Inequalities in childhood pneumococcal vaccine uptake persist in England despite schedule change

University of Liverpool

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Vaccine uptake data has been examined to assess the impact of moving from a '2+1' to a '1+1' Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) dose schedule on vaccine coverage and health inequalities among infants in England.

Persistent inequalities remain a major barrier to achieving universal protection against life-threatening infections – reflecting findings from the UK Heath Security Agency National Immunisation Programme Health Equity Audit 2025.

The findings from an interdisciplinary research team including data scientists, infectious disease epidemiologists and physicians from the University of Liverpool are published today (1 April 2026) in the journal The Lancet Regional Health – Europe. 

By performing a data analysis, researchers from the Institute of Population Health and the Institute of Infection, Veterinary & Ecological Sciences at the University of Liverpool have examined the trends in timely vaccine uptake before and after England changed its PCV dose schedule in  January 2020 – transitioning from a “2+1” PCV schedule (two primary doses at 8 and 16 weeks, with a booster dose at 12 months) to a “1+1” PCV schedule (single primary dose at 12 weeks and a booster dose at 12 months).

In a longitudinal study, the researchers analysed Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) uptake data from 2013-2025 for children aged 1 and 2 years from the Cover of Vaccination Evaluated Rapidly (COVER) programme. COVER collects quarterly and annual data on childhood immunisation coverage in England for children at 1, 2 and 5 years of age.

Looking at pattens for upper-tier local authorities in England linked to 2019 Index of Multiple Deprivation quintiles, the study found that PCV booster retention has dropped in England since the schedule change, which coincided with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. This deterioration disproportionately affected children in more deprived areas, risking avoidable disease burden concentrated in the most disadvantaged communities and widening health inequalities. The findings agree with evidence from a BMJ article by the wider research team and the UK Heath Security Agency National Immunisation Programme Health Equity Audit 2025, reporting immunisation inequity in England is not only persistent but it is worsening in critical areas.

The number of required clinic visits may be insufficient to overcome the systemic barriers to vaccination faced by marginalised communities. Immunisation system strengthening, targeted, equity-focused interventions and enhanced call-recall systems for post-infant vaccine delivery could help address the identified PCV coverage gaps. These outputs are timely as the House of Lords - Childhood Vaccinations Committee is holding an inquiry to examine childhood vaccination coverage in England, why there has been a gradual decline in coverage over the past decade and what the Government should do to reverse this decline and reduce inequalities in childhood vaccination coverage.

Dr Edward Hill from the University of Liverpool is the corresponding author on the paper. He said: “National averages and patterns can often mask local vulnerabilities. This research highlights the importance of using granular data to identify exactly which groups are falling behind in intervention uptake. Public health interventions can then be more precisely targeted.”

Lead author Praise Ilechukwu from the University of Liverpool commented: “Our study shows that while the UK's move to a 1+1 schedule was evidence-based and efficient, we are still seeing a consistent lag in protection for children in deprived areas. These deprivation-associated inequalities in pneumococcal vaccine coverage in children leaves children in deprived areas more vulnerable to pneumococcal diseases like pneumonia and meningitis.”

Co-author Professor Neil French from the University of Liverpool commented: “Addressing the PCV booster retention issues can be aided by establishing routine monitoring of booster gaps as a key performance indicator for the vaccination programme. This should include regular reporting by deprivation and place to enable early identification of emerging problems.”

Co-author Dr Dan Hungerford from the University of Liverpool commented: “Inequalities persist even with fewer required vaccination appointments for PCV. We need to look at the wider social determinates of inequalities in child health and structural access factors—like flexible vaccination access points and tailored community outreach—to ensure every child is protected regardless of their background.”

The research, published today in The Lancet Regional Health - Europe, was supported by the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections.

