Higher educational cooperation has long been central to China’s foreign relations. This article examines the political ramifications of the exodus of international students from China during the COVID-19 pandemic. China introduced some of the world’s most restrictive entry requirements for international travelers, forcing most international students at Chinese universities to study remotely between the Spring semesters of 2020 and 2022. This affected the 221,700 foreign students who were enrolled in Chinese universities, 81,600 of whom were from African countries (Mulvey 2021; UNESCO 2022). Travel restrictions were barely eased until late in the spring semester of 2022, and the border was finally opened for most students during the fall semester of 2022 (Liu and Peng 2024). Some students missed five semesters of in-person classes, and others gave up on their studies in China altogether. Thousands of students campaigned globally for the right to travel to China, attend classes in person, and get the educational experience they had envisioned.

Climate change resulting from human activity is causing sea-levels to rise. Rising sea-levels pose an existential threat to small islands. Some have argued that this might result in islands losing their status as ‘islands’ and, at the same time, their maritime areas. The present article disagrees. In order to qualify as an ‘island’, a coastal feature must be ‘a naturally formed area of land, surrounded by water, which is above water at high tide’: Article 121(1) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). A feature that meets these requirements is, according to Article 121(2), entitled to a territorial sea, an exclusive economic zone and a continental shelf. Article 121(3) provides that rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or an economic life of their own have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf. The words ‘naturally formed area of land’, as well as broader considerations, suggest that the status of a feature is determined on the basis of its natural condition—not changes generated by human activity. Just as construction through human artifice cannot elevate a coastal feature into an island, man-made climate change which causes sea-level rise cannot turn an island into something other than what is described in Article 121(1).

Drinking culture. What happens in the field. It was just a joke. Don’t rock the boat. Archaeology staggers under the weight of its many “gray zones,” contexts of disciplinary culture where boundaries, relationships, ethical responsibilities, and expectations of behavior are rendered “blurry.” Gray zones rely on an ethos of silence and tacit cooperation rooted in structures of white supremacy, colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and ableism. In the gray zone, subtle and overt forms of abuse become coded as normal, inevitable, impossible, or the unfortunate cost of entry to the discipline. Drawing on narrative survey responses and interviews collected by the Working Group on Equity and Diversity in Canadian Archaeology in 2019 and 2020, we examine the concept of the gray zone in three intersecting contexts: the field, archaeology’s drinking culture, and relationships. The work of making archaeology more equitable relies on our ability to confront gray zones directly and collectively. We offer several practical recommendations while recognizing that bureaucratic solutions alone will not be sufficient. Change will require a shift in archaeological culture—a collective project that pulls gray zones into the open and prioritizes principles of care.

We study random walks on metric spaces with contracting isometries. In this first article of the series, we establish sharp deviation inequalities by adapting Gouëzel’s pivotal time construction. As an application, we establish the exponential bounds for deviation from below, central limit theorem, law of the iterated logarithms, and the geodesic tracking of random walks on mapping class groups and CAT(0) spaces.

Some contemporary philosophers in the Aristotelian tradition contend that agents differ from non-agents in that the former possess and exercise two-way causal powers.1 According to this distinction, non-agents possess powers that have only one type of manifestation. The powers of agents, by contrast, are manifested in two distinct and opposed ways.2 In developing this account, two-way powers theorists explicitly draw on Aristotle’s distinction between rational and non-rational powers in Metaphysics Θ.2 and 5 (see, e.g., Alvarez, 2009, p. 72, n. 16, 2013, p. 109; Steward, 2020, pp. 352–4; Frost, 2020, pp. 1148–1151). Proponents of this approach disagree about the nature of the two ‘ways’ in which agents manifest their agency (see especially Frost, 2020, and Steward, 2020). There is accordingly disagreement about how we should understand the Aristotelian ideas that anticipate the relevant notion of a two-way power (§§2–3). Nevertheless, all parties seem to agree on this much: a two-way causal power is a single power that directly relates to two distinct and opposed ways in which matters might proceed (see Alvarez, 2013, p. 102; Steward, 2012, p. 155; Lowe, 2013, p. 177; Frost, 2020, p. 1148).

