Coming up with the cash for a down payment is not easy. If the goal of homeownership is out of reach because of that upfront amount required, you may be tempted to dip into the savings you have stashed for other purposes — like your retirement.

In fact, the Trump administration recently suggested this possibility, proposing to “allow investors to use some of their retirement funds to make a down payment on a ​house,” said Reuters. It is already an option to borrow against retirement funds through a 401(k) loan, assuming your plan permits it. But is raiding your retirement for a home purchase a financially sound idea?

While the specifics of the Trump administration’s proposal have yet to be revealed, there are some major caveats and drawbacks to 401(k) loans. And generally, taking money out of your retirement, even if you repay it, will reduce your later balance. Here are some pros and cons to help you decide whether utilizing your 401(k) makes sense.

Pro: It is an immediate source of cash for a down payment

The obvious benefit of tapping your 401(k) for a down payment on a house is that it is a quick source of cash, assuming you have built up a decent balance. There are limits on how much you can borrow through a 401(k) loan, though: The “maximum loan amount is $50,000 or 50% of your vested account balance, whichever is less,” said Bankrate.

Con: You have to repay the loan

A 401(k) loan is money borrowed that you will have to repay, even if those payments are technically going back into your own account. Loan payments are typically automatically deducted from your paycheck, which will mean less money to put toward other expenses, including payments on your new mortgage. For repayment, the “time frame is normally no more than five years,” meaning with a “$50,000 loan, that’s $833 a month plus interest,” said Investopedia.

Pro: Interest on a 401(k) loan is paid back to your account

Unlike with a traditional loan, where the interest you pay goes to the bank, interest paid on a 401(k) loan “will go back into your retirement account, although on a post-tax basis,” said Bankrate. As a result, “you are earning at least a little money on the funds you withdraw,” said Investopedia.

Con: You will lose out on potential investment growth

When you take money out of your 401(k), you will lose out on the potential growth of those funds. Even if you repay the full amount, those lost years during which interest could have continued compounding could result in a gap in your retirement savings balance. Plus, “some plans don’t allow employees to make regular contributions until the loan is paid off,” said NerdWallet, putting you further behind.

Pro: No credit check is required

A 401(k) loan “won’t require a credit check or be listed as debt on your credit report,” said Bankrate (though your employer will likely know about the loan). This means that if, for some reason, you are “forced to default on the loan, you won’t have to worry about it damaging your credit score because the default won’t be reported to credit bureaus.”

Con: Leaving or changing jobs will expedite repayment

Repayment expectations shift for a 401(k) loan if you are no longer at the job where you have your 401(k). Should you leave your job, whether because you want to change companies or get laid off or fired, “you must repay the loan by the due date of your federal income tax return or the loan will be considered a withdrawal,” said Investopedia. A 401(k) withdrawal will entail paying income taxes on the amount and, if you are under the age of 59 ½, a 10% early withdrawal penalty.

Humanity’s energy needs could be revolutionised by a source created during the very formation of the planet.

Geothermal power plants use energy stored in the form of heat beneath the Earth’s surface. They are built where there are underground reservoirs of water around fault lines in the Earth’s tectonic plates and use the power of the planet’s natural heat to generate electricity.

Pro: environmentally friendly

Geothermal energy has a low carbon footprint because it produces minimal greenhouse gases when compared to fossil fuels.

Once a plant is up and running, there’s effectively no emissions produced and ground source heat pumps for the home, which use heat from water underground, require very little maintenance, with the capacity to heat properties for more than 80 years.

Con: greenhouse gases 

But drilling into the ground to build geothermal power plants can mean that greenhouse gases are released from underground. Although these gases are also released into the atmosphere naturally, the process is accelerated near geothermal plants.

That said, the amount of gas released “pales in comparison with the number of pollutants pumped into the atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels”, said The Eco Experts.

Pro: renewable

Geothermal energy is a source of renewable energy that “will not run out”, said the BBC, because the hot reservoirs within the planet are “naturally refilled, making it both renewable and sustainable”.

It is widely regarded as a reliable, constant power source with the potential to help stabilise grids and it’s seen as a viable alternative to fossil fuels. It is also not dependent on weather conditions.

Con: location-specific 

These sorts of power plants “can’t be built everywhere”, said the BBC. It’s easiest to set them up near fault lines, but they “become more expensive and difficult to set up the further down you have to drill to reach hot water”.

There’s a high concentration of these plants in western US states, such as California, due to their location along the Pacific Ring of Fire. Iceland is a world leader due to its location on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Pro: job creation 

Geothermal plants have operational lifespans of up to 80 years, so they can offer stable jobs for a long time. They bring employment to rural areas where opportunities otherwise may be particularly scarce.

The energy the plants produce is the renewable energy that generates the most employment per unit of installed capacity, according to a report by the World Bank in 2023, said Enel.

Con: expensive

The typical cost of building a small one-megawatt (MW) power plant is between £1.7 million and £6.1 million, said The Eco Experts. A 500 MW power plant would cost around £2.5 billion to get started.

The initial cost of building these plants in the UK would be high because the pipes might have to reach hundreds of metres or more underground to reach sources of hot water.

Even if you have already chosen an account for retirement savings, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t change your mind about it later. In fact, this is not at all uncommon — and many people see meaningful benefits from making a switch further down the line.

One common swap that people make is converting their traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. With this move, retirees can skip paying taxes on their withdrawals, but they will need to pay taxes on the money contributed, as a Roth IRA is funded with after-tax funds as opposed to pre-tax funds like a traditional IRA.

To determine whether or not this tax trade-off makes sense, it is important to weigh both the benefits and the drawbacks that a Roth conversion can have.

Pro: You will enjoy tax-free growth and withdrawals.

Since you pay taxes up front with a Roth IRA, the money you put into it can grow tax-free, and later withdrawals are tax-free as well. That tax-free growth can make a big difference in your life — “if you let your investments grow over several decades, that could lead to tens of thousands of dollars in tax savings,” said Ramsey Solutions, a personal finance blog. Plus, if you expect to be in a higher tax bracket later than you are now, that could result in “significant tax savings down the line,” said Vanguard.

Con: Your tax bill could go up right now.

While you may see tax benefits later, you are likely to end up with a tax bill now. When you convert a traditional IRA or 401(k), “you’re recognizing that contribution as income, and you must pay taxes on it — the taxes you didn’t pay when it went into the traditional account with pre-tax dollars,” said Bankrate. Depending on the amount you convert, that could even push you into a higher tax bracket overall.

Pro: You will not have to take RMDs.

A Roth IRA does not mandate taking required minimum distributions (RMDs), which the IRS requires for other account types, such as traditional IRAs, once you hit a certain age. This means with a Roth IRA, “you get to decide how and when you take money out of your account in retirement after a Roth conversion,” said Ramsey Solutions. In the meantime, your funds can continue growing tax-free.

Con: You typically have to wait five years for withdrawals.

“If you’re under 59 ½, you can’t use your funds for five years after a traditional IRA to Roth conversion,” due to what is known as the five-year rule, said Kiplinger. If, for some reason, you need access to the funds sooner, you may get hit with a 10% early withdrawal penalty, depending on your age.

Pro: You can pass on accounts tax-free.

A Roth conversion can also serve as a valuable estate planning tool, as “your heirs could inherit those funds income tax-free,” unlike with a traditional IRA or 401(k), said Kiplinger. Further, “inherited Roth earnings continue to grow tax-free, meaning your heirs have more flexibility on when to withdraw.”

Con: Your eligibility for government programs could be impacted.

If you “participate in government health care programs or others that depend on your income, a conversion could affect your eligibility in those programs or their cost,” said Bankrate. This is why it’s crucial to be mindful of timing when making a Roth conversion. Otherwise, said Charles Schwab, it “could increase your Medicare premiums and the taxes you pay on Social Security benefits.”

From specialty travel rewards cards to cards that offer generous cash-back or points on everyday purchases, there are a plethora of choices for your wallet. It might feel hard to choose just one credit card — but do you really have to?

As it turns out, not necessarily. Having more than one credit card can even offer financial benefits, such as a higher credit limit to work with and a backup card just in case. But there are drawbacks to weigh, too, especially if you tend to struggle with overspending or organization.

Here is a look at both the pros and cons, so you can determine whether you would like to have more options or if you are better off staying true to one card only.

Pro: You will have more flexibility, and a backup

Having more than one credit card can introduce an element of flexibility. Say you encounter an emergency expense. In that situation, by “splitting the cost of a big expense, such as medical bills, between two credit cards, you are eating up less of your credit limit on one,” said CNBC Select. Plus, you have a card to fall back on if “one of your credit cards becomes compromised or is declined,” said SmartAsset.

Con: You will have more to keep track of

The more credit cards you use, the “harder it is to keep track of your purchases, balances and due dates,” said Experian. Any lapses could lead to missing a payment, in which case “you’ll be slapped with a late fee on top of interest charges for the month,” and even “damage your credit if you’re late by 30 days or more.”

Pro: Your credit limit will go up, which can help your credit score

“With a thin file, how you use your credit can have a bigger effect on your scores than if you had more accounts,” given that “with only a few cards, it might not take much spending to use a lot of your overall credit limit,” said NerdWallet. Adding another card to the rotation could lower your credit utilization, which can benefit your credit score.

Con: You can more easily rack up debt

If you are “prone to overspending or already struggling with credit card debt, having more than one card is risky,” said SmartAsset. With multiple cards, you will get greater latitude to spend, and also have a harder time getting a quick snapshot of how much total debt you have accrued, since balances are spread around.

Pro: You can better maximize rewards

“Carrying multiple credit cards allows you to earn a greater variety of rewards — including cash back on grocery purchases, points on travel bookings and more,” said Bankrate. You can even strategically use cards to line up with specific rewards or bonus categories, such as reserving one card for gas fill-ups and grocery store trips, and another for booking travel.

Con: Your credit could take a hit, at least temporarily

“Charge offs, late payments and high credit utilization rates can create negative marks on your credit reports if you are not careful,” said Equifax. And even if you are, that does not mean you are immune to credit dips. Because the average length of your credit history influences your score, “new card accounts often lower your credit score about five points,” said CNBC Select, alongside any impact you may see from the hard inquiry associated with your application.

Many schools across the U.S. have floated the idea of banning cellphones in classrooms, and these bans largely have bipartisan support. Currently, 35 states have some rules or policies regarding classroom phone use. By another metric, “bans on phones are being enacted or proposed in at least 40% of national education systems, with the aim of helping students focus,” said The Economist. Despite this, not everyone agrees that completely banning cellphone use is a good idea, and some believe it can cause different types of harm.

Pro: Reduces distractions

Banning cellphone use in class can lead to more focused students. “The human brain is incapable of thinking more than one thing at a time,” said Michael Rich, an associate professor of pediatrics and an associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard University, to the Harvard Gazette. Cellphone usage in class can lead to distractions for all students, not just the one using the phone. “Students’ phones can make notification noises that disrupt class and embarrass the students,” said the East Hampton Star.

Removing cellphones “created an environment more conducive to learning” and led to “less student chatter and disruptive behavior,” said The Economist. One study also found that in classrooms without cellphones, “even teachers used their own phones less” and “they also became more engaged with pupils.”

Con: Reduces some learning opportunities

Technology is integral to today’s society. “Students need to learn the risks and opportunities that come with technology, develop critical skills and understand to live with and without technology,” said a 2023 report by UNESCO. “Shielding students from new and innovative technology can put them at a disadvantage.”

Students need to be taught “how to use cellphones and when to use them responsibly,” said Candice Breaux, the career and technical education supervisor at West Baton Rouge Parish Schools, to Education Week. “How do they know when it’s appropriate, where it’s appropriate, how it’s appropriate to use them?”

Pro: Can reduce the risk of mental health struggles

A lack of cellphones could make many students feel more comfortable. One school in Texas that implemented a ban “reported more participation by students and also said they saw student anxiety plummet — mainly because students weren’t afraid of being filmed at any moment and embarrassing themselves,” said NPR. This also reduces cyberbullying.

Constant access to social media has led young people to become more depressed. “School hours could provide a large chunk of the day that they get a break from screens, which might have a positive impact on mental health,” said Care.com.

Con: Challenging to implement

Enforcing cellphone policies “adds one more task to a teacher’s long to-do list,” said Care.com. It may become more burdensome to enforce a total ban than just to teach students to use phones responsibly. “Teachers could spend a lot of energy and effort fighting [cellphones], but I don’t know how far they really would get,” Lauren Tavarez, director of digital learning at the Ector County Independent School District in Texas, said to Education Week.

In addition, even if a ban is implemented, “there are still tablets and laptops — intended as aids to classroom instruction but offering many of the same temptations to distraction,” said The Economist.

Pro: Improves grades and learning

Removing cellphones reduces cheating. No cellphone access forces students to learn the material. “With virtually everything at their fingertips on an Internet-connected phone, students can not only look up answers but also use AI chatbots to generate text, thus evading in-class writing assignments,” said Britannica. Without phone access, students pay attention and absorb the material.

“For low-achieving students, even modest differences can really matter,” Louis–Philippe Beland, an economist at Carleton University in Ontario, said to The Economist. A study performed in India found that students in phone-free classrooms performed better academically, especially in non-STEM classes.

Con: Reduces sense of safety

Banning cellphones limits students’ abilities to contact their loved ones in case of an emergency. The most common reason given by parents to keep school phone access was to be “able to get in touch if there’s an emergency,” said NBC News. This is especially pertinent with the rise of gun violence in schools.

“It is a very sad state of affairs that one of the reasons we think we have to have phones in the classroom is so when the shooting starts, students can call and say goodbye or let people know that this is happening,” Robin Gurwitch, a psychologist at Duke University, said to NBC News.

The clamour within Labour to introduce a wealth tax in a bid to balance the books is continuing to grow ahead of a make-or-break autumn budget.

Keir Starmer and other senior cabinet ministers have repeatedly refused to rule it out following recent comments from the former Labour leader Lord Kinnock, who proposed a 2% levy on assets over £10 million.

Pro: raise revenue

"Estimates vary" about the impact of imposing an extra levy on the super-rich wealth, said The i Paper, but economists are in broad agreement that a "carefully targeted" wealth tax could raise around £10 billion a year, or possibly more, "with minimal impact on the wider population".

A Wealth Tax Commission report in 2020 calculated that "after accounting for non-compliance and administration costs, a one-off wealth tax payable on all individual wealth above £500,000 and charged at 1% a year for five years would raise £260 billion; at a threshold of £2 million it would raise £80 billion."

"If it were unexpected and credibly one-off – a major challenge in practice – this would be an efficient way to raise revenue and could be used to address existing wealth inequality," said the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank.

Con: capital flight

"In virtually every country where it has been tried, a wealth tax has failed to raise anything like the extra revenue which was envisaged," said veteran investment banker Ken Costa in The Telegraph. The reason is that it "encourages the fight of existing wealth and discourages the creation of new wealth. Therefore, there is less wealth to tax."

Only four countries have actually "retained a wealth tax”, said ThisisMoney: Norway, Spain, Colombia and Switzerland. Other nations have tried but failed as the wealthy avoid them and the levy raises "little revenue", creating "high admin costs".

Pro: tackle inequality

"Britain's wealth gap between the richest and poorest is now the second largest in the world behind the US," said Green MP Sian Berry in The Argus. "Two thirds of Britain’s entire wealth" is owned by the richest 10% while "over four million children are living in poverty".

The thing a wealth tax does, Kinnock told Sky News, "is to say to the country, 'we are the government of equity'."

Critics often point to a combined income and investment tax rate of 98% on the highest earners imposed by Labour in the mid-1970s as proof that levying the rich to the hilt does not work. "Less remembered", said The Guardian's Andy Beckett, is the fact that "Britons were more financially equal" in this period than "they had ever been before, and ever have been since".

Con: reduce competitiveness

Opponents of a wealth tax argue it is unfair because it "taxes assets regardless of the return", which "penalises those who hold low-return assets and could put people off saving and creating wealth", said The Times. This in turn reduces competitiveness, deters investment and stifles innovation – all things Labour in particular are looking to foster in their push for economic growth.

This is why "a Kinnock-style wealth tax isn’t going to happen", said George Eaton in the New Statesman. "It would make the UK a distinct outlier at a time when Reeves is striving to maintain international competitiveness."

Pro: public support

Public attitudes show a "clear desire for wealth to be taxed more, relative to labour", said the Wealth Tax Commission.

A recent YouGov poll, of more than 4,000, claimed that 49% of the public "strongly support" the idea of a wealth tax along the lines of that suggested by Kinnock, with 26% saying they "somewhat support" it. Only 6% said they were "strongly opposed".

This is playing out across many countries, where populism "has familiarised voters again with the idea that elites have too much and the majority too little", said Beckett in The Guardian. This corresponds to the British Social Attitudes survey, which shows the number of people who believe "government should redistribute income from the better off to those who are less well off" has risen slowly but steadily over the past 20 years.

Con: impossible to administer

Most countries that have tried to introduce a wealth tax over the past 50 years have found they "raised relatively little money and were nearly impossible to apply fairly", said The Times.

Putting a value on assets – be it real estate, art or private businesses – is incredibly complex, time-consuming, expensive and prone to legal challenges or loopholes.

This leads to a situation where the state will "tax different people's wealth differently," said Arun Advani, a professor of economics at Warwick University. With millions of assets to value, "you have to take shortcuts", and that means "people are not paying the wealth tax in the same way".

Germany, for example, abandoned its 1% tax on net wealth in 1997 after the courts ruled it unconstitutional because it treated property more favourably than other assets.

This is another reason why a wealth tax is a non-starter in the UK, said The New Statesman. "HMRC lacks the data on property and pensions required to introduce a general wealth tax (and it would take several years to establish a new system)."

Donald Trump has again used the threat of tariffs to further his political objectives, this time in his bid to take control of Greenland.

The US president sparked fresh diplomatic turmoil by announcing plans to impose an additional 10% tariff on eight European countries that have mobilised to try to block his ambitions in the Arctic. These are due to kick in on 1 February before rising to 25% from June.

The announcement has “triggered an ongoing scramble among European leaders to come up with a response to Trump”, said Politico. While Keir Starmer has pushed back against imposing retaliatory tariffs, saying a trade war was in “nobody’s interest”, Germany has backed Emmanuel Macron’s call for a “trade bazooka” if Trump carries through on his threat.

Since returning to the White House a year ago, the US president has introduced a whole host of tariffs for all kinds of reasons – with decidedly mixed results. Here are the pros and cons of tariffs.

Pro: increases government revenue

Tariffs are essentially another form of tax and as such generate revenue for governments. A quick look at the data behind this claim “tells a compelling story”, said Sky News’ economics editor Ed Conway. Indeed, “for nearly all of the 19th century, tariffs imposed on goods imported into America provided more than half the government's revenues”.

Data from the US Treasury Department shows the federal government collected $264 billion from increased tariff revenue in 2025, compared to $79 billion in 2024, before Trump’s latest trade war began. The US-based Tax Foundation calculated that, at their current level and “accounting for negative economic effects”, the revenue raised by tariffs will be $1.7 trillion over the next decade.

It means that, as a source of revenue relative to the size of today’s global economy, income from tariffs is “modest”, according to the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

Con: impacts on consumers and economy

One of the “most immediate impacts of tariffs is a rise in consumer prices”, said EV Magazine.

A report out this week by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy concluded that American consumers are paying for “nearly all” of Trump’s tariffs, and that the $200 billion or so surge in customs revenue last year “represents $200 billion extracted from American businesses and households”.

Significant short-term price hikes on imported goods, ranging from electronics and cars to everyday groceries, can in turn “contribute to inflationary pressure”, said EV Magazine, forcing central banks to “raise interest rates, potentially slowing economic growth and increasing borrowing costs for businesses and consumers”.

The problem, said Sky News’ Conway, is that “there is only so high one can lift these fees before they begin to stifle activity, making goods so expensive to import that domestic consumers face economic damage”.

Because tariffs are “in essence a tax on consumers”, Trump’s levies offer the “sort of liberation that most corporate bosses and investors would happily do without”, said The Economist.

Pro: protects domestic businesses and jobs

“In most cases” tariffs are “intended to protect local industries by making imports more expensive and driving consumers to domestic producers”, said the Council on Foreign Relations. Supporters argue that tariffs incentivise companies to manufacture goods within their own country, reviving industry while bolstering supply chain resilience.

“Long-standing concern” about the loss of manufacturing jobs to countries with lower labour costs has been a main driver for the anti-globalisation movement in the developed world, said the BBC. Trump has told American workers that they no longer need to be “worried” about losing their jobs to “foreign nations”. Instead, he said, “foreign nations will be worried about losing their jobs to America”.

Con: lobbying and corruption

Tariffs often lead to “cascading protectionism and create a fertile ground for corruption”, said the free-market think tank the Cato Institute. Trump’s 2018–19 tariffs on China led to “a complex process of exclusion requests” and “lobbying”.

In the absence of appropriate oversight, tariff exemptions “become political currency – traded between firms and officials in what amounts to a pay-to-play arrangement”, said Forbes. Rather than economic factors, decisions are determined by “lobbyists, campaign contributions, and political connections”.

Pro: protecting national interests

Trump “has long argued that the US is being cheated by its trading partners and that tariffs are the best remedy”, said The Guardian.

Politically, tariffs can be used as an “extension of foreign policy”, said Investopedia. Imposing them on a trading partner’s significant exports “may be used to exert economic leverage”.

The use of tariffs as a “negotiating tool” with other countries “might well be their main function in the hands of Mr Trump”, said Conway. In his first year back in office, he has used the threat of levies on Mexican and Canadian goods to try to force both governments to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and fentanyl into the US. He has tried to force Russia’s hand in the Ukraine war by targeting India and China and now has threatened European allies with extra tariffs unless they yield to his demands to take over Greenland.

Con: retaliatory tariffs

Retaliatory – or tit for tat – tariffs are among the “multifaceted harms of protectionist measures”, said the Cato Institute.

A 2024 study by economists from international universities and the World Bank concluded that retaliatory levies imposed by China and other nations on US goods during Trump's first term had “negative employment impacts”, especially for farmers.

But “if Trump’s trade war fizzled as policy” it “succeeded as politics”, said NBC News. Support for Trump and Republican congressional candidates rose “in areas most exposed to the import tariffs, including the industrial Midwest and manufacturing-heavy Southern states like North Carolina and Tennessee”.

As the world becomes more connected, globalization has become a daily reality for people in every corner of Earth. But while globalization — described by Peterson Institute for International Economics as the "growing interdependence of the world's economies, cultures, and populations," can have positive effects on economies, there are also concerns about what it can do to the environment and the world's workers.

Pro: Globalization boosts economies

In general, globalization "expands business operations worldwide and is facilitated by communications, technological advancements, and socioeconomic, political, and environmental developments," said Investopedia. This can help lower both the cost of manufacturing goods as well as the cost of goods to consumers.

This economic boost is "gained via diversification of resources, new investment opportunities, and new raw materials and resources," said Investopedia. This allows companies to take advantage of as many market opportunities as possible.

Con: Globalization heightens competition

Global free trade is mostly beneficial, but "individual companies, organizations, and workers can be disadvantaged, however, by global competition," said Harvard Business School. This is "similar to how these parties might be disadvantaged by domestic competition: The pool has simply widened."

And as governments work to protect these companies, they may look to do so by implementing tariffs, which can "make it more difficult for a competing nation or business to justify doing business in the country," said Harvard Business School. This can be "detrimental to the overall economic performance of both parties."

Pro: Globalization creates international cooperation

By bringing different sectors of the world together, globalization means people are "becoming increasingly connected" through "telecommunications, the Internet, free trade, air travel and more," said National Geographic.

Beyond just bringing people together, this collaboration can help "developing countries overcome challenges and enhance their global participation," said the World Economic Forum. These countries, many of which continue to face economic hardships, can see that "their unique perspectives and needs are recognized and integrated into global solutions."

