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Sunday, March 15, 2026

Why is the dollar profiting from Middle East war?

ByAFP
March 14, 2026

The surge in energy prices triggered by the conflict in the Middle East has significantly strengthened the dollar - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File MARK WILSON

Lucie LEQUIER

The surge in energy prices triggered by the conflict in the Middle East has significantly strengthened the dollar, paradoxically undermining US President Donald Trump’s economic objectives.

AFP looks at the reasons behind the greenback’s rise against rivals.

– King of oil –

At the start of the conflict almost two weeks ago, investors began massively selling assets, turning to energy investments in anticipation of a supply crisis — and to the dollar — the currency used to price oil and gas.

Attacks on Gulf infrastructure and the blockade of the strategic Strait of Hormuz has propelled the price of Brent North Sea crude, the global benchmark, by more than one third to around $100 per barrel.

With more dollars needed to purchase oil, the greenback has appreciated by around 2.5 percent since the start of hostilities, according to the Dollar Index, which compares the US unit to a basket of major currencies.

The dollar, seen as a highly liquid asset owing to it being readily available and exchangeable, is seen also as a leading safe haven investment.

It is favoured for international trades as well as foreign exchange reserves held by central banks.

– The US spared –

The United States has so far been spared from the oil supply crisis thanks to the country being the world’s leading producer of crude.

Although it still imports the commodity, the US purchases only eight percent of its requirement from the Gulf, compared with nearly two-thirds from Canada, according to the most recent official data from the US Energy Information Administration.

Rising oil prices tend to support the dollar also thanks to the US being a net exporter of refined petroleum products and gas, in turn boosting the nation’s trade balance.

By comparison, European and Asian economies which are more reliant on Gulf imports are being hit harder, making their currencies and bonds less attractive.

– Risks to inflation –

The dollar is additionally profiting from the possibility of a fresh inflation hike caused by soaring energy costs.

This is because it increases the likelihood of the US Federal Reserve slowing the pace of its planned cuts to interest rates, while even forcing it to possibly raise borrowing costs in the short term.

The prospect of higher interest rates for longer strengthens the appeal of the dollar, to the detriment of dollar-denominated gold and another traditional safe haven.

Despite recent strengthening, the dollar has not yet recovered to the levels it reached ahead of Trump’s return to the White House.

Offsetting the currency’s recent gains are concerns about the impact of Trump’s tariffs on the world’s biggest economy.

Fears surrounding high US debt levels and the president’s pressure over the independence of American institutions, notably the Fed, have also weighed upon its value.

“The dollar remains in demand and well supported,” Kathleen Brooks, analyst at traders XTB, told AFP.

“However, as the conflict drags on the attractiveness of the dollar could diminish… The US still has a massive budget deficit, which could get worse due to the war, as military spending may need to rise sharply in the coming months.”

– Trump’s paradox –

Market developments since the start of the conflict run counter to the objectives initially stated by Trump, who has pledged to lower gas prices, fight for lower interest rates, as well as advocating for a weak dollar to support exports.

Countering this, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asserted at the end of January that the “US always has a strong dollar policy”.

Mark Sobel, a former senior Treasury official, told AFP that “the administration’s views on the dollar are confused, muddled and inconsistent”.

Marc Chandler, analyst at Bannockburn Capital Markets, meanwhile concluded that for the US government, “denying Iran nuclear weapons or missiles seems to have a higher priority than the short-run impact of the foreign exchange market”.

Saturday, March 14, 2026

Why is the dollar profiting from Middle East war?

By AFP

March 14, 2026

The surge in energy prices triggered by the conflict in the Middle East has significantly strengthened the dollar - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File MARK WILSON

Wednesday, March 11, 2026

Report reveals alarming truths about US society

A child waves an American flag during a Fourth of July celebration with frontline workers and military families, Sunday, July 4, 2021, on the South Lawn of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Chandler West)

David Badash

March 11, 2026

ALTERNET

America is increasingly divided, politicians and social media say, but a new report digs beneath the surface of society to reveal what may be a “big lie.”

According to Axios‘ Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, most Americans “are too busy for social media, too normal for politics, too rational to tweet. They work, raise kids, coach Little League, go to a house of worship, mow their neighbor’s lawn — and never post a word about any of it.”

Those Americans are the silent majority, Axios says.

“Most Americans are patriotic, hardworking, neighbor-helping, America-loving, money-giving people who don’t pop off on social media or plot for power,” they write. “The hidden truth: Most people agree on most things, most of the time. And the data validates this, time and time again.”