The paper Inequalities in childhood pneumococcal conjugate vaccine uptake in England before and after the change from a 2+1 to 1+1 schedule: a longitudinal study is available here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(26)00079-7/fulltext

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Journal

The Lancet Regional Health - Europe

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

 

Native Americans were making dice, gambling, and exploring probability thousands of years before their Old World counterparts

Colorado State University

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Late Pleistocene (13,000 to 11,700 BP), Early Holocene (11,700 to 8,000 BP), Middle Holocene (8,000 to 2,000 BP),
and Late Holocene (2,000 to 450 BP) diagnostic and probable prehistoric Native American dice: (a, d) Signal Butte, Nebraska
(Middle Holocene), NMNH-A437076, NMNH-550791; (b) Agate Basin, Wyoming (Early Holocene), UW-11327; (c, f) Agate Basin,
Wyoming (Late Pleistocene), UW-OA111, UW-OA448; (e, g) Lindenmeier, Colorado (Late Pleistocene), NMNH-A442165, NMNHA440429; (h) Irvine, Wyoming (Late Holocene). (Figures 1a, d, e, and g courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, Smithsonian
Institution, American Museum of Natural History. Figures 1b, c, f, and h courtesy of the Department of Anthropology, University
of Wyoming.)

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Credit: Photo courtesy of Robert Madden

FORT COLLINS, Colo., March 23, 2026 — A new study forthcoming in American Antiquity, the flagship journal of North American archaeology published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Archaeology, presents evidence that the earliest known dice in human history were made and used by Native American hunter-gatherers on the western Great Plains more than 12,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age, long before the earliest known dice from Bronze Age societies in the Old World.

The research conducted by Colorado State University Ph.D. student Robert J. Madden indicates that dice, games of chance, and gambling have been a persistent feature of Native American culture for at least the last 12,000 years, with the earliest examples appearing at Late Pleistocene Folsom-period archaeological sites in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. These artifacts predate the earliest known Old World dice by more than 6,000 years.

“Historians have traditionally treated dice and probability as Old World innovations,” Madden said. “What the archaeological record shows is that ancient Native American groups were deliberately making objects designed to produce random outcomes, and using those outcomes in structured games, thousands of years earlier than previously recognized.”

What these Ice Age dice looked like

The earliest examples identified in the study come from Folsom sites dating to roughly 12,800–12,200 years ago. Unlike modern cubic dice, these were two-sided dice known as “binary lots,” carefully crafted, small pieces of bone that were flat or slightly rounded, often oval or rectangular in shape, sized to be held in the hand and tossed in groups onto a playing surface.

The two faces of these binary lots were distinguished by applied markings, surface treatments, coloration, or other visible modifications, much like heads or tails on a coin, with one face designated as the “counting” side. When thrown, they reliably landed with one side or the other facing upward, producing a binary (two-outcome) result. Sets of these dice were cast together, and scores were determined by how many landed with the counting face up.

“They’re simple, elegant tools,” Madden said. “But they’re also unmistakably purposeful. These are not casual byproducts of bone working. They were made to generate random outcomes.”

How the research was conducted

Rather than relying on subjective resemblance or guesswork, the study introduces a new attribute-based morphological test – a systematic checklist of measurable physical features – for identifying North American dice archaeologically. The test was derived from a comparative analysis of 293 sets of historic Native American dice documented across the continent by ethnographer Stewart Culin in his 1907 Bureau of American Ethnology monograph, Games of the North American Indians.

The study then applies this test systematically to the published archaeological record, essentially re-examining artifacts long labeled as possible “gaming pieces” or otherwise overlooked to determine whether they meet the new objective criteria for dice. In most cases, the evidence had been in the archaeological record for decades, but without a clear standard for identifying dice, it had never been analyzed as part of a larger pattern. Using this approach, Madden identified over 600 hundred diagnostic and probable dice from sites spanning every major period of North American prehistory, from the Late Pleistocene through and after the period of European contact.

“In most cases, these objects had already been excavated and published,” Madden said. “What was missing wasn’t the evidence, it was a clear, continent-wide standard for recognizing what we were looking at.”