Con: Globalization can exploit workers

Laborers, particularly in low-income countries, can be exploited for the economic benefit of globalization, which "weakens global trade networks' integrity and resilience, leaving companies vulnerable to supply chain interruptions and legal liabilities," said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Many industries that exploit workers are "part of our daily lives.

Globalization is a "great boon for some of the world's biggest companies, but not for their workers," said Jacobin. It would be "more accurate to describe many" globalized efforts "as global poverty chains."

Pro: Globalization makes goods more accessible

Increasing economic ubiquity "allows companies to find lower-cost ways to produce their products," said Velocity Global. And while increased competition has its drawbacks, it "drives prices down and creates a larger variety of choices for consumers." This can "help people in both developing and already-developed countries live better on less money."

The "way technology spreads across countries is central to how global growth is generated and shared across countries," said the International Monetary Fund.

Con: Globalization has environmental concerns

Globalization has "caused pollution, damaged ecosystems, contributed to climate change, and disproportionately harmed impoverished people and communities of color," said attorney Ben Crump. Many people, particularly in low income areas, have "suffered serious environmental harm because of globalization."

There is a "strong historical relationship between closer global ties and higher greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere," said the Cato Institute. But to "reach climate stability is to harness the immense power of globalization for sustainable planetary progress."

The union membership rate in the U.S. was only 9.9% in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor's statistics, but the push to unionize remains strong in many companies. Unions were also a major point of contention in the 2024 presidential election. But while many people support unions, others have pointed out their shortfalls.

Pro: Better working conditions

Unions can "promote economic equality and build worker power, helping workers to win increases in pay, better benefits and safer working conditions," said the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Pushes by unions for higher wages seem to be working, as the 17 states with the highest union densities "have state minimum wages that are on average 19% higher than the national average."

When wages increase among union workers, this can often lead to an "improved access to benefits, particularly for women and Black workers," said the Center For American Progress.

Con: Unions cost money

This is perhaps the most obvious drawback of unions: they're not free. Unions "charge dues to pay the salaries of union leaders and workers during a strike," said Maryville University, and "some unions spend union dues on six-figure salaries for leaders and luxurious headquarters."

Critics suggest this is "unfair to people who might have practical or ideological objections to the union and don't want to comply with requirements to pay dues or fees," said SmartAsset.

Pro: Increased productivity

Unions can boost productivity by "allowing workers to engage in decision-making in workplaces," and they "may also improve business outcomes by helping firms hold on to tenured workers who tend to be more productive," said WorkRise. Unionized workers are also "less likely to express intent to leave their jobs."

Research has "shown that unions reduce turnover, which increases worker productivity," said Cornell University's Scheinman Institute. This productivity boost is "particularly visible in service-oriented workplaces like hospitals."

Con: Less worker autonomy

Union membership often comes with a rise in rules, and this may not always benefit workers. Union employees "enjoy less autonomy and must abide by union rules," said LaborSoft. These rules "may favor seniority, slowing advancement and making newer employees more likely to get laid off."

Beyond this, unions may cause angst among workers based on the choices union leadership makes, because "unionized employees are bound to union decisions even when they disagree," said LaborSoft.

Pro: Safer workplaces

Unions "have long played an important role in improving the health and well-being of workers, and unionized construction sites and coal mines have been found to be safer than ones where there is no union," said The American Prospect. Collective-bargaining agreements "often require employers to provide safety and health precautions far stronger than OSHA's standards."

This is especially true when it comes to places like health clinics and hospitals, where safety is critical. Unions have "historically been involved in creating healthy and safe workplaces, advocating regulations that are monitored and enforced by public health entities," said the NIH's National Library of Medicine.

Con: Unions can go on strike often

It seems that striking unions are a constant source of news headlines, and data supports this. The "number of workers involved in major work stoppages increased by 280% in 2023," said the EPI. Nearly 350 strikes occurred that year, the most in two decades.

These strikes "included workers across the country — from auto workers to Hollywood writers and actors, nurses and public school teachers," said the EPI. Many strikes occurred throughout 2024, and a major port labor deal avoided a strike at the beginning of 2025.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are organisms that have had their DNA altered through genetic engineering, usually to add positive attributes. They have become a hot topic of debate: While some people swear by their ability to make food more accessible, others are skeptical about their safety.

Pro: Requires fewer pesticides

Pesticides can contain harmful chemicals that have been known to cause damage to the environment as well as human health. Luckily, the vast majority of GMOs grown in the U.S. are "engineered to produce their own pesticides, or survive direct application of pesticides," said As You Sow. In making crops more genetically resistant to pests, fewer pesticides are required to cultivate the crops. "Farmers can use less spray pesticides when they plant GMO crops," according to the FDA, which also "saves farmers money."

Con: Could cause allergic reactions

Some worry that GMOs could trigger certain allergic reactions. "If a soybean is crossed with a certain nut, it's possible that people with allergies to the nut may react to the genetically engineered soybean," said Yahoo. Mixing DNA has the potential to be risky, however, research has shown that GMOs are not more likely to cause reactions than non-GMOs. "Scientists developing GMOs run tests to make sure allergens aren't transferred from one food to another," said the FDA.

Pro: Higher nutritional value

GMOs can be engineered to have higher nutritional value. "Golden Rice, for example, developed in 2004, satisfies 50% of your daily Vitamin A needs per cup," said the University of Michigan School of Public Health. "Furthermore, the crop is durable and can grow in relatively infertile regions of the world," where Vitamin A deficiency is widespread, like sub-Saharan Africa. Several other foods have been modified to be healthier and more accessible.

Con: Increases antibiotic resistance

Many GMOs have genes added that make them resistant to certain antibiotics so that "GM plants and cells can be distinguished from non-GM ones," said the government of the Netherlands. While this could help increase the strength and longevity of the crop, there is a risk that resistance could transfer.

After eating a GMO, theoretically, "such genes can be transferred to bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract of humans or animals," said the Netherlands government. "The bacteria could go on to develop resistance to that specific antibiotic. Subsequently that antibiotic could be ineffective in treating humans affected by the resistant bacteria." Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem globally and it has the potential to worsen diseases.

Pro: Lowers food costs

Growing GMOs can lower costs in several ways. Climate change, overfarming and population growth have all caused crop yields to decrease. Genetic engineering can "improve crop yields and help farmers grow food in drought regions or on depleted soil, thereby lowering food prices and feeding more people," said Britannica. In addition, "GMO crops, through their environmental sustainability, potential for nutritionally-fortified foods and increased productivity, actually play a key role in keeping the cost of food down, now and in the future," said Forbes

Con: Unknown health implications

Not much is known about the long-term effects of GMOs on human health. Many worry that altering DNA could increase the risk of cancer, but there is no evidence to suggest this is true. "In theory, these added genes might create substances that could cause reactions in sensitized or allergic people, or result in high levels of compounds that could cause other health effects," said the American Cancer Society. "However, at this time there is no evidence that foods now on the market that contain genetically engineered ingredients or the substances found in them are harmful to human health." In reality, not much research exists disputing or supporting the claim, which is a cause for concern in and of itself.

From bitcoin and ethereum to tether and dogecoin, there are a wide variety of cryptocurrencies to choose from. For many who have opted in, crypto has yielded impressive returns. However, for others, it has led to devastating losses, not to mention encounters with scams and fraud in the industry.

So is this buzzy digital currency worth adding to your investment portfolio, or is it better to steer clear? We lay out the pros and the cons to help you decide.

What exactly is cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency "is a digital currency, such as bitcoin, that is used as an alternative payment method or speculative investment," meaning an investor hopes to profit from a change in value when they go to sell, said NerdWallet.

Typically, "cryptocurrencies exist on decentralized networks using blockchain technology — a distributed ledger enforced by a disparate network of computers" — and "are generally not issued by any central authority," said Investopedia.

What are the upsides of investing in crypto?

Depending on the type of investor you are and your tolerance for risk, crypto can offer upsides as an investment, including:

It is a decentralized currency. For many, a major upside of crypto is that it is a "decentralized currency, meaning it's not regulated by a single government or central bank," said Credit Karma. In other words, "governments can't control [crypto] like they can with centralized fiat currency such as the U.S. dollar."

It offers diversification. One potential benefit of crypto for your portfolio is that owning some "can increase your portfolio's diversification since cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have historically shown few price correlations with the U.S. stock market," said The Motley Fool. Diversification is key when investing, as it spreads your portfolio across a number of different types of assets, buffering against market volatility.

It may provide sizable returns. Though it is far from guaranteed this will happen, "several cryptocurrencies have seen their prices skyrocket since first being introduced," said Bankrate. This translates to "the potential for large gains on your investment." Plus, since "the sector is quite new," there are "potentially many more changes that may come down the line to make investing in cryptocurrencies even more attractive," said Corporate Finance Institute, a financial education website.

It is accessible. Another benefit of crypto is that it "can be easily accessible to everyone around the clock, even those without access to traditional banking," whether due to a checkered banking history, lack of documentation or lack of proximity to bank branches, said Fidelity. Further, "crypto transactions can have lower fees and faster transfer times than some traditional bank transactions." One caveat: If you lose your password to your digital wallet, there is no recovery process like for other financial products and accounts. Instead, "if you lose your password, you lose access to your bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies stored in it)," said AARP.

Are there risks or drawbacks to crypto?

While past tales of people making bank on crypto may seem tempting, it is important to heavily weigh the downsides of this investment as well:

It is extremely volatile. While risk of loss is possible with any type of investment," crypto's elevated volatility makes it an even bigger risk factor," said Forbes. As just one example, "Bitcoin has experienced rapid surges and crashes in its value, climbing to nearly $65,000 in November 2021 before dropping to just over $20,000 a year and a half later," said Investopedia. Further, said Bankrate, since cryptocurrencies "aren't backed by anything," that means "the price they trade at is determined by the whims of traders."

It is susceptible to hacks and scams. Fraud and hacks are both common with crypto. That is because "though cryptocurrency blockchains are highly secure, off-chain crypto-related key storage repositories, such as exchanges and wallets, can be hacked," said Investopedia. In the past, many exchanges and wallets have been hacked, "sometimes resulting in the theft of millions of dollars in coins." Further, there are "websites that look like opportunities for investing in or mining cryptocurrencies, but are bogus," which can deceive less experienced investors, said Charles Schwab.

It lacks government regulation. While some may see it as an upside that crypto is largely unregulated, that can bring downsides as well. "Governments around the world have not yet fully reckoned with how to handle cryptocurrency, so regulatory changes and crackdowns have the potential to affect the market in unpredictable ways," said NerdWallet. Leaving crypto unregulated also puts "investors at risk of market manipulation and fraud," said The Wall Street Journal.

It has a major environmental impact. Crypto is often made through mining, which "involves solving complex mathematical problems to verify transactions and create new blocks in the blockchain," said Credit Karma. This "requires lots of computational power, which in turn requires a large amount of energy." In fact, according to "a comparison by the University of Cambridge," said NerdWallet, "worldwide bitcoin mining consumes more than twice as much power as all U.S. residential lighting." That said, not all types of crypto have the same level of carbon intensity, and "many crypto mining companies are using renewable sources of power and have committed to carbon offsetting," said Morgan Stanley.

Some swear by it as a morning miracle while others dismiss it as a smug wellness trend, but it's hard to ignore the soaring popularity of the "5am club".

Whether it's to meditate, exercise, journal, learn a new skill or just get going early, a growing number of people are up with the birds. But does this practice really mean you "win the day", or will it just leave you tired later on?

Pro: productivity

In his book "The 5am Club", leadership expert Robin Sharma wrote that the practice lets you achieve "productivity, prosperity, performance and impact" on the scale of "superstars, virtuosos and geniuses".

Journalists who have put the wellness trend to the test have indeed reported increased productivity. "My day-to-day motivation around work has gone up," said Anya Meyerowitz in Glamour, and she found herself "bursting" with ideas. "I was definitely more productive," said Shannon Talbot on Today's Parent.

Con: impracticality

One drawback is that an early start requires an early bedtime. "In order to get enough sleep, many people would need to go to bed at 9pm," Russell Foster, head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at Oxford University, told The Guardian.

"Unfortunately, most of us aren’t able to do that," because we have "all this stuff we need to do, whether that be helping kids with homework or putting a load of washing on". 

Another problem with a 9pm bedtime is that other people – be they fellow household members, neighbours or just passers-by on the street – are still likely to be up and about, so getting peaceful sleep at such an early hour may not be as simple as it sounds.

Pro: self-control

By consistently getting up at 5am, you create a strong and positive routine. Springing out of bed so early – whether you feel like it or not – is a way to practise discipline, the foundation of all good habits and lasting change.

So while the 5am practice can have many tangible benefits, "above all", wrote Jon Stalker on Bedstar, "this routine is an exercise in self-control. If you exercise self-control in one area of your life, the newfound discipline spreads to other sites, too."

Con: burnout

People who rush into the 5am club "won't last", wrote coach and author Craig Ballantyne, because "they'll suffer from self-imposed jet lag" and so "come to despise waking up early". Then "they'll return to sleeping as late as humanly possible each morning before they have to get up in order to make it to work".

Pro: happiness

An early start can promote feelings of positivity. A University of Toronto study found that those who prefer to wake earlier lead happier and healthier lives than their counterparts who choose to sleep and wake later. 

Writing on CNBC after she tried out the 5am wake-up call, Renée Onque said she felt happier, particularly "having more time in solitude" in those early hours.

Con: body clock

If you plan to follow the 5am rise time only on weekdays, your body might still wake you up early at weekends. "Because my body was used to my new wake time, I still got up at about 7am or 8am" on Saturday and Sunday, said Onque, who admitted she normally "sleeps till noon most weekends".

Colin Espie, professor of sleep medicine at Oxford University, told The Guardian that each us have a "chronotype" – meaning we are a morning person or a night owl. It would be "foolishness" to say to an owl type: "You should get up early and be productive then. It goes against their natural sleep-wake rhythms."

"An Englishman's home is his castle", according to the old saying, reflecting the cultural importance of the home as a symbol of independence and security. For the majority of Britons, that still means owning the property they live in.

"If there's such a thing as a British dream, it's to own the roof over your head," wrote French journalist Agnès Poirier for The Guardian back in 2016 – "and then sell it for a stonking profit".

Currently, around two-thirds of UK households are owned by the occupier, either with a mortgage or outright. The remaining third rent their property – but owning still remains the ultimate aim for most, with a 2023 survey for the National Residential Landlords Association finding that 76% of tenants want to buy at some point.

Pro: low commitment

While the risk of a large rent increase or even eviction always hangs over tenants, the lack of permanence in a rental agreement cuts both ways. For younger people looking for the freedom to pursue study or travel opportunities, or those whose careers might require relocation, a fixed-term or rolling contract is often a far more attractive prospect than the financial and legal commitment of owning property.

Con: insecurity

Although tenants do have some legal protections, a renter's housing security is dependent to a large degree on their landlord, who can decide to increase the rent or end the tenancy. Critics of the current housing system say that much of this instability could be avoided if the UK adopted more tenant-friendly laws similar to those seen in countries like France and Germany, where eviction is only permitted in limited circumstances and rent rises are subject to strict controls.

In England, a Renters (Reform) Bill that would have ended no-fault evictions is among a raft of legislation shelved by the dissolution of parliament. Labour has pledged to end no-fault evictions and introduce "rent stabilisation" measures if it is elected.

Pro: affordability

The cost of renting versus owning a property is relatively small – just £27 per month, according to research by Halifax published in the FT Adviser. However, where affordability really becomes an issue is when it comes to accumulating a deposit. Whereas a typical tenancy agreement might ask for a deposit of one month's rent, as of February 2024 the average house deposit for a first-time buyer had risen to £53,414. With the prospect of saving tens of thousands of pounds out of reach for many, renting remains the most affordable option.

Con: restrictions 

Not being responsible for repairs and maintenance work is one attractive feature of renting, but the flip side is that tenants are often subject to limitations on how they can use their home. For instance, landlords can impose restrictions on who can live in the property, prohibit tenants from keeping pets, or bar them from making any significant alterations to the decor.

Scotland has already taken steps to give renters more power, including proposals in the Housing Bill currently under consideration at Holyrood which would ensure tenants are allowed to "keep pets and decorate their homes", said the BBC.

Pro: convenience

Home maintenance can be a stressful and costly headache for homeowners, especially if major problems arise. In a rented property, arranging for repairs, overseeing the work and paying for it is the responsibility of the owner rather than the tenant. Generally, a tenant is only required to treat the property with reasonable care and report any issues to their landlord promptly.

Con: no equity

While renting might be more affordable than buying, the downside is that renters are not accumulating any equity in the property – in other words, they are paying someone else's mortgage.

Property is considered one of the most reliable investments you can make, as prices tend to grow reliably over time. So those who can afford to buy but choose to rent are missing out on an asset that could become very valuable – particularly in later life. "People are increasingly looking at their main home as a way of supplementing their pension provision," Lucian Cook, residential research director at Savills estate agents, told The Financial Times.

Oat milk is the bestselling plant-based milk alternative in the UK, and also in European markets including Germany, Sweden and Finland, where it has become the go-to for a vegan cappuccino or creamy dairy-free porridge.

In the US, oat milk is second only to almond milk in popularity, and it is slowly gaining ground in emerging markets in Latin America and East Asia, capitalising on "urbanisation, changing dietary habits, and increasing disposable incomes", according to market-research platform Credence Research.

Here are the pros and cons of switching to oat milk.

Pro: more environmentally friendly

Pint for pint, cow's milk has a carbon footprint between 2.5 and three times larger than plant-based alternatives. And it's generally accepted that oat milk "has a smaller carbon footprint than most of the alternatives", said The Independent.

Estimates of environmental impact vary but, according to the BBC's "Sliced Bread" podcast, producing a litre of oat milk requires 12 times less space than a litre of cow's milk globally, and three times less in Europe. The figures are also persuasive for water consumption: a litre of oat milk requires five times less water than a litre of cow's milk, in Europe.

Con: requires intensive farming

The crop yields needed to meet soaring demand for plant-based milk mean "highly industrialised farming", said The Independent. When vast swathes of land are converted to production of a single crop, it creates a monoculture, "stripping out biodiversity and having a detrimental effect on pollinators".

However, it's all relative. For instance, while rice and almonds require less space than oats, they both require substantially more water. And all dairy alternatives require significantly less land and water than raising dairy cattle.

Pro: creamy foam and flavour

Oat milk's creamy taste and consistency is usually described as the most similar to dairy milk, which is good news if you love the taste of cow's milk and are switching purely for ethical or health reasons.

If you're no stranger to an oat-milk latte, you'll also know that oat milk froths up into a foam comparable to the kind you'd get from cow's milk – which can't be said for all dairy alternatives.

Con: not suitable for all diets

Unsweetened oat milk "can add up to 30g carbs (similar to two slices of bread) to your favourite coffee order", said dietitian Susie Burrell in The Sydney Morning Herald. The starch in those carbs converts to sugar when you drink it, triggering a temporary spike in blood-glucose levels. But "if you're not diabetic and otherwise eat well", take the panic-inducing headlines with a pinch of salt, wrote Vox's environmental reporter, Benji Jones. "It's normal for food to raise your blood sugar." 

Oat milk also contains fibre – no bad thing in itself, as it "promotes bowel regularity", said the i news site, but, if you're sensitive to fibre or simply drink too much, it "can lead to bloating and gassiness".

Pro: allergy- and intolerance-friendly

The increased availability of plant-based milks in cafés and supermarkets in recent years has been a boon for those with lactose intolerance. And oat milk is especially friendly to those with other food sensitivities or allergies, too. Soy milk and almond milk are among the bestselling milk alternatives, but their principal ingredients are also common allergens. Oat allergies are rare, by comparison. But consumers should always check the label first for unexpected ingredients or cross-contamination risks.

Con: fewer nutrients

Cow's milk is packed with nutrients, including calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, iodine and vitamins B2 and B12, so, if you're swapping out dairy for oat milk, you may need to adjust your diet to ensure you're getting enough of those vitamins and minerals elsewhere – or look for fortified oat milks.

If protein content is important to you, opt for soy milk, which is "closest nutritionally to dairy milk" and contains a similar amount of protein to cow's milk – around 8g per 250ml glass, said Burrell for The Sydney Morning Herald.

What are the benefits of oak milk?

To summarise, oat milk offers a dairy-like creamy consistency and slight natural sweetness, which makes it an appealing option for "regular" milk drinkers looking to experiment with plant-based alternatives. While industrialised farming of all stripes comes with an environmental impact, cultivating oats requires much less space and water than grazing dairy cattle, making it a more environmentally conscious choice than milk. It also represents a good milk alternative for those with lactose intolerance, especially if they also have dietary restrictions around common allergens like nuts or soy, which form the basis of other popular milk alternatives.

Is oat milk suitable for weight-loss diets?

Bryony Gordon in The Telegraph credited cutting out oat milk, along with other highly processed foods, with helping her lose 20lb. And it's true that, compared to other plant milks on the market, oat milk is higher in calories, with up to 120 calories in a cup. However, in moderate quantities, oat milk is unlikely to disrupt a weight-loss regimen – simply "keep an eye on your serving sizes", said Women's Health. 

Does oat milk pose any health risks?

Although oat allergies are rare, consumers with allergies or intolerances should always check the label first for any unexpected ingredients or cross-contamination risks. This is especially the case for people with a gluten intolerance, registered dietitian nutritionist Tamar Samuels told the Huffington Post, warning that, although oats themselves are gluten-free, oat milk is "typically processed in facilities that manufacture gluten-containing products".

Universal health care (UHC) is a system under which "all people have access to the full range of quality health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship," said the World Health Organization. Currently, 72 countries have some form of UHC, according to the World Population Review. The U.S. is not one of those countries. But there has been interest from the American public in pivoting to a UHC system.

The current U.S. health care system is paid for through both public and private sources. These sources include insurance companies, along with government programs like Medicare. Many people would prefer to transition to a single-payer system, which is a form of UHC. In this system, health care is paid for by a single public entity — usually the federal government — through taxes. Medicare for All is a popular proposal in American politics that would turn the current system into a single-payer system, essentially expanding Medicare coverage to the entire population. However, there may be both benefits and drawbacks involved in implementing a UHC system in the U.S.

Pro: a healthier society

The largest and most obvious benefit of universal health care is the fact that everyone gets health care. UHC is "linked to longer life expectancy, lower child mortality rates, higher smoking cessation rates, lower depression rates and a higher general sense of well-being, with more people reporting being in 'excellent health,'" said Britannica. It also "leads to appropriate use of health care facilities, including lower rates of emergency room visits for non-emergencies and a higher use of preventative doctors' visits to manage chronic conditions."

Universal health care can additionally help society-wide health issues by "addressing the growing chronic disease crisis, mitigating the economic costs associated with said crisis" and "reducing the vast health disparities that exist" between levels of society, said an article published in the journal Medicina. UHC may also lead to better outcomes during pandemics like Covid-19. "When any of us is exposed, all of us are," said Milwaukee Independent. "Universal, effective and affordable health care makes us all stronger and safer."

Con: increased taxes

UHC can be pricey. If implemented, Medicare for All would cost an "estimated $30 to $40 trillion over ten years," said Britannica. "The cost would be the largest single increase to the federal budget ever." While much of this cost could be covered by taxing the wealthy, "taxes on the middle class would have to rise in order to pay for it" as well, said the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "Those taxes could be imposed directly on workers, indirectly through taxes on employers or consumption, or through a combination of direct or indirect taxes."

Those in favor of UHC argue that the benefits from access to health care would offset the extra cost required to implement it. On the downside, those who require less health care would also see their costs increase. "Whether a family pays more or less on net under Medicare for All will depend on how the program is financed and will also differ from person to person," said CRFB.

Pro: reduced financial burden

While UHC could lead to increased taxes, it would also bring down insurance premium prices and reduce the chance of medical bankruptcy. Medical debt is a significant problem in this country, with U.S. residents owing at least $220 billion total; 14 million people owe over $1,000 and three million people owe more than $10,000, according to the American Hospital Association. "Affordable, comprehensive health care coverage is the most important protection against medical debt," said the AHA.

