Rayssa Leal writes yet another chapter in her own story and in the global history of skateboarding as a sport. On December 7th, the young athlete from Maranhão secured her fourth SLS Super Crown, held in São Paulo, in Brazil.
In a tightly contested event, Rayssa was crowned champion even before performing her final tricks, following Chloe Covell’s fall in her last run.
The Super Crown brings together the best skateboarders in the world, based on their results throughout the season. By winning her fifth title at the Pro Tour STU Rio 2025, Brazilian skater Rayssa Leal earned a direct spot in the final of the world championship.
Her victory comes at a time of significant renewal within the sport. In recent years, skateboarding has been marked by the rising of prodigy talents, athletes who are increasingly younger.
Among the rivals who competed directly with the Brazilian were Chloe Covell, a 15 years old Australian, and japanese skaters Funa Nakayama (20), Yumeka Oda (19), and Coco Yoshiwaza (16). These exemplary athletes bring a new energy to the ramps.
In this way, the championship has become a showcase for the transition between seasoned experience and emerging talent.
Revealing athletes, expanding opportunities, and building new stories, the blend of veterans and rookies create a competitive atmosphere that accelerates the evolution of the sport and ensures a promising future for young riders.
This renewal is also strong in the men’s division. Rising star Ginwoo Onodera, age 15, won his first world title, competing against renowned veterans such as Giovanni Viana (24) and Nyjah Huston (31).
The São Paulo arena witnessed skateboarding at its highest technical level, with the title also being decided on the final run.
Double Journey
Beyond her win on the board, Rayssa celebrated another major achievement: her high school graduation. Balancing the life of an athlete with the classroom, she completed this chapter as the valedictorian of her class.
In a social media post, the teenager thanked her teachers and highlighted the importance of education in personal and professional development.
“To the teachers, thank you so much for each lesson inside and outside the subjects. You were like guides, mentors, and, beyond that, we became friends throughout this journey.”
Her attitude serves as an example to many young people, showing that it is possible to grow in sports without giving up one’s studies.
With her fifth STU Rio title and her fourth Super Crown victory, the “Fadinha” (“Little Fairy”) has solidified her name as one of the greatest in world skateboarding. (Rayssa earned the nickname “Fadinha” after a video of her skating in a fairy costume went viral when she was younger.)
Urban Culture
Skateboarding, which began as an urban practice tied to the streets and youth culture, became an Olympic sport without losing its essence. Upon joining the Games, it carried with it the aesthetics, attitude, and narratives of the streets, expanding its reach and opening new paths for athletes worldwide.
Events in the sport continue not only to showcase competitions but also to honor the roots of skateboarding. By recognizing and incorporating elements of urban culture, championships create a welcoming environment for both athletes and audiences.
With rap and hip-hop performances, rap battles, artistic interventions, and many other forms of creative expression, these events stimulate the creativity and cultural identity of the streets.
Among those who attend STU Rio editions is Maria Eduarda Caus, a young spectator who, despite not practicing the sport, sees the championship as a major gathering and celebration of urban culture.
“I think everyone is on the same vibe, they live the sport and lifestyle… It’s an event where the audience really matches the proposal, everyone is there to have a good time.”
With the strength of the new generation, the presence of urban culture, and increasingly engaged audiences, skateboarding reaffirms itself as a broad, inclusive sporting and cultural phenomenon.
It’s one of the first questions I’m asked when I arrive at a job interview in Stockholm. Before anyone mentions my CV, someone reaches for the kettle. The interview hasn’t officially started, but in a way, it already has.
This is fika — Sweden’s daily ritual of coffee and conversation. But here’s the paradox: In 2022, Swedish coffee consumption drove the clearing of roughly 331 hectares of Amazon rainforest, exceeding the impact of Swedish beef consumption that same year, according to a 2025 analysis by Chalmers University of Technology, the Stockholm Environment Institute, and WWF.
For a country that topped the Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index in 2024 and aims for fossil-free energy by 2045, this creates an uncomfortable question: How does a climate leader reconcile a beloved cultural tradition with global environmental damage?
The Cost of Comfort
Swedes consume coffee at one of the highest per-capita rates globally. Fika isn’t just a coffee break — it happens at 10 a.m., after lunch, during meetings, on trains, at job interviews. To skip it feels antisocial. This is where colleagues become friends, where business gets done, where the long Nordic winter becomes bearable.
But coffee carries a steep environmental price. At least 312,803 hectares of Brazilian forest were directly cleared for coffee cultivation through 2023, according to Coffee Watch. Up to two-thirds of Brazil’s suitable Arabica growing area could be lost by 2050 under current climate trends. Coffee production depletes water resources, destroys biodiversity, and relies on carbon-intensive supply chains spanning thousands of kilometers.
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences researchers report that 119 million cups of coffee brewed in Swedish restaurants are wasted annually — before accounting for the beans that never make it to market, the water used in cultivation, or the forests cleared to grow them.