The earliest examples were examined directly in museum collections at the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Wyoming Archaeological Repository, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Rewriting the deep history of probability

Historians of mathematics widely regard dice games as humanity’s earliest structured engagement with randomness, an intellectual precursor to probability theory, statistics, and later scientific thinking. Until now, the origins of these practices were thought to lie exclusively in Old World complex societies beginning around 5,500 years ago.

This study suggests a much deeper and broader history.

“These findings don’t claim that Ice Age hunter-gatherers were doing formal probability theory,” Madden said. “But they were intentionally creating, observing, and relying on random outcomes in repeatable, rule-based ways that leveraged probabilistic regularities, such as the law of large numbers. That matters for how we understand the global history of probabilistic thinking.”

A 12,000-year cultural tradition with living descendants

The research also documents the remarkable breadth, as well as the persistence, of Native American dice games. From Paleoindian times through the Archaic and Late Prehistoric periods, dice appear at 57 archaeological sites across a 12-state region associated with a variety of different cultures and subsistence strategies.

According to Madden, this breadth of use and endurance reflects their social importance. “Games of chance and gambling created neutral, rule-governed spaces for ancient Native Americans,” he said. “They allowed people from different groups to interact, exchange goods and information, form alliances, and manage uncertainty. In that sense, they functioned as powerful social technologies.”

About the Study

The article, “Probability in the Pleistocene: Origins and Antiquity of Native American Dice, Games of Chance, and Gambling,” will appear in American Antiquity, published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Archaeology.  

Figure 9. Folsom diagnostic and probable Native American dice. (Figure 9a, b, d, and g: Agate Basin, Wyoming, UW-OA005,
UW-OA109, UW-OA111, UW-OA448, courtesy of the Department of Anthropology, University of Wyoming. Figure 9c: Lindenmeier,
Colorado, DMNS-A900.179, courtesy of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Figure 9e–f, h–i, k–p, r: Lindenmeier, Colorado,
NMNH-A443046, NMNH-A442165, NMNH-A44890, NMNH-A441178, NMNH-A440429, NMNH-A441841; NMNH-A442122, NMNHA443755, NMNH-A443850, NMNH-A443658, NMNH-A441839, courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution,
American Museum of Natural History. Figure 9j: Lindenmeier, Colorado, CSU-7805-6, courtesy of the Department of Anthropology,
Colorado State University. Figure 9q: Blackwater Draw, New Mexico; drawing by D’arcy NR Madden afer Hester (1972:Figure 9b,
by Phyllis Hughes). (All photographs, except (j), are by the author).

Credit

Photo courtesy of Robert Madden

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Journal

American Antiquity

DOI

10.1017/aaq.2025.10158 

Article Title

Probability in the Pleistocene: Origins and Antiquity of Native American Dice, Games of Chance, and Gambling

Article Publication Date

2-Apr-2026

WATER WITCFHING

Watering smarter, not more

UC Riverside develops modern-day robotic divining rod

University of California - Riverside

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A robot designed to assist with precision irrigation in action, in a citrus orchard. 

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Credit: Elia Scudiero/UCR

Advanced technology can help farmers get to the root of a growing problem ¾ overwatering in an era of increasing drought and water scarcity. A new UC Riverside system can map soil moisture tree by tree, so growers water only where and when it’s needed.

This system, detailed in the journal Computer and Electronics in Agriculture, was led by the research group of Elia Scudiero, associate professor of precision agriculture and the Director of UCR’s Center for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment (CAFE).

Water management is one of the biggest challenges facing agriculture in California and other dry regions. Currently, some growers rely on soil moisture sensors buried in the ground to determine when to irrigate. These sensors are expensive and typically installed in only a few locations, leaving growers to guess how conditions vary across hundreds or thousands of trees.  

“The information those sensors provide is very limited,” Scudiero said. “It really only tells you what’s happening in the immediate areas where they’re placed.”

Even when sprinkler systems deliver the same amount of water throughout an orchard, the soil moisture and its availability to trees can vary greatly from spot to spot within a single field.