UHC would also allow those with more medical needs or low-income patients to still be able to access medical treatment without fear of the cost. "If all Americans were provided health care under a single-payer system, medical bankruptcy would no longer exist, because the government, not private citizens, would pay all medical bills," said Britannica.

Con: general inefficiency

Health care run by the government is doomed to face the same inefficiencies as the government itself. "Increased wait times in the U.S. would likely occur — at least in the short term — as a result of a steep rise in the number of primary and emergency care visits," said Medicina. There may also be an increase in "general wastefulness, inefficiency and disorganization that is often associated with bureaucratic, government-run agencies."

Under UHC, cost sharing would be "very limited," and the "demand for medical care would probably exceed the supply of care — with increased wait times for appointments or elective surgeries, greater wait times at doctors' offices and other facilities, or the need to travel greater distances to receive medical care," said the Congressional Budget Office. As a result, "some demand for care might be unmet."

Pro: positive societal changes

As UHC would increase medical demand, it could also prompt the creation of better public health behaviors. The advent of UHC in the U.S. may be "more likely to promote healthy lifestyle behaviors, environmental factors and policies compared to a non-inclusive system," said Medicina. For example, to decrease the need for medical attention due to frustration with longer wait times, people may be more likely to become physically active instead. The government may also focus on decreasing pollution and regulating food to prevent health problems in the first place.

More resources, such as green spaces, could also appear in low-income areas. There is a "significant inverse association between higher levels of residential green cover and lower direct health care costs," said a 2022 study published in Environment International. UHC gives the government an incentive to make society healthier and safer.

Con: reduced quality of care

The transition to UHC could disrupt hospitals and, in turn, their quality of care. A "single-payer system that paid hospitals using Medicare rates would result in a substantial decline in hospitals' average payment rates," said the Congressional Budget Office. "Such a system would place considerable financial pressure on hospitals."

The increase in demand for care could also stretch resources thin, leading to a diminished quality of care. "Under a government-sponsored socialized health care system, choice would become more limited, timing mandated and supply and demand would be controlled through the constraints of a health care budget," said Joshua Axene of health consulting company Axene Health Partners. "As much as Americans believe that they are crockpots and can be patient, we are more like microwaves and want things fast and on our own terms."

Solar power is the third largest source of renewable energy globally, behind hydropower and wind – but it's the fastest-growing. 

In 2023, three-quarters of new renewable electricity capacity came from solar power, according to the International Energy Agency.

Solar energy refers to power generated by sunlight, captured via solar panels. Most solar energy is photovoltaic (PV) – converting light into electricity – but the sun's rays can also be used to power thermal panels, which directly heat water or other liquids.

Climate experts are united on the need to transition to renewable energy sources, but the field of solar power is not without its concerns and controversies.

Pro: it's already working

The momentum of solar energy uptake has already passed a "tipping point" towards "irreversible" dominance, according to researchers at the University of Exeter and University College London.

Their study, published in the journal Nature Communications last year, predicted that by the middle of this century solar power "will have come to dominate the [global energy] mix". It credited the technology's wide availability and "economic attractiveness" for creating "a cycle of increasing investments" around the world.

Con: billions of panels need recycling

The 2.5 billion or so solar panels currently installed around the world will start to lose efficiency after 25 to 30 years, said the BBC, yet "specialist infrastructure to scrap and recycle them is lacking". 

With the first wave of solar panels now "approaching retirement", action is needed to create facilities to recycle them effectively.

"It's going to be a waste mountain by 2050, unless we get recycling chains going now," Ute Collier, deputy director of the International Renewable Energy Agency, told the broadcaster.

Pro: improving technology

The efficiency of solar panels has seen "significant progress" in recent years, said The Independent, "primarily boosted by the so-called 'miracle material' perovskite", which consists of calcium titanium oxide.

One of the most persistent concerns over solar panels is their capacity to generate enough energy to cover cloudy spells, but perovskite solar cells "are able to capture about 20 per cent more energy from sunlight than traditional ones made from silicon", said the Financial Times. It's no wonder the material is "the talk of solar energy circles", although production would need to ramp up significantly if they were to become standard on the global market.

Con: vast solar farms

Rooftop solar panels can supply power effectively to individual homes and businesses, but harnessing solar energy on a wider level means massive solar farms.

For instance, the planned Botley West mega farm in Oxfordshire, which would supply energy to an estimated 330,000 homes, would take up about five square miles of countryside. Proposals such as this one are putting "the frontline of the battle to go green… in rural community halls", said Politico.

Botley West has provoked a fierce backlash, from concerns over the impact on wildlife to local residents "grumpy about potential noise and bucolic views being spoiled", the news site said.

Pro: the sky's not the limit

Solar farms in space would be a novel way to avoid protests over spoiled countryside – and they're closer than you might think.

Until a few years ago, the idea would have been "dismissed as science fiction", said Sky News science correspondent Thomas Moore, but now governments and private companies alike are investing in plans to launch specially designed systems of solar panels into orbit.

Solar panels would "capture 13 times more energy in space than they do on the ground", Moore said, so even allowing for energy lost while being beamed back to Earth, "it would still far outstrip solar generation on the ground".

Con: China's dominance

Even as uptake of solar energy increases worldwide, Europe-based manufacturers of solar cells are scaling back production or even going bankrupt because "in some cases 95%" of panels and parts installed in Europe come from China, said Reuters.

Chinese manufacturers offer lower prices than their Western counterparts, but reliance on China raises questions over "cybersecurity and sustainability", as well as labour practices. Almost half of the polysilicon used in solar panel production comes from the Xinjiang Autonomous Region – home to China's Uighur Muslim minority, who are regularly subjected to forced labour.

The European Commission's recent Solar Charter introduced measures designed to "help European clean tech manufacturers compete with foreign suppliers", Reuters said, but still chose to "steer clear of restrictions on cheap panel imports from China".

Virtual reality headsets will be popular gifts this holiday season, as more and more companies dip their toes into the cyber-ecosystem. From virtual golf experiences to gaming and meditation retreats, VR has been assimilated into many areas of our lives.

Generally, virtual reality has been deemed a mixed blessing. It has the potential to expand access to services and spaces for those who would have otherwise been precluded; but VR's interface also raises security, health and environmental concerns.

Pro: Increases exposure to green spaces

Scientists say that human access to nature and green spaces can positively affect our health. And virtual reality is now being studied as a means of bringing nature to people who would otherwise not have easy access. This may be especially useful for people with conditions that prevent them from spending substantial amounts of time outdoors. "Research shows some health improvements associated with experiencing nature in virtual reality, although these benefits are smaller than those gained by exposure to real nature," Scientific American said. While direct access to nature is irreplaceable, virtual technology can ensure people in less-green cities receive a healthful nature bump.

Con: Causes cybersickness 

Virtual reality can have a number of side effects, particularly cybersickness. The condition is similar to motion sickness and can cause "new avenues for discomfort, such as disorientation, dizziness, nausea and increased muscle fatigue," Alexis Souchet, a cognitive ergonomics researcher, said in The Conversation. These side effects can be affected by a number of factors, including "how complicated the scene is or the way VR reproduces user movements." In addition, "task accuracy was shown to negatively correlate with cybersickness," said a 2022 study published in the journal Frontiers in Virtual Reality.

Pro: Increases access to health care services

Virtual reality can revolutionize remote health services that include minor appointments and therapy. According to a 2024 report, the global market for augmented and virtual reality in health care is expected to be worth around $19.1B by 2033, compared to $3.3B in 2023. Along with more minor health appointments and mental health services becoming more accessible, VR would allow "anyone, regardless of race, sex, age or language," to "visualize their anatomy and prognosis in a way that is easily grasped," Alon Zuckerman, the president of Surgical Theater and a leader in VR for health care, said in Forbes. "Health care providers now have the tools to truly create a personalized treatment plan while communicating and collaborating with their patients."

Con: Raises privacy concerns

Virtual reality can provide a new avenue for hackers. Researchers from University of California, Riverside, said that "spyware can watch and record our every motion and then use artificial intelligence to translate those movements into words with 90% or better accuracy." An application on a VR headset could potentially monitor movements to determine passwords or other confidential information. "Basically, we show that if you run multiple applications, and one of them is malicious, it can spy on the other applications," said Nael Abu-Ghazaleh, who led the research. "It can spy on the environment around you. And it can also expose to the attacker your interactions with the headset."

Pro: Provides interactive learning experiences

VR technology could revolutionize education. "The appeal of simulations is that they can provide training equal or nearly equal to practice with real systems, but at reduced cost and with greater safety," said Britannica. The tech is particularly applicable to medical and military scenarios. It could also provide an immersive learning experience that would never otherwise be able to be replicated. For example, students can be "transported to different places and environments that they might not otherwise have access to, such as a historical site, a foreign country or even outer space," said Simbott.

Con: Raises sustainability concerns

The expansion of virtual reality would be like the "internet on steroids," Todd Richmond, the director of the Tech + Narrative Lab and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, said to TechTarget. While the technology is fairly new, the ultimate goal is to create a metaverse or an expansive virtual reality. For this to come to fruition, a lot more technology will be required. The potential use of cryptocurrencies, which are known to be taxing on the environment, might be required. In addition, there are "growing concerns about the environmental impact associated with the increasing demands for hardware," because "users will need specialized equipment such as headsets, and cloud computing providers will have to implement more capacity to handle the anticipated spike in demand for compute power."

Debate over the British government's controversial Rwanda bill has once again raised the question of whether a written constitution would help or hinder the process to allow the deportation of illegal migrants.

A written constitution is a "comprehensive" and "codified" document that "serves as the supreme law of the land, establishing the rights and responsibilities of the government", said The Lawyer Portal. An unwritten constitution "serves the same purpose, but is based on a collection of laws, customs and precedents" that have evolved over time.

The vast majority of countries in the world have some form of written constitution, with notable exceptions including New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Israel and, of course, the United Kingdom.

Pro: clarity

The late Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham, said of the UK that "constitutionally speaking, we now find ourselves in a trackless desert without map or compass". This is the "precise problem codification addresses", said Gopal Subramanium in Prospect. "When a constitution is codified, we know what it says. Each organ of the state – the legislature, the executive and the judiciary – has a clearer idea of the breadth of its powers" and the relations these organs have with each other and with citizens are "more easily discernible".

By contrast, unwritten constitutions are "open to ambiguity and can be subject to numerous interpretations", said the BBC. This lack of clarity has "exacerbated recent political crises in the UK", said Sionaidh Douglas-Scott on the UCL's Constitution Unit blog. The legal status of referendums, for example, has never been properly set out, leading to the seemingly endless constitutional crises in the years following the vote to leave the EU.

Con: inflexibility   

Supporters of an unwritten system like the UK's, which is made up of a vast array of different laws, customs and conventions developed over centuries, claim it offers "greater flexibility" and can "evolve and adapt to reflect changes in society", said the BBC.

Walter Bagehot, in his book The English Constitution that was first published in 1867, argued it was the very provisional nature of our constitutional arrangements that made them fit for purpose compared, for example, to the strict codification of the US constitution.

In the UK, the flexibility afforded by an unwritten constitution has come to be seen as an "advantage", agreed UCL's Constitution Unit, enabling the removal of hereditary peers from the House of Lords, the introduction of the Human Rights Act, devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the creation of the Supreme Court.

Pro: educative function

One "commonly cited benefit" to states possessing written constitutions is that such devices perform an "educative function, because citizens can easily consult and reference the documents", said Brian Christopher Jones in The Atlantic. Jones' recent book, "Constitutional Idolatry and Democracy", compares the respective merits of the UK and US systems. 

The American constitution is easier for lawmakers, judges and perhaps most importantly citizens to understand. US schoolchildren grow up learning parts of it by heart. It is widely available online and its physical form consistently lands on best-seller lists.

Being able to point to a constitution and assert its values is "empowering", agreed Subramanium, citing his own experience in India in which generations "understand the workings of its constitution, learning their rights and asserting them against successive governments".

Con: judiciary over parliament

Parliamentary sovereignty is commonly regarded as the "defining principle" of the British constitution, claimed UCL's Constitution Unit, and without a written constitution in place, statutes are the UK's "highest form of law", said Jones in The Atlantic.

In his 2019 Reith lecture series on the state of democracy in the UK, the former head of the Supreme Court and opponent of a written constitution, Lord Sumption, argued that calls for a single codified document are the wrong answers to the right question. All a written constitution would do, he said, was move the UK further towards legal constitutionalism, abrogating the powers of our democratic bodies in favour of an "increase (in the powers) of judges".

Jones' conclusion is that unwritten constitutions can perform "just as well as written ones", and that, for "all their grandeur, written constitutions do not produce better democratic outcomes and can sometimes entrench significant mistakes, rather than help facilitate resolutions to complex problems".

Pro: protecting rights

Perhaps the "most significant advantage of a written constitution is its benefit to the citizen", said Subramanium. The document represents the "embodiment of the contract citizens enter with their government" in which they agree to be governed in exchange for assurances their freedoms will be protected and their equality guaranteed.

Rights guaranteed by a written constitution are "usually beyond parliament's power to amend with a simple majority", said Subramanium, meaning "individuals and minority groups are thus protected from majoritarian and populist influence".

As the British philosopher AC Grayling noted, "a constitution not at the whim of any current administration is a sterner guardian of rights and liberties than a constitution malleable to partisan and passing interests".

Con: writing a written constitution

For countries like the US the constitution is a sacred document. But in the UK, which has survived for centuries without one, the formalising of a single written constitution would prove hugely complicated and controversial. It would likely take years, if not decades, of political wrangling and lobbying and would make debates around the primacy of EU law look small by comparison.

Setting out the arguments for and against, a report by the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in 2015 noted that "any study of written constitutions around the world shows that they only come into existence after a successful invasion, after a revolution, or some appalling failure in the polity and breakdown in the way government and politics were operating".

In the age of online shopping, items are constantly being delivered all over the country, all the time. Usually, those deliveries come from planes and trucks, but companies like Amazon and Walmart are toying with a new solution to facilitate deliveries and reduce the manpower required: drones. The remotely operated flying machines can get to any location using GPS coordinates — and can get there quickly. Despite this, their use cannot yet be implemented widely and can also pose logistical and privacy issues. 

Pro: Reduce reliance on vehicles

Relying on drones can be an effective way to reduce transportation emissions and curb climate change. "If delivery drones gain widespread usage, it would reduce reliance on vehicles for many companies," Investopedia explained. "If widely adopted, it could help many countries meet emissions targets set in various global agreements." Online shopping is only going to grow and, accordingly, so will deliveries. Trucks require fossil fuels and produce emissions that drones can avoid, especially if the delivery is local. "Some things just don't make sense — like why use a two-ton car to deliver a two-pound burrito?" James Campbell, a professor of supply chain and analytics at the University of Missouri at St. Louis told Builtin. "That's inherently inefficient. So if you could do that with a drone, maybe that makes a lot of sense."

Con: Poses a privacy risk

"Widespread use of drones can be expected to increase privacy concerns among citizens already nervous about corporate and government data collection," Investopedia noted. Drones have a history of surveillance use, and many of the features used for that purpose would also be necessary for deliveries. The source expounded, "Drones typically use a camera and GPS to navigate delivery destinations, which many believe to be intrusive." In general, the public may not be comfortable with drones flying over their neighborhoods. Invasive bonus: Overhead cameras can potentially see into homes or yards, especially in more spread-out areas.

Pro: Faster deliveries

When ordering from nearby, drones can cut delivery times substantially. Trucks and planes "can be slow and prone to traffic and weather delays," whereas, "drones can navigate around these obstacles and deliver packages directly to customers' homes or businesses in a fraction of the time," according to Essential Designs. This could revolutionize same-day delivery, as well as delivery of perishable items, and "could be especially useful for urgent or time-sensitive deliveries, such as prescription medications or emergency supplies."

Con: Regulatory issues

Drone takeoffs and landings in the U.S. "require meticulous scrutiny by the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] and local officials," according to Insider Intelligence. This can make widespread implementation difficult. Individual states have varying laws regarding drones and don't do much more than enforce existing federal regulations. Bobby Healy, founder and CEO of drone delivery company Manna, told Builtin, "It's still unclear when scaled delivery will be allowed to happen and under what systems it will happen."

Pro: Access to hard-to-reach locations

Drones can have easier access to remote and rural areas that may not have the infrastructure required for planes and trucks. Drones are "an ideal solution" for expanding delivery reach because they "don't need infrastructure," Campbell told Builtin. Drones can land in any spot and don't require open spaces or pavement. This could be especially effective in disaster zones or medical emergencies. "If you're vaccinating children for measles and mumps, you're not sending 50 kilos," Campbell said. "You're sending a small amount of product. And it needs to go fast because it needs to be refrigerated."

Con: Logistics could be an issue

Drone delivery could pose logistical issues, especially in densely populated areas. The technology would need to be capable of maneuvering around buildings and wildlife like birds. Also, deliveries to specific apartments would be difficult without human intervention. "In this country, we have an incredible road system," Campbell told Builtin. "So you can get almost anywhere fairly quickly by truck or car. And that makes it much harder for drones because the drones now have to compete against something that's been fine-tuned and optimized."

Compounding pharmacies are facilities that are able to make customized medications. This could be to alter a drug's dosage or composition for medical purposes. Many patients have benefitted from drug compounding, especially those suffering from allergies to certain drug ingredients. Nonetheless, these facilities have been steeped in controversy, as many have formulated knockoffs of the weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy with a different active ingredient that has not been used in other FDA-approved medications. Compounding pharmacies can be lifesaving for many but can also be dangerous if standards aren't met. Also, the quality of facilities can vary widely.

Pro: Provide meds you can't find at regular pharmacies 

Compounded drugs provide more customization options for both dosage and composition. Doctors can prescribe a compounded drug to alter the dosage, add appealing flavor if intended for a child or pet, alter the form of the medication or remove ingredients like allergens, according to WebMD. For certain medical needs, compounding pharmacies might be the only option because the FDA-approved version of the necessary drug may not be suitable for certain patients. For example, a compounded drug can be "vital to the geriatric patient or a child who cannot swallow a pill and needs a medicine in a liquid form that is not readily available," explained U.S. Pharmacist. 

Con: Cause potential problems in drug quality

While compounding facilities do need to maintain the same manufacturing standards as traditional drug manufacturers, they do not face the regulatory standards that commercial drug manufacturers do. "There are reports of compounding pharmacies sourcing ingredients through various 'grey market' channels of varying quality," Derek Lowe wrote in a piece for Chemistry World. "Some of these are legitimate drug lots resold by middlemen (through transactions of variable legality!), but others are manufactured by facilities that aren't approved as suppliers in the pharmacies' own countries." Different states have different laws and regulations regarding compounding facilities, so the quality of medicines can vary greatly. "Poor compounding practices can result in serious drug quality problems, such as contamination or a drug that contains too much active ingredient," the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) added.

Pro: More affordable

While the price of compounded medications is quite varied, pharmacies could make some medications more affordable by altering the formulas' ingredients. For example, a compounding pharmacy is capable of "producing medication at a different, less expensive dosage than a retail pharmacy," according to Health Dimensions. Some have called compounded drugs a "boon for patients" because the patients can pay "a third of what they would for brand-name products," Medscape explained. This can be life-changing for patients who struggle to afford medication and now have an economical alternative that can be equally effective.

Con: Regulated differently than FDA-regulated drugs

The comparative lack of regulation is a major concern for those who oppose compounded pharmacies. "Compounded drugs pose a higher risk to patients than FDA-approved drugs because they do not undergo FDA premarket review for safety, effectiveness, or quality," the FDA detailed, adding that compounded drugs also lack an FDA finding of manufacturing quality before such drugs are marketed. This largely leaves compounded pharmacies to use their own discretion in making drugs. "There are a lot of great compounding pharmacies out there that take great patient care every single day," said Betty Jones, compliance senior manager of accreditation and inspection programs at the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy told The New York Times. "But there are [also] some of those bad actors."

Pro: Helps to alleviate impacts of drug shortages

Sometimes the FDA taps compounders to help produce drugs that are facing a shortage. "Almost every time there is a fear of some new shortage, we turn immediately to the compounders and say, 'What do you have for our needs for this?'" said Eric Tichy, who leads the medical supply chain at Mayo Clinic, to the Wall Street Journal. Having the option to compound medications can reduce pressure on drug manufacturers, especially when a medication, like Ozempic, is in high demand. "They're not trying to make a million bucks doing this," Tenille Davis, a compounding pharmacist in Arizona, told The New York Times. "They're trying to meet an intense, overwhelming patient and provider demand for this product." The Journal added, "Having a steady supply of drugs, compounded or not, means healthcare providers are less likely to ration drugs, and patients are less likely to miss treatments."

Con: Leads to potential deaths

"Some compounding pharmacies and drug preparers may make misleading statements about the safety or efficacy of compounded drugs," WebMD explained. ​​"If the mixture is contaminated, it can injure or kill people." The methods used in compounding pharmacies increase the risk of the drug formulation going awry. "Compounding pharmacies tend to use less automation," which can, according to Medscape, "increase the chance for errors with potency or contamination, including lapses in sterilization." This occurred at the New England Compounding Center in 2012, where several patients contracted fungal meningitis from a compounded epidural steroid injection that had been contaminated. 

After a festive season filled with drinking and indulging, some of us may be thinking about giving up alcohol for Dry January or even quitting for good.

And giving up is not uncommon – according to Drinkaware, some 14% of adults in the UK never touch the stuff, despite 52% of them having previously been drinkers.

The Week examines the pros and cons of saying no to alcohol, whether it's just for a month or a lifelong decision.

Pro: it has many health benefits

Giving up alcohol can have a number of health benefits such as aiding weight loss, decreasing blood pressure and cutting the risk of diabetes, according to a recent study.

Dr Gautam Mehta, senior lecturer at the UCL Institute for Liver and Digestive Health who co-authored a paper on the benefits of periods of alcohol abstinence such as Dry January, said that a month off alcohol for moderate to high drinkers can have "tangible health benefits".

"Our study saw a weight loss of around 2kg, a decrease in blood pressure of around 5%, and an improvement in diabetes risk of almost 30%," he told BBC Good Food. The study also found "large decreases in blood growth factors that are linked to certain cancers", said Dr Mehta. But it is not known if these benefits "translate to long-term improvements in health", he added.

Con: short breaks may encourage heavier drinking later

Total abstinence from alcohol isn't strictly necessary; in fact it's better to avoid alcohol for a few days every week – to give your liver time to repair – than to have one alcohol-free month a year after which you return to drinking, according to the British Liver Trust.

One of the main problems with trying to stay off alcohol entirely is that it can encourage "yo-yo behavioural patterns" and encourage a "binge-purge mentality", said Men's Health. 

Dr Mehta said that periods of alcohol abstinence such as Dry January can make people feel "more confident about managing their drinking generally" but it could also have "unintended consequences". Participants "might feel that they've 'detoxed' after a month of no drinking, and drink more than they otherwise would have done in subsequent months," he said.

Pro: giving up can help form a habit that sticks

A break from drinking can lead to a lasting change, or even to giving up alcohol entirely. University of Sussex researchers found that 70% of Dry January participants maintained healthier drinking habits six months later. 

Around 13% stopped drinking permanently. But outcomes varied, with some returning to a high alcohol intake later on.

Con: it can be dangerous for heavy drinkers

Heavy and problem drinkers should not stop drinking alcohol without first seeking medical advice. Withdrawal symptoms can vary from mild (sweating, headaches, anxiety) to severe (vomiting, shaking, hallucinations and seizures). Heavy drinkers should therefore consult a GP before they cut down.

Pro: may promote self-awareness around drinking behaviours

Participating in periods of alcohol abstinence such as Dry January can provide good opportunities for us to reflect on our drinking habits and see where we may need to instigate change. 

According to Ian Hamilton, a lecturer in addiction at the University of York, Dry January "prompts people to think about not just how much they drink but what their individual relationship with alcohol is". So people who realise they are drinking frequently in order to relax might "think about alternative ways to relax rather than relying on alcohol", he told BBC Good Food. 