VandeHei and Allen point the finger at “the terminally online news junkies,” and say that they are the ones “who are detached from the actual reality.”

To prove their point, they note that “four out of five Americans don’t use X, and therefore don’t see what you see.”

“Pew Research Center found last year that only 21% of U.S. adults use X, and just 10% visit it daily. The loudest platform in politics reaches barely one in five Americans.”

Perhaps even more surprising, they say: “Did you know that during most hours of most prime-time nights, less than 1% of the country watches Fox News, CNN or MS NOW, combined?”

“Maybe,” they suggest, “it’s the very people on these platforms who are the crazy ones,” and “maybe, most people are simply normal, sane, real.”

Further making their case, they point out that Americans gave $592.5 billion to charity in 2024, more than 75 million Americans volunteer each year, three out of four Americans “gave money to a religious or other nonprofit organization in the past year, and 63% volunteered their time.”

VandeHei and Allen conclude by saying, “The next time your screen tells you America is broken, close it. Walk outside. Talk to your neighbor. Coach the team. Go to the town meeting. That’s the real America — and it’s a hell of a lot better than the one being manufactured for clicks, clout and cash.”

Sunday, March 08, 2026

Scientists unveil universal aging mechanism in glassy materials

Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters

"Glass" has a unique and distinct meaning in physics—one that refers not just to the transparent material we associate with window glass. Instead, it refers to any system that looks solid but is not in true equilibrium and continues to change extremely slowly over time. Examples include window glass, plastics, metallic glasses, spin glasses (i.e., magnetic systems), and even some biological and computational systems.

When a liquid is cooled very quickly—a process called quenching—it doesn't have time to organize into a crystal but becomes stuck in a disordered state far from equilibrium. Its properties—like stiffness and structure—slowly evolve through a process called "aging."

Now, a research team from the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has proposed a new theoretical framework for understanding the universal aging behavior of glassy materials.

The study reveals a fundamental mechanism that governs how glasses—from simple spin systems to complex network glasses such as amorphous silica—slowly evolve over time.

To understand the aging process, the researchers developed a generalized trap model (GTM) grounded in the material's energy landscape: a multidimensional map of all possible configurations and the energy barriers that separate them. According to the GTM, aging is driven by activated hopping across these energy barriers. A universal distribution of barrier heights, incorporating crucial finite-size corrections, governs the system's slow, nonequilibrium dynamics.

The theory predicts that during nonequilibrium aging, the system undergoes "weak ergodicity breaking" at a temperature higher than the conventional glass transition temperature. In statistical physics, "ergodic" refers to a system that explores all possible configurations consistent with its energy. In contrast, the term "ergodicity breaking" refers to an equilibrium system becoming trapped in a subset of possible states, unable to explore all configurations. Weak ergodicity breaking occurs in nonequilibrium systems and describes a system that continues to evolve but remains correlated with its initial configuration even after prolonged aging.

By applying the GTM to four distinct models, including the random energy model (a spin glass), the Weeks-Chandler-Andersen model (a simple atomic glass), and amorphous silica (a network glass), the researchers demonstrated that glass aging behavior follows universal mathematical laws. A key finding is that the logarithmic decay of the two-time correlation function, a hallmark of aging, is directly linked to the finite size of "activation clusters," or groups of particles that rearrange together during the aging process.

In the Weeks-Chandler-Andersen model, this insight allowed the researchers to extract a static length scale from the nonequilibrium dynamics, extending its observable growth range from a mere factor of two to three to a full order of magnitude. This provides strong supporting evidence for the random first-order transition (RFOT) theory, a leading theory of the glass transition.

This work provides a unified phase diagram that describes both ergodic and weakly non-ergodic phases in spin and structural glasses, offering a powerful tool for understanding these ubiquitous yet complex materials. These findings have implications not only for materials science but also for other complex systems, such as protein dynamics and even the training of deep learning algorithms, where similar slow relaxation processes are observed.

Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aec4416

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Universal activated aging and weak ergodicity breaking in spin and structural glasses

Thursday, February 26, 2026

Study reveals how Trump’s 2024 victory made prejudice cool again

Supporters of Republican presidential nominee former U.S. President Donald Trump react as Trump speaks from the Palm Beach County Convention Center, as they attend an election watch party at Maricopa County Republican Committee during the 2024 U.S. presidential election in Chandler, Arizona, U.S., November 6, 2024. REUTERS/Go Nakamura/File Photo

Adam Lynch

February 25, 2026

ALTERNET

A new study reveals that President Donald Trump’s derogatory rhetoric is making prejudice fashionable again.