Courts in England ordinarily grant anti-suit injunctions when proceedings are (or will soon be) initiated in a foreign court in breach of clauses which subject disputes to the exclusive jurisdiction of courts, or refer them to arbitration, in England. Would they, however, grant such relief in support of foreign dispute-resolution clauses? In UniCredit Bank v RusChemAlliance, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom answered this question in the affirmative, thus expanding the English courts’ power to issue anti-suit injunctions. This article seeks to assess the likely extent of this expansion and the future implications it could have for the law on anti-suit injunctions in England. The article also examines the Supreme Court’s pronouncements on the other significant issue in the case concerning the law governing arbitration agreements and their potential effect following the enactment of the Arbitration Act 2025.

Can social norms give rise to distorted information in China? We observe that China’s leading social norm related to alcohol consumption and social drinking enhances earnings management. An analysis of toxic alcohol scandals supports a causal interpretation. Further evidence suggests that the influence of alcohol may come from the negative externality that it creates, which is propagated by corporate leaders and cannot be attenuated by market-oriented institutions. Our results reveal a social norm externality that may have important normative implications.

Adapting Barker’s ((2019). The Journal of Navigation, 72(3), 539–554) taxonomy of wayfinding behaviours – originally developed for man-made environments, paper and screen – we examined which behaviours are also found in the outdoors. In the analysis of the collected data from a questionnaire (n=401), we find that participants employ every category in Barker’s framework of social, semantic and spatial behaviours. Our respondents report the use of digital maps on a mobile phone as the most common behaviour, with following directional signs as the second most used. Furthermore, social wayfinding behaviours figure prominently and the participants express preferences for various information sources. We demonstrate similarities of behaviours across the different types of environments and we confirm the applicability of Barker’s taxonomy of wayfinding behaviours also in nature. Our study generates knowledge that potentially can make navigation simpler and more efficient through wayfinding design, and lead to heightened feeling of safety in the outdoors. Wayfinding behaviour studies, like this one, can serve as a bridge between human psychology and practical design.

This article addresses the doctrine of remoteness in tort in light of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Armstead v Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Co. Ltd. Armstead further attenuates an already weak control on tortious liability. In outline, it does so in two ways: first, by establishing that contractual liabilities incurred as a result of tortiously caused property damage comprise non-remote damage provided that those liabilities represent a reasonable pre-estimate of the counterparty’s loss; and, secondly, by allocating the burden of proof in respect of remoteness to defendants. This article explores these rules. It contends, in particular, that the first collides with the fundamental principle that the extent of the claimant’s loss in tort is irrelevant to the issue of remoteness while the second means that, oddly, the onus of proof in relation to remoteness in tort differs from that in contract.

Mr. President, we remain resolute in our commitment to combating all forms of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia and related intolerance whether that be at home or abroad…. Nonetheless, we have a number of concerns with this text….

Cut finite element methods (CutFEM) extend the standard finite element method to unfitted meshes, enabling the accurate resolution of domain boundaries and interfaces without requiring the mesh to conform to them. This approach preserves the key properties and accuracy of the standard method while addressing challenges posed by complex geometries and moving interfaces.

In recent years, CutFEM has gained significant attention for its ability to discretize partial differential equations in domains with intricate geometries. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the core concepts and key developments in CutFEM, beginning with its formulation for common model problems and the presentation of fundamental analytical results, including error estimates and condition number estimates for the resulting algebraic systems. Stabilization techniques for cut elements, which ensure numerical robustness, are also explored. Finally, extensions to methods involving Lagrange multipliers and applications to time-dependent problems are discussed.