One reason is soil texture. Fine soils packed with tiny particles hold water tightly because they have more surface area where water can cling. Sandy soils contain larger particles and fewer small ones, which allows water to drain more quickly. These differences can leave neighboring trees experiencing very different conditions.

The new system replaces limited sensor data and guesswork with detailed maps. A robot moves through an orchard measuring a property of the soil called electrical conductivity. These readings, combined with data from the fixed moisture sensors already in the ground, allow researchers to build a statistical model that predicts water content across the entire field.

Electrical conductivity indicates how easily electricity moves through the soil and is influenced by factors including moisture as well as salt and clay content. By pairing those measurements with direct water readings from buried sensors, the system can translate conductivity into accurate estimates of soil moisture.

The result is a tree-by-tree picture of water distribution. “Using this method, growers will finally know how much water they have, and how much they need, and can water specific trees if they’re dry,” Scudiero said.

Maintaining the right moisture level is important for plant health. Trees that receive too little water become stressed, and more vulnerable to pests and disease. Too much water, however, can deprive roots of oxygen as soil pores fill with water rather than air. “There’s a sweet spot,” he said.

Enhanced precision could also keep orchards from folding. Growers already face tightening regulations on groundwater use while water costs continue to rise.

“If water becomes limited, farmers have two choices,” Scudiero said. “They can retire orchards, or they can find ways to produce the same crops using less water.”

The technology may also reduce fertilizer pollution. When fields are overwatered, nutrients applied to crops can wash below the root zone and into groundwater, polluting it.

“If you apply only the amount of water the plants actually need, you reduce the risk of washing those nutrients away from the roots of the crops and into the environment,” Scudiero said.

This project has been years in the making. Researchers began developing it in 2019 through collaborations between agricultural scientists and engineers at CAFE.

For Scudiero, it represents the realization of a long-standing goal. He has studied soil conductivity technology for about 15 years and had hoped to someday pair it with autonomous vehicles capable of surveying entire fields.

The team has already filed a patent related to how the robot interacts with sensors without disturbing their measurements. This research was conducted at the UCR Citrus Research Center & Agricultural Experiment Station. Future work will focus on testing the system with commercial growers beyond the university’s research orchards.

Moving from research plots to real farms will require rugged machines capable of operating in all weather conditions and across different crop systems. Private industry partners may eventually adapt the technology into commercial products.

The work is part of broader efforts at UCR to further the field of precision agriculture, where researchers are developing technologies that combine robotics, sensors, and data science to help farmers manage resources more efficiently.

For growing facing limited water supplies, the payoff for this research could be significant.

“More crop per drop!” Scudiero said. 

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Journal

Computers and Electronics in Agriculture

DOI

10.1016/j.compag.2026.111540 

Article Title

Robotic mapping of soil volumetric water content with geospatial soil apparent electrical conductivity in micro-irrigated citrus orchards in California

Spain cuts the link between gas and power and has Europe’s cheapest power

Thanks to heavy investment into renewables, Spain now has some of the cheapest power in Europe and is insulated from the current energy price shocks. / bne IntelliNews

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By Ben Aris in Berlin April 3, 2026

A year ago this week, Spain’s grid ran entirely on renewable power for a full day for the first time ever. Wind, solar, and hydro met all the peninsula’s electricity demand on April 16. Five days later, solar set a new record, generating 20,120 MW of instantaneous power – covering 78.6% of demand and 61.5% of the grid mix.

Spain is the second highest producer of solar power in the EU, but a fifth of its electricity still comes from gas. Spain’s largest source of clean electricity in 2025 was solar (22%) and its share of wind and solar in the energy mix (42%) exceeds the EU average (30%), according to Ember.

Spain has emerged as Europe’s green energy champion after the government invested heavily into renewables as it sought to break its dependence on expensive and increasingly unreliable fossil fuel imports. That has already paid huge dividends as the cost of power plummeted and is now one of the lowest in Europe. 

But the transformation is not over yet: Spain relied on fossil fuels for 25% of its electricity in 2025.