“Individuals naturally want to fit in,” reports PsyPost. “They tend to hide their prejudices when society disapproves of them. However, when a prominent political figure openly uses derogatory language against specific groups, it sends a signal that these negative attitudes are now socially acceptable.”

Making people express their “previously hidden biases” was a talent Trump showed in his 2016 election, but his weird superpower expressed itself again in 2024, researchers noticed.

“After his initial campaign, voters across the political spectrum agreed that expressing prejudice against specifically targeted groups, such as immigrants and Muslims, had become much more acceptable,” PsyPost reports, so researchers needed to determine if Trump’s 2024 reelection triggered an identical reaction in a different political climate.

They recruited undergraduate students from a large midwestern state university and required them to evaluate a wide variety of social groups, including immigrants, Muslims, Asian Americans, disabled people, and many others, totaling 128 distinct groups. Sure enough, when Trump spoke harshly about marginalized communities during his campaign, such as immigrants, Haitians, and Asian Americans, participants became more likely to view prejudice against these same groups as socially acceptable after he won.

“If people have any attitudes at all about a group, they’re likely to be stable,” said Christian S. Crandall, a professor of psychology at the University of Kansas. “But Trump can create strong new prejudices, especially if people don’t have much of an opinion about the group in the first place. Attitudes are fairly difficult to change, but they’re much easier to create.”

PsyPost reports the negative political language also predicted a direct rise in the participants’ own internal biases. Following the 2024 election, individuals admitted to holding stronger personal prejudices against the exact groups that the campaign had heavily criticized, which also included Muslims and transgender people.

Crandall said the resulting prejudice was “spread out across the whole nation and population.”

“I think that various kinds of prejudice have become much more overt. Antisemitism (which the administration says it’s fighting, but that seems to be a cover to attack universities, and I’m saying that as a personal opinion, not on the data), and elimination of all DEI-relevant policies and grants seem to be backing off concern for civil rights.”

The participants were predominantly white college students from the midwestern United States, reports PsyPost, which leaves into question how thoroughly Trump’s talent as a prejudice accelerant jumps across race. The study also evaluated changes over a span of just a few weeks, making the long-term stability of these shifts difficult to interpret.

Monday, February 16, 2026

How tech-dependency and pandemic isolation have created ‘anxious generation’

Taylor & Francis Group

Unchecked use of technology and pandemic isolation have ‘reshaped’ how teenagers develop – but it’s not too late to intervene.

This is the stark warning of educator Amber Chandler, who suggests teens are struggling with unprecedented levels of anxiety in this ‘scared new world’, which presents a major challenge for parents and schools. However, the teacher says children can learn to flourish and thrive if given the right support.

No phones at bedtime, ‘no-tech’ public spaces and letting children handle their own problems are among scientific evidence-based solutions offered in her book Reclaiming Connection – How Schools and Families Can Nurture Belonging in a Scared New World.

Chandler also suggests parents become more ‘present’ by not scrolling on their smartphones when with their children. They can then take the lead in teaching their offspring how to be in the ‘here and now’.

Schools also have a vital role to play, she suggests, by helping students to navigate technology responsibly and safely.

Chandler’s position is not isolated, in fact concerns are growing worldwide among parents, schools and policymakers over the impact of smart phones and other devices on young people. Australia, for example, has recently banned social media for under 16s and other countries are considering similar policies.

Besides the unprecedented challenges teens face in the hyper-connected digital world, this generation of adolescents experienced an equally unprecedented global pandemic which isolated them from peers and shut off many developmental opportunities, while making many young people dependent on screens.

“The addictive nature of students’ online experiences began during the pandemic but has progressed now to a point where we must make some hard decisions, courageous decisions,” she explains. “These decisions require the ‘adults in the room’ to look at the evidence that screens, used indiscriminately, are toxic.

“The Scared New World that I fear we are inhabiting is the result of a reckless alchemy concocted from the isolation of the pandemic amalgamated with digital distractions far more powerful than we had suspected.”

Chandler hopes to counter the detrimental impact of the pandemic on young people’s social and emotional development by helping families, communities and schools come together to help them succeed.

She presents solutions based on her experiences spanning more than 20 years as a English Language Arts teacher, including seemingly simple suggestions such as teaching children about their data and digital footprint, and embracing opportunities for young people to get involved in clubs, groups and face-to-face activities.