However, people participating in events like Dry January are already more likely to be moderate drinkers, said Hamilton. "Even if people do feel they benefit from Dry January it's difficult to know whether this is solely due to cutting out alcohol, as people tend to do parallel healthy things like eat more healthily and take up exercise."

Con: harder to socialise

Wanting to have a drink while socialising is one of the most common reasons why people find it hard to abstain from alcohol, according to research commissioned by Volvic, which sponsored a study of 2,000 adults. Post-work drinks, a desire to socialise and a fear of missing out were all ranked among the top reasons people fell off the wagon during Dry January.

But learning you can socialise without having a drink has its upsides. "It's a deeply held lie that everything in life requires alcohol," said Richard Piper, chief executive of Alcohol Change UK, speaking to The Times. "You’ll find it's incredibly liberating once you realise you can still go out there and socialise without alcohol."

As police departments look to implement new ways to catch criminals, one emerging technology is the use of automatic license plate readers (APLRs). These are camera systems that scan images of license plates, allowing law enforcement "to identify and compare plates against those of cars driven by people suspected of being involved in illegal activities," according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ALPRs recently helped lead to the arrest of a Los Angeles man suspected of quadruple homicide. Without ALPRs, "this individual that we believe is responsible for at least four murders may have been out there and re-offended," said Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna.

Despite the obvious benefits of alleged criminals being taken off the streets, opponents of ALPR technology have raised concerns about privacy, as well as issues about the tech's accuracy. 

Pro: It helps catch criminals

ALPRs can help police arrest criminals. Beyond the aforementioned murder suspect in Los Angeles, ALPRs have resulted in the arrests of alleged carjackers, rapists, bank robbers and even a mass shooter in Atlanta. "Those cameras proved extremely helpful," law enforcement told WRAL-TV of the latter, adding that police were able to get a hit off their ALPR systems and "[find the] precise location of the building he walked into." During a four-month trial period in Wichita, Kansas, ALPRs "helped police make 156 arrests, a majority of which were felony cases, and recover 23 guns and 152 stolen vehicles," Kevin Cox reported for American Police Beat magazine.   

Con: It can be inaccurate

The technology is improving, but there have been instances of ALPRs being widely inaccurate. A 2019 estimate found that the "accuracy rate of the license plate readers is about 90%," per KTVU-TV — but this means that one in 10 plates are misread. This is "especially concerning, considering that the cameras can scan 2,000 plates per minute," according to the partisan think tank Independent Institute. As a result of this error rate, "mistakes and misidentifications are frequent." In one instance from 2009, a San Francisco woman was pulled over at gunpoint after ALPRs mistakenly identified her car as stolen. 

Pro: It has other uses 

Beyond assisting in the capture of criminals, ALPRs can also be used for traffic safety. This includes speed traps and red-light monitoring as well as parking enforcement, according to ALPR manufacturer Tattile. Other groups can also use ALPRs to their advantage. Public transit agencies use the tech to "collect highway tolls, reducing traffic bottlenecks caused by tollbooths," law firm Lane Powell reported. Property managers and homeowners associations can use ALPRs to "track vendor's, visitor's, or tenant's activities, enforce parking restrictions and investigate insurance claims," the firm added. 

Con: It can be abused

The use of ALPRs is "almost entirely unregulated and can be subject to abuse," according to a report from the University of Michigan. This is especially true at the federal level, which has no guidelines for ALPR usage. As a result, "law enforcement and private actors can use the technology however they wish," the report added. There have also been reported instances of police officers using data collected from ALPRs to "get information on romantic partners, business associates, neighbors, journalists and others for reasons that have nothing to do with daily police work," the report said. 

Pro: It strengthens security

Given that ALPRs are often used to watch neighborhoods, many police departments tout them as tools to enhance community security. Flock Safety, an ALPR manufacturer, claims to have "reduced crime in their cities' markets by 70% and have made more than 2,500 communities safer," the Pensacola News Journal reported. Flock allows communities to receive a consistent stream of data about neighborhood crimes, including burglary, home theft, vandalism and mail theft, according to its website. Similar ALPRs are already available on the market. 

Con: It creates legal questions

Many civil rights groups have cautioned the widespread use of ALPRs as a potential violation of privacy. ALPRs collect and store data on the cars they scan, and this data is "sometimes pooled into regional sharing systems," the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reported. As a result, "enormous databases of innocent motorists' location information are growing rapidly," the ACLU added, and this information is often kept for years "with few or no restrictions to protect privacy rights." In the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned, there are also concerns that state governments could use ALPRs to "track people trying to cross state lines" to get an abortion, Wired reported. 

Rishi Sunak wants to push through emergency legislation to classify Rwanda a "safe" country after the Supreme Court ruled his government's flagship policy to send illegal migrants there is illegal.

The prime minister said he would bring a new "draft treaty" to MPs within days, followed by an emergency bill in the coming weeks "that essentially says Sunak thinks he's now following the law so don't take him to court", reported Politico's London Playbook.

The multimillion-pound plan to send migrants to Rwanda was first announced back in April 2022 under the then PM Boris Johnson. It has since become central to Sunak's pledge to "stop the boats" crossing the Channel by the next election. It has proved hugely divisive, however.

Pro: it acts a deterrent

The main argument made by successive home secretaries is that the threat of deportation to Rwanda acts as a strong deterrent to people seeking to travel to the UK illegally.

The government's lawyer, James Eadie KC, told the Supreme Court there is a "serious and pressing need to take effective steps that will act as a deterrent to those undertaking the perilous and sometimes life-threatening journey, typically across the Channel from a safe country, normally France".

Home Secretary James Cleverly told Sky News: "The deterrent effect of Rwanda is already having an effect in the thinking of the people smugglers."

Con: inhumane and illegal

Opponents of the Rwanda plan claim it is fundamentally inhumane and in breach of multiple international agreements protecting the rights of refugees. 

They point specifically to Rwanda's questionable human rights record. Author Michela Wrong in The Guardian described the country as "one of most repressive nations in Africa" that "muzzles the press and human rights activists and opposition leaders are killed or jailed, or simply 'disappear'". Rwanda ranks as "not free" on the Freedom House think tank's freedom index.

Even the UK Home Office's report on human rights in the country, published in May 2022, invited probing questions about why Rwanda was selected as a location to send asylum seekers who arrive in the UK.

Pro: other countries do it (or want to)

While UK courts may have ruled the plan illegal, the Rwanda deal appears to have set a blueprint for other countries looking to strengthen their migration polices. 

Earlier this month Italy announced an accord to set up Rwanda-style migration holding centres in Albania, while Germany and Austria "are pushing ahead with controversial plans of their own to send asylum seekers to third countries", said the Financial Times. 

Con: it doesn't work

A long-awaited "impact assessment" of the Illegal Migration Bill published in June concluded it was "not possible to estimate with precision the level of deterrence" the Rwanda scheme, or something similar to another third country, would have.

The report noted academic consensus that there is "little to no evidence" policy changes deter people leaving their home countries and seeking refuge. Instead, shared language, culture and family ties were accepted to be "strong factors" influencing the choice of final destination.

In fact, said Tortoise Media, deterrence measures and tough border policies are "likely to have the opposite effect". Such policies "incentivise pre-emptive migration and push temporary migrants into permanent settlements out of fear of future restrictions, while driving migration underground and diverting geographical routes to more dangerous and deadly options", it said.

Pro: it is backed by the public

While it may have failed to win the backing of the Supreme Court, the Rwandan deportation policy does have support among the public, according to a poll earlier this year.

Support had remained "relatively unchanged" since it was first announced in May 2022, The Times reported. A survey for the More in Common think tank carried out in April this year found that 46% of people still supported it, compared with 27% who opposed it. 

Polling for Savanta, after the Supreme Court ruling, showed that 47% of the public still backed it, rising to 67% of those who are Conservative voters. This "illustrates why the Tories are set on pursuing the policy despite the Supreme Court's ruling on Wednesday", said the i news site.

Con: cost

The Home Office has refused to publish the payments agreed with the Rwandan government, citing "commercial sensitivities". These are on top of the £140 million payment handed over to Kigali as part of a deal signed under the Johnson government. 

However, the government's own impact assessment of the deal estimated the cost of sending a single person seeking asylum to Rwanda could be almost £170,000. It also conceded that ministers did not know the overall costs of the plan.

What then, asked Isabel Hardman in The Spectator, "is the point of the government’s flagship Rwanda deportation scheme if it isn't going to save money for the taxpayer?". It is, she added, the "cost of policy making that is about symbols rather than things working".

The United States’ opioid problem has steadily been getting worse. In 2022, more than 110,000 people died of drug overdoses, "two-thirds of whom succumbed to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl," reported The Washington Post. One controversial solution are safe injection sites, described by Scientific American as "places where people who use injectable, but illegal, opioids such as heroin, can do so without fear of overdose, prosecution or spreading disease."

Some facilities have already been established in cities like New York City and San Francisco, while others have banned them. Global research has found benefits to these facilities, but many are still wary about their implications.

Pro: Acts as harm reduction

Harm reduction involves "meet[ing] people where they are ― on their own terms, and may serve as a pathway to additional health and social services, including additional prevention, treatment, and recovery services," per the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Creating safe injection sites prevents needle sharing and public drug usage. 

"People will not stop using drugs just because they are told not to, so the best way to manage the various side effects of drug abuse," wrote City Journal. "In addition to preventing death or disease, harm-reduction programs create an opportunity … to conduct outreach."

Con: Normalizes drug use

Having safe injection sites makes opioid use more commonplace. "Outreach efforts on the streets have enabled drug users rather than steer them toward treatment," Philadelphia council member Quetcy Lozada told the Post. "We have made [drug users] comfortable living in [their] conditions. A facility would only make that more accessible."

"The nation appears caught between the failures of the old war on drugs and a new harm-reduction approach that … appears hobbled by an activist philosophy at odds with the everyday realities of drug use in America," wrote Tablet Magazine. Safe injection sites don’t provide incentives to quit drugs, but simply make using them safer. 

Pro: Could reduce drug-related crime

Research has shown that safe injection sites meant "users were less likely to overdose, visit emergency rooms or commit crime," the Post reported. These sites create a "zone of stability" keeping people from "injecting in public in unsafe ways," Sarah Evans, the division director of drug policy at the Open Society Foundations, told GBH.

"There isn't a correlation between the opening of these sites and the negative things that people anticipate," Evans added. A 2014 study of safe injection sites found they didn’t "increase drug injecting, drug trafficking or crime in the surrounding environments."

Con: Could keep people from seeking help 

Drug access could keep people locked into addiction, making them reluctant to seek help. "As [users] drift to other parts of their lives and stay dependent on these bad drugs, we’re going to lose that life as a productive citizen," Michael Driscoll, a Philadelphia City Council member, told The New York Times. 

"We need to prioritize sobriety, not just allow addiction to continue and spiral," Pennsylvania state Sen. Christine Tartaglione (D) told the Post. Many drug users may also suffer from concurrent disorders such as depression or anxiety. "Only addiction treatment programs use an integrated treatment approach that addresses drug abuse at the same time as a co-occurring mental illness," wrote addiction recovery center Footprints to Recovery.

Pro: Prevents overdose deaths

Because safe injection sites are monitored, the facilities have prevented thousands of overdose deaths across the country, per the Times. Staff are often able to administer naloxone and oxygen to prevent deaths. Research on safe injection sites found that they lead to lower drug mortality rates and lower public drug usage. "People can’t recover if they’re dead," Jeremy Drucker, Minnesota’s director of addiction and recovery, told the Times.

Many people also "respond to the nonjudgmental, caring atmosphere of safe consumption sites by seeking treatment and other social services," wrote the Cato Institute. "Overdose prevention sites can be part of a comprehensive strategy that can save lives and address open-air drug use," said San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

Con: Causes problems with federal drug controls

The operation of safe injection sites is at odds with federal drug regulations. While the Biden administration has endorsed harm reduction strategies to combat the opioid crisis, the sites "operate in a legal gray area," per the Times. This is because of a 1986 statute making it illegal "to maintain or open any place for the purpose of using any controlled substance," per think tank R Street.

Safe injection sites remain illegal under federal law, so those that were opened anyway are relying on authorities not to intervene. Because of this, access to sites varies greatly depending on their location. "Even liberal elected officials and communities, like those in Philadelphia, continue to question what they consider more lenient approaches to opioid use," the Times added.

Some private schools in the UK are offering parents the chance to pay in advance for their child’s schooling to avoid fee rises resulting from a Labour-proposed end to tax exemptions.

With an election expected by the end of 2024 and Labour currently leading in the polls, it is expected to follow through on its pledge "to hit fee-paying schools with a 20 per cent VAT bill within the first year of government", said The Telegraph. 

Labour has said the move will "bring in £1.7 billion which can be used to recruit 6,500 teachers for state schools", but some trade unions have warned that the move "could cost teachers jobs", the paper reported in a separate article.

The party’s leader Keir Starmer has "batted away claims that his party is contemptuous of aspirational parents" and private schools, said The Economist, arguing that it is "unjust to continue exempting from tax a service bought mostly by the rich".

But what are the benefits and drawbacks of private schools? Here are the pros and cons.

Pro: provide better prospects

Research from 2019 showed that those in top jobs, including politicians, judges, leading civil servants and diplomats, were "five times more likely to have been to a fee-paying school than the general population".

According to research by the think tank The Sutton Trust, "power rests with a narrow section of the population" – the 7% who attended private schools and the 1% who graduated from Oxbridge. It said there was a clear "pipeline" leading from "fee-paying schools through Oxbridge and into top jobs". 

Research by University College London and Cambridge showed that private school graduates are also likely to "earn 17% more than workers from similar homes" by the age of 25, said The Economist.

Con: fundamentally unfair

While private schools provide a "richly resourced" environment for pupils, they "pose a serious problem for Britain's education system and society", said UCL professor Francis Green on The Conversation. They remain "very socially exclusive" and attempts to open opportunities for low-income students through bursaries show "no sign" of working.

Less than 10% of Britain's population is privately educated, said Green, but they occupy a "high proportion when it comes to positions of public influence". An education from one of these schools "enables pupils to jump the queue for many of the high-status rungs of British society", he added, which is of "little value" socially if the majority of pupils are held back.

Pro: good for the economy

Private schools offer a significant contribution to the economy and “provide as many jobs as Asda, Sainsbury’s and Co-op combined”, said the Daily Mail.

A report by the Independent Schools Council (ISC) suggested that Britain's fee-charging schools contributed "£16.5 billion to the economy" and that figure had grown “by a fifth in just four years”. The report also suggested that private schools save an “estimated £4.4 billion” for the government per year in not having to provide those pupils with state school places.

The ISC said that private schools have a major effect on the areas around them and that there were “small regional schools with big contributions to local economies”.

Con: expensive

Private schools are expensive and their fees are continuing to rise. According to an Institute for Fiscal Studies report this year, there has been a "20% real-terms increase in average private school fees since 2010" and attendance remained "concentrated at the very top of the income distribution". The average fee for 2022-2023 was £15,200, “nearly 90% higher than state school spending per pupil”. Top private boarding schools cost significantly more.

These fees are now "pricing out the sons and daughters of dentists, police officers and high-flying civil servants", said Charlie Peters in The Critic, with schools having to “increasingly cater to the super wealthy of the international city class”.

Pro: greater range of activities and subjects

Private schools "offer a wider choice of subjects to study and sports to play" than state schools can, wrote Peter Caddick-Adams in The Critic. If he had attended a state school, he argued, there would not have been the "same opportunities to row or fence; mingle with foreign students; scamper over Welsh hills with tent, map and compass; or visit foreign lands".

Access to some sports, for example, is borne out in statistics within men's professional sport, where "37 per cent of rugby internationals and 43 per cent of the England cricket team" attended independent schools, said The Sutton Trust, while only 5% of the men’s football team did. Likewise, of the "best-selling popstars" in 2019, 30% attended independent schools, while 44% of "top actors" were privately educated.

Con: exacerbate inequality

There has been a "widening attainment gap in education" since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, said The Observer. Despite "repeated pledges by ministers", A-level results from 2023 showed that private school pupils were "more than twice as likely to achieve A or A* grades as those in the state sector".

There is a "chain of entitlement" in Britain's education system that needs to be broken to allow "radical change", said The New Statesman. While the complete abolition of private schools "remains a taboo subject", it added, unless Britain is to "undergo a genuine transformation of its education system", then "its inequalities will endure".

You may not consider artificial intelligence assistants like Siri or Alexa as potential close friends, but the latest wave of generative AI tech indicates that the possibility of AI companions is less farfetched than before. Apps like Replika are billed as the "AI companion who cares" and offer a more empathetic and interactive experience. Other companies are integrating their tech into existing assistants, indicating a shift toward friendlier chatbots. While this may be the beginning of an era of AI companionship, some critics are wary about the digitization of human interaction, saying that it could create problems when it comes to contact between real people. Others are more optimistic about the potential for AI to be used in this capacity.

Pro: They're more personal than older AI assistants

The newest AI bots move beyond simple speech or text recognition to create a more interactive experience, as many have the ability to recall previous conversations and built-in personalities. In the next few months, "we will all be rethinking our relationship with computers in a profound way" through "the modality of computer conversation," Mark Wilson predicted in Fast Company. As old-school assistants are replaced with more personal AI companions, computing, "once simply about completing tasks, will become more personal, nuanced and, above all else, familiar than ever before,"  Wilson noted. 

Con: They only mimic human interaction

While developing an actual relationship with AI companions might be appealing, some experts warn that the technology only mimics what real human interaction is like. MIT professor of sociology Sherry Turkle argued that this "pretend empathy ... takes advantage of the deep psychology of being human," per CNET. She could see why people might turn to digital companionship. Still, in the end, chatbots, "no matter how clever, can only disorient and disappoint," Turkle said in MIT's 2020 Technology Review.

Pro: They make companionship accessible for lonely or marginalized people

For some people, AI bots offer an opportunity for interaction they may have never had. Some of us who are blessed with close friends and families "may look down on tools like this, experiencing what they offer as a cloying simulacrum of the human experience," Casey Newton wrote on the substack Platformer. "But I imagine it might feel different for those who are lonely, isolated or on the margins." For example, Psychology Today pointed out that for "the elderly in retirement homes or those isolated due to chronic illness, an AI chatbot can offer the gift of constant, caring companionship." 

Con: They can perpetuate problematic beliefs about relationships

As AI becomes more interactive, it is not surprising that apps now allow you to customize companions capable of building a romantic rapport. Eva AI, an AI girlfriend app, enables you to create your perfect digital partner. But having the capability to develop someone that you control and meets your every whim is "really frightening," said Tara Hunter, acting CEO for domestic violence advocacy group Full Stop Australia, told The Guardian. "Given what we know already that the drivers of gender-based violence are those ingrained cultural beliefs that men can control women, that is really problematic," she added.

Pro: They can help you practice navigating real relationships

Despite all the naysayers, several users have reported that AI chatbots help them practice intimate or romantic situations in real life. When the teams behind the Replika friend bot and its flirtatious counterpart, Blush, started listening to user's stories, they realized that there was "actually a lot of value for people in being able to practice more romantic speech and having these more intimate moments,” Blush’s chief product officer Rita Popova told TechCrunch.  

Con: They could negatively impact the birth rate 

The rise of interactive AI girlfriends is "enabling the silent epidemic of loneliness in an entire generation of young men," Liberty Vittert opined for The Hill. She argues that if young men choose AI girlfriends over real-life relationships, they likely won't marry or have children with real women. Eventually, this could lead to a smaller workforce as the population shrinks. If the trend continues to enable "a generation of lonely men to stay lonely and childless," it could have "devastating effects on the U.S. economy in less than a decade," Vittert predicted. 

The rise of gene-edited embryos has raised a myriad of ethical questions. It involves altering DNA to prevent disease or even to choose specific traits using a method known as CRISPR. In 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui created the first gene-edited babies, making them resistant to HIV. While the process is controversial, many researchers see the potential in the technology if properly regulated. "Clinical trial results demonstrate that CRISPR is safe, and it’s effective for treating and curing human disease," remarked Jennifer Doudna, who won the Nobel Prize in 2020 for discovering CRISPR. "It’s important with a powerful technology like this to grapple with the challenges of responsible use."

Pro: It could help treat a number of diseases

Turning to genetic modification could be a solution for a number of genetic diseases including sickle cell anemia, muscular dystrophy and cancer. This can be done through modifying human embryos to correct the genetic issue. "There are more than 10,000 single genetic mutations that collectively affect probably hundreds of millions of people around the world," Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a biologist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, told NPR. "We could help a lot of people." Genetic engineering technology can also make crops disease-resistant, seedless or able to bear larger fruit. 

Con: It could create greater health divide between developing and developed nations

While the technology has "great potential," it’s also "very expensive," Robin Lovell-Badge of the Francis Crick Institute told The Guardian. "A treatment for one person could cost a million dollars." According to the World Health Organization, there are also "an estimated two billion people have no access to essential medicines, effectively shutting them off from the benefits of advances in modern science and medicine." Equity in medical access has been a long-standing problem. "We have to start talking early on about ways to ... make [gene therapy] cost-effective and sustainable," Alta Charo from the University of Wisconsin at Madison told CNN.

Pro: It could help aging populations

Genetic modification could help populations live longer and healthier, particularly when it comes to combating genetic diseases like Alzheimer’s. An estimated 6.7 million Americans aged 65 and older live with the disease, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. "The aging population is of grave importance as both a socioeconomic issue and a strain on the medical system," remarked He Jiankui, per CNN. The biggest issue is that editing an embryo "to address a complex disease that affects people toward the end of their life" is "highly questionable," Peter Dröge, an associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, told CNN.

Con: It could lead to eugenics

Opening the door to modifying embryos can be a slippery slope into eugenics. "Genome editing has made it easier to imagine 'improving' human traits," Ruth Garde, curator of Cut + Paste, a public exhibition about genome-editing technology, told The Guardian. There are no guidelines on when to use genetic modification on humans, which brings up a debate on what circumstances warrant it. "Some people will agree that using genome editing to modify a defective gene that may lead to an infant's death if untreated is acceptable," but are against using it to "ensure that an unborn child has specific physical features such as blue eyes or blond hair," The Conversation reported. 

Pro: It could help infertile parents have children

Scientists have explored a method called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), a process that allows for "custom-making human eggs and sperm in the laboratory from any cell in a person's body," per NPR. "IVF will probably never be the same," said Eli Adashi, a reproductive biology specialist from Brown University. The technology could be "life-altering for individuals to build that family that they dream of," Andrea Braverman, who studies infertility at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, told the outlet. IVG opens the possibility for infertile and gay couples to have biological children. 

Con: Could lead to new genetic diseases

Much is still unknown about the consequences of genetically modifying embryos. "Experiments have also shown that in about 20% of cases, these genome-editing changes can lead to substantial rearrangements of a person’s genome, which is very, very dangerous," remarked Lovell-Badge. "It could cause cancer." Along with potentially causing disease, genome editing could also "create new genetic diseases that could then be passed down for generations," essentially expanding the range of genetic diseases rather than reducing it, NPR reported. This has led to even more questions surrounding ethics.

Labour secured a massive Commons majority at last year’s general election with the support of just one in five eligible voters. The party won nearly two-thirds of MPs (63%) with just a third of the votes (34%). That is partly the result of the UK’s first-past-the-post system for general elections, but low turnout – in this case just under 60% – is also a big factor.

“The problem of low and unequal turnout in elections risks trapping British politics in a spiral of stagnation and discontent,” said political historian David Klemperer on the Constitution Society. A new cross-party Campaign for Compulsory Voting has been launched to try to emulate the likes of Australia, Luxembourg and Singapore, where voting is a legal requirement.

There are currently 22 countries around the world that use mandatory voting, with enforcement varying from modest fines for those who fail to turn up on polling day to the naming and shaming of non-voters.

