pipeline, Smith has helped prove Carney’s constant anti-separatist refrain that “Canada works”—incurring the rage, no doubt, of her own political base. Canada also needs to work for anyone who depends on a clean environment, healthy and thriving ecosystems, and safe, stable climate. But with Smith and her separatist constituents setting up as a fifth column for annexation by Donald Trump’s United States, let’s set aside any notion that 51st state status for Canada is a recipe for anything other than climate disaster (and so much else). Resisting and withstanding Trump (just 170 more sleeps until mid-term elections, which is a damn sight better than the 730 we started with) doesn’t mean a free pass for a pipeline, but we can still appreciate it that keeping Canada whole and sovereign is still Carney’s Job One. • The Words Not Spoken: Apart from a commitment to export a million barrels of “low-emission” Alberta bitumen per day (memo to Smith and Carney: You realize that that’s less than the industry is already exporting??), the MOU implementation plan says nothing about the international trade and economic sovereignty deals that Carney has been travelling the world to negotiate. It didn’t have to. Carney doesn’t need permission from Danielle Smith, her American enablers, or her separatist allies to continue building the alliances that will ratchet down our economic dependency on our unstable, unreliable neighbour to the south. But every connection he builds with countries outside North America helps align our economy and our future with a faster shift off fossil fuels. Little if any of this was on our bingo cards a year or two ago. But it’s the pathway that has opened up to us. And if it gives Canada any climate or energy gains at all in an era still dominated by Trump and his increasingly ridiculous tariffs, his loutish trade negotiations and his continuing annexation threats, we have to take the wins. Not least because they’ll be the point of departure for what we can achieve in 2027, 2029, and beyond, as Trump’s grip and this era begin to loosen and then fade. What is Carney Doing? If this line of thought is right—and it’s a possibility, not a prediction—it means that Carney’s actions and decisions are largely about buying time. Time for Trump’s power to wane. Time for Alberta’s separatist/conspiracist virus to spread, mutate, die out, or at least die back, with help from a vaccine of federal steadiness and calm (appropriate enough, for a movement populated largely by vaccine deniers) that no conspiracy theory can dismiss. And time for the government’s trade and investment agenda to deliver results—even knowing that some of those results will bring impacts that front-line communities will not and should not accept. In the immediate moment, none of this changes the way the wider climate community has to respond, from campaigners to investors to front-line practitioners. All of our voices are still essential. But those voices will be stronger and more confident if we have a clearer sense of the brutal game we’ve been pulled into, and a plausible path (or two it three) for playing it to the win we need. This conversation also underscores our biggest task for the remaining years of what was supposed to be the “decisive” decade for climate response: if we can shift the energy narrative in Canada, make it a mainstream view that the country’s preoccupation with oil and gas has us falling farther behind a changing world, we’ll see far better results in the 2030s and beyond. For many veteran climate advocates, taking on that part of the fight will begin with recognizing that most of our friends and family, neighbours and colleagues already understand that climate change is real and right in front of us: they’re looking away and staying silent because they don’t have what climate communicator Katharine Hayhoe calls “efficacy”. As Hayhoe recently pointed out in a feature interview with The Energy Mix, it amounts to science denial to keep hammering away at the dire news about global warming without also helping audiences understand what they can do about it, with multiple studies telling us why that won’t work. Far better to open those conversations with the dominant crises like energy security, food security, emergency preparedness and business continuity, affordability, and financial security that have knocked climate change far lower on the list of public priorities, and will likely keep it there. We Knew This Would Happen Climate hawks have always known this day would come. For decades, we warned that everyone had to pay attention to climate change right now, because it would be much tougher to respond once the crisis itself started affecting our daily lives. We were right, and here we are. But now, thanks to decades of hard work, communities and countries have an alternative to doubling down on fossil fuels. “In 10 years everyone will have ‘always known’ that solar and batteries were going to win,” Morgan Solar Executive Chair Mike Andrade writes on LinkedIn. With the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz roiling energy priorities around the world, Canada and the United States are among the shrinking number of countries that are still very keen on fossil fuel development. Understanding that gap is a first, essential step in spotting the opportunities ahead, and averting the deep economic as well as environmental and social risk we face if we don’t seize them. Thanks for reading The Energy Mix Weekender! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. Subscribe Mitchell Beer traces his background in renewable energy and energy efficiency back to 1977, in climate change to 1997. Now he and the rest of the Energy Mix team scan 1,200 news headlines a week to pull together The Energy Mix and The Energy Mix Weekender. Chart of the Week BYD Eyes 20 Dealership Locations After Canada Greenlights Chinese EV Imports ‘Sledgehammer’ Carbon Price Deal Boosts Emissions by 230Mt, Aims for Fall 2027 Pipeline Approval ‘Worse Than Harper’: Regulatory Rollback Would Stop Canada from Assessing Project Impacts, Critics Warn Electricity Strategy Aims for Doubling by 2050, Allows ‘Flexibility’ for Gas Power Plants Opposition Mounts as O’Leary’s Data Centre Approved in Drought-Stricken Utah Diluted Carbon Price Misses ‘Reality of the World We’re In’, Could Impede Diversified Trade: Climate Institute $200B in Clean Energy Investment Will Need On-Time Delivery, Reliable Policies, Trade Association Says ‘Sovereign Pipeline’: CEO Pitches to Keep Trans Mountain in Government Hands What a Supercharged El Niño Could Mean for Canada Canada’s future is electric, and here’s how a power grid superhighway would get us there (Toronto Star) The Perilous Waters of Hecate Strait (Globe and Mail) Saudi Aramco profits jump despite conflict in Middle East (The Guardian) Farmers confront rising cost of fertilizer and fuel as spring seeding under way (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Clarkson forecasts 24% decline in offshore oil, gas capital expenditures (Oil & Gas Journal) Pipe Dreams: How Oil and Gas Fail to Deliver Economic Development in Africa (Oil Change International) Developing countries must hold the pen to script the fossil fuel transition (Climate Home News) Iran war threatens the dream of a post-oil economy in the Gulf (Washington Post) U.S. Oil, Gas Work Force Hits Lowest Level Since 2022 (Rigzone) Why Polestar Is Doubling Down on Net Zero as Rivals Pull Back on EVs (Bloomberg) Why this Michigan utility plans to sell its hydro dams for $13 (E&E News/Politico) Levees can no longer save New Orleans (Vox)
Scientists find hidden brain nutrient deficit that may fuel anxiety
A major analysis of brain scans found that people with anxiety disorders have noticeably lower levels of choline, a nutrient crucial for healthy brain function. The strongest evidence appeared in the prefrontal cortex, the region tied to emotional control and decision-making. Researchers say the discovery is the first clear chemical brain pattern linked to anxiety and could eventually lead to new nutrition-based treatments.
Scientists find hidden brain nutrient deficit that may fuel anxiety
A major analysis of brain scans found that people with anxiety disorders have noticeably lower levels of choline, a nutrient crucial for healthy brain function. The strongest evidence appeared in the prefrontal cortex, the region tied to emotional control and decision-making. Researchers say the discovery is the first clear chemical brain pattern linked to anxiety and could eventually lead to new nutrition-based treatments.
Scientists catalog the ‘fractal dimensions’ of more than 130,000 islands
The “coastline paradox” helped to define fractals, but coastlines themselves turn out to be less fractal than thought
How City of Hope is turning microbiome science into better cancer care
For years, clues pointed to the gut microbiome as a key factor in cancer treatment outcomes. Recent advances in gene sequencing are now clarifying its influence on how patients respond to therapy. At City of Hope, this clarity has catalyzed a more comprehensive model for microbiome science in cancer care. We define the microbiome as […]
Googlebook finally delivers a true desktop with app icons and widgets to Google’s laptops
For over a decade, the ChromeOS desktop has been little more than a glorified wallpaper viewer. While there is definitely an appeal to that distraction-free, minimalist approach, users migrating...
Ranking college football's 26 most-feared defensive players ahead of the 2026 season
The 2026 season will largely be defined by these elite pass rushers, linebackers and defensive backs
Globavend Expands into Digital Entertainment Through Proposed Acquisition of Loomi Entertainment
Proposed Transaction Positions Globavend to Enter the Fast-Growing AI-Enabled Short-Form Digital Entertainment MarketPERTH, Australia, May 15, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via IBN -- Globavend Holdings Limited (NASDAQ: GVH) (“Globavend” or the “Company”), an emerging e-commerce logistics provider, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Zenith Green Limited (the “Vendor”) to acquire 70% of the equity interests in Loomi Entertainment Group Limited (“Loomi Entertainment”,
Chartbook 449: Voldemort on Threadneedle street. The Bank of England and the "haunted house" of English politics.