An initial hurdle for many parents and teachers to overcome, she suggests, is pandemic fatigue – where many adults are simply ‘sick of’ talking about the pandemic, making addressing any issues doubly challenging.

“As I’m learning more, it is becoming clear that it isn’t something we can wish away. I’m saddened because the trauma inflicted on all of us has left its physical mark on us which then is playing out in the classroom and society,” she says.

The author also shares anecdotes about her own shortcomings as a parent to demonstrate the challenges that families face. She reveals she’s a ‘snowplough’ parent who clears obstacles from her children’s path, but who wasn’t alert to the dangers of smartphones. Now aware of the neurological changes in young people caused by screen use, Chandler advises parents to delay introducing phones and screens as long as possible.

“I’ll be honest, as an adult in this situation, I felt pretty guilty about my own children’s social media use when I realized that it was 100% designed to addict them and then mine their identity,” she explains.

But it’s not just parents – schools are increasingly reaching to screens to educate and test their students, something Chandler has deep concerns about.

“I am not anti-technology, but I am very much worried about the implications of our obsession with data collection that simply leads to remediation upon remediation. Instead, the younger years should be about discovery and innovation, problem solving and collaboration,” she explains.

Her advice to families, schools and mentors is to be compassionate about the decisions made until now, but to insist on change for the future: “We have to recognize that we were duped. Most people simply did not know that cellphones were addictive.”

The author doesn’t shy away from holding herself accountable, and encourages others to too. Chandler says: “Unpopular opinion: Families need to hold themselves accountable. Small children cannot drive to the store, buy an expensive device, and regulate screen time when they can’t even tie their shoes. We bought the phones, iPads, and gaming consoles.”

DOI

10.4324/9781003659969

Sunday, February 15, 2026

New research shows God-believing ‘nones’ align more closely with religious Americans

Religious nones who believe in God are far more likely than other nones to hold conservative views

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Philip Schawdel — image:
Philip Schwadel is a leading researcher on the growing population of religious "nones."
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Credit: Craig Chandler, University Communication and Marketing

Nearly one in three Americans now identify as religious “nones,” and new research from University of Nebraska–Lincoln sociologist Philip Schwadel suggests that this fast‑growing group is far more ideologically diverse than commonly assumed.

In a new study, published in Sociology of Religion, Schwadel found that religious nones who believe in God are far more likely than other nones to have similar policy preferences to their religiously affiliated counterparts. Nones — or those who identify as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular — have grown from approximately 16% of the population in 2007 to 28% according to the most recent data from the Pew Research Center.

Using data from the General Social Survey, a nationally representative survey of adults in the United States, Schwadel examined 16 measures ranging from attitudes on capital punishment to government spending and political intolerance. God-believing nones are more likely to support school prayer, the death penalty and making pornography illegal, while opposing abortion. They are less likely than other nones to support increased spending on welfare, scientific research, education or to protect the environment.

These findings build on Schwadel’s previous work documenting the growing diversity among the religiously unaffiliated. While Americans increasingly disaffiliate from religion, many still assume the nones represent a single ideological bloc. Schwadel’s new research points out that isn’t true.

“We tend to think of these people as all atheists,” Schwadel, Happold Professor of Sociology, said. “I see in popular discourse, people often conflate the non-religious with atheists, but very few of them are atheists. The biggest takeaway is that we treat these people as one group, but as 28% or so of Americans, they have tremendous diversity.”

Schwadel said the conservatism he found among God-believing religious nones compared to other nones was somewhat surprising.

“I did expect God-believing nones to be different from the other nones, the atheists and agnostics,” he said. “I did not expect it to be this different. I did not expect that in many cases, they are just as conservative on a lot of these issues as religious affiliates who believe in God. Nones who believe in God look more like religious Americans than they do other nones. Many of these people, as this article shows, support the death penalty, oppose abortion, support school prayer.”

And God-believing religious nones are a large subsection. Schwadel noted that among the religiously unaffiliated, 35% believe in God, 28% believe in a higher power, 21% are agnostic and 16% are atheists.

That God-believing nones are growing could have political implications, Schwadel said, and he is exploring the religious language politicians use in future research.

“I think there's a clear implication for Republican politicians,” he said. “I do think that they can appeal to some of these nones who believe in God or even believe in a higher power, whose policy perspectives align with the Republican Party, if they tone down a little bit of the Christian-specific language.”