Its per capita emissions of 0.9 tonnes of CO₂ were below the EU average of 1.3 tonnes of CO2e. It ranked 21st globally for electricity demand in 2024.

In 2025, wind generated 256 GWh. Solar followed with 151 GWh. Hydroelectric sources added 129 GWh. Solar thermal contributed 11 GWh. Other renewables added another 11 GWh. And Renewable waste generated 1 GWh, according to Spain’s grid operator Red Eléctrica.

Its per capita emissions of 0.9 tonnes of CO2e were below the EU average of 1.3 tonnes of CO₂ . “Spain’s power sector emissions have fallen by more than two thirds over the last two decades, as wind and solar expansion displaced fossil fuels,” Ember said in a report in February.

Breaking the fossil fuel chains

Spain’s electricity market is being reshaped by the effort to break the link between fossil fuels and power prices. It is a policy that has already delivered some of the cheapest wholesale electricity in Europe but has also exposed new vulnerabilities in the country’s grid.

Wholesale electricity prices in Spain were a third (32%) less the EU average in the first half of 2025, reflecting what Dr Chris Rosslowe, senior energy analyst at Ember, described in a report as “the reduced influence of expensive fossil gas and coal power on the electricity market… driven by surging wind and solar”.

The country has moved from being among Europe’s most expensive power markets in 2019 to one of its cheapest, as renewable capacity has taken over fossil fuels.

At the core of that transformation is a sharp decline in the role of gas in price-setting. In 2019, fossil fuels determined Spain’s electricity price in 75% of hours; by 2025, that figure had fallen to 19%.

Rosslowe said that “Spain has broken the ruinous link between power prices and volatile fossil fuels”, with average wholesale prices of €62/MWh ($67/MWh) sitting well below the cost of gas-fired generation, which averaged €111/MWh over the same period.

The scale of the build-out has been decisive. Spain added more than 40GW of wind and solar capacity between 2019 and 2025, doubling its installed base. Renewables accounted for 46% of electricity demand in the first half of 2025, up from 27% six years earlier, while fossil generation fell to 20% of the mix—far below levels in Germany or Italy. April 2025 marked the first month ever without coal-fired generation, a milestone that would have been improbable a decade earlier, says Ember.

This expansion has also reduced import dependence and has provided a buffer to the current energy price shock. New renewable capacity installed since 2020 avoided 26bn cubic metres of gas imports, saving €13.5bn ($14.6bn), according to Ember. The Bank of Spain has estimated that wholesale prices would have been 40% higher in 2024 had wind and solar remained at 2019 levels.

Yet the gains have come with some problems. There are two parts to the green energy transition: investment in renewable generating capacity and investment into the grid. Spain has made a lot of progress in the first task, but the second is a work in progress.

The problem is renewable power supply can be erratic, unlike the steady state of generating power using something like gas. Last summer the entire Iberian peninsula was blacked out on April 28 2025, due to large fluctuations in power that the grid could not cope with. Spain still relies on gas-fired plants to stabilise the grid but now needs to invest into a grid that can cope with these unpredictable swings.

Rosslowe warned that “increased reliance on gas power post-blackout for grid stabilisation has been costly”, with ancillary service costs surging. In May 2025, such services accounted for 57% of the electricity price, up from 14% previously, while the cost of balancing actions doubled year on year.

The reliance on gas for system stability has also driven a sharp rise in renewable curtailment. Between May and July 2025, 7.2% of potential renewable generation was curtailed, compared with 1.8% in the preceding years, as grid constraints forced operators to prioritise gas plants for voltage control and system balance.

A lag in infrastructure investment has left Spain with one of Europe’s largest gas fleets but only the thirteenth-largest battery storage capacity, with just 120MW installed. The battery revolution could smooth out the renewables power supply, but until grid-level eight-hour batteries appear the green transition will not be over.

Spanish grid spending has also trailed peers, with €0.30 invested in networks for every €1 spent on renewables, compared with a European average of €0.70, according to Bloomberg.

