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The Conversation

The Conversation is an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community and delivered direct to the public.

UK government’s tiered COVID-19 alert systems are all flawed, warns disaster expert

Alert systems need to be clear and easy for everyone to understand. Yet, to date, the UK’s national alert system has created confusion and been largely ignored. Now, a second local alert level system has been introduced in England. I’m not convinced…

Nobel peace prize: hunger is a weapon of war but the World Food Programme can’t build peace on its own

By awarding the 2020 Nobel peace prize to the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), the Nobel committee said that it wanted to “turn the eyes of the world to the millions of people who suffer from or face the threat of hunger”.…

Estonia is a ‘digital republic’ – what that means and why it may be everyone’s future

People around the globe have been watching the build up to the US election with disbelief. Particularly confusing to many is the furore over postal ballots, which the US president, Donald Trump is insisting will lead to large-scale voter fraud…

Coronavirus: divide-and-rule tactics are clearly not working for the UK’s exhausted, fractured population

The UK government has introduced hefty fines for those not following the latest rules brought in to manage the COVID-19 crisis. It has also told bars and pubs to close at 10pm and reduced the number of people that can congregate…

How and when will we know that a COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective?

By William Petri – The Conversation With COVID-19 vaccines currently in the final phase of study, you’ve probably been wondering how the FDA will decide if a vaccine is safe and effective. Based on the status of the Phase 3 trials currently…

3 ways a 6-3 Supreme Court would be different

If the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is replaced this year, the Supreme Court will become something the country has not seen since the justices became a dominant force in American cultural life after World War II: a decidedly conservative…

The EU is on a collision course with Poland over hate crime

In her first state of the union address as president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen called out hatred and pledged to build “a union of equality”. While European institutions have been at the forefront of fighting hate…

Iran’s secular shift: new survey reveals huge changes in religious beliefs

Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution was a defining event that changed how we think about the relationship between religion and modernity. Ayatollah Khomeini’s mass mobilisation of Islam showed that modernisation by no means implies a linear process of religious decline. Reliable large-scale…

19 years after 9/11, Americans continue to fear foreign extremists and underplay the dangers of domestic terrorism

On a Tuesday morning in September 2001, the American experience with terrorism was fundamentally altered. Two thousand, nine hundred and ninety-six people were killed as the direct result of attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania. Thousands more, including…

Brexit: as the deadline looms, why are negotiations stalling?

The UK left the EU on January 31 this year. Yet, the trading relationship between the two parties will not change until January 1 2021, when the transition period agreed by both sides expires. And with negotiators heading into their…

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