“Coffee is one of the most environmentally damaging crops in global agriculture,” says Anne Charlotte Bunge, a sustainability researcher at Stockholm University. “If fika is to continue, Swedes need to rethink what they drink and how much.”
The Limits of “Klimatsmart”
The response has been what Swedes call “klimatsmart fika” — climate-smart coffee breaks. Cafés now prominently display certifications. Oat milk has become standard. Consumers increasingly choose specialty beans from traceable sources over cheap drip coffee.
Swedish roaster Löfbergs has invested in direct partnerships with producers, supporting agroforestry practices that improve soil health and biodiversity. CEO Anders Fredriksson frames this as both ethical imperative and business necessity: “A sustainable transition is critical for companies that want to remain competitive.”
Market data from late 2024 shows rising demand for sustainably sourced coffee, with artisanal cafés emphasizing ethical production. Plant-based alternatives now appear as expected defaults rather than sacrifices — oat milk in place of dairy, plant-based butter in cinnamon buns.
But does this add up to meaningful change?
The Amazon Footprint Report 2025 notes that while certification can reduce links between consumption and deforestation, no label guarantees a product is entirely deforestation-free. Sweden’s total coffee footprint remains substantial. Incremental improvements in sourcing don’t change the fundamental equation: coffee will never be a local, low-impact crop in Scandinavia.
What’s Not Being Addressed
This disconnect reveals the limits of consumer-focused climate solutions. Individual Swedes making better choices matters less than the aggregate demand signal. Sweden’s total coffee consumption continues at one of the world’s highest per-capita rates despite growing sustainability awareness.
There’s also no policy discussion. Unlike beef or palm oil, coffee faces no import restrictions, no deforestation-free sourcing requirements, no government initiatives to reduce consumption. The burden falls entirely on voluntary consumer action and corporate self-regulation.
A Tradition Under Pressure
Yet giving up fika entirely seems both unlikely and, to many Swedes, undesirable. Traditions rarely disappear because they’re criticized. They do, however, evolve under pressure.
This illustrates the emotional complexity of climate action when it intersects with identity. Fika isn’t fungible. It can’t be replaced with tea or hot chocolate without losing its cultural meaning. The ritual itself — the pause, the social connection, the shared moment — is what Swedes are trying to preserve.
What Would Real Change Look Like?
If Sweden were serious about aligning coffee consumption with climate leadership, several pathways exist:
Import regulations requiring deforestation-free certification for all coffee, similar to emerging EU standards for other commodities. Corporate transparency mandates forcing retailers to disclose supply chain environmental impacts. Public procurement policies prioritizing sustainable coffee in government offices, schools, and hospitals. Investment in alternative protein crops that could reduce agricultural pressure in tropical regions.
None of these are currently under consideration.
The Swedish government’s climate strategy extensively covers transportation, energy, and industrial emissions. Coffee doesn’t appear. This suggests that cultural traditions enjoy implicit protection from the kind of scrutiny applied to other sectors — even when environmental impacts are comparable.
“We have this idea that climate action is about big infrastructure and policy,” Bunge observes. “But it’s also about daily habits that feel too personal to regulate. That’s where it gets difficult.”
The Uncomfortable Middle Ground
The story of klimatsmart fika is ultimately about incremental adaptation in the face of systemic problems. It’s consumers making marginally better choices within a framework that remains fundamentally unsustainable. It’s corporations improving practices without reducing volumes. It’s a country maintaining its self-image as a climate leader while outsourcing environmental damage to distant ecosystems.
Is this progress? Compared to ignoring the issue entirely, yes. Compared to what the climate actually requires, probably not.
What fika reveals is how societies negotiate the gap between values and behavior, between what we believe and what we’re willing to change. The Swedish approach — acknowledging the problem, making adjustments, hoping it’s enough — may be the most honest response available when tradition collides with environmental necessity.
But honesty isn’t the same as adequacy. Sweden can’t forest its way to sustainability if consumption patterns remain unchanged. At some point, climate leadership requires confronting uncomfortable questions about which traditions can continue and which must transform.
For now, the coffee keeps brewing. The ritual continues. And the Amazon keeps shrinking — 331 hectares at a time.
“We’re running on fumes,” says Sarah Shaw, associate director of advocacy for MSI Reproductive Choices, which provides contraception and abortion services in 36 countries. “This year has been a really bad year, next year is going to be a really bad year,” she told The Sentinel in an interview late last year about the impact of aid cuts.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision in 2025 to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has hit development programmes around the world. At least 23 million children stand to lose access to education, and as many as 95 million people to lose access to basic healthcare, potentially leading to more than three million preventable deaths a year as a result, according to an Oxfam report in November.
The impact of cuts by the world’s largest aid donor has not just been at the front line of providing aid, but has also affected logistics and the delivery of supplies, according to Shaw.
“Trump dismantled USAID, which is the delivery arm for the world’s development programme. He just stopped 50 years of programming, and the fall-out from that has massively impacted our service delivery.”