Imagine the scene: In some Harry Potter version of 21st-century London, a group of deathless UK Treasury officials gathered from across the last century huddle over warm pints and glasses of Chardonnay. Around the table there are officials from the 1920s, the 1930s, the 1970s, 2022 and today. Inevitably, in May 2026, the subject of conversation is the disintegration of the current Labour government. Despite its huge majority in parliament, it has been reduced to tatters by catastrophic local election result. These exposed the fact that rather than having a government with a clear popular majority, the UK is like most other modern societies divided into 5 segments each of which commands between 26 and 16 percent of the vote. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the leadership at Nos 10 and 11 Downing Street - where the Prime Minister and the Chancellor (Treasury Secretary) work - seem paralyzed. They are caught between mounting discontent over unfairness and the cost of living, and tough fiscal strictures that push them into making unpopular spending decisions. In the London pub, the Treasury officials from across the ages, can barely hide their satisfaction at the latest display of democratic politics caught in the vice-grip of financial logic. “Remember the mur d’argent and the banker’s ramp?” “Just like yesterday!” There are smirks around the table. Then the representative of 2026 pipes up: “One thing you have to say about the current lot (referring to the latest hapless Labour government), you don’t have to teach them about the bond market!” There is a murmur of ascent from the Treasury Mandarins. The trauma of the fiscal crisis of September-October 2022 sits deep. Back then, in the final stages of Tory decay, a ‘mini budget’ that challenged fiscal orthodoxy led to a brief but fierce panic in one of the oldest government bond markets in the world (aka gilt market). Now all you have to do is to mention the “bond market” to hush debate. [ Paul Mason@paulmasonnews In the name of public service, and as ex-economics editor of BBC Newsnight, I offer to do a zoom call, tonight, with any Labour MP who wants to understand why bond markets do not "fall into line" with governments. 1/ 3:57 PM · May 12, 2026 · 466K Views 224 Replies · 674 Reposts · 3.93K Likes ](https://x.com/paulmasonnews/status/2054229532404519082?s=20) “And the funny thing is”, the young man in the huddle continues, “they don’t even want to talk about … ”. There is a sudden hush. Significant looks are exchanged around the table. About? One of the senior figures puts down his glass with a decisive “clink”. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has entered their thoughts. Meanwhile, a few miles away in a grubby pub in Bloomsbury, two conspirators from the camp of Critical Macrofinance huddle over cans of low-alcohol IPA. They look at each other and blurt out loud: “The Bank!” “Everyone in the bloody Labour party is talking about the bond market. But why aren’t they even mentioning … the Bank of England!?” “Why is no one talking about Voldemort?” In Paul Mason’s blogpost, after much chest-thumping about basic fiscal logic, the basic point about the Bank of England is buried in the fine print at #3 in his list of suggestions as to what a radical Labour government might actually be able to do! [ Conflict & Democracy Down with the bond market! Down with gravity! It may seem unfair to focus on Labour MP Paula Barker for her off-the-cuff assertion that the bond market would have to “fall in line” with Andy Burnham, should he replace Keir Starmer as prime minister. But Burnham himself told the New Statesman that Labour had to “get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets… Read more 2 days ago · 100 likes · 3 comments · Paul Mason ](https://htsf.substack.com/p/down-with-the-bond-market-down-with?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web) Back in Bloomsbury they shake their heads and ask: “Didn’t we learn anything from the Eurozone crisis?” Meanwhile, as if summoned to the conversation by some higher force, the “pink pages” announce: “The days of ultra-cheap government borrowing have come to an end” and Martin “Whizzard” Wolf publishes the graph of the season Look at the UK in 2026, perilously positioned on the upper edge of the pack. No wonder no one in London needs any lessons about the “bond market”. But, look again. Imagine how they feel in Rome. What is London’s nightmare in 2026? The nightmare is that you end up like Italy in the early 2010s during the Eurozone crisis. Once comfortably situated in the middle of the pack, watching with horror as your ten-year yields explode to 7 percent and “spreads” become a national nightmare. One of the largest economies in Europe, a founding member of the euro, stigmatized. But the message of the Italian experience is ambiguous. After all, the stigma didn’t last. In 2026, Italy borrows at rates lower not only than the UK but the US. The US, which, as everyone knows, enjoys the “exorbitant privilege” of being the issuer of reserve, safe asets. What kind of magic is this? How did Italy, in the space of fifteen years, go from being good, to bad and back again? Which brings us back to our dissident friends in their Bloombury boozer and their memories of the Eurozone crisis. Italy never was Britain - with its ongoing fiscal deficits. Without interest payments, on primary balance, from 2000 to 2020 Italy ran a tight fiscal ship. Even in 2008 it barely went into deficit and when it was being put on the rack in the early 20210s its primary surplus matched that of austere Germany. So, what happened? How did it end up stigmatized? Of course Italian politics didn’t help. Berlusconi was at the helm and he had legal issues. But amongst friends in the Bloomsbury pub, Berlusconi is a sideshow, the name we whisper to each other is “Trichet”. From 2004 to 2011 the ECB was headed by Jean-Claude Trichet, ex of the French Treasury, more German than the Germans. After 2009 as the news of the Greek fiscal disaster broke, the European bond markets wento into panic mode and Trichet began