Pro: higher and more representative turnout

This may seem obvious, but compulsory voting leads to drastically higher voter turnout rates. In Australia, where mandatory voting was first introduced in 1925, turnout for elections hovers at around 90% of all registered voters, way more than the UK's 2024 general-election turnout of 59.7%.

Additionally, it has made taking part in elections be seen as both "a right and a duty", according to progressive journal Independent Australia. Compulsory voting underpins Australia's democracy, "and Australians have readily accepted this with their enthusiastic participation in the electoral process".

Beyond changing the culture around elections, mandatory voting has been proven to improve accessibility. Australia has taken extensive action to ensure most people have "the opportunity to vote – even the most disadvantaged", said the Harvard International Review.

"Those countries who have compulsory voting, where the penalty for not voting is a fine, and where spoiling your ballot paper is allowed as a way of signalling general discontent, tend to have healthier democracies," said Alastair Campbell for the i news site, "and healthier democracies tend to be happier places."

Con: infringes on individual liberty

Critics have long argued that people have a right not to cast a vote, and on a "philosophical and legal level" compulsory voting "raises the question of whether requiring citizens to vote is an appropriate infringement on individual liberty", said Policy Options.

Indeed, said Rohan Silva in The Times, "to a British sensibility the core of the Aussie electoral system feels deeply uncivic and illiberal: the legal requirement to turn up and vote or else be clobbered with a government fine of up to £100 and potentially hauled in front of a judge".

Furthermore, the US Supreme Court has already recognised the right not to speak, added the Free Speech Center, and compulsory voting could be seen as compelled speech. Choosing not to go to the polls is a form of freedom of expression.

Pro: minimises polarisation

“Casting votes regularly” makes you a part of the democratic “system”, said Marcela Valdes in The New York Times. This means voters are not so drawn to “ideas on the margins”, compared with those who never or rarely vote.

"If the full range of voters actually voted, our political leaders, who are exquisitely attuned followers, would go where the votes are: away from the extremes," Eric Lui, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, wrote in Time.

"Academic studies corroborate this view," said Silva in The Times, "suggesting that the more people who turn out to vote, the more centrist the outcome." This is said to be because "parties can't simply pander to their hardcore supporters, who tend to be more ideological and less representative of the general population".

Con: the 'uninformed voter' effect

One of the major arguments against compulsory voting is that it leads to a greater number of so-called "uninformed voters", with those who currently choose not to vote generally less educated on political issues than those who do.

Evidence suggests that new voters are more susceptible to misinformation during a campaign. The Australian political scientist Haydon Manning wrote for CNN that compulsory voting often "requires banal sloganeering and crass misleading negative advertising".

There was little evidence, for example, that mandatory voting in Brazil has led to greater knowledge about the issues in the country or elsewhere, said The Economist. Neither does a higher turnout mean that voters perceive governments to be more legitimate, it added.

There is also concern that uninformed voters, or those who simply do not care about the outcome of an election, may end up voting randomly. The impact of "random" votes "ends up being particularly detrimental because it fails to increase civic engagement and may skew election results", reported Fair Vote.

Pro: creates a fairer economy

The tendency towards non-voting is not evenly distributed among the population, but rather heavily correlated with age and class. In Britain, this manifests as an “unrepresentative electorate – richer, older, whiter, and more secure than the UK public at large”. This creates “warped incentives for politicians” to adopt policies that find favour with the “older, economically insulated minority at the expense of the wider public”, said Klemperer in The New Statesman. For this look no further than the economically illiterate but politically expedient pension triple lock, which successive governments have dared not drop for fear of angering older voters.

Where this argument “gets really interesting is the novel case it makes that such compulsion is justified to fix Britain’s poor productivity growth”, said The Economist.

Con: criminalises non-voters

While Australia has shown that only a small percentage of voters refuse to abide by the law, in a country the size of the UK or even US this would still equate to tens or hundreds of thousands of normally law-abiding citizens being penalised for not voting.

In countries that have compulsory voting, its enforcement "varies from being strict to being weak", said Policy Options. Australia, for example, imposes modest fines on citizens who do not turn up to vote, with exceptions made for those who have "valid and sufficient reasons", while other countries use "shaming", posting the names of non-voters.

But this is an uncomfortable thought for many opposed to a big state. "If Nadine Dorries is vexed about compulsory BBC licence fees, the thought of enforced voting would probably prompt her to start an armed militia," said Silva.

College degrees have been considered a ticket to financial success for a long time, but faith in the return on investment of higher education appears to be waning. Enrollment at some institutions is in decline, and some analysts are pushing back against the narrative that college is necessary. While this isn't a new debate, changes in employer expectations and generational differences are shaping the way we discuss the value of a college education. 

Pro: You're more likely to make higher wages

College graduates continue to have statistically higher wage potential than their peers without degrees. A Burning Glass Institute study recently found that the "four-year degree is still a valuable commodity, delivering an immediate 25% wage premium within a year of graduation," The Wall Street Journal reported, noting that the difference remained consistent over 12 years. A degree also "makes it easier for graduates to recover from early career struggles" and allows unemployed graduates to "move up more easily into jobs where more of their coworkers have a degree."

Part of why graduates have more upward mobility is because their degrees are a "gateway to professional occupations, such as business and engineering, in which workers learn new skills, get promoted and gain managerial experience," David Deming wrote in The Atlantic. In contrast, workers without degrees tend to "end up in personal services and blue-collar occupations, for which wages tend to stagnate over time."

Con: Some companies don't value degrees like they once did

Employers from various industries have stopped requiring college degrees for certain positions. They are instead considering more skills-based qualifications, thus creating alternative routes for entering the workforce. Some companies have "invested in hiring routes such as apprenticeships so new recruits can train on the job," Financial Times reported. Even though the shift is often "just virtue-signaling," Joseph Fuller, co-lead of Harvard Business School's Managing the Future of Work program, told the Times, he believes "eliminating degree requirements is smart business and an appropriate thing to do."

Pro: The value of a degree trickles down into society

Postsecondary education ultimately "benefits society writ large," Diane Cheng, vice president of research and policy at the Institution for Higher Education Policy, told Inside Higher Ed. The advantages graduates gain from a college education "flow down to their communities, to their families, to their economies," Cheng said. So investing in resources to make college more affordable and "improve postsecondary value is really something that benefits everyone."

Con: The burden of student debt can outweigh the benefits of higher ed

When it comes to the high cost of higher education, "the United States is an outlier in more ways than one," Paul Tough wrote in The New York Times Magazine. In other countries, the government subsidizes the cost of college, bringing tuition as low as $2,000 a year or even "essentially zero." A few decades ago, U.S. state and federal governments also covered much of the cost of public colleges. "Now students and their families bear much of the burden," often taking out onerous student loans to cover the rising costs, "and that fact has changed what used to be a pretty straightforward calculation about the economic value of college into a complex math problem" that doesn't always end in a positive number.

Pro: You'll have a longer life expectancy

While doing research for a recently published paper, Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton discovered that the "America of those without college degrees has been scarred by death and staggeringly shorter life spans," the pair wrote in an essay in The New York Times. "For those without college degrees, life expectancy reached its peak around 2010 and has been falling since." The issue is "an unfolding disaster that has attracted little attention in the media or among elected officials," they added.

Con: New grads make less than their parents did when starting out

Today's college graduates are making less money on average than their parents did after they finished school. Over the past four decades, graduates' salaries have decreased by more than 10% after adjusting for inflation, according to a recent report by Self Financial.  In 1984, new "graduates earned $23,278, on average, or $68,342 in today's dollars," which is "roughly $7,254 more than 2023 graduates," CNBC summarized.

In collaboration with health startup Sesame, retail behemoth Costco will now offer its members access to outpatient medical services, including virtual primary care visits, for only $29, CNN reported.  

In a press release, Sesame said Costco members will now have access to low-cost health care providers within their direct-to-consumer marketplace in all 50 states. The company does not accept health insurance "because it primarily caters to uninsured Americans and those with high-deductible plans who prefer to pay cash for their health care," CNN summarized. The company added that its model keeps prices reasonably low for its users. 

The partnership now brings Costco in line with competitors like Amazon, Walgreens, Walmart, and CVS Health, all of which are "directly providing health care to customers as the demand for urgent care access outside of a traditional hospital setting booms," CNN noted. Whether or not retail health care reshapes the industry, it's worth weighing out the benefits and pitfalls of this increasingly popular option. 

Pro: It makes health care more convenient

Convenience is a big selling point for retail health care. From in-house clinics in local pharmacies and shopping centers to virtual offerings and appointments, an increased variety of options is better and more convenient for those in need. Patients can make appointments online, sometimes through existing memberships, or walk into a clinic whenever they have time. Retail clinics are also occasionally open outside of typical doctor's office hours. 

Con: It's not the best option for all medical issues

Retail health clinics and virtual visits may not be suitable for everyone. Suppose you are taking certain medications or have a chronic health condition. In that case, you might be better off seeking help from a hospital or a primary care physician who is familiar with your medical history. "Health care is different for older adults," Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, health care policy professor at Harvard Medical School, told the Harvard Health Blog in 2016. "The care you'll need for even a simple problem might be more complicated."

Pro: It democratizes heath care

Affordable health care that doesn't require insurance opens up care for people who otherwise wouldn't have access. This could be especially useful in areas with a deficit of hospitals or other medical providers. Dollar General recently partnered with DocGo, a mobile medical clinic company, to "test whether it could draw more customers and tackle persistent health inequities," NPR reported. Pairing mobile clinics with "Dollar General's ubiquitous small-town presence" has been applauded by "investment analysts and some rural health experts as a way to ease the rural health care drought," NPR added.

Con: 'Scattered' care can lead to mix-ups 

Even if it's convenient, jumping between providers can mess up the continuity of your care, particularly if you see different people for the same problem. Retail clinics do offer to send your medical records to other providers, but oversights are still a concern. "The risk with that is, scattered care from multiple places can lead to mix-ups," Dr. Suzanne Salamon, geriatrician and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, told the Harvard Health Blog. "And if people don’t bring their complete medication lists to a clinic, the clinic may prescribe something that will interact with medications they're taking."

Pro: There is transparent pricing 

Transparent and fixed pricing is another draw for retail providers, particularly when high health care costs, hidden fees and unexpected medical bills are taken into account. Retail providers' prices, typically displayed on their websites, are often significantly lower than that of a primary care visit or a trip to the emergency room. This transparent and fixed pricing aligns with retailers' "efforts to act as discount superstores," which "enhances their brand value," per Fierce Healthcare.

Con: You could end up in the emergency room anyway

Retail clinics are primarily built for low-acuity ailments, so if you show up experiencing severe symptoms, you're likely to get rerouted to an emergency room or hospital anyway. This might happen in instances where the patient isn't educated on which facility is appropriate for the level of care they need, per PatientEngagementHIT. A patient in this scenario also risks receiving an "inaccurate diagnosis that then stems into further treatment-seeking following the initial urgent care visit." 

The Supreme Court recently agreed to take on two cases at the center of an ongoing content moderation debate, where it will decide "whether states can essentially control how social media companies operate," CNN reported. The justices will be considering laws passed in Texas and Florida in 2021 that "could have nationwide repercussions for how social media — and all websites — display user-generated content," the outlet added. 

Both sides of the political divide have heavily scrutinized Big Tech and their policies over content removal in the past. Democrats have pushed for more moderation of user-generated content, while Republicans claim that social media companies are overstepping and excessively targeting content from the conservative right, an allegation former President Donald Trump has repeated several times. 

Pro: It protects the public from harmful content and misinformation

For some, content moderation is the first line of defense against spreading misinformation and content that could be harmful to users. It can protect young consumers from cyberbullying or flag content that spreads misinformation, which became a point of contention at the height of Covid-19.  “Content moderation is really about human safety," argued Alexandra Popken, VP of Trust and Safety of WebPurify, a content moderation company. The goal of moderation is "to proactively detect and remove harms before they materialize and impact real people," Popken added, "or to respond and react as quickly as possible once they have materialized.”

Con: It negatively impacts the mental health of moderators

Those tasked with scouring thousands of potentially jarring posts, images and videos have complained that the work hurts their mental health and that companies don't offer adequate resources to help those suffering as such. In June, hundreds of social media moderators for outsourcer TELUS International in Germany called on lawmakers to improve their work conditions, "citing tough targets and mental health issues," Reuters reported. They were "led to believe the company had appropriate mental health support in place, but it doesn't. It's more like coaching," Cengiz Haksöz, a former content moderator at TELUS International, told the outlet. "And these outsourcers are helping the tech giants get away from their responsibilities."

Pro: It protects a company's brand

Content moderation enables brands to control their reputation, protecting them from inflammatory content that could harm their users or alienate them from advertisers. "Illicit submissions that unalign with a brand’s values can quickly turn products intended to spread positivity into something far more sinister," Jonathan Freger, co-founder and CTO of WebPurify, said in Forbes. A lack of content moderation "allows for harmful UGC to slip through the cracks and threaten the user experience and brand reputation," he added. 

Con: It opens the door for 'digital authoritarianism'

Content moderation has snowballed, and the "collateral damage in its path" was ignored, Evelyn Douek said in Wired. And the push for more moderation in the U.S. has had "geopolitical costs, too"; some authoritarian governments "pointed to the rhetoric of liberal democracies in justifying their own censorship." Western governments have "largely left platforms to fend for themselves in the global rise of digital authoritarianism," she noted. "Governments need to walk and chew gum in how they talk about platform regulation and free speech if they want to stand up for the rights of the many users outside their borders."

Pro: It puts the onus on social media companies to keep platforms safe

Not that we don't benefit from using our discretion in determining which content to interact with, but social media platforms are still responsible for fostering a safe environment for all users. Having content moderation tools and policies in place is a part of how companies assume the responsibility of safe platforms, especially for marginalized people who find solace and community online. Often, those communities can become the targets of content that threatens that safety, "which is where content moderation is crucial," Popken, WebPurify's VP of Trust and Safety, said in an interview with Tech HQ. 

Con: It is anti-free speech

One of the prevailing arguments against content moderation is that it is inherently anti-free speech, especially when done at the behest or under the influence of government officials. In June, a U.S. federal court issued an injunction barring the government from contacting social media platforms about moderating posts protected by the First Amendment, Quartz reported. The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general who alleged that the government was censoring free speech on social media platforms under the guise of combatting Covid-related or election misinformation. In his ruling, Judge Terry A. Doughty wrote that the case “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” He concluded that the evidence depicted "an almost dystopian scenario," wherein the government assumed a role "similar to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth.'"

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced the scrapping of Phase 2 of the HS2 rail project. 

The second phase of the high-speed rail was meant to extend Phase 1, the under-construction London-to-Birmingham route, further north to Manchester, but "delays and spiralling costs" have led to the government axing the northern leg of the project, said Sky News.

The prime minister promised to use the money saved to invest "in alternative transport projects in the north", a similar promise to that made by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson who "pulled that trick" when he cancelled the extension from Birmingham to Leeds in 2022, added Sky News.

But the delivery of HS2 has been fraught with "incompetence and financial mismanagement" from the start, wrote Madeline Grant in The Telegraph, and has left Britain looking "uniquely incapable of delivering major infrastructure projects". It was pitched with the promise to "slash travel times and boost rail capacity", said Wired, and its scrapping could have "serious repercussions" for the "future of rail investment".

Here are the pros and cons of the HS2 railway.

Pro: greater connectivity 

HS2 launched with the commitment to deliver "a high-speed line connecting central London to the northern cities", said Politico, but it currently looks "unlikely to reach Manchester, Leeds – or even central London".

Still, a properly executed HS2 would be a "boost for connectivity between major cities" in the north, and create "more space for stopping services and freight trains" on the West Coast Main Line, said Sky News.

The Department for Transport said the high-speed rail would "triple the number of people" able to travel between the cities and provide a much-needed upgrade to infrastructure "built by the Victorians more than 100 years ago", said BBC Newsround.

Con: increasing costs

A government report in the run-up to the project said it should cost "no more than £69 billion", said The Times. That, however, turned out to be a severely "undercooked figure" and a "dissenting report" said it would cost a "much more realistic £106 billion".

Since then, the estimate of the total cost for the project is £180 billion, with the "London to Birmingham leg alone costing almost £100 billion".

There's "no denying this is an almighty mess", The Times added, with the estimated cost a "ridiculous price tag for a 140-mile railway".

Pro: new jobs

When HS2 first broke ground the government was "expecting to create 22,000 jobs" through the project over the first few years with "women and under-25s the core focus for recruitment and skills investment", said the BBC. The government said the project would "re-balance the UK's economy" and promote "investment outside London" added the BBC's business correspondent Theo Leggett.

As of 2022, HS2 had increased its "current total workforce to just under 30,000" and had around 2,500 "formerly unemployed now working on HS2". The Stop HS2 campaign's Joe Rukin, however, told the BBC that the project would "permanently displace almost that many jobs" in its construction.

Con: the time

Even if the Manchester extension was going ahead, the timeline for it to open would have been delayed significantly. The London to Birmingham branch was originally slated for 2026 but was "pushed back" to "between 2029 and 2033", while the second phase was delayed until 2040 from 2032, before being "apparently shelved altogether", said Yahoo News.

There is also a penalty for scrapping HS2 though, with the "weekend closures on other mainline railways to upgrade existing lines" in its absence lasting up to "14 years", said The Guardian. It could also spell the end of the Northern Powerhouse Rail and result in "further decades elapsing" on a high-speed rail link in the north from east to west.

Pro: reduction of carbon footprint

One of the "principal arguments in favour" of developing HS2 was that it would "help the UK cut its carbon emissions" by linking many of its currently disconnected parts with London and continental Europe, and in turn "lessen demand for carbon-intensive air travel, road freight and car journeys", wrote Patrick Barkham in The Guardian. However, its "overall construction and operation" will still create significant carbon emissions.

But "far more road schemes will be needed if we can't shift traffic to more efficient rail", argued Jon Stone in the Independent, with high-speed rail "proven the greenest way to get people off short-haul flights". 

Con: environmental impact

The government was accused of having "major problems" with its estimates of HS2's impact on surrounding wildlife and nature, and "more than 50% of natural habitats could be lost overall" in the work between London and the West Midlands, reported ITV News. The Wildlife Trusts said the assessment of the impact on biodiversity was "fundamentally flawed" and called for construction to be paused while the impact was re-evaluated. The trusts said on BBC Newsround that while they were in favour of "sustainable transport solutions", the HS2 construction came "at an unacceptable cost for our natural world".

Rishi Sunak's plans to radically overhaul A-levels and replace them with a new "British Baccalaureate" have received decidedly mixed reviews from teachers and parents alike.

The prime minister is understood to be considering ditching the current exam system for 16- to 18-year-olds and replacing it with a new certificate where pupils would study a broader range of subjects until they leave school. English and maths would be compulsory – something Sunak has long called for.

Perhaps ironically, the plans would bring post-Brexit Britain's education curriculum much closer to the rest of Europe, where the International Baccalaureate (IB) has been in place for decades and pupils receive a total score out of 45, rather than grades in individual subjects.

Pro: a more holistic education

Supporters of the IB say it provides a much broader and rounded educational experience. Students follow six academic courses over two years, choosing one course from each of six groups including mathematics, sciences, individuals and societies, studies in language and literature, and the arts. This is compared to just three A-level subjects which can also be much more limited in scope.

The Creativity, Action, Service (CAS) component also puts an emphasis on "emotional and social development by getting students involved in activities outside the classroom", said Studential.

This seemingly endless suite of assignments and deadlines, combined with mock exams, "contribute to make IB a demanding programme" said the South China Morning Post (SCMP), but it comes with "definite benefits: a form of analytical training that can follow you to university and beyond".

Con: rewards generalists

The strength of the IB is also its weakness, namely that it rewards pupils who are good at everything while those who excel at a few subjects suffer.

It means that students who excel in one or two subjects often miss out on their first-choice university, because typical offers usually require a minimum IB score based across all subjects, rather than top scores in particular subjects that students want to pursue at undergraduate level.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment, told i news this is why most schools in the UK that adopted the IB have since dropped it and returned to A-levels. According to the International Baccalaureate Organization just 137 schools in the UK currently offer the IB Diploma, half as many as in 2008.

Pro: More attractive to employers

With the future of work less and less predictable, employers today "care less about subject specifics and more about skills, diversity and flexibility", wrote Colin Irvine, Director of IBDP at Bradfield College, all traits which along with self-management and ambition are the cornerstone of an IB education, he added.

Nick Law, headteacher at Carre's Grammar School in Sleaford, told The Lincolnite that offering an English Baccalaureate could, "if properly funded, planned and designed with teachers and professionals, enhance life opportunities and give students the knowledge and skills that employers are looking for".

This is a view backed by Robert Halfon MP, chair of the Commons Education Select Committee, who in a 2022 article for TES magazine set out the case for why an IB-style qualification that mixes academic and technical subjects is needed to prepare students for the new world of work.

This adds to "a growing body of evidence that the IB Diploma Programme prepares students for success at the university level and beyond", an article on the Haileybury school portal reported.

Con: not suited to British university system

While the IB complements university courses in Europe and the US, which are typically longer and allow students to specialise later on, it "does not suit the British university system, where students are already expected to have specialised upon entry", said i news.

"If you're going to take somebody up to the higher reaches of physics in three years at university, they've got to have a very high jumping-off point" said Professor Smithers. "That works well with the A-level system, where you can show that you've done subjects like physics, maths, further maths and computing, but not the International Baccalaureate."

Pro: improves international prospects and outlook

While it may put some students at a disadvantage when entering British universities, "thanks to its international recognition and transferability, and to its rigour and breadth of study, [the IB] has become a very popular choice among expat families seeking a well-rounded, international education for their children", said World Schools.

"You can't go past the most obvious point in the IB's favour – the international aspect," agreed Crimson Education. The IB Diploma is recognised by all leading universities, said the education site, "which instantly puts you on the world stage and contextualises your application". By comparison, "country-specific programmes don't have the same global reach, so it's harder for universities to understand the results and compare you fairly to other candidates."

In Europe especially the IB Diploma is “widely accepted and more easily understood than A-levels”, said Studential.

Con: it's a marathon not a sprint

"The IB is no walk in the park" said Crimson Education. "In fact, it's not a walk at all. Think of it more as a run – but a marathon, not a sprint," said the site, this means "you need to be a 'long-distance learner' to do well".

"Some of the work, depth required, and deadlines can be overwhelming, both in terms of volume and variety" agreed SCMP, meaning "not everyone has the maturity to embrace these things, and so IB simply is not for everybody."

It may also not be for those who feel the pressure under intense exam situations. This is because, while the course "requires consistent work and solid performance over a two-year period" your performance is judged in one final exam covering all the material taught over the whole two-year period, said World Schools.

Last year saw a “sharp hike” in the number of executions carried out around the world, according to UN Human Rights, despite the overall global trend continuing to move towards universal abolition.

In Iran, at least 1,500 individuals were reportedly executed in 2025, almost half related to drug offences. It was a similar story in Saudi Arabia, with a total of at least 356 executions, surpassing its record for the number carried out for a second year in a row. According to UK-based campaign group Reprieve, around two thirds were linked to non-lethal drug-related offences. More than half of these were foreign nationals “who appear to have been put to death as part of a ‘war on drugs’ in the kingdom”, reported the BBC.

Recent decades have seen a “clear trend” away from capital punishment around the world, with “more than 70%” of countries having abolished the practice, said the Death Penalty Information Center, a US-based non-profit organisation. The US “remains an outlier” among democracies for its use of the death penalty; most countries that still carry out state executions are authoritarian regimes such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and China.

Here are some of the major arguments for and against capital punishment.

Pro: public support

The latest major survey in the US by Gallup found that while the death penalty enjoys less support among younger generations, a majority of Americans (52%) are still “in favour of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder”.

Support in the UK, which had been in slow decline since hangings were abolished in the 1960s, is also on the rise. A YouGov poll last November found more Britons support reintroducing capital punishment (50%) than oppose it (45%), with 42% of the public believing capital punishment should be the standard sentence when it comes to murder.

