Lungfishes achieved high diversity in the Devonian, but most of these lineages went extinct in the late Devonian mass extinctions. Carboniferous lungfish are generally thought to belong to one larger diversification, Phaneropleuriformes, typically associated with freshwater and estuarine environments. We here use μCT to describe a lungfish occiput from the Tournaisian of Blue Beach, Nova Scotia, Canada, the first lungfish occurrence from the Tournaisian of North America. The occiput is short and high with well-developed dorsolateral cristae, two pairs of spinal nerves posterior to the vagus nerve, and a short triangular posterior stem of the parasphenoid. Although this specimen is too incomplete to place into a phylogenetic analysis, we identify characteristics shared with both holodontids and dipterids and absent within Phaneropleuriformes, suggesting the persistence of a wider range of lungfish lineages through the end-Devonian mass extinction events, in line with recent findings from the Tournaisian-aged Ballagan Formation of Scotland. Differences in the faunal composition of the Blue Beach Member of Nova Scotia and the Ballagan Formation of the Scottish Borders may be a consequence of different paleoenvironments in these roughly coeval formations or of palaeobiogeographical barriers to dispersal between Europe and Atlantic Canada. The possible persistence of a marine or estuarine lungfish into the mid-Tournaisian shows turnover of the marine durophage guild across the Hangenberg extinction was not complete, but may have been sufficient to disrupt incumbency in earliest Carboniferous marine trophic guilds.

This article presents the theoretical foundations of speculative archaeoacoustics, a methodology of composition in which artistic practice becomes a way of accessing the lost music of the Upper Palaeolithic. It begins by accepting David Graeber and David Wengrow’s understanding of prehistory as a dazzling tapestry of investigations and enquiries, before drawing a methodology of affect and creation from the work of Steven Mithen. From here it critiques two contemporary procedures for realising ancient music – one theoretical and one practical – to show how lost art must be reclaimed not through the empirical limit but the aesthetic exception. By adapting Alain Badiou's theory of eternal, invariant truths through a satirical tradition that includes science- and theory-fiction, the argument concludes with the demonstration of a procedure through which we may reimagine, discover and speak for vanished genius.

This article discusses the United Kingdom Supreme Court judgment in Zubaydah v Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which addressed the law governing the tort liability of the United Kingdom Government for its alleged complicity in the claimant's arbitrary detention and torture overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency. In holding that English law applied, the Court departed from previous case law by giving decisive weight to public law factors in its choice-of-law reasoning. This decision arguably heralds a greater role for English law in relation to tort claims brought by overseas victims of allegedly wrongful exercises of British executive authority as a mechanism for achieving executive accountability, controlling abuse of power, ensuring the rule of law and providing victims access to remedy.

The quilisma is a sign found in the earliest surviving notations of Gregorian chant. Since the ‘chant restoration’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the sign is included once again in all chant books, and poses an inevitable question of interpretation to those studying and performing chant. However, since medieval times, there has been considerable debate whether the sign denotes a particular method of voice production, a particular rhythmic value and/or an element in a melody's modal orientation. Chant manuscripts of the northern Low Countries (the northern half of the modern-day Netherlands), although not well known for their melodic content, point to highly interesting developments in response to a continually changing musical aesthetic. Likewise, these manuscripts offer new insights into the quality of the quilisma: the sign was widely used in the region up to the sixteenth-century Dutch Revolt, and for much longer than in the better-known square notation. Through analytical and comparative study, the sign's occurrence, position, development, relation to other signs and functions are clarified and presented in this article along with insights into its unique notational development.

This essay assesses the morality of Ukraine's use of drones to attack targets inside Russia. Following its invasion by Russian forces, Ukraine has had a just cause to wage a war of self-defense. However, its efforts to achieve that cause remain subject to moral limits. Even a state that has been unjustly attacked may not, for example, respond by deliberately targeting the attacking state's civilian population. To do so would violate the jus in bello principle of discrimination. The essay first describes how drone technology has frequently enabled long-range strikes against Russian military assets as well as other targets inside cities. It then explains why it would be morally wrong for Ukraine to attack its enemy's population centers. First, Russian civilians are not liable to attack, and this nonliability is undiminished by the injustice of Russia's invasion or by any in bello wrongs committed by the Russian military. Second, attacking Russian cities with drones would arguably achieve little or no self-defensive benefit for Ukraine, and it could even be counterproductive.

On November 9, 2023, Prime Minister Albanese of Australia and then Prime Minister Natano of Tuvalu signed the Australia-Tuvalu Falepili Union Treaty in Rarotonga (Falepili Union Treaty or the Treaty). The preamble explains that “the concept of Falepili . . . connotes the traditional values of good neighbourliness, duty of care and mutual respect.” It sets a groundbreaking precedent for Small Island States threatened by rising sea-levels, addressing both State continuity and climate resettlement. Nonetheless, and despite its subsequent entry into force on August 28, 2024, it has not been without controversy in Tuvalu and, to a lesser extent, Australia due to provisions seen by some as substantially infringing Tuvalu's independence in foreign relations or even its sovereignty.