It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Fighting in Mozambique’s gas-rich Cabo Delgado region forces 22,000 to flee amid health collapse, UN warns
Nearly 22,000 people fled their homes in northern Mozambique in a single week last month amid renewed fighting across Cabo Delgado, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) warned on Tuesday (October 7). The latest surge in displacement, in late September, marks a sharp escalation in a conflict now in its eighth year, with over 100,000 people uprooted since January.
The region, home to multibillion-dollar liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects, has repeatedly been targeted by militants. On September 22, insurgents believed to be linked with the Islamic State struck a Cabo Delgado town, killing and beheading civilians, sparking a fresh wave of fear-driven flight.
The violence, which began in 2017 with insurgent attacks by a group locally known as al-Shabaab — unrelated to the Somali Islamist faction — has evolved into a multi-layered crisis compounded by successive cyclones, flooding and drought that have devastated livelihoods.
For the first time since hostilities began, all 17 districts of Cabo Delgado have been directly affected. More than 1.3mn people have been displaced overall, many of them multiple times. “Families are reaching their limit,” said Xavier Créach, UNHCR’s representative in Mozambique. “Some who once hosted the displaced are now fleeing themselves.”
Civilians continue to face abductions, killings and sexual violence, while children risk forced recruitment by armed groups. Women and girls remain particularly exposed when collecting water or firewood, UNHCR said, and many require urgent psychosocial care.
The UN reports more than 500 violent incidents in the province through August — already exceeding the 2022 peak — involving raids, abductions and destruction of homes and infrastructure. The violence has crippled the region’s health system: around 60% of facilities in the hardest-hit districts are non-functional, the WHO-led response team said.
The attacks deepen concern about Mozambique’s $20bn LNG sector, anchored by French major TotalEnergies’ project in Cabo Delgado. Operations have been suspended under force majeure since 2021 following earlier assaults in Palma. But early in October, Mozambican President Daniel Chapo said conditions were met to lift force majeure on the LNG project.
Meanwhile, in Mocímboa da Praia, according to the UN, the only hospital is operating with less than 10% of its staff, mostly volunteers struggling to maintain emergency and maternity services. Health workers warn that malaria and cholera outbreaks are likely to rise with the onset of the rainy season.
The health-sector response plan for northern Mozambique was only 11% funded as of September 2025, leaving essential drug stocks at critical levels. UNHCR said its Mozambique operations have received just $66mn of the $352mn required for 2025, leaving agencies overstretched as humanitarian needs increase.
World Bank warns of rising informal employment across East Asia, with Indonesia most affected
The World Bank has raised concerns over worsening employment quality across East Asia and the Pacific, warning that the growing shift towards informal and low-productivity jobs threatens the region’s economic resilience, CNBC Indonesia reports. The findings were presented by Aaditya Mattoo, the World Bank’s Chief Economist for East Asia and the Pacific, during the October 2025 East Asia and Pacific Economic Update press briefing.
Mattoo explained that over the past decade, countries across the region have undergone a structural shift in employment, moving away from productive sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing toward the informal service sector. “Many people are leaving low-productivity farming, not for high-productivity industries, but for low-productivity service jobs, including those in the gig economy,” he said on October 8.
The World Bank cited Indonesia as a key example, noting a significant rise in informal employment within the services sector. Mattoo highlighted that this shift represents a worrying trend, as fewer workers are entering stable, high-value industries such as manufacturing, which traditionally drive economic growth and wage improvements.
According to the World Bank’s report, the expansion of the informal economy could increase vulnerability among the middle class, making them more prone to slipping into poverty. “A large share of people in this region work in informal or low-productivity jobs. The population at risk of falling into poverty now exceeds the size of the middle class in most countries,” the report noted.
Supporting this view, Indonesia’s Central Statistics Agency (BPS) reported that informal workers continue to dominate the national labour market. As of February 2025, there were 86.56mn informal workers, accounting for 59.4% of the total workforce, while formal employment stood at 59.19mn people, or 40.6%.