Still, policy is now shifting again. The government has approved reforms to expand clean flexibility, including plans for eight synchronous compensators at a cost of €750mn ($810mn), expected to deliver annual savings of €200mn. Battery projects totalling 2.6GW are in development, while new interconnection capacity with France is advancing with support from the European Investment Bank.

Rosslowe said that “boosting grids and batteries will help Spain break free from fossil dependency for good”, adding that the country’s experience shows both “the success in growing renewables” and the risks of failing to match that growth with system flexibility.

Aircon: from comfort to matter of life and death

Summers are getting hotter, but as the Climate Crisis accelerates fair soon temperatures will reach a point in some counties where human life can no longer be sustained, if you get caught out of doors. Air conditions will be come existential at that point. / bne IntelliNews

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By Ben Aris in Berlin April 1, 2026

The last three years were the hottest ever recorded and it’s only going to get worse – to the point where people will start to die from overheating. Unless you have an air conditioner. 

As a species, humans can only tolerate so much heat. Anyone caught outside in the so-called wet-bulb conditions – 35°C with 100% humidity for more than six hours – will perish. The body become unable to cool itself and shuts down. When summer temperatures eventually reach this point in the decades to come, people will need an aircon unit to stay alive in the same way as an astronaut needs a spacesuit.  In the meantime, mere heat-stress mortality is already on the rise. 

Real life studies show the optimum temperature for humanity is somewhere between 17°C and 27°C, but the earths climate is starting to move outside the band that will support human life. There are several factors going into this calculation: the optimum in London is 18°C where air conditioners are uncommon, whereas the same in Texas is 27°C where the use air conditioners is widespread. Even as temperatures move beyond what we can survive, technology will come to humanity’s rescue. For a while anyway.

In cold countries, heating is considered a necessity and often provided by the state. That is not true in hot countries. As out-of-bounds temperatures start to appear, governments around the world will have to start to factor heat-deaths into social policy and urban planning.

Wet-bulb conditions already occur in places like Pakistan and UAE, but they have been short-lived, a few hours only. Scientist say that as the Climate Crisis accelerates extreme heat is already becoming a problem even before wet-bulb conditions are common. As IntelliNews reported, mortality is already rising simply due to heat-stress that singles out the old and infirm. Most heat-deaths occur in people older than 65 at a lower levels of heat and humidity. A recent study projects that by 2050, several lower-income countries could see heat-stress mortality overtake some of the major lethal diseases as the leading cause of death.

Air conditioners

The solution is the mundane air conditioner. Already considered essential in developed countries with hot summers, air conditioners are going to become existential in the countries most exposed to extreme temperatures. Access to air conditioning will literally save lives.

That is a problem for the poorest countries. In large parts of Africa electricity consumption is so low that even running a single-room air conditioner for an hour exceeds the average person’s entire daily household power use.

In richer hot countries in the Middle East power is still an issue and as aircon units use a lot of power. Government need to plan for very large increases in power to cool everything from homes to factories as summer temperatures in places like Oman will regularly exceed 50°C in the hottest months. In a recent study, McKinsey estimated that “cooling” will consume 40% of the cost of adapting to the new hot climate in the period 2020-2050, with the need for this spending to become acute from about 2035 onwards as power consumption will start to rise exponentially form then on.

A typical aircon unit consumes about 1,000 watt-hours of electricity per hour. Less efficient models can require 1,500 watt-hours making energy efficiency critical in countries where every kilowatt counts. In at least 45 countries, the average residential electricity use per person for a full day is lower than the electricity needed to power an air conditioner for one hour, according to a report from Our World in Data (OWID).

The problems in Asia are similar, although the population has better access to electricity, but the power budgets still don’t stretch to keeping a family cool all day. In India, the average daily household electricity budget allows for just 44 minutes of air conditioning. In Nigeria, it is 13 minutes. In South Sudan, only four minutes. And that assumes the houses are hooked up to the grid.