Support was highest among Reform voters (82%) and Conservatives (67%), with 35% of Labour voters, 30% of Lib Dems and 26% of Greens backing the return of capital punishment. In response, MP Rupert Lowe called for a “legally binding referendum” to decide if there are circumstances “where the guilt is so undeniable, crime is so monstrous, the evil so irredeemable” that capital punishment should be an option.

Con: wrongful execution risk

“The death penalty carries the inherent risk of executing an innocent person,” said the Death Penalty Information Center. It found that since 1973, at least 202 people who were on death row in the US have been exonerated. “The remain­ing ques­tion is how many inno­cent lives are worth sac­ri­fic­ing to pre­serve this punishment.”

Statistically this means that “for every 10 people on death row who are executed, at least one person on death row is innocent”, said Dr Bharat Malkani at the University of Birmingham. It could be argued that exonerations “prove that the appeals system is working”, but in reality, it is “more than likely that innocent people have been executed in recent years”.

Often, “people from the margins of society, particularly people of colour”, are those who “disproportionately face execution” due to “racial bias, inadequate legal defence, incentivised informants and unreliable evidence”, said The Innocence Project, regarding cases in the US. These factors “consistently pervert justice at the expense of innocent lives”.

Pro: could reduce crime

“Nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed,” Reform UK MP Lee Anderson said in 2023, as he called for the return of the death penalty in Britain.

There is little evidence to support the idea that the death penalty reduces crime, but “fearmongering” remains a “potent political weapon”, particularly for Republican politicians in the US, said Duncan Hosie in The Washington Post. “Over-the-top fealty to the death penalty still resonates with some voters. And as long as it does, opportunistic politicians will exploit these impulses to gain power.”

In September, Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the full enforcement of capital punishment laws in Washington to “deter and punish the most heinous crimes in our nation’s capital”. He previously said the death penalty for murder would act as a “very strong preventative”.

Con: not a deterrent

“Study after study shows that the death penalty does not deter crime,” said Scientific American. Instead, it is “cruel and inhumane” without showing significant benefits.

Zimbabwe, whose president once faced the death penalty himself, abolished capital punishment after its senate approved a bill in December 2024. Before the bill was approved, said Amnesty International, there was a group pushing for it to remain “in the erroneous belief that it acts as a deterrent to crime”. But “no empirical evidence” exists to prove that it “results in the reduction of crimes worldwide”.

Pro: sense of retribution

Of the “four major justifications for punishment” – deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation and retribution – it is the last of these that has “often been scorned by academics and judges”, said Robert Blecker, a professor emeritus at New York Law School, in The New York Times in 2022. But “ultimately, it provides capital punishment with its only truly moral foundation”.

The argument that the death penalty delivers closure for victims’ families is highly contested but often invoked by advocacy groups and those directly impacted. For the family of Jamie Rose Bolin, who was brutally murdered by neighbour Kevin Ray Underwood in 2006, the death penalty, carried out in December 2024, was “the only just punishment”, said USA Today.

Con: expensive and easily botched

The Trump administration’s push for states to escalate executions has led them to return to “unreliable” methods of killing prisoners – including lethal injection, which has the “worst track record of any method of execution” and can lead to long and torturous deaths, said Austin Sarat in The Guardian.

These concerns around lethal injection have led to the use of “alternative execution methods, like nitrogen gas”, which have led to failed or painful executions, said CNN.

The death penalty can also be a more expensive procedure for the state. In countries with arduous appeals processes and strong human-rights organisations, the death penalty is, counterintuitively, far more expensive than imprisonment for life.

After months of challenges from campaigners, opposition politicians and members of his own party, Sadiq Khan described the expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone as a “landmark moment” for the city.

“The decision to expand the Ulez London-wide was a difficult one,” the London mayor said on Tuesday, “but necessary to save lives.” The Conservatives pitched the policy as part of a Labour-led “war on motorists”, and it was considered a decisive factor in the Tories retaining the Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat in July’s by-election.

The divisive topic has also split Londoners, with 47% in favour of expanding the zone and 42% against, according to a recent YouGov poll of 1,000 people for ITV. While politicians weigh up whether green policies are vote winners, here are some of the key issues that have shaped the tempestuous Ulez debate.

1. Pro: improve air quality

Air pollution poses the biggest environmental threat to public health in the UK, according to the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities. It is responsible for between 28,000 and 36,000 deaths each year.

The aim of Ulez is to reduce the level of atmospheric pollution in London by limiting the amount of nitrogen dioxide emissions released by cars driving through the city.

Professor Frank Kelly of Imperial College London told the BBC that no area of the capital currently meets the World Health Organization’s air quality guidelines, “so that means everywhere you go the air you are breathing is having some impact on your health”.

In the four years since Ulez was introduced, first in central Lonon in 2019 and then inner London in 2021, it has succeeded in lowering air pollution in the city. A report published by the mayor of London’s office in February indicated that nitrogen dioxide levels in central London were 46% lower now than they would have been without the Ulez scheme, and 21% lower in inner London.

2. Con: costs for drivers

People with non-Ulez-compliant cars will have to pay £12.50 per day that they drive within the 600-square-mile zone, or face a penalty charge of up to £180. These drivers are being encouraged to invest in Ulez-compliant vehicles in order to avoid paying the charge, and can apply for up to £2,000 towards the cost of a new car by putting their previous one through the mayor of London’s scrappage scheme.

But £2,000 won’t cover the full cost of switching to a more environmentally friendly vehicle, said economist Julian Jessop in The Telegraph, particularly as the price of second-hand vehicles has increased. And as a result, the Ulez expansion could disproportionately affect people living in areas that aren’t well served by public transport, “which includes much of the periphery of London”.

That is likely to mean that poorer households will be harder hit by the financial burden, Jessop continued, while “the better off will simply swallow the additional cost”.

3. Pro: encourage greener transport

The Ulez expansion has been introduced to not only protect public health, but to help tackle climate change, said Khan, who describes himself as a “doer, not a delayer” on environmental issues. Money raised through the Ulez charge will be reinvested into London’s public transport network, to provide greener ways of travelling across the city.

Transport for London (TfL) lists the low-emissions options for drivers with non-compliant vehicles. Other than scrapping a car, they include using public transport, walking or cycling, making off-peak journeys or joining a car club. For those who need access to a personal car, TfL recommends investing in an electric vehicle or a second-hand car that is in line with Ulez standards, a more eco alternative to continuing to drive a non-compliant car.

4. Con: not enough notice

Some politicians and campaigners have criticised the notice period between the announcement of the zone’s expansion last November and the change coming into effect, which was nine months. They argue this did not give drivers enough time to invest in cars that met Ulez standards.

The previous Ulez expansion, which saw the zone’s boundary extended from central London to include the North and South Circular roads, was announced in 2019 and came into effect in 2021, giving people “almost two and a half years to prepare”, said the BBC.

And in other cities with clean-air zones, notice periods much longer than nine months have previously been given, indicating such changes are “happening more quickly” in London.

5. Pro: global leader on air pollution

Other countries have introduced low-emission zones, but London’s Ulez now covers the largest area of any in the world. And the £12.50 daily charge “looks reasonable” compared to other cities with higher fines, said Forbes.

Drivers in vehicles that aren’t compliant with the French clean air act “risk on-the-spot fines” of €68 to €135 (£58 to £115) within Paris’s Boulevard Périphérique. In Glasgow, non-compliant vehicles can incur fines of £60, doubling with subsequent breaches to a maximum of £480.

Policymakers around the world will be “closely” watching the Ulez expansion, said The Observer, “as other cities weigh up whether to introduce similar schemes”.

6. Con: ‘loopholes’ for traders

Traders with vehicles that don’t meet Ulez standards will be allowed to claim any Ulez charges back when they file their tax returns, so long as each journey filed was “an exceptional trip solely for business”, the Financial Times reported.

While the news will be “a relief to thousands of traders”, the “loophole could lead to fewer drivers trading in their cars for cleaner alternatives”. And “it also raises questions over whether taxpayers far from London will partly subsidise drivers in one of the wealthiest parts of the country”.

Fewer jury trials could take place in the UK in an effort to try and ease the strain on an overburdened justice system that is near collapse.

The Crown Court caseload has reached "almost pre-pandemic levels", with the backlog so big that some cases could have to wait until 2029 to be heard, said Sky News.

The proposal to conduct fewer jury trials comes from an independent review of the criminal courts conducted by Brian Leveson, a retired senior judge, who said the current system was near "total collapse". Leveson has proposed the idea of judge-only trials for certain crimes, like fraud and bribery, as well as more out-of-court settlements to stop cases reaching court at all.

Ministers will now consider the recommendations; however, critics will likely point to a dilution of the right to a trial by jury, while supporters will view pushing more cases to the Magistrates Court as a necessary easing of the burden on the Crown Court.

Here are some key arguments for and against trials by jury.

Pro: ensures representation

Having juries means that the "community is represented", with members of any "race, religion, gender and socio-economic group" brought together to "decide the fate of a fellow citizen", wrote Thomas Leonard Ross KC for The Sun.

Felicity Gerry KC, a professor of legal practice at Australia's Deakin University, agreed that in cases where the "public has a vested interest" and the verdict could result in a "life-changing punishment", it is "vital" that members of the community, rather than a lone "privileged professional", decides on the innocence or guilt of a fellow citizen.

Jury service is "an exercise in democracy", Gerry added in article on The Conversation.

Con: jurors can be biased

Jury members are "subject to all kinds of societal biases that may prejudice their interpretation of the evidence", said Morgan in Glamour.

Finding out what goes on "inside the jury room" and "the biases that might influence jurors" is of vital importance, said psychologists Dr Itiel Dror of University College London and the Open University's Dr Lee John Curley and Dr James Munro.

Like all humans, jurors are "fallible beings" who may have biases that can lead to confirmation bias – when jury members distort the evidence "against their preferred verdict", or give "more weight to the evidence that favours their preference".

Bias in the criminal justice system is a "significant issue", the trio added, and can cause "miscarriages of justice", but establishing "procedures" can help to "avoid the potential for bias to influence the process".

Pro: boosts public confidence

Ditching the "anonymous balance" offered by a jury, said Scottish Criminal Bar Assocation president Tony Lenehan KC, in favour of the verdict of a "single middle-aged, university-educated person, most likely white and male", risks "attacks in the press for every decision the vocal minority dislikes".

The lone judges "will feel those eyes upon them", Lenehan wrote for The Times, and it would be a "strong character indeed who pays no heed". Allowing this "one interested party" to potentially have any sway in a case "robs" the justice system of "public confidence" and "essential transparency".

Responding to the Leveson proposals for judge-only trials, Matt Foot, the co-director of the charity Appeal, said trials without a jury would "increase the number of miscarriages of justice". Juries ensure "safeguarding" of the right to be "free from discrimination" and "confidence in our criminal courts".

Con: hung verdicts

Most juries are able to "reach their verdict unanimously", said Jacqui Horan, an associate professor of law at Australia's Monash University, on The Conversation. But in some cases, they "unable to agree" after deliberating "for several hours or days". This usually results in a retrial with a new jury.

The defence is "usually at an advantage" in retrials, according to The Sun, because the prosecution faces the "hard task of trying to surprise the defence team" with new evidence. By contrast, the defence can use their knowledge of the evidence presented at the first trial to "block all loopholes" and "amend what needs to be changed to build a stronger case".

Pro: checks on power

Scrapping juries would put "unprecedented power in the hands of judges", said Spiked's Luke Gittos, particularly in "complicated crimes" such as rape. Trials by jury are "inherently fairer" and are "an essential safeguard against injustice".

Juries can also be crucial in preventing "excessive state power", said lawyer Samantha Love in an article for the Oxford Royale Academy. They can help to prevent "laws being enforced with which the population do not agree", as well as ensuring that "society is involved in the administration of justice" and "protected from the state".

Con: expensive and time consuming

Although many argue that monetary cost should not be a "relevant factor" in determining the value of juries, "practicalities can be as important as principles", wrote Love for the Oxford Royale Academy. And the jury system does "have costs for the economy and the state".

Not only are jurors able to claim expenses for their travel and food during their jury service, they may also be absent from work "for sustained periods", potentially costing them and their employer. To have to "sit in court for two weeks without ever being called to sit on a case" is not "uncommon", Love added.

There are a huge number of decisions to be made when choosing a new home, from price to size to location, but perhaps one that is often overlooked is whether to go for a new-build house.

“Buying a new-build home is different to purchasing an existing property,” said consumer watchdog Which?, and there is a list of positives and negatives to consider.

1. Pro: help for first-time buyers

Opting for a new-build may be the only way many first-time buyers can get a foot on to the property ladder.

The First Homes scheme, launched in 2021 to replace Help-to-Buy, offers first-time buyers a discount of at least 30% against the market value of a home – but only when purchasing a new-build – with larger discounts possible in London and the southeast of England.

Another option to help first-time buyers that only applies to new-builds is “shared ownership”, where you purchase a stake of as little as 25% of a property and pay rent on the remainder.

2. Con: ‘new-build premium’

The so-called “new-build premium” is a term used to describe how newly built homes tend to be pricier than older properties that are otherwise similar in size and location. This is because everything is new and unused, reflected in buyers often paying “tens of thousands extra”, said Which?, or as much as 30% more than older homes in the same area, according to Roarie Scarisbrick, partner at Property Vision, in the Evening Standard.

This also means new-builds lose value the day the first occupant moves in as the building, interior and appliances are no longer brand new. The Home Owners Alliance advises that “if you are buying a new-build, plan to live in it for the longer term”.

3. Pro: lower energy bills

Because new-builds must comply with the latest building regulations they are far more energy efficient than older properties. Newer homes often have “better insulation, may be double or triple glazed and also have the advantage of a more modern boiler, which can all help homeowners to save cash”, said The Independent.

Data from energy performance certificates (EPCs) shows over 80% of new homes have the highest A or B ratings, compared to just 2.2% of existing properties. With better EPC ratings, said the Home Owners Alliance, comes the option of green mortgages, which can offer cheaper rates.

4. Con: added charges

Many new-builds, especially flats, are serviced, with porterage, lifts and communal facilities that mean “high service charges”, said property expert Scarisbrick. These rarely, if ever, come down in price and can contain hidden costs that rise significantly over time.

It is therefore vital these are clearly set out in the conveyancer contract and are included in the overall cost of purchasing a new-build. Checking the length of the lease is also “crucial”, said Home Owners Alliance, and should be “at least 90-120 years and preferably 999 years”.

Another added cost is the potential need for a snagging survey when you purchase a new-build. According to Compare My Move, surveys have shown that 99% of new-build homeowners had to report snags or defects to their builder after moving in - 34% claimed that the number of problems detected was more than what they had originally expected to find. 30% of new build-owners found between 1-5 issues, whilst 26% found over 16 defects.

5. Pro: chain-free purchase

Being the first owner of a new-build means you will not have the issue of a chain of buyers above you. Sales often fall through due to no fault of the two parties directly involved but because someone further down the line is unable to complete their purchase. Not having this hanging over your sale “can take away one of the main stresses of buying a home”, wrote TV property guru Phil Spencer in the Daily Express.

It also removes the risk of being gazumped, said Property Road. “However, be aware that once you have agreed to buy a new-build, the developers will often set a deadline for when you need to complete by. This can add pressure if you need to sell your own property to fund the move.”

6. Con: mortgage complications

A major risk when purchasing a new-build home is that it will not be completed on time, or significantly delayed by unforeseen problems, as was the case during the pandemic.

Long delays could result in you having to pay “unexpected costs, such as for storage or more rent while you wait for your home to be finished”, said London Money. It warned that “if the delay is too long, you may also run the risk of your mortgage offer expiring”.

Delays in construction can also mean that “issues that weren’t flagged up in a survey suddenly rear their heads”, said House Beautiful. And while “any credible development firm will always provide after-sales care, it can vary dramatically”.

The start of a new school term invariably revives the age-old debate about the pros and cons of school uniforms among students, parents and teachers alike.

This week also sees MPs debate the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which Labour hopes will go some way to easing the financial burden on parents by fulfilling its manifesto pledge to "bring down the cost of school by limiting the number of branded items of uniform and PE kit that schools can require".

With nearly a third of parents struggling to afford uniforms but the majority of teachers adamant they are essential to creating a level playing field, these are the main arguments for and against.

Pro: promotes equality and inclusion

The most oft-cited value of school uniform is that, "if it is implemented sensibly, it can have a useful equalising effect in the classroom", said Stephen Bush at the Financial Times. "It can be a way to ensure that, however briefly, no child is easily marked out from another due to their inability to afford the latest fashions or a popular item of clothing."

Four out of five teachers believe school uniforms are vital to creating a level playing field, according to a survey by the Schoolwear Association, cited by The Guardian.

The association said uniforms foster "a sense of community, equality, discipline and professionalism", echoing a 2007 survey from Oxford Brookes University that found uniforms often "directly contributed to a feeling of school pride".

Con: imposes extra financial burden

Uniform is expensive: 78% of parents spend more than £100 every school year, according to a survey commissioned by Wynsors last summer. Over half of these respondents (57%) are forking out up to £249. "With the cost-of-living crisis already causing financial issues for many families, it's understandable why British parents are feeling the pressure of having to pay alarming amounts for school kit," said a blog on the shoe retailer's site.

Parents are "routinely paying more than double the price for branded school uniforms, compared with similar items offered by supermarkets and high-street stores", found analysis by The Observer.

In a bid to alleviate some of this financial burden, the new Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill will impose a limit of three branded items of school uniform required by primary schools, and four items by secondary schools, if a tie is branded. Set to come into effect in September 2026, "this includes PE kit and applies to after-school activities" but still allows schools to offer "optional" branded uniform items, said Schools Week.

Pro: promotes discipline and focus

Uniforms became more common in the US in the late 1980s "with the promise that they would curb gang violence and crime", said The Washington Post. Uniforms, teachers say, "have become a no-nonsense way to stave off distractions" and focus on learning.

This argument is a variation on the "broken windows" theory of law and order, said Will Hazell for The i Paper: "if schools clamp down on sloppy dress and incorrect clothing, it makes clear to pupils that the teachers are in charge".

While there is little empirical evidence to back this up, the rationale has nevertheless been used as part of a pilot programme in France to establish if uniforms can improve behaviour. If successful the French government has said the scheme could be rolled out nationwide.

Con: curbs freedom of expression

The claim that school uniforms restrict personal expression is the "most frequently used defence against them", said Fashion Law Journal. "Kids and teenagers express themselves and identify with particular social groupings through their clothing choices" and so "many students who oppose school uniforms claim that, when they are denied the freedom to express themselves through clothing, they lose their sense of self".

The growing support for school uniforms in the US is "one of the great surrenderings of liberty in modern history", said Mark Oppenheimer in The New Yorker. Uniforms are "yet one more way that the surveillance of the un-powerful – the poor, people of colour, and that great unheard group of the young – has become increasingly acceptable".

In August, the UK Competition and Markets Authority urged schools to think about whether their policies on uniform are actually in the "best interest of pupils and parents".

Pro: could save time and money overall

Conversely, uniforms can also "save students and parents time and money", said the School Wear United blog.

"Instead of spending time each morning trying to decide what to wear, students can simply put on their uniforms and be ready for school. Additionally, uniforms can be less expensive than trendy clothing, and they can often be purchased in bulk or handed down from older siblings."

Put bluntly, when there is a uniform policy, "there is no peer pressure on students to have the latest trainers", Dame Rachel De Souza, the Children's Commissioner for England, told The i Paper.

Con: continued gender issues

A 2018 survey from Plan International UK found that a third of British girls said they were sexually harassed while in their school uniforms. Of course, there is no real evidence that they would have been any safer out of school uniform.

There is also the widely held view that schools police female students' uniform to a greater extent than they do with boys, particularly with regards to modesty rules.

"If we're going to have school uniforms, it should be the same for every child with no differing options," said one mother in Metro. "Then if boys and girls all wear trousers, we don't need arguments about skirt lengths or about which uniform non-binary or transgender children should wear."

While governments and advertisers have long used technology to track the whereabouts of citizens and consumers, active location sharing has been available to the public only for a relatively short time.

Introduced to a mass audience in around 2017, when Google first released location sharing on its Maps function, it has since become “just another type of social networking”, said Vox, “despite the fact that for many people, it still feels a little icky”.

“We don’t often think about our current location as sensitive information, but it is,” said Lifewire. Here is how it can and is used for good and bad.

1. Pro: safety tool for parents

The use of location-tracking services brings both “benefits and concerns” for parents, said BrightCanary. Primarily it can be used to find out where children are at all times, particularly in case of emergency. It also allows parents to make sure they are where they say they are, and offers peace of mind.

It also provides a level of “accountability” said BrightCanary. “If your child knows their whereabouts are being monitored, they may be less likely to engage in risky behaviour because of the increased possibility of being caught,” said the news site.

If “safety and convenience” are the foremost reasons for location-tracking your child, it is crucial they are aware and agree to share locations with you, said the Family Online Safety Institute. If they are not and later discover that they were forced to location share without their knowledge, “then this can lead to feelings of resentment and a breakdown of trust in your relationship”.

2. Con: invasion of privacy

Location-tracking features have “stirred controversy” for well over a decade, said The New York Times. According to the non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Center, location-tracking technologies enable law enforcement agencies to monitor people’s movements or advertisers to connect people’s online activities with their real identities.

“In other words, used carelessly, location tracking may hurt your privacy,” said the paper.

“There’s very little stopping foreign intelligence services from using a front company to purchase such data,” said Security Magazine. “Nor is there much to stop clients from freely sharing the data they access. And then there’s the issue of data breaches, providing yet another opening as hackers look to use the data for their own economic ends.”

“I see it as the natural conclusion of the digital-age expectation that we’re always online, always available, and have no reasonable expectation of a private, offline life,” explained Scott Nover, a tech reporter at Quartz.

3. Pro: finding lost property

Perhaps the most obvious benefit of location-tracking is for finding something you have lost. Beyond the in-built tracking systems which allow you to easily locate your phone, Bluetooth wireless technology allows the likes of Apple AirTags and Tiles for Android “to see its location on a map in real-time (or the last known location if it’s not connected to the network) and play an audio alert from the tracker’s speaker” reported The Wall Street Journal. It means, for those who have embraced the new technology, the days of losing your keys down the back of the sofa are well and truly over.

4. Con: dangerous in wrong hands

“Armed with the knowledge of where you are at a specific point in time, people with ill intent could use that information to your disadvantage,” said Lifewire.

Tracking apps, along with the likes of smart speakers and key-logging software, “have made it easier for perpetrators to maintain control of victims and continue abuse”, said the BBC. Location tracking is just one way an “ill-intentioned romantic partner” can “monitor, intimidate, and control you – and they don’t have to be a tech wizard to manipulate it”, The New York Times reported.

This also applies to complete strangers. ‘Checking in’ at locations while running errands “provides potential thieves with detailed knowledge of your daily schedule”, said Springwise. Conversely, while location-sharing can tell you where someone is, it can also tell you where they are not: an invaluable tool for criminals looking to target your home when you are on holiday.

5. Pro: keeping track of friends

It is not just parents who use location sharing to keep track of those close to them. The rise of ride-sharing apps like Uber, as well as a huge variety of dating apps, have normalised “a culture of being alone with strangers”, reported Tech Crunch.

“We talk to strangers online, pay them to get into their cars and meet up with them alone” said the tech site: developments that “go against every rule about strangers that our parents embedded in our childhood brains”.

Because of this more and more people are choosing to share their location with their closest friends when on a night out.

6. Con: bad for relationships

“Experts are divided over how helpful location sharing really is for relationships,” said Inverse.

For some couples who have experienced cheating it can be used to build up trust. But it can also increase anxiety. Dr Jenni Skyler, of the Intimacy Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said that if a relationship has not experienced a recent breach of trust “it’s excessive”.

“It is sort of an exercise over control, and it can take you down a rabbit hole,” she told Inverse.