Compared with February 2024, the share of informal workers increased by 0.23 percentage points, while the proportion of formal workers declined by the same margin. Analysts say this indicates that structural issues within Indonesia’s labour market, such as limited access to quality jobs, slow industrial diversification, and weak social protection, remain unresolved.
The World Bank’s findings underscore the urgency for governments in the region to strengthen job creation, skill development, and formal sector growth to prevent long-term productivity stagnation and growing inequality.
Ancient teeth provide new insight into the lives of the world’s first farming villagers
Researchers, led by the universities of Durham and Liverpool, UK, analysed the chemical signatures in teeth from 71 people, spanning the entire Neolithic period from 11,600 to 7,500 years ago.
The teeth were found at five archaeological sites in what is now modern Syria.
By analysing the strontium and oxygen isotopes in the tooth enamel, the researchers were able to establish if the individuals grew up locally or whether they moved from a different area - reconstructing previously invisible patterns of mobility.
This tooth analysis, combined with skeletal evidence and funerary practices, revealed that once permanent villages were firmly established, most people stayed local and strengthened ties to particular communities.
Interestingly, towards the end of the Neolithic it appears that women were more likely than men to move between communities.
This suggests patrilocal traditions, in which women relocated to form marriages in new communities, whereas men remained in their home villages.
This movement cycle may have evolved to avoid inbreeding within communities.
The study also found that local and non-local individuals were often buried together and received the same, sometimes exceptional, funerary treatments.
The research is published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
Senior author, Dr Eva Fernandez-Dominguez of Durham University’s Department of Archaeology, said: “This research allows us to see, for the very first time in this region, how mobility and social connections shaped the earliest farming societies.
“We found that villagers largely stayed local, yet they welcomed newcomers who appeared to be fully integrated into social and funerary life.
“The evidence of women moving between villages also points to complex social dynamics in the world’s first permanent settlements.”
First author of the study, Dr Jo-Hannah Plug, currently of the University of Oxford, said: “The Late Neolithic period in this region is archaeologically known for the development of new cross-regional networks, innovation, and the movement of material culture, animals, and ideas.
“Our research, for the first time, shows direct evidence for the movement of people during this period too.
“Our observation that women in particular were mobile, illustrates their - likely central - role in the processes of innovation and the establishing of cross-regional networks of the Neolithic period.
“Our results suggest that the reproductive networks of this period extended beyond the direct neighbouring communities, and that marriage partners were sought potentially quite far away.”
The researchers found that at some sites, individuals who originated elsewhere appeared fully integrated into village life, suggesting early farming communities were inclusive and open to newcomers.
One striking example came from one of the sites, Tell Halula, where multiple layers of human remains were preserved within house floors.
Analysis revealed that the individuals buried together in the same house included both locals and non-locals, all treated with the same funerary practices.
Further evidence across the samples showed that local and non-local people were buried in close proximity in the same cemeteries and spaces, with the same elaborate burial assemblages and with similar post-mortem manipulations such as being buried in a seated position.
This indicates that mobility did not preclude social inclusion, and that villagers in the Neolithic period were open to assimilating newcomers fully into community life and afforded them the same distinct treatment in death.
The study demonstrates how scientific techniques, such as isotope analysis, can transform our understanding of human social life from thousands of years ago.
It also fills a major knowledge gap in the Northern Levant, a key corridor for the spread of agriculture and settled human societies.
Lead author Carra Williams, a PhD student in geosciences at the University of Sydney, here holds a fossilised coral core that has undergone neutron scanning.
A University of Sydney student has developed a completely new way to peer inside coral fossils to recover lost records of past climate change.
In collaboration with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), geoscientist Carra Williams has pioneered the use of neutron computed tomography (NCT) to identify tiny, well-preserved pockets of coral skeleton that can reveal precise timelines of sea-level and climate shifts stretching back hundreds of thousands of years.
“This method opens the door to recovering climate information from coral samples once written off as too altered to be useful,” said Ms Williams, who is undertaking a PhD in the University of Sydney’s School of Geosciences in the Geocoastal Research Group.