The penetration of aircon units remains extremely low. Only 5% of households in India have air conditioning, compared with 6% in South Africa and 16% in Brazil, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). In the very poorest countries, many of which are the most exposed to heatwaves,  penetration is close to zero.

Even the penetration of electric fans, the cheapest and most basic alternative to aircon, is low. A simple fan uses roughly 50 watt-hours per hour, but that still only gives an average Nigerian four hours of cooling a day, assuming they don’t turn the lights or TV on.

Cooler countries will see temperature-related deaths fall

Even developed cooler countries in the Global North are going to come under pressure. Ironically, initially the number of heat-related deaths will fall as temperatures rise, as extreme cold still kills more people in the developed hemisphere than heat, according to the Global Burden of Disease study.

The study that estimates that 7.7% of deaths were attributed to temperature found that 7.3% were from cold temperatures; 0.4% were from heat. Globally, cold deaths are nine-times higher than heat-related ones. In no region is this ratio less than three, and in many, it’s over ten-times higher. Cold is more deadly than heat, even in the hottest parts of the world.

Another study published in Nature Climate Change in 2021 attributed one-third of heat-related deaths across all countries to climate change and that cold-related deaths are falling every year.

But that is not going to stop the problem transition from cold-related deaths to heat in the coming years. There have been several blisteringly hot summers during the annual disaster season which got underway three years ago. Extreme heatwaves are regularly hitting the south of Europe and US southwest, where temperatures have broached 40°C as earlier as April. A heatwave last summer in Europe, caused an estimated 16,000 excess deaths.

Aircon units are widespread in the US; now they are starting to appear in Europe. The sale of aircon units in Europe peaked at around 10mn in 2022, during an exceptionally hot summer, but are expected to continue to rise going forward. But sometime after 2035 they will have to become mandatory in all buildings in the worst affected countries.

The increased demand for power will add to the cost-of-living crisis in the Global North. Although down from their 2022 peak, consumer prices remain well above pre crisis levels and rising power costs are already make things worse, according to the IEA’s last Household Energy Affordability report. In Europe, after the 2022 energy shock, power prices remain twice their long-term pre-Ukraine war average and now they are rising again thanks to the Iran war.

 

Iran-linked hackers claim breach of Israeli air defence contractor PSK Wind

Alleged images from Iranian hack. / bne IntelliNews

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By bnm Gulf bureau April 2, 2026

The Handala Hack Group, a cyber outfit aligned with Iran's "axis of resistance," claimed on April 2 to have breached the networks of PSK Wind Technologies, an Israeli firm that designs integrated command and control systems for the country's air defence network.

The group said it had extracted "all sensitive data" from PSK Wind's servers, including classified documents relating to command and control centres and communication systems. It claimed the stolen information had been "transmitted directly to the missile units of the Axis of Resistance."

The claims could not be independently verified. PSK Wind Technologies and the Israeli military did not immediately comment on the alleged breach.

Handala issued a threat timed to the Jewish holiday of Passover, stating: "What you celebrate as Passover will soon turn into a day of unforgettable mourning." The group warned that "none of your command or defence centres will be secure."

The claimed hack is the latest in a series of cyber operations targeting Israeli military infrastructure since the war began on February 28. Iran and its allied groups have pursued a parallel cyber campaign alongside conventional missile and drone strikes, seeking to degrade Israeli intelligence and defence capabilities.

If confirmed, a breach of PSK Wind's systems would be significant. The firm is described by the hackers as the "mastermind behind the command and control centres" of Israel's air defence network, which has been under sustained pressure from daily Iranian, Houthi and Hezbollah missile and drone attacks throughout the conflict.

Israel's air defence systems, including Iron Dome, David's Sling and Arrow, have been central to the country's ability to intercept incoming projectiles. Any compromise of the command architecture linking these systems could have operational consequences.

Iran's IRGC separately threatened on March 31 to target 18 US technology and AI companies it accused of providing targeting data for assassination operations against Iranian nationals.