a brutal game of cat and mouse. Between 2009 and 2011, Trichet intervened in the bond market to help, only when he thought he had compliance with austerity. When he thought they were uncooperative, he withdrew. In the summer of 2011, he even made direct suggestions to his Italian counterparts in Rome, as to how Italy should be governed. It was this cat and mouse game that drove the bond markets crazy and exposed Italy to a violent squeeze. When Mario Draghi took over the ECB at the end of 2011 and declared “whatever it takes”, the pressure on Italy, gradually eased. It is that starring role that has made Draghi into the towering figure in European politics that he remains today. So now you see why voices in London hush when it comes to the Bank of England. “The bond market” isn’t an irresistible objective force like the weather or an avalanche. It can appear like that. But that depends on the way it is being handled, or not handled by the central bank. Which is why the silence about the Bank of England in London right now is so significant. If you think this all sounds a bit fishy, coming from a left-liberal Keynesian like myself, well, let me introduce you to Robin Brooks, who, to put it mildly, plays on a different quidditch team to me. Here, from the position of a fiscal hawk is Robin’s celebratory account of the Bank of England’s role since 2022; In October 2022, at the height of the bond market blow-up in the UK, something incredible happened. Governor Andrew Bailey told British pension funds the Bank of England would end its support program for the country’s fragile gilt market, drawing a line under how much help the central bank was willing to give to exposed pension funds and - implicitly - the government. By the end of that week, Kwasi Kwarteng - the finance minister - had resigned. Prime Minister Liz Truss would soon follow. This episode is so incredible because it contrasts with what happened in the Euro zone earlier that year. Bond markets in Spain and Italy were under pressure amid high inflation and rising interest rates. In the middle of this, Mario Draghi - Italy’s Prime Minister - resigned, compounding pressure on bond markets of high-debt countries on the Euro periphery. Unlike the Bank of England, the ECB caved. It bought Italian and Spanish government bonds in an effort to cap yields and introduced a new tool that signaled to markets it might do such caps more frequently going forward. Faced with pressure on bond markets, the ECB capitulated to political pressure from high-debt countries like Italy and Spain. The Bank of England stood its ground and toppled the Truss government. This kind of thing has long-lasting consequences. It means markets price a higher probability of yield caps in the Euro zone, which keeps Italian and Spanish yields artificially low, while markets feel free to push up UK yields without fear of central bank intervention. As I flagged in yesterday’s post, this means you really can’t compare UK yields to those of other high-debt countries. The UK looks worse, but only because its central bank isn’t interfering with markets. There’s more to this than just that 2022 episode. The Bank of England has also been much more aggressive in its quantitative tightening (QT) than other central banks. If one motivation for quantitative easing (QE) is to lower bond yields - especially longer-dated ones - then it stands to reason QT pushes yields up. The left chart above shows a four-quarter moving average of UK government debt issuance (black line) in percent of GDP and which sectors absorb this issuance, including the Bank of England (blue bars). The right chart above compares the Bank of England’s accumulation or run-off of government bonds (blue line) with that of other central banks, where this blue line is the same as the blue bars in the left chart. The Bank of England was quicker and more aggressive than other central banks in downsizing its bond holdings, so UK yields will have risen more than elsewhere also for this reason, not just because of Governor Andrew Bailey’s remarks in October 2022. Back in October 2025, after a conversation in New York with friends in British politics, my sense of dysphoria was such that I raised the issue of the Bank of England openly in the FT Since 2008, the UK has slid into a deep economic and political predicament. Growth has stagnated to a degree far worse even than in the 1970s. The Tory leadership’s wager on the Brexit referendum spectacularly backfired, leaving the UK isolated from Europe and at the mercy of its special relationship with the US, many of whose political class regard the UK as a basket case. After years of austerity, the Labour party lurched to the left and then back to the centre. The Tory party has been eclipsed by the populist nationalism of Reform. Any British government should be worrying first and foremost about how to restart growth. Instead, Keir Starmer is beset by shades of the gilt market panic triggered by the Liz Truss government in 2022. The debt level is higher than in recent years, but there is no cause for panic. UK debt is at far from critical levels and of long duration. Whether you want to “take back control” or launch progressive economic policy, a democracy dogged by fear of bond market vigilantes is unhealthy. In a country that is a monetary sovereign, this climate points to one thing: a disconnect between the government and the central bank. Since 1997, the independence of the Bank of England has become a sacred cow. But independence is what you make of it. And in the wake of the gilt market crisis of September 2022, relations between the Bank of England and the UK government need a reset. In normal times, there is no doubt that an inflation-targeting independent central bank can serve a country well. But since 2008, the UK and other advanced economies have not had the luxury of such simple problems. To their credit, central bankers around the world have not stood on orthodoxy. After 2008, the US Federal Reserve rescued the global banking system and, through quantitative easing, it stabilised the