The article examines the widespread practice of using extended judicial formations to decide certain types of cases in higher courts, a practice present in many jurisdictions—whether appellate, apex or supranational. While the use of these formations, often considered the ‘most important’, is frequently debated within individual countries, a conceptual and comparative analysis providing a firmer theoretical foundation for these discussions is currently lacking. Departing from existing scholarship, which often assumes a universal purpose for these bodies, this article argues that jurisdictions tend to adopt one of two models of extended formations: the collective control model or the jurisprudential model. These models reflect divergent sources of legitimacy for the enlarged formations—either rooted in the broader participation of judges in the court’s decision-making process (input or procedural legitimacy), or in the doctrinal quality of the decisions that the grand chamber produces and their resulting consequences (output or performance-based legitimacy). These distinctions help to explain differences in how extended formations are composed, the types of cases they hear, the procedures they follow and how their decisions are drafted and subsequently used within the court. The article ultimately demonstrates that the choice between the two models reflects broader assumptions within different judicial systems about the nature of law and judging.

Ensemble Kalman methods, introduced in 1994 in the context of ocean state estimation, are now widely used for state estimation and parameter estimation (inverse problems) in many arenae. Their success stems from the fact that they take an underlying computational model as a black box to provide a systematic, derivative-free methodology for incorporating observations; furthermore the ensemble approach allows for sensitivities and uncertainties to be calculated. Analysis of the accuracy of ensemble Kalman methods, especially in terms of uncertainty quantification, is lagging behind empirical success; this paper provides a unifying mean-field-based framework for their analysis. Both state estimation and parameter estimation problems are considered, and formulations in both discrete and continuous time are employed. For state estimation problems, both the control and filtering approaches are considered; analogously for parameter estimation problems, the optimization and Bayesian perspectives are both studied. As well as providing an elegant framework, the mean-field perspective also allows for the derivation of a variety of methods used in practice. In addition it unifies a wide-ranging literature in the field and suggests open problems.

This article identifies a development in rabbinic discourse about Torah study. Whereas early texts contrast study with activities like earning a living, the Palestinian Talmud presents a new debate in which study stands in binary opposition to activities otherwise considered part of the life of Torah, such as good deeds and prayer. This debate shaped the eventually dominant view of the rabbinic sage as primarily, or even exclusively, a scholarly figure. The article shows how this discourse was formulated through adaptation of earlier sources and considers how it may have responded to broader transformations in the sages’ world.

This article explores the nexus between the law of the sea and the potential future treaty on plastic pollution, which is currently being negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations (UN) Environment Programme. The potential treaty aims to regulate the full lifecycle of plastics, including in the marine environment. The relevance of the law of the sea regime is fundamental given the highly transboundary nature of already existing legacy plastic pollution in the ocean as well as ocean and land-based sources of plastic pollution. A particular contentious element is the engagement of stakeholders such as industry, academia, Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the development of this treaty. The article will explore possible options for the formulation of the treaty and draws on lessons learnt from the negotiations of the Agreement under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction.

Attributes of familial relationships, ascribed in biblical metaphors to YHWH and Israel, can be traced back to ancient Near Eastern mythological and diplomatic concepts. In Hosea 11, the dynamic between YHWH and Israel mirrors political and authoritarian conventions prevalent in that era. Israel is depicted as an adopted son of God, analogous to an Egyptian or Assyrian monarch whose authority derives from a divine heritage. Simultaneously, Israel assumes the role of a subjugated and devoted son, akin to a vassal subdued according to the norms of the ancient Near East. As a result, the characteristics of the chosen son in Hosea 11 blend attributes of both a king and a vassal, two entities who have no influence over their own chosen status. Consequently, Israel’s position is best described as that of a “divine vassal,” one whose privileges are affirmed, while his very existence and territorial rights remain in perpetual jeopardy.

This article explores the intersection of, and relationship between, the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement and the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS). It examines the status of the Southern Ocean as an ‘area beyond national jurisdiction’ before analysing the application of the ‘not undermine’ principle to the ATS as developed in Article 5 BBNJ Agreement. The article examines the implications of the BBNJ Agreement in relation to environmental impact assessments, area-based protection, marine genetic resources and dispute resolution within the ATS. It argues that the thus far defensive approach of the Antarctic Treaty parties to the BBNJ Agreement is neither sustainable nor in the long-term interests of either agreement. It argues for positive engagement between the two regimes for the ultimate benefit of Southern Ocean governance.