This is particularly true among younger people, clinical psychologist Yasmine Saad told USA Today. She has estimated that the issue of location sharing in relationships comes up for about 80% to 90% of people in their teens, 20s and 30s at her practice.

Ultimately, said Mashable, “your decision to share your location with your partner depends on the scenario and perhaps a couple of other factors, too – namely, you and your partner’s personal preferences and the status of your relationship”.

Since their launch in the 1980s, when Dire Straits sang about having to “install microwave ovens”, the speedy cookers have become a staple in modern kitchens.

A survey has revealed microwaves to be the “nation’s number one must-have kitchen gadget”, owned by up to 95% of households, said Xanthe Clay in The Telegraph. Yet they continue to be disparaged because of their association with ready meals and other ultra-processed food.

While they can often save time in the kitchen, suspicions of uneven heating and various health issues linger. Here are the pros and cons of microwave ovens.

1. Pro: saves money for owners

As well as saving you time, they can save you money. You can “trim real money from your energy bill by using the microwave more in place of the big oven”, said CNet, because it uses 1,200 watts of energy per hour, compared with an electric oven, which uses 3,000 watts.

They are usually cheaper up front, too. “Overall, microwaves are far cheaper to purchase than air fryers,” said Woman & Home. You should “never waste your money on an expensive microwave”, said USA Today, as “most microwaves are the same under the hood”.

2. Con: certain social stigma

A certain social stigma surrounds microwaves, as people feel that they “nuke” rather than cook food. Microwaves have been “portrayed by some chefs as singlehandedly dragging the art of cooking into the gutter”, said the BBC.

They are the world’s “worst invention”, said Scottish chef Graham Campbell. “The world is too fast and no one has time to cook healthy food any more,” he told The Times, adding that “the microwave oven is the worst invention ever” as it encourages people to eat “ready meals that are full of shit”.

3. Pro: reheating is easy

As well as cooking, microwaves perform a number of useful tasks, including reheating. “Reheat food until piping hot throughout,” said BBC Good Food, and “be aware they do not heat evenly throughout, so take your food out halfway through cooking time and give it a stir.” Microwaves can also “defrost food quickly and safely”, added the website.

Microwaves can also help with other tasks. For instance, they can heat up cold plates or bowls and even disinfect things like kitchen sponges. It’s also worth noting that there are an increasing number of recipes and pre-packaged foods designed specifically for microwave cooking.

4. Con: poor taste and texture

Some people find that food cooked in a microwave has a different taste or texture than it would if it had been cooked using old-fashioned methods. Because they “essentially steam your food”, said Woman & Home, microwaves can sometimes produce a meal that “feels a little wet or soggy”.

They also sometimes heat food unevenly, leading to hot and cold spots which are unpleasant to the tongue and a potential health risk with some foodstuffs.

5. Pro: environmentally friendly

Microwaves cook fast, so their energy consumption is almost always lower than other cooking options. This makes them more environmentally friendly, as does the fact they produce no fumes or other pollution.

They also heat only the food and not the whole oven or the surrounding air, making them much more energy-efficient than conventional ovens, which again makes them less of a climate-zapper.

6. Con: some health risks

Some scientists warn of the risk of ingesting phthalates when eating microwaved food, said the BBC. “When exposed to heat, these plastic additives can break down and leach into food”, it warned.

For instance, in a 2011 study, researchers purchased more than 400 plastic containers designed to contain food, and found that the majority leaked these chemicals that disrupt hormones.

A proposed major reform of the UK’s surrogacy laws could see intended parents declared as the legal parents of a surrogate child at its birth.

In March, a joint report by the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission said the almost 40-year-old current law “does not work in the best interests of any of the people involved”.

Currently, the intended parents raising the baby have “no legally recognised relationship” and “cannot make any decisions over the child”, said Sky News, until at least six weeks after the birth and when a court grants a parental order. The surrogate parent, who is the legal parent at birth, must also provide permission for a parental order to be granted.

Under the proposed new law, the “scrutiny of the surrogacy arrangements would start pre-conception” and intended parents would not need to apply for a parental order, said The Guardian. The surrogate parent would, however, be able to withdraw consent up to six weeks after the birth, although under the new law, a judge could overrule and award a parental order if they deemed the “welfare of the child required it”.

While the government must now consider whether to introduce the committee’s recommendations as law, here are the pros and cons of surrogacy in the UK.

1. Pro: getting more accessible

There has been a “huge increase” in the number of people putting themselves forward as surrogate mothers, said The Independent. Volunteer numbers for the charity SurrogacyUK were “soaring to record levels” in 2021 and 2022, with the number of surrogates far outweighing the number of intended parents. The charity said it was a “huge shift” in previous trends, largely due to “increasing press coverage” and surrogacy being more “prominent in popular culture”.

2. Con: no formal arrangement

Even if the intended parents are the biological parents of the child, a surrogacy arrangement is not currently legally enforceable in the UK, leaving “both surrogates and intended parents feeling unprotected and potentially vulnerable”, said The Independent. Under current law surrogacies “largely rely on friendship agreements” and rarely on “formalised contracts”. There’s “no legal obligation to compensate surrogates for expenses”, the paper said, potentially leaving volunteers out of pocket, while the surrogate mother would be able to withdraw consent and keep the child.

3. Pro: profiting is prohibited

In the UK, surrogacy is viewed as altruism and a “gift from one woman to another”, said the BBC, which is why it is illegal to profit from a surrogacy arrangement. Money can only be handed over on an “expenses-only basis”.

Surrogacy laws vary hugely from country to country, and in many of those that allow unregulated commercial surrogacy, there are significant “child welfare concerns” as well as “examples of surrogate mothers being exploited”, particularly those who are “financially and socially vulnerable”.

4. Con: complex legal process

The parents who intend to bring the child up must “currently wait at least six weeks to become the legal parents” after the birth but in reality, the legal process can be even longer, taking “up to a year to go through the courts”, The Guardian said.

One couple viewed the fight to acquire a parental order as the “biggest challenge they faced” in the surrogacy process, said The Independent, and it meant they were unable to make “critical decisions regarding the medical treatment or care” of their son.

5. Pro: not just for couples

A change to surrogacy laws in the UK in 2019 ended a restriction that allowed only couples to seek parental orders. It has “never been unlawful in the UK for a single parent to conceive a child with the help of a surrogate”, but until 2019 single men or women were unable to become the legal parent of their child, said legal firm Bindmans.

6. Con: not enough protections

The new proposals by the Law Commission cater “to the desires of adults with a vested interest in surrogacy” rather than “child welfare”, wrote Sonia Sodha in The Observer. Any checks on potential parents (who would become legal parents if the new law is approved) are “light-touch” and could be carried out by those with little or no “knowledge or experience of child safeguarding”.

The commission's proposals are “jaw-droppingly naive”, she wrote, and while couples can conceive through IVF and naturally with few checks “surrogacy is the only route through which a single man as a sole parent can create a biological child”, and therefore more stringent checks should be in place.

Spain is the first country in Europe to offer paid menstrual leave following similar policies in Indonesia, Zambia, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

The draft bill, approved by the Spanish parliament in February, allows women to request three days of paid leave per period “in case of incapacitating menstruation” such as debilitating cramps, vomiting or nausea, the Spanish Congress said in a statement.

In Spain, employees are generally entitled to a minimum of 15 days of paid sick leave per year. But as a rule, it is only paid after three days of illness. Employees taking menstrual leave would receive the statutory sick pay from the first day.

The policy is “part of a broader package on sexual and reproductive rights”, said Euronews, including expanding abortion access, and has “sparked intense debate over whether it will help or hinder women at work”.

UK groups have been campaigning for similar legislation. “We need to understand the experiences and challenges that people who menstruate face in the workplace, and then take steps to support them,” a spokesperson for period equality charity Bloody Good Period told BBC News.

The Labour Party has also proposed a menopause action plan, which could include paid time off for women, said The Times.

The Week takes a look at the pros and cons of the policy.

1. Pro: raises awareness

Supporters of period leave policies argue that “they can advance gender equality by normalising menstruation”, Marian Baird, a professor of gender and employment relations at the University of Sydney and co-author of a study on global menstrual leave legislation, told The Washington Post.

Spain’s new law is “a huge step forward because it’s got the whole society talking about this”, Bernat Fons, a union spokesperson at Girona City Hall in northeast Spain, told France24.

“The rights related to menstrual health have never been discussed [in Spain] and the data is chilling,” Ángela Rodríguez, the Spanish secretary of state for equality and against gender violence, told El Periódico. “It is important to clarify what a painful period is; we are not talking about a slight discomfort.”

About a third of women suffer from severe period pains, known as dysmenorrhea, according to the Spanish Gynaecology and Obstetrics Society, with symptoms including vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches and fever.

2. Con: could increase discrimination

Critics say menstrual leave could “reinforce negative gender stereotypes and notions of biological determinism, leading to more employer discrimination against women”, Baird told The Washington Post, adding that it was too early to properly gauge the impact of such policies.

Offering paid leave implies that menstruation is “some sort of debility that affects women’s ability to work, which is untrue”, Sally King, founder of Menstrual Matters, a non-profit organisation supporting menstrual rights, told The Times.

The idea that menstruation is a disability could reinforce the historic stereotype that it “makes women weaker”, Maria Carmen Punzi, a menstrual health researcher at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, told France 24.

Period leave could worsen perceptions that women are not as productive at work as men, especially in demanding roles, and lead to discrimination in performance reviews and promotions, Sioban Harlow, professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, told Health Central.

“In the long term, it may be one more handicap that women have in finding a job,” Cristina Antoñanzas, deputy secretary of Spanish trade union UGT, told Euronews.

Italy considered a menstrual leave law in 2017, but lawmakers worried it could be detrimental to women in the workplace.

3. Pro: could combat absences

The largest menstrual study to date, by Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands in 2021, found that one in three women experienced such intense pain during periods that they were unable to carry out daily tasks. Half of these women kept their symptoms a secret, said Maria Carmen Punzi in an article for People Management.

“Menstruation-related symptoms cause a great deal of lost productivity, and presenteeism is a bigger contributor to this than absenteeism,” the study authors concluded. “There is an urgent need for more focus on the impact of these symptoms.”

Just over half of female employees have suffered period pain so strong it affects their ability to work, according to a 2016 YouGov study for the BBC.

Of 1,000 women, 52% suffered severe pain, the study found, with nearly a third of those taking at least a day’s sick leave as a result. Just 27% had told their employer that period pain was the reason.

“The impact on a woman’s career, not to mention on her mental and physical health, could be alleviated if workplaces were configured to be more sympathetic and to offer more support to women experiencing these issues,” argued Alexandra Jones for the Evening Standard.

4. Con: potential access issues

To apply for the paid leave, “employees will need to get a doctor’s note every single time”, according to Sifted, “because Spain’s public social security system will foot the bill”.

It is up to doctors to judge whether the pain is sufficiently debilitating to approve leave, which could discourage women from trying to access it.

It is also “unclear how the new law will affect freelancers”, wrote Madrid-based journalist Leah Pattem for Al Jazeera last October, “or how companies and sectors will need to reform in order to comply.”

Some people entitled to menstrual leave will not take it for fear of judgement from others at work, she added. Many “have already normalised working in pain and discomfort”.

5. Pro: helps endometriosis sufferers

Paid menstrual leave could offer relief for sufferers of endometriosis, an incurable chronic disease that affects roughly one in 10 women. The severe pain associated with endometriosis often forces employees to take days off work.

“I would go to bed crying in pain, then wake up and have to go to the office and try to push through the pain,” Iris Serra, a marketer at Barcelona-based mental health app Oliva Health, told Sifted. “I was at the point in my career where I was growing professionally but people didn’t know why I needed to take a sick day every month.”

The prevalence of endometriosis in Spain is about 16.1 per 10,000 women, according to a nationwide study in 2021. “Currently, there is a gap in global data on endometriosis, particularly in Spain,” said the report.

“We need to challenge the squeamishness and silence around menstrual health,” Emma Cox, CEO of Endometriosis UK, told BBC News.

6. Con: legal and privacy issues

Men and women who do not menstruate could argue that menstrual leave policies for women are discriminatory, as they are not entitled to the benefits, Melinda S. Malecki, an Illinois lawyer, told The Washington Post.

“I think [menstrual leave] is fraught with more problems than it solves,” Harvey R. Linder, a labour and employment lawyer in Atlanta, told The Washington Post, adding that he would advise companies against implementing it.

Spanish trade union Comisiones Obreras has raised concerns over the privacy implications, questioning how women might need to demonstrate their symptoms to claim the leave, for example by proving that they suffered from a condition known to worsen period pain – such as endometriosis or polycystic ovary syndrome, said Euronews.

It could also subject transgender men who are still menstruating to scrutiny, or infringe on the privacy of women who have experienced early menopause.

Others argue that those who do suffer severe symptoms associated with periods should already qualify for paid time off under existing law.

Low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) have been introduced by local councils across London with the goal of creating safer and healthier communities but critics say the scheme is in fact having the opposite effect.

LTNs have been implemented across various boroughs in London, and aim to restrict traffic on residential streets, prioritising pedestrians, cyclists and public spaces.

London has had LTNs “since the 1970s” reported The London Evening Standard, but a “flurry” of schemes have been implemented since 2020 as part of the Mayor of London’s plan for 80% of all trips in the capital to be by active or sustainable modes by 2041.

Boroughs with LTNs include Camden, Croydon, Ealing, Hackney, Hounslow, Islington, Lambeth, Newham and Waltham Forest, with most boroughs having implemented the scheme in some form.

But critics of the scheme say it can have unintended consequences that outweigh any potential benefits. The Week examines some of the arguments for and against LTNs.

1. Pro: safer for pedestrians

One of the biggest advantages of LTNs is that they improve safety for pedestrians. According to data from Transport for London, 80% of deaths on London’s streets are people walking, cycling or on motorbikes and mopeds. By creating almost car-free zones, LTNs provide a safer environment for vulnerable road users.

2. Con: questionable effectiveness

Critics argue that the effectiveness of LTNs in reducing traffic and emissions is questionable. A study by The Times found that traffic did not decrease in the London boroughs but “rose by an average of 41 million miles or 11.4% as traffic came back after the first lockdown”.

In comparison, the two inner London boroughs that did not implement the scheme saw a rebound of only 29 million miles or 8.9%. The figures suggest that the schemes “may not be as green as their promoters suggest”, argued The Times, as “cars caught in jams or having to take longer journeys emit thousands of tonnes more carbon dioxide”.

3. Pro: improving air quality

According to a study conducted by Imperial College London in 2022, which analysed three distinct schemes implemented in Islington, north London, LTNs that used planters, barriers and cameras to limit vehicle access to residential streets resulted in a decrease in both traffic volume and nitrogen dioxide pollution.

The study revealed that concentrations of nitrogen dioxide decreased by 5.7% within the LTNs and by just under 9% on the surrounding boundary roads, in comparison to the control sites.

4. Con: emergency services block

This is a “genuine factor” that should be taken into consideration when it comes to the implentation of LTNs, said The Guardian, and councils have had to make some alterations to the schemes – for example, using cameras instead of physical barriers on some roads – after consultation with fire and ambulance services.

5. Pro: encouraging healthier habits

Encouraging more people to walk and cycle was a key aim of the government’s introduction of LTNS in 2020. According to the Centre for London, boroughs that tracked cycling over time found large increases in cycling both inside and outside LTNs, with greater increases inside LTNs.

Between spring 2019 and 2021, cycling increased on average by 7% in inner London and 22% in outer London, as people sought alternative modes of transport during the pandemic and took advantage of quiet LTN streets to cycle.

6. Con: pushing traffic to other areas

Opponents argue that LTNs can push traffic – and the problems created by traffic – into neighbouring areas. While this may improve the neighbourhoods in which LTNs have been implemented, critics argue that they effectively push the problems elsewhere.

However, a study by the University of Westminster has suggested this fear could be unfounded. Researchers found that there was minimal increase in traffic on neighbouring roads.

Providing cash transfers is an increasingly popular tool used by aid agencies and governments to help those caught in a humanitarian crisis.

Cash transfers are direct payments of money as humanitarian aid, usually given through physical cash, mobile money, smart card transfers or vouchers for local suppliers. This is given as an alternative to more “traditional” forms of aid such as food, blankets, medicine and shelter kits.

The use of cash transfers as a form of aid ballooned during the Covid-19 pandemic, with the number of individuals receiving monetary or voucher-based support increasing by 240% over pre-Covid levels, reaching approximately 1.1 billion people, equivalent to 14% of the global population, according to the World Bank.

1. Pro: support before disasters

Humanitarian relief agencies are used to providing aid in two ways: “helping people out after disaster has already struck, and helping them out by giving them stuff”, said Vox.

But cash transfers “turn that model on its head”. They effectively “offer people support before the shock hits, making them more resilient and limiting the economic and human damage when it comes”, said the news site.

In July 2020, pre-empting severe flooding in Bangladesh, the UN World Food Programme sent 23,434 households around $53 (£42) each a few days before the floods came. Over a million households were inundated during those floods, with health and food services disrupted.

According to a study published by the Centre for Disaster Protection in 2021, which examined the impact of these cash transfers, households who were given money were 36% less likely to go a day without eating, 12% more likely to evacuate household members, and 17% more likely to evacuate their livestock than households who didn’t receive cash.

And the benefits remained for months afterwards. Households who had received cash reported “significantly higher child and adult food consumption and wellbeing” as well as “ lower asset loss, [they] engaged in less costly borrowing after the flood, and reported higher earning potential”.

2. Con: effectiveness unclear

While cash transfers are effective at improving food security, their impacts on other import outcomes are “inconclusive”, said economists Iva Trako and Dahyeon Jeong at the World Bank.

They wrote that a small number of studies show “mixed evidence” on outcomes such as income generation, credit and savings, education, labour, gender-based outcomes and social cohesion. They argued that “context specificity” is therefore “crucial” in cash transfer programmes, as the “type of crisis and the broader context in which the crisis occur” are factors in the effectiveness and feasibility of such interventions.

3. Pro: efficient and cost-effective

Cash transfers are “often more efficient and effective than other forms of aid”, according to the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, as they can provide those in need with “the means and flexibility to decide and prioritise their recovery”.

Cash transfers also reduce the logistical complexities in delivering other types of humanitarian aid such as food or other physical goods, meaning it can reach beneficiaries much more quickly. A study by the Center for Global Development found that cash transfers can be “25-30% more efficient than food aid”.

They are often simply cheaper than other types of aid, such as food, for several reasons. Cash “can often be transferred to bank accounts or mobile money accounts. It does not go off, and governments don’t have to worry about having the wrong type of cash in the wrong place,” wrote Dr Kate Orkin, a labour economist at the University of Oxford.

4. Con: structural problems

Cash assistance often only provides immediate relief and cannot combat the greater, structural issues that “cause poverty in the first place”, such as “discrimination, weak democratic governance and unfair international trade practices”, argued Heath Henderson, an assistant professor of economics at Drake University in Iowa, on The Conversation.

And that means the long-term effects of providing cash assistance are often “limited”. A recent study in Uganda looked at the impacts of cash transfers nine years after people were given money. “While the researchers found positive effects on employment and earnings after four years, these impacts virtually disappeared after nine,” said Henderson.

5. Pro: provides dignity

According to Michel Saad, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ethiopia, cash transfers not only help people buy locally, improving the local economy, but provide “more dignity” for those in need.

“Communities know what they need better than humanitarian actors,” Saad told The Guardian. “So when we give cash, it’s allowing them to be in charge of their own personal lives and say, ‘We believe we need to address this problem or that problem.’ Basically, it’s putting people at the centre.”

6. Con: open to corruption

Opponents of cash payments argue that recipients of aid money could misuse their funds on non-essential or luxury items, such as alcohol or cigarettes. There is even the risk that money could “fall into the hands of terrorist organisations”, a factor that has left some aid agencies particularly “skittish” about sending cash “lest they run afoul of government counterterrorism imperatives and lose their funding”, said Tufts Now.

But those fears are “largely unfounded”, according to Dan Maxwell, acting director of the Feinstein International Center. During the Somalia famine, people used the vast majority of the cash they received to buy food or repay debts they incurred from buying food before assistance was available, he told the site. “The overwhelming evidence is that money is used on things that people genuinely need.”

Keir Starmer has set himself on a collision course with nimby voters after the Labour leader promised to be on the side of “builders not blockers” by relaxing planning rules in green-belt areas if the party wins the next general election.

First coined in 1875, the term “green belt” refers to a ring of protected countryside around large urban areas. The Metropolitan Green Belt was proposed by the Greater London Regional Planning Committee in 1935 and the practice became commonplace across the rest of the country after the war and into the 1950s and 60s in response to a huge increase in house building.

Green belts now make up roughly 13% of England’s total land area, compared to the 2.3% taken up by buildings. Around London it covers an area approximately three times the size of the city itself.

“The question of whether the green belt is working well, which is often tied up with questions of how to meet the need for housing, can prove contentious,” said the House of Commons Library. “Some commentators argue that the protections afforded by the green belt are too weak, and inappropriate development can encroach on the green belt, while others argue that the protections are too strong, and get in the way of building sufficient housing and so limit economic growth.”

1. Pro: space for more houses

“While the green belt remains an enduringly popular policy,” the “opportunity cost” is “a lack of developable land, resulting in less homes being built”, said the Centre for Cities think tank.

With the UK in the grip of a housing crisis and more than one million households currently on the waiting list for affordable homes, right-wing think tanks such as the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs have argued that the release of some green-belt land could help solve the housing crisis, while the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that the responsiveness of housing supply to demand in the UK was the weakest among developed countries, due in large part to green-belt policies.

For example, the Home Builders Federation estimated that 140,000 homes could be built on London’s periphery if just 1% of the green belt was developed.

2. Con: increases urban sprawl

The London Evening Standard said the Metropolitan Green Belt was introduced in the mid-twentieth century precisely “to prevent urban sprawl”, a fact repeated by the Housing Secretary Michael Gove when he unveiled a shake-up of renting regulations last week. Of the five stated purposes behind designating land as part of a green belt in the 2012 National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), two are directly related to limiting urban sprawl and preventing neighbouring towns from merging into one another.

Speaking to The Sunday Times, Chipping Barnet MP Theresa Villiers, who has been dubbed “the patron saint of nimbyism” and last year led a Tory rebellion that caused the government to scrap housing targets, warned of the very real danger that places like her constituency could lose their green spaces and “become indistinguishable from central London”.

3. Pro: reduces house prices

The other “opportunity cost” listed by the Centre for Cities is higher house prices. As a case in point, the think tank reported that new houses in the UK are about 40% more expensive per square metre than in the Netherlands, despite there being 20% more people per square kilometre there than in England.

Yet it is more than just a question of supply outstripping demand and driving up house prices. According to analysis in Brickonomics, in the 1930s, when green belts were first proposed, land could cost as little as 2% of the sale price of the finished property.

By the late fifties land accounted for around a quarter of house values but this had increased to 70% in 2013. For Colin Wiles, writing in Inside House, “this proves the point that land, or the lack of it, is the single most important issue in English housing today”. He argued that housing priced will only come down “to reasonable levels when we end our obsession with protecting the countryside and hemming our people into towns and cities”.

4. Con: nature conservation

“When the green belt was created it was not designed to protect nature, but to prevent the growth of our cities”, said Tom Spencer in CapX. Today, perhaps unsurprisingly, the environmental case has become one of the strongest arguments against green-belt development.

Conservationists claim building on protected areas of countryside swallows up farmland and wildlife habitats while increasing air pollution and flood risk. It also provides a vital escape from urban life, argued Crispin Truman, Chief Executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

Writing in Huff Post UK, he said “the green belt is the ‘countryside next door’ for 30 million people – more than half of England’s population. It’s where those of us stuck in cities go to get away from the stresses and strains of urban life. Its fresh air and open spaces make it fundamental to our physical health and mental wellbeing.”