Treasury market in the face of huge deficits. In Europe, things were trickier. Both the Bank of England under Mervyn King and Jean-Claude Trichet’s European Central Bank played cat and mouse with national governments. This was a high stakes wager that between 2010 and 2012 escalated bond market tension and triggered a disastrous turn to austerity. Shaken by the impact of those shocks, their successors, Mark Carney and Mario Draghi adopted a more protective stance (assuming you were not the government of Greece). Recall that Draghi’s legendary slogan, “Whatever it takes”, was uttered to face down the City of London’s bond vigilantes. In 2015, Draghi launched QE — financial repression by another name. In 2016, Carney used the authority of the Bank of England to stabilise markets following the vote for Brexit, an exemplary demonstration of how central banks can underpin democratic choice, even when those choices are wrong headed. All these were independent central bankers steeped in the best practice of the 1990s, who recognised that historic crises demanded radical action. It was the price surge of 2021-2023 that poisoned the atmosphere. Though the shock came mainly from the supply side, central banks ended up in the dock. Nowhere more so than in the UK. The Bank of England reacted with aggressive normalisation. Faced with a cost of living crisis, the governor called for workers to accept real wage cuts. In early 2022, as gas prices were at record levels and Russia’s army was poised to invade Ukraine, the Bank adopted a stringent programme of quantitative tightening, elevating interest rates. When the Truss government got itself in trouble, the Bank took almost a week to come to the rescue. Rather than enacting a charade of normality, it is time to recognise that in 2025 the UK faces a period of historic transition. To meet this challenge, what is needed is a new concordat with the Bank. This should not ignore inflationary pressures or the long-run trajectory of debt, but should affirm the priority of reviving investment-led growth. One could follow Donald Trump in demanding interest rate cuts. The Bank could shadow the ECB in its commitment to capping Eurozone yields. But the top priority should be to lay the ghost of September 2022. The Bank’s slowing of QT last month was a concession. An immediate and complete end would send the right signal. Such a concordat will not by itself restore sanity to politics, solve the housing problem or rebuild the NHS. But it would help to lift the fear of bond market crisis, which is paralysing the effort by democratic politicians to answer the fundamental questions facing the nation. Now, that call for a new concordat between government and Bank of Englands seems more urgent than ever. The problem is that in October 2025, Starmer still had some authority. Today the government is in tatters. And when you are the “under the harrow” - to echo a phrase of Montagu Norman’s from the 1920s - it is the worst possible time to consider institutional change. To make general arguments at a time of crisis can only seem like special pleading rather than a general argument for long-term change. The same, unfortunately, is also true for the other basic institutional reform that Britain urgently needs i.e. the abolition of the out-dated first past the post electoral system and its replacement by a moderated form of proportional representation. And thirdly - whilst we are saying the quiet parts out loud - Britain needs to reopen the question of EU membership. What the local election results of 2026 show is that this remains a key issue. And what they also show is that there is a clear majority that would favor a return. Until these basic features of Britain’s political economy are addressed the country will carry on its politics as though in a haunted house, governed by governments that lack actual majorities, conjuring up false constraints whilst ignoring the real ones. This one is for DG and MI. I love writing the newsletter. If you enjoy it too and fancy buying me a coffee once a month, you know what to do. Click below! Subscribe
Revisiting the Blaze Alexander Trade Way Too Early
Introduction On February 5th, 2026 Arizona Diamondbacks GM Mike Hazen sent fan favorite infielder Blaze Alexander to the Baltimore Orioles in exchange for relief pitcher Kade Strowd, along with two minor league prospects, RHP Wellington Aracena and infielder Jose Mejia. It definitely hasn’t been long enough to evaluate this trade fairly, and won’t be for […]
Angus Taylor’s tough talk on migration puts politics over policy and risks feeding damaging stereotypes
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From chessboards to computer science
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Forbes Unveils Its Inaugural Ranking Of The Top Family Businesses Featuring America’s Biggest Family Companies Driving Jobs, Growth And Generational Success
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Albany mayor offers specifics on city budget shortfalls
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Introducing Northwood Insights, a New Blog for the Next Generation of Business Leaders
New content platform strengthens the university’s digital presence, broadens its reach among prospective students, and establishes Northwood as a thought leader in business, free enterprise, and entrepreneurial education. Northwood University has launched Northwood Insights, a new blog designed to position the university as a leading voice in business education, free enterprise, entrepreneurship, and career development. The platform delivers expert, research-informed content to prospective students, current students, and the broader professional community, meeting audiences where they already are online and searching for answers. “Northwood has always been about preparing people to move forward with clarity and confidence,” said Marketing and Communications Officer Rachel Valdiserri. “With Northwood Insights, we’re meeting students where they are with content that’s relevant, direct, and built for how they discover and learn