The Venice Biennale is one of the world's most authoritative art platforms, and it must not become a stage for whitewashing the war crimes that Russia commits daily against the Ukrainian people and our cultural heritage. We call on the organisers of the Venice Biennale to reconsider their decision to allow the Russian Federation to return and to maintain the principled position demonstrated in 2022-2024.
The 'immovables rule' dictates that foreign laws and court decisions generally have no direct effect on the ownership of assets tied to UK land. While originally designed to protect national sovereignty, its application in the 21st century creates a unique paradox for the London market.
Iranian researchers are in a difficult situation. Those in Iran face low wages, high inflation, sociopolitical instability, resource mismanagement, oppression by the authorities and long-standing international sanctions. High prices hinder conference attendance, as do difficulties obtaining visas. Unstable Internet connections, frequent power outages and lack of access to scholarly sources jeopardize collaborations. Scholars also have to contend with isolation, and sometimes biases, from the international community. And for those who work abroad, travelling to and from Iran is risky, even with visas and double citizenship.
BANGKOK Prosecutors in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore seized hundreds of millions of dollars in assets belonging to a Cambodian businessman whom the U.S. accuses of heading a global scam syndicate. It's the latest in a string of investigations and asset seizures that began when American prosecutors charged Chen Zhi, the founder of Cambodia's Prince Holding Group, with running a large-scale cyber-scam network whose operations span countries including the U.S., the U.K. and Palau.
Pressing challenges, from the climate emergency to pandemic preparedness, demand concerted efforts at the global scale. But the growth in the use of international sanctions since the Second World War, although mostly targeted at economic growth and military capacity, has also affected science and scientific cooperation (see 'Science, restricted' and Supplementary information for raw data). Many nations have suspended publicly funded collaborations with the scientific institutions of several countries, including Iran, North Korea and Russia.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, tried to quell the backlash by saying the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would not be visiting any of the bombed sites and that discussions about these were still to be had. He said the return had been endorsed by Iran's supreme national security council and that the inspectors would be allowed to visit the Bushehr nuclear site to oversee refuelling only a role required by the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