5. Pro: high quantity of low-quality land

The green belt is “hugely popular,” said The New Statesman, “and politicians willing to talk about the fact that parts of it are far from green or discuss how it has choked off growth have generally been restricted to the backbenches.”

The reality is that much of green belt land is not made up of rolling fields but so-called brownfield sites. Ryan Shorthouse, the chief executive of centre-right think tank Bright Blue, told i news that “a significant amount of the green belt is made up of low-value land”, which has either already been built on or been left derelict.

The NPPF states a key aim of green belts is to assist in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment and “if it was all about preserving green fields, then that may be a worthwhile pursuit”, agreed Spencer. However, he goes on to point out “we already have statutory protections better designed for these purposes, such as areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks, as well as through private agreements known as conservation covenants. Protecting the countryside and workers’ access to it is important, but simply blocking urban expansion is the wrong way to do it.”

6. Con: urban regeneration

Another stated purpose of green belts in the NPPF is to assist in urban regeneration by encouraging the recycling of derelict and other urban land. This is “the government’s current line when it comes to building on green-belt land,” said i news, encouraging councils to make the most of suitable brownfield land for development, to “steer development away from green-belt land” where possible, and to “protect and enhance” the green belt.

While urban regeneration is net positive in its own right, the Campaign to Protect Rural England has also argued there is sufficient brownfield land to meet England’s housing needs, claiming in a report from 2022 that “there is space for at least one million homes on suitable brownfield land”.

Interest in vasectomies, or male sterilisation, as a contraceptive method is growing worldwide, particularly in the US where the overturning of Roe v. Wade has dramatically restricted abortion access.

Within a week of the Supreme Court decision in 2022, daily online searches for “vasectomy” nearly doubled, according to a report by telehealth company Innerbody Research. Searches for “where can I get a vasectomy” increased by 850% in some states, the report said. Some men in the US are now uploading footage of their vasectomies to TikTok.

In the decade prior to 2015 there had been a long-term decline in the number of vasectomies performed in the UK, falling 64% according to NHS Digital data. But last year there were “anecdotal reports” that vasectomies for young men were becoming more prevalent in the UK and even in China, said BBC Worklife, “where sterilisation remains culturally taboo”. In Australia, where vasectomy rates are relatively high compared with other developed nations, a doctor told SBS News that there had been “close to 20% increase in the number of childless men under 30 requesting vasectomies” between 2020 and 2021.

“It’s a big decision to have a vasectomy,” said the NHS. The Week takes a look at some of the main pros and cons of the procedure.

1. Pro: safer than reported

A vasectomy is a surgical procedure to cut or block the tubes that carry a man’s sperm from the testicles to the penis, in order to “permanently prevent pregnancy”, according to the NHS.

Vasectomies are “much safer than reported”, said a team of UK doctors who checked 94,000 procedures for complications. At the European Association of Eurology medical conference last month, the team said “serious risks are extremely rare”, according to BBC News.

Only about two in every 1,000 (0.2%) men experienced extreme scrotal pain, which contradicts a “commonly used” patient information leaflet that puts the figure at up to one in 20, it said. Rates of infection were just over 1%.

“Vasectomy is a very reliable and safe contraception method,” said senior NHS registrar Julian Peacock, who headed the review. He pointed out that the risk information on patient leaflets is from the 1980s, and is now outdated.

Vasectomies do not cause any increased risk of developing prostate cancer, according to two US studies published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2016.

Vasectomies do not affect sexual performance, sex drive, increase risk of heart disease or cause severe pain, said the Mayo Clinic.

2. Con: some risks and pain

“Your ball sack (scrotum) may become bruised, swollen or painful,” according to the NHS. “Some men have ongoing pain in their testicles.”

There is “a low risk of complications or side effects”, said the Mayo Clinic, but possible side effects can include bleeding or a scrotal blood clot, blood in the semen, infection and in rare cases, fluid build-up or an abnormal cyst in the testicle.

However, there are two types of vasectomy: a conventional procedure using a scalpel (surgical knife) and a so-called no-scalpel, or “blood-free” or snipless vasectomy. A no-scalpel vasectomy is associated with far fewer risks and pain.

Last week, a no-scalpel vasectomy passed a preliminary clinical test in the US, reported MedPage Today, achieving a decrease in sperm of almost 100% after 30 days, and causing no serious side effects.

3. Pro: quick and simple

“Once perceived as drastic and irreversible, vasectomy surgeries are now simple, routine and relatively painless,” according to The Guardian. “Urologists advertise ‘no needle, no scalpel’ procedures.”

The procedure involves “a small cut or puncture in the skin of the scrotum, which can be closed with dissolving stitches”, BBC News said. A day or two of rest is recommended, and sport, heavy lifting and sex should be avoided for at least a week.

“It’s usually carried out under local anaesthetic, where you’re awake but don’t feel any pain, and takes about 15 minutes,” NHS guidance said.

4. Con: not always reversible

According to the American Urological Assocation, between 3 and 6% of the 300,000 vasectomy patients each year in the US want to reverse the procedure.

Vasectomies “should be thought of as a permanent procedure for those considering it”, said Science Focus.

The success rates of a reversal are “not high”, according to Science Focus – about 75% “if done within three years of the original procedure, falling to around 55% up to eight years, and 40% up to 14 years”.

“A reversal to restore fertility will not always work,” said BBC News, “and is likely to have to be carried out privately, which could cost thousands of pounds.”

Reversal works by rejoining the tubes that carry sperm from the testes to the penis. There are two techniques: macroscopic vasovasostomy, performed with the naked eye; and microscopic vasovasostomy, using strong magnification.

A review published in the SN Comprehensive Clinical Medicine in 2021 showed a higher success rate of reversal with the microscopic procedure: 91.4% patency (being open or unobstructed) after the operation, compared with 80.5% for the macroscopic procedure.

A non-surgical vasectomy, called RISUG (reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance) is also under development in India. It involves injecting a gel into the vas deferens to block sperm, rather than cutting or tying it. A shot can then break down the gel. Vasagel, the US equivalent, is currently in clinical trials, reported Healthline.

5. Pro: reliable and effective

“The most reliable means of contraception for men – and one that cannot fail or be forgone in the heat of the moment – is a vasectomy,” said The Economist.

Vasectomy has a 0.15% failure rate at preventing pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, making it highly effective compared with other forms of contraception.

“It usually succeeds,” said Michelle Roberts, digital health editor for the BBC, “but doctors advise using contraception for a few months as some sperm can still be present.”

6. Con: not always accessible or affordable

“In most parts of the UK, a vasectomy is available free of charge from the NHS,” said official guidance. “But waiting lists can be several months, depending on where you live.”

Doctors could also refuse to refer you for the procedure.

“If you’re under 30, you’ll find many surgeons are reluctant to do it”, the NHS said. “You may be more likely to be accepted for a vasectomy if you’re over 30 and have had children.”

Cost in England “may be becoming an issue”, said The Guardian in 2016. “At a time of increasing financial pressure on the NHS, some clinical commissioning groups are considering reducing the number of vasectomies they will pay for, or dropping them altogether.”

In the US, a vasectomy can cost up to $1,000, according to Planned Parenthood, although they can be free depending on health insurance or government programs like Medicaid. But a vasectomy “usually ends up saving you money in the long run,” the guidance adds.

Social media has grown from its infancy in the early 2000s into a ubiquitous part of most people's lives. What began as a way for people to connect with each other has evolved into a variety of platforms where people can get news, share ideas and even make a living. But from the beginnings of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to the second wave of platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, people have had differing opinions on the true nature of social media.

Pro: maintain connections

One of the biggest positives of social media is the way it brings people together. These sites "play an important role in the establishment of friendships and the everyday back and forth of peer relationships," said the Pew Research Center. The term "social media" provides a clue to the initial purpose of the platform: building social interactions.

As new platforms developed, so did the way in which people used them. The shift was "almost invisible, but it had enormous consequences," said The Atlantic. "Instead of facilitating the modest use of existing connections — largely for offline life (to organize a birthday party, say) — social software turned those connections into a latent broadcast channel," and all at once, "billions of people saw themselves as celebrities, pundits and tastemakers."

Con: depression and anxiety

The impact on mental health, especially among children and adolescents, has long dominated debate around the use of social media. Numerous studies have found links between heavy social media use at a young age and negative self-esteem, body dysmorphia and higher psychological distress. This is especially true among girls, with the UK government moving to introduce the Online Safety Act in 2022 to safeguard children from the effects of social media-triggered depression. In the U.S., Congress has also introduced the Kids Online Safety Act, which would force social media platforms to "exercise reasonable care" when creating features meant for children.

Experts have raised concerns about how social media use activates the reward circuits in the brain, which can cause addiction, said USA Today; those with a history of trauma are particularly vulnerable. At least 15 children under 13 who tried to participate in the TikTok viral "blackout challenge" died, said Vox. "While pursuing the dream that TikTok dangled in front of them — becoming an overnight superstar — many more have become burnt out, disillusioned or otherwise hurt."

The risks to mental health led former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy to call for a "surgeon general's warning label on social media platforms" in an op-ed for The New York Times. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X can create "significant mental health harms for adolescents," said Murthy, which is why Congress should require them to issue warnings to protect America's young people "from online harassment, abuse and exploitation" that are amplified by algorithmic feeds.

Concerns about the negative impact of social media on the mental health of young users led Australia to pass the first ever social media ban for kids under 16, which was enacted in December 2025. Several other countries are now looking to follow in Australia's footsteps, including Spain, which announced plans for a similar ban in February, and France, whose National Assembly backed legislation to ban children under 15 years old in January.

Pro: changed politics and news

For all the talk of social media as a toxic cesspit, "it has also encouraged young people to vote, to engage in local politics, and to organize — sometimes against TikTok itself," said Vox. It has revolutionized the way people receive information, forever democratizing news. It has changed politics (for good or bad, depending on your outlook) by ushering in Brexit and Donald Trump but also by helping those living in repressive regimes communicate and mobilize. The Arab Spring was made possible by social media and it is the front line of the communication battle raging in Russia and Ukraine today.

The importance of social media in politics and news was further solidified by the prominent role it played in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Despite the fact that she lost, former Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign showed a deft hand in navigating the internet's social sphere, adopting many of the memes made about her and using them advantageously. Podcasters, streamers and influencers also emerged as the faces of the digital news cycle last year; this cohort of digital entertainers became a "source of news for a significant number of Americans, especially when it comes to politics," said NPR.

Con: cognitive overload

"Social media can be mentally draining," said Matthew Pittman, an assistant professor of advertising and public relations at the University of Tennessee, in The Conversation. Citing recent experiments on how social media affects behavior, he said: "You are more likely to be influenced by a high number of likes on posts — even to the point of clicking on ads for products you don't need or want." Yet the effect of "cognitive overload" can result in more than just buying things you do not need.

The endless access to information is perhaps of greatest concern for children, said Adam Brown, a clinical assistant professor in the department of child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, to USA Today. As a 2023 study published in JAMA Pediatrics shows, checking social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram too often can even affect how the brain develops in early adolescence, with students who checked social media habitually displaying differences in brain development related to emotions, motivation and cognitive control.

The increasing popularity of short-form content, inspired by the success of TikTok, has also led to concerns about the attention span of children and teenagers. The so-called TikTok brain phenomenon is built around the constant exposure to dopamine-spiking short videos, which have slowly become the norm across other platforms, including YouTube shorts. And given the large swath of content available on social media, the "exposure to a wide range of emotions, from joy and inspiration to anger and sadness, all within a short span, can be mentally taxing," said Calm.

Pro: provides education

It is important to stress the educational and entertainment aspects of social media, said Fox News. "A lot of people end up discovering new musicians, styles of clothing they want to try out, or even facts about the world that they didn't know before." Providing a vital window to the outside world during the Covid-19 pandemic, it has inspired people "to make fun iced coffee drinks, to pursue careers in arts and entertainment, to romanticize their lives, to feel more positively about their own bodies," said Vox.

There are many ways children can learn using social media. This ranges from how "students interact with content to how educators design and share their learning materials," said the British School of Barcelona. Social media can also facilitate "collaborative learning" by letting kids "work together on projects and assignments at anytime and from anywhere," as opposed to being limited to school hours.

Con: privacy concerns

There is a growing concern over privacy and security when it comes to social media. The Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018 revealed how data from platforms such as Facebook was being manipulated for political gain by third parties.

Concerns about TikTok's links to the Chinese state resulted in a law temporarily banning the platform the day before Trump was inaugurated for the second time. The new president swiftly extended the law's effective date with an executive order and suggested he would consider doing so again. Under the timeline set by Trump, TikTok's China-based parent company, ByteDance, was given "75 days beyond the initial January deadline to divest from the popular platform amid national security concerns," said The Hill. Longstanding negotiations continued until October 2025, when the U.S. and China announced a deal for TikTok's sale.

The deal closed in January 2026, with the joint venture acquiring TikTok's U.S. assets formally established and the leadership team announced "one day before the deadline" set by Trump, CNN said. The majority American-owned joint venture will "operate under defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurances for U.S. users," the group said in a statement. The agreement provides for "American and global investors to hold 80.1% of the venture while ByteDance will own 19.9%," Reuters said. The three managing investors of the new entity, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, are cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX, who each hold 15%.

TikTok "will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World," Trump said in a Truth Social post praising the deal. He thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping "for working with us and, ultimately, approving the deal."

But "does the recent deal truly resolve the national security risks originally cited by Congress to justify the TikTok ban?" said Scott Young at Harvard Law Today. "In my view, no, and, in some ways, it's made the problem even worse," said Timothy Edgar, a Harvard Law lecturer and expert on cybersecurity, to the outlet. Creating U.S. TikTok "leaves many existing threats unresolved while exposing users to additional privacy risks," said Young. The "company follows you around other parts of the internet that have nothing to do with TikTok," said the BBC.

Tens of millions of mobile phones are set to go off simultaneously at 3pm on Sunday, as the UK prepares to test its first nationwide emergency alert system.

Messages will be accompanied by a siren sound and vibration that will stop automatically after ten seconds. The alert will make a sound even if a phone is on silent and people will need to tap “OK” or swipe away the notification.

Already operational in countries around the world such as the US, Greece and Japan, alerts are expected to be sent “very rarely, only when there is an immediate threat to life, so it may be months or years before anybody receives one”, reported Sky News.

1. Pro: helps save lives

Cabinet Office minister Oliver Dowden stated the most obvious benefit when he suggested the alert could one day “be the sound that saves your life”. The government has said it would be used in “life-threatening emergencies” to broadcast urgent messages in the event of a disaster such as severe flooding, fires or extreme weather. However, the use of targeted alerts in countries such as the Netherlands and South Korea to control the spread of Covid point to other life-saving applications, especially after the UK government “was criticised during the pandemic for lagging behind other countries on the technology and repeatedly ignoring its own findings that an emergency messaging system could help Britain at a time of crisis”, The Guardian reported.

2. Con: risk for abuse victims

The government has admitted the emergency test on Sunday could put those in abusive relationships at risk by exposing concealed phones. “Monitoring a partner’s phone or depriving them of it is a common factor in many abusive relationships”, said the i news site, while those in abusive relationships “can often rely on concealed phones to communicate with their loved ones or support services”. Acknowledging the threat posed by the alert to people subject to domestic abuse, the government has issued new advice for people with concealed phones to “opt out of the national test either by turning off Emergency Alerts in their phone settings or by switching their phone off”.

3. Pro: free and easy to receive

Crucial to the success of any alert system is that is free of charge to everyone. The government’s official website stresses that every compatible mobile phone or tablet in range of a mast will receive the alert. “Your mobile phone or tablet does not have to be connected to mobile data or Wi-Fi to get alerts. Emergency alerts are free. You do not need to sign up for them or download an app”. The only reasons you will not receive an alert is if a device is turned off or in airplane mode, connected to a 2G or 3G network, Wi-Fi only or not compatible.

4. Con: distraction for drivers

A major concern is that a sudden unexpected siren sound could distract drivers caught unawares, increasing the chance of crashing. The Telegraph reported that “officials are concerned that the potential consequences have not been fully thought through”, with officials meeting the RAC to discuss how any risk to drivers can be reduced. As well as “some form of panic”, president of the AA, Edmund King, also warned “the odd sound could mean they reach for the phone”, increasing the risk of drivers receiving a fine for checking their phone while driving.

5. Pro: can be used at a local level

While the test on Sunday will target every phone in the country, more often than not alerts will be localised. With notifications having already been successfully tested in East Suffolk and Reading, Sky News said they “could be sent to specific areas, however big or small”. For example, everybody in a village where a river was about to burst its banks could be sent a warning alert. The broadcaster said it is unlikely to be used during an active terror attack, however, “as the attackers would then receive a notification as well, but decisions would be taken when and as needed”.

6. Con: danger of going wrong

While similar systems have been credited with saving lives in other countries “botched tests have also been the source of mass panic”, said the i news site. In 2018, a message was mistakenly sent across Hawaii, warning of an incoming ballistic missile attack, and a second message explaining the error not sent for another 38 minutes. Something similar happened in Canada in 2020, when an emergency alert warning millions of people of an “incident” at a nuclear power plant near Toronto was sent in error.

Artificial intelligence (AI) could lead to a “nuclear-level catastrophe”, according to a third of researchers surveyed for an annual report by Stanford University.

AI systems “demonstrate capabilities in question answering, and the generation of text, image, and code unimagined a decade ago”, said the report’s authors. But they are “prone to hallucination, routinely biased, and can be tricked into serving nefarious aims”.

ChatGPT, a new chatbot, has provoked much discussion in recent months, intensifying debate over the advantages and disadvantages of AI.

1. Pro: increased efficiency

AI-powered systems can process and analyse large amounts of data quickly, enabling faster decision-making and increased productivity across various industries.

For instance, noted the i news site, a study found that AI can cut your wait for a hospital bed by an hour when you go to A&E.

“For a human to go through 10,000 lines of data on a spreadsheet would take days, if not weeks,” explained Forbes, but AI can do it “in a matter of minutes”.

2. Con: the question of ethics

AI is “purely logical”, said Forbes, and “makes decisions based on pre-set parameters that leave little room for nuance and emotion”. In turn, this “makes it very difficult to incorporate areas such as ethics and morality into the algorithm”.

AI “notoriously fails” in “capturing or responding to intangible human factors that go into real-life decision-making – the ethical, moral, and other human considerations that guide the course of business, life, and society at large”, said Harvard Business Review.

3. Pro: more leisure time

Some believe that as AI takes on more and more tasks, society will readjust and allow all of us more leisure time.

“I expect that the world, or at least the developed part of it, will gradually choose more leisure,” wrote Roger Bootle in an extract from his book, The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Robot Age, published in The Telegraph.

“It will become normal for people to work a shorter working day and a shorter working week, with the three-day weekend becoming the norm,” he added.

4. Con: potential job losses

Increased automation brought about by AI has the potential to displace jobs, particularly in fields where tasks are repetitive and easily automated. It could displace roughly 15% of workers, or 400 million people, worldwide between 2016 and 2030, according to a McKinsey study.

The potential for human job losses is “widely regarded as the number one downside to AI”, said ITPro, and it “could set in motion a wave of lay-offs, as employees struggle to outperform machines”.

5. Pro: scientific breakthroughs

AI can accelerate scientific research by automating data analysis, enabling new discoveries in fields like astronomy, genetics and material sciences.

It has contributed to significant advancements in healthcare, said Discover magazine, and can “aid in the diagnosis of cancers”.

An AI program called AlphaFold proved capable of predicting a protein’s structure based on its amino acid sequence, which will “be a great help in drug discovery and development, benefiting us all”.

6. Con: monopolisation of power

Even now, there is growing concern over the power of multinational corporations, and AI has the potential to further centralise power in the hands of a few tech giants.

AI and new technologies “are already making Big Tech even more powerful than ever before”, wrote Sukhayl Niyazov on Towards Data Science, “because the AI industry naturally gravitates towards monopolisation”.

For most children in the UK, the school holidays are a welcome reprieve after weeks of learning. For some parents, however, the school holidays can be an unwelcome time of logistical stress and financial pressure.

With most working parents unable to take leave for the duration of the school holidays throughout the year, the impending breaks can be a “mix of panic, overwork, trying to find money for childcare and begging for help from grandparents”, said Allegra Chapman for the i news site. The “combination of the cost-of-living crisis and the long school holidays” also piles on the pressure for parents, said Katharine Swindells at City Monitor, and many parents “will be forced to give up work or reduce their hours” to look after their children.

For teachers, the holidays are “necessary for a break for both pupils and themselves”, said Yahoo! News, although they may “benefit from more spread-out breaks”, argued Chapman.

While the UK’s current school holiday calendar is a long-standing tradition, there is an ongoing debate as to whether school breaks should adapt to changes and pressures in society.

1. Pro: sufficient breaks for kids

The 91 days of holiday given to schoolchildren in the UK can be beneficial in allowing them time away from the rigours of structured learning.

The six-week summer break particularly gives them time to “just be kids”, mother-of-two and former teacher Jo Otto argued in Yahoo! News, providing sufficient time for “children to have other opportunities” and “learn other skills outside of what they learn at school”. For parents, it can also be “precious time spent with them” within busy schedules.

2. Con: effect on learning

Pupils can lose up to “40% of the gains they have made over the school year while on summer break”, a 2020 study showed, often known as “‘summer slide’, or ‘summer learning loss’, reversing some of the progress students have made over the year”, said Forbes.

It seems true that “disparities in academic attainment, particularly around reading and language, grow during breaks”, Jon Kay of the Education Endowment Foundation told The Guardian. This can be largely “explained by levels of access to books and stimulation like museum visits”, which is much easier for affluent pupils, while those from poorer backgrounds tend to “stay stationary”.

3. Pro: good for teachers

The idea of shortening holidays is “incredibly unpopular with teachers” and would impact “the recruitment of high-quality teachers”, Kay said, and the UK’s summer holiday is already “one of the shortest in the OECD countries”.

Indeed, when the Welsh government launched a consultation on shortening school holidays and spreading them throughout the year, it immediately put “education unions on the defence”, Neil Butler, the national official for Wales for teaching union NASUWT, told the BBC. He said that if the “six weeks were reduced, you’d see a mass exodus from the profession”.

The summer break is a “key time for teachers to switch off from the stress and demand of the job”, the BBC said.

4. Con: pressure on parents

School holidays “are a nightmare for parents”, writes Chapman at the i news site, arguing for “shorter, more frequent set breaks across the year” or even having schools “operating all year round” and giving “annual leave” to children to match their parents. That would require “more investment into the school system to provide more, better paid, staff who can share the load and cover time off”, to also benefit teachers, she said.

The impending school holidays are an “intricate task demanding hours of planning” for parents, said Susannah Streeter at the BBC, trying to find “childcare and entertainment for the long stretch of summer”.

Increasing costs mean “many parents have to make some stark choices in terms of their careers”, with many choosing to take “a big salary drop as a compromise for flexibility”.

5. Pro: summer is best time for break

A drastic change to school holidays would almost certainly see a reduction of the long summer stretch, meaning extra weeks earlier and later in the year at half-terms.

“The huge disadvantage of a two-week half-term break at the end of October is undoubtedly the weather,” writes teacher Yvonne Williams in TES Magazine. She argues that a staycation is a “less attractive proposition in the last weeks of October” and that inclement weather and shorter days will keep children “glued even more firmly to the internet”.

An extension of the summer break would be better, she argues, as there are “threads trailing” in the autumn, making it harder for teachers to switch off and for pupils to stay on top of their work.

6. Con: exacerbates inequality

The increasing cost of childcare and activities during holidays means disadvantaged families are often left worse off. The UK has seen a “decline in the availability and sufficiency of holiday childcare” while the “cost of accessing physical activity spaces” is preventing some children from “doing more physical activity”, writes Katharine Swindells.

Poorer families who rely on free school meals often have to “meet the extra food costs” during the holidays, with some parents having to “skip meals over the summer break” to ensure their children are fed, said The Observer. With lower government support it’s “leaving charities, food banks and businesses to pick up the shortfall”, said Swindells.