today. It’s not about adding more noise; it’s about delivering ideas, perspectives, and insights that help them make more informed decisions earlier in their journey.” The blog features a growing library of articles spanning Northwood’s core academic strengths, including business administration, automotive and mobility studies, sports management, and entrepreneurship. Each piece is written to inform and guide, answering the real questions students are asking while organically connecting readers to the academic programs, faculty expertise, and career outcomes that define a Northwood education. Each article is crafted to reflect Northwood’s institutional voice while being optimized for the search behaviors of today’s prospective students, a generation that begins researching universities long before they apply. By appearing in those early search results, Northwood establishes credibility, builds familiarity, and creates a meaningful connection with students the moment they are most open to influence. “This platform is a natural extension of our enrollment strategy,” said Dr. Matthew Bennett, vice president of enrollment and strategic alliances. “When a prospective student searches for career paths, we want Northwood to be the source they trust. Northwood Insights makes that possible at a global scale.” Beyond enrollment, Northwood Insights serves the university’s broader advancement mission. As a platform built to demonstrate expertise and institutional relevance, it reinforces Northwood’s standing as a thought leader in free enterprise education and entrepreneurial leadership, directly supporting alumni engagement, donor confidence, and community partnerships. The content signals that Northwood is not only preparing students for the careers of today but actively shaping the conversations defining the industries of tomorrow. “Attention isn’t given anymore; it’s earned,” said Milada Dzevitski, Northwood’s digital content and technical writer who manages the Northwood Insights blog. “This platform is built to meet that standard, with content that’s relevant, direct, and worth engaging with.” Northwood Insights is live now and will continue to grow with new content published regularly. Share this page
Analyst defines Bills' offseason by 1 word
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What to know about Hawaiʻi's efforts to limit corporate donations in politics
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How AI Is Reshaping Entrepreneurship for Gen Z and Small Business Owners
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming entrepreneurship by lowering barriers like cost, connections, and expertise. As a result, 77% of founders say it’s now accessible to start and grow a business regardless of background. Gen Z is driving this shift, with 73% managing multiple income streams and using AI to start and grow businesses. The result is a rise in flexible “portfolio careers,” where networks, personal branding, and digital tools are key to success. Key findings from LinkedIn’s research: 77% of founders say entrepreneurship is accessible regardless of background 73% of Gen Z entrepreneurs have multiple income streams 69% of founders say entrepreneurship is more achievable than ever 75% of entrepreneurs say networks are critical to success 68% of Gen Z entrepreneurs say AI is important to their business How are Gen Z entrepreneurs reshaping business? New research from LinkedIn shows how the use of AI, shifting career priorities, and evolving definitions of success are reshaping how businesses are started and grown. Gen Z is leading a shift toward more flexible ways of working, with nearly three-quarters (73%) of Gen Z entrepreneurs reporting multiple income streams, compared to 56% of Gen X. This highlights growth in “portfolio careers” designed to build resilience and create greater control over work and income. How is AI making entrepreneurship more accessible? AI and digital tools are making entrepreneurship more accessible, lowering traditional barriers such as cost, connections, and expertise. More than three-quarters (77%) of founders say entrepreneurship is accessible regardless of background, while 69% say it is more achievable today than ever before. Younger entrepreneurs are driving this change, with more than two-thirds (68%) of Gen Z entrepreneurs reporting that AI and digital tools are important to their business, more than twice the rate of Baby Boomers (27%). Nearly one in five (18%) Gen Z entrepreneurs say AI made starting their business feel possible. AI is also helping small business owners compete for talent: 57% of US entrepreneurs say that AI can help them compete with larger companies to find and attract better candidates. Related: The AI Edge for Entrepreneurs
VENU Announces Expansion Plans of Its Premium Live Entertainment Portfolio into Tennessee with Landmark $300 Million Amphitheater at the Bend in Chattanooga
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TribeVibe Entertainment sweeps WOW Awards 2026 with five wins, cementing its position as a defining force in India's live entertainment landscape
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What to know about states' efforts to limit corporate donations in politics
Two states could try to squeeze companies’ money out of politics by redefining the powers of corporations
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Why joining the family business was James Reed’s hardest decision — and why it paid off
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Donovan Mitchell explodes for NBA playoff record-tying 39 second-half points, leads Cavaliers to 2-2 series tie with Pistons
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UT Health Henderson Achieves Elite National Status with Straight “As” For Patient Safety
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Americans See Health Care Costs, Deficit, Inflation as Big Problems Facing the Nation
Issues like money in politics and Republicans’ and Democrats’ ability to work together are also seen as very big problems across the political spectrum.
