World

Breaking international news and analysis from around the globe.

What if we paid for electricity through taxes, not bills?

SuxxesPhoto / shutterstock The UK government has announced that standing charges will be removed from gas bills and that it intends to also remove them from electricity bills. Standing charges are a fixed fee paid by every household, regardless of…

The Conversation ·

How London’s 1838 ‘great stink’ created the modern vampire

Long before modern medicine could name the invisible terrors ravaging Victorian Britain, the public found a face for contagion: the vampire. A new exhibition at the University of Leeds’s Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery, Quite Shameless: Cultural Reflections on the…

The Conversation ·

Before bans for under-16s, we need to ask: what counts as social media?

KlingSup/Shutterstock Amid growing concerns about teenagers’ mental health and wellbeing, governments around the world are considering or enacting new restrictions on young people’s access to social media. Australia has already legislated a ban on social media for under-16s, and the…

The Conversation ·