“By seeing inside the fossils in 3D, we can distinguish the original coral mineral, aragonite, from its altered form, calcite. The aragonite retains the best signals of past ocean and climate conditions in coral that are available to us.”
Ms Williams said that by understanding the past with greater detail, we are best prepared to understand how anthropogenic climate change will affect reefs today and in the future.
CORAL SKELETONS AND WEATHERED BOOKS
Corals build their skeletons from aragonite, a form of calcium carbonate. Over time, this delicate mineral often transforms into calcite through a process called diagenesis, destroying much of the original information about the climate when the coral was growing, rendering fossils unreliable for dating and reconstructing past climates.
By harnessing neutron computed tomography at ANSTO’s DINGO neutron imaging instrument, the Sydney team was able to scan coral cores and map where aragonite survives inside altered specimens, without damaging the samples.
In simplified terms NCT involves directing beams of neutrons – produced at ANSTO’s OPAL research reactor at Lucas Heights – through the coral fossils to create images of their internal structures, much like X-rays or CT scans are used to look inside the human body.
The scans revealed hidden aragonite zones, proving that even previously “undateable” fossils can still yield robust information.
“This is like finding intact pages in an otherwise weathered book,” Ms Williams said.
“Those rare sections of original aragonite allow us to extend and strengthen our records of how reefs and oceans responded to major environmental changes in the past. That context is critical for assessing how today’s reefs will cope with rapid warming and sea-level rise.”
The project is supervised by Professor Jody Webster, a global authority on coral reef history. He said the new approach has the potential to transform how scientists reconstruct the records of ancient climates.
“Coral reefs are one of the most sensitive archives of environmental change,” Professor Webster said.
“By using neutrons to look inside their fossils, we can unlock data that has been hidden for millennia. This will help us understand the thresholds and tipping points reefs faced in the past – vital knowledge as human-driven climate change accelerates.”
The research demonstrates the first use of NCT to screen fossil corals for climate and dating studies. Unlike X-rays, which show only density contrasts, neutrons are highly sensitive to hydrogen, making them ideal for detecting aragonite, which holds more water and organic matter than calcite.
The result is a clear 3D map of mineral phases inside a coral core without cutting it open.
The study analysed four coral samples, including a calibration sample of modern coral from One Tree Reef at the University of Sydney’s research station at One Tree Island. The geologic samples included a recent fossil from Muschu Island in Papua New Guinea from about 1650 years ago, a Late-Pleistocene era sample more than 40,000 years old from Ashmore Reef on the Northwest Shelf, and a fossilised Mid-Pleistocene era sample from the Great Barrier Reef that is about 600,000 years old.
The research has been published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystemsof the American Geophysical Union. The study marks an important collaboration between the University of Sydney and ANSTO, Australia’s nuclear science agency.
The work highlights the University of Sydney as a place where students can lead world-first discoveries with global impact.
“It’s exciting to see a PhD student driving such innovative science,” Professor Webster said. “Carra’s work shows the calibre of research training we offer – combining cutting-edge technology with big questions about humanity’s future.”
Download videos of coral scanning and photos of the researchers at this link.
Outside of work hours, please call +61 2 8627 0246 (directs to a mobile number) or email media.office@sydney.edu.au.
Research
Williams, C. et al ‘Neutron computed tomography: a novel high-resolution, non-destructive method for screening fossil coral for diagenetic alteration for geochronologic and paleoclimatic reconstructions’ (Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 2005). DOI: 10.1029/2025GC012439
Declaration
The authors declare no competing interests. Funding sources included the Australian Research Council, the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering, and the University of Sydney. The authors acknowledge the support and access to ANSTO facilities.
Senior author Professor Jody Webster inspects Great Barrier Reef coral cores from previous studies in the labs at the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney.
Neutron computed tomographic scan of coral fossil, produced by Carra Williams using the DINGO NCT scanner at the Australian Nuclear Science Technology Organisation (ANSTO) research reactor at Lucas Heights, Sydney.
Neutron computed tomography: a novel high-resolution, non-destructive method for screening fossil coral for diagenetic alteration for geochronologic and paleoclimatic reconstructions