Americans See Health Care Costs, Deficit, Inflation as Big Problems Facing the Nation
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American Business Awards® Recognize SPS for Redefining the Modern Workplace
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Trump Rejects Iran’s Response to U.S. Proposal as Oil Prices Surge
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Shane Van Gisbergen Makes Flawless Rally To Win Watkins Glen
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Bryce Harper Makes Worrying Admission on Health Issues After Unexpectedly Exiting Mid-Game
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Opinion: How Alaska’s small businesses are redefining ‘local’ in the digital frontier
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UK's Starmer launches political fightback, putting Europe ties at heart of reset
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Manchester City's Phil Foden To Sign New Long-Term Extension
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Dignity Health Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital Achieves 6th Consecutive Hospital ‘A’ Safety Grade in Patient Safety
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Nottingham Forest v Newcastle United: Key stats and talking points
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Is Autodesk (ADSK) Using Small-Business Flex Pricing To Quietly Redefine Its Competitive Moat?
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MARY BRUNKOW
A chance discovery made around 80 years ago paved the way for Mary Brunkow’s painstaking work, which contributed to redefining how the immune system functions. From investigating an obscure gene dismissed as ‘junk’ by other scientists, to choosing to opt out of academia and conduct her research at a biotech startup, Brunkow has embraced the unexpected throughout her career.
Asus ExpertBook Ultra 14 with Core Ultra X7 launches today for an insane $3599 price tag
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ASUS ExpertBook Ultra Now Available for Purchase in the United States
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Science diplomacy lessons from a North Korean volcano
Mount Paektu, a mythic, active volcano on the border between North Korea and China, is almost the epitome of a scientific challenge that crosses political lines. In 946 CE, it erupted in one of the five biggest volcanic events of the past 10,000 years, kicking up huge quantities of ash and sending destructive mud flows down river channels for hundreds of kilometres. Should this happen again, the entire region, including easternmost Russia, South Korea and even Japan could be hit. “It’s definitely got the potential to be big,” said James Hammond, a professor of geophysics at Birkbeck, University of London. An eruption on the scale of 946 would have “huge regional impact.” For the past 15 years, Hammond has helped lead a groundbreaking collaboration with North Korean scientists to study the volcano, navigating scientific sanctions, tough export controls on scientific equipment and a long, pandemic-enforced exodus from the country. Although he seems more at home on far-flung research expeditions – before speaking to Science|Business, Hammond was camping out on a Greenland ice sheet – he has also advised the European Commission on its changing science diplomacy strategy. His long experience with North Korea has made Hammond sceptical of blanket bans on science collaboration, no matter the country.This is a live question in Europe, where in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, institutional ties with Russian universities were almost entirely severed, although some scientists fear this could undermine our understanding of climate change’s impact on the Arctic. Here, Hammond tells the story of the Mount Paektu mission and the policy lessons he takes from it. Ominous rumblingsThe genesis of Hammond’s collaboration came in 2002, when Mount Paektu began to rumble ominously. Earthquake activity picked up and the volcano began to emit unusual gases. North Korean scientists took notice. “People felt we need to know more about this volcano,” said Hammond. In 2011, North Korean vulcanologists put out a request for international expertise to help them learn more. At the time, Hammond and his collaborator, Clive Oppenheimer, were working on a vulcanology project in another sanctioned country, Eritrea, and so decided to answer the call. Within a month, they had flown into Pyongyang. “It was pretty incredible,” recalls Hammond (left). “We were made to feel like honoured guests, and invited to official celebrations.” The scientific opportunity was huge. Paektu is unusually positioned, a thousand kilometres from where tectonic plates rub against each other in the Pacific. “It was an incredibly interesting volcano, but not much research had been done, at least not in the international community,” he said. “There was so much we felt we could do. And we had these partners that were super keen to engage.”The mission received an unusual visitor in the form of volcano-obsessed filmmaker Werner Herzog, who accompanied Hammond and Oppenheimer while directing his 2016 film Into the Inferno about volcanos across the world. Four days into the trip, the German director delivered a long speech about reunification to his North Korean hosts, recalls Hammond. “He got to the heart of the Koreans and how they felt, and how they thought, in a way that I'm not sure I ever will,” he said. UN sanctionsHowever, Hammond realised he’d been “naïve” about how difficult it would be to collaborate with North Korea, which was sanctioned far more heavily than Eritrea. “We didn’t fully appreciate the all-encompassing nature of restrictions,” he said. In 2016, as tensions escalated over Pyongyang’s nuclear tests, a United Nations resolution banned all joint scientific work with North Korea. However, the UN sanctions did allow countries to request carve outs, and the UK successfully requested an exemption for Hammond’s work. Related articlesEU pushes for joint science diplomacy, but care needed to avoid gridlock, experts sayRussia severs its last ties with German scienceAnchor Greenlanders in Arctic climate research, experts tell EU ahead of policy updateExport controls have also delayed Hammond’s work. In one case, it took 18 months to get approval from the UK government to take seismometers, which measure earthquakes, to North Korea. “It was frustrating,” he said. “But they didn’t just say no.” However, one instrument, called an induction coil, used to measure how the earth conducts electricity, was blocked entirely because it can in theory be used to detect submarines. Karaoke bondingSince the collaboration started in 2011, Hammond has visited the country around 15 times, although the pandemic closed off North Korea for more than five years. A trip last November was Hammond’s first since the outbreak. Despite this lengthy interlude, Hammond has deep bonds in the country. The North Korean scientists Hammond works with are somewhat isolated, as they struggle to access the latest research papers and travel to international conferences. That said, they are “excellent geophysicists” and are “very well trained in the field,” he said. Over karaoke and chats about their families, “we’ve made friendships, for sure,” he said. The authorities have to sign-off things like the placement of seismometers, for example, but Hammond said these requests have been approved. “Everything that we've asked for within a scientific context has been delivered.”Scientific backchannels? These kind of personal links between scientists across political lines are one purported benefit of science diplomacy. During the Cold War, some historians argue, scientific contact between the US and Soviet Union laid a groundwork of trust for other cooperation, such as on arms control. Hammond agrees that backchannel contacts to North Korean geophysicists are hardly likely to defuse a military crisis on the Korean peninsula, but the simple fact of the scientific collaboration makes contacts between diplomats that little bit easier. “It creates opportunities to understand each other a little bit better,” he said. “When maybe you have those more difficult discussions as diplomats, it's coming from a slightly better place.” Cutting tiesDrawing lessons from the Mount Paektu mission for today’s links with Russian science isn’t simple. The analogy is far from exact, Hammond said, “because one is essentially a Cold War, versus a pretty hot war in the case of Russia.” But Hammond’s broader argument is that the challenges we face, such as climate change, pandemics, biodiversity loss, pollution and so on, have globalised in an unprecedented way, making blanket shutdowns in collaboration with any country unwise.He’s somewhat critical of the UN scientific sanctions imposed on North Korea in 2016, even though they did allow for exceptions. “I think a blanket halt to some of these things, when we face big global challenges [. . .] that’s quite a risky thing to do,” he said.Institutional endorsement?European academics are still by and large free to work individually with Russian counterparts. However, official, institutional partnerships have largely ended. Shortly following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian university rectors wrote a public letter endorsing the war, meaning European universities fear official collaboration could also be seen as a kind of endorsement. Hammond acknowledges there is a risk of legitimising regimes, and state-controlled universities, through scientific cooperation. “That’s the trade off you have to make,” he said. Strategic projectsWith Russia, instead of giving a green light to restart all Arctic science, a middle ground might be firing up a few carefully selected “strategic” projects, said Hammond. After all, European countries are still collaborating with Russia on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, an experimental nuclear fusion plant in the south of France. However, even if Europe did try to revive Arctic science with Russia, there’s no guarantee Russian scientists would play ball. A series of high-profile arrests of physicists in Russia accused of sharing their findings with the outside world has made collaboration fraught. Even before the invasion of 2022, “the Russian regime made it increasingly difficult, and this sort of discouraged people,” Dag Rune Olsen, rector of the Arctic University of Norway, told Science|Business last year.
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