For example, some U.S.-funded contraceptives intended for poor nations and worth nearly $4 million have been stuck in a Belgian warehouse since the U.S. aid freeze. They could become unusable by mid-2026, Reuters reported in October.
MSI has diversified its funding sources in recent years, following past cuts in U.S. aid. However, the global impact on the ground of the latest cuts has meant the organisation has needed to help fill gaps elsewhere:
“The closure of USAID and the speed at which it happened has caused so much chaos at country level, it’s blasted a massive hole in health budgets,” Shaw says.
“Governments are exhausted and they’re broke. We’re having to step in in a lot of countries and actually move the contraceptives around for the Ministry of Health to get them to the right place.”
In addition, European governments have been slower than in the past to fill funding gaps, embattled as they are by the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and defence spending needs due to the war in Ukraine.
“The broader trend across Europe is, funding falling massively short of fast‑growing needs,” says Nihad Sarmini, global head of business development and partnerships at Action For Humanity, which delivers life-saving support in over 14 countries.
“There are women in Syria who may have to travel 100 kilometres for a maternity clinic, which may not be there next month when they need it again. Children in Yemen are succumbing to medieval diseases like cholera and diphtheria, entirely preventable and treatable, because governments are withdrawing funding and leaving humanitarians to plug gaps elsewhere.
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as Action for Humanity and MSI are also braced for a planned cut in UK aid spending to 0.3 percent of gross national income (GNI) in 2027 from the current 0.5 percent. This latest cut in UK aid follows a cut in 2021 in response to the pandemic.
UK international development organisation network Bond said in an October briefing note that it was hearing that the UK government was considering ending its aid partnerships with several countries in Africa, including Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe.
MSI’s programmes include a major health project in West and Central Africa which is funded by Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
Aid cuts are short-sighted, as every dollar invested in sexual reproductive health saves $130 in other development costs, according to Shaw.
“An investment in contraception is way wider than just a health investment. It breaks generational cycles of poverty, it enables women and girls to leverage opportunities by staying in education, by becoming economically independent,” she says.
Sarmini also stresses the far-reaching nature of slashed funding:
“Cuts to one organisation quickly ripple through the system, and communities pay the price.”
Britain will struggle to boost economic growth without investment in training and skills but this sector of the economy is getting little help from the government, business expert Nigel Driffield told The Sentinel.
Britain’s left-of-centre Labour government, elected with a strong majority in July 2024, is trying to lift people out of poverty and provide better public services without sharp rises in the tax burden. It is looking to faster growth to close that gap, but that strategy has failed to bear fruit so far. Gross domestic product grew at only 0.1 percent in the third quarter of 2025, down from growth of 0.3 percent in the previous quarter.
Concerns about the cost of living, coupled with worries about immigration, have given the right-wing populist Reform UK party a strong lead in opinion polls.
Manufacturing in Europe has been lagging the United States and China, fueling a rise in populism, as The Sentinel has previously reported. Productivity is particularly slow in Britain, according to Driffield, professor of international business at Warwick Business School.
“We have a major productivity problem in this country, much more than an employment problem. We have a lack of investment in capital, and lack of investment in skills.”
Britain issued its closely-watched annual budget statement in late November, delivered by finance minister Rachel Reeves. The government has provided an extra 1.5 billion pounds to help employers train young people. However, such money is often diverted for use for higher-skilled workers, Driffield said.
“Businesses send people on an MBA, that doesn’t necessarily address the lower skills problem.”
For university students from poorer families, the government said it would reintroduce small student grants. However, its plans to charge each university a levy of £925 per student for most international students are a counter-productive measure, according to Driffield.
“Can you imagine a situation where the government says, ‘we are going to put an export tax on Jaguar cars’? Name another sector where it would do that.”
Driffield said the latest budget was mainly about lifting people out of poverty. The government finally removed an unpopular cap on child benefit for families with more than two children, introduced by the previous Conservative government.
The minimum wage was also raised in the budget by 4.1 percent to £12.71 per hour. However, campaigners argue that the minimum wage is still not enough to live on.
“A very high proportion of people on benefits are also in full-time work, because they are on very low earnings,” said Driffield. “We are effectively subsidising low-wage employers. That’s why I advocate for investment in skills. If people working full-time on the minimum wage are still eligible to claim benefits, that tells you there’s something wrong.”
Income tax rates did not rise in the budget, in line with a promise by Labour in its manifesto. But the government announced a further freeze to the income thresholds above which people have to pay higher tax rates, effectively meaning higher taxes for many in the future.
The extra three-year freeze will cost the typical worker £220 a year, according to a post-budget report from the think tank Resolution Foundation, which focuses on living standards. Most workers would be worse off than if Reeves had raised income tax by 1p instead, the Resolution Foundation added.
The High Pay Centre, a think tank for fairer pay, was also critical of the tax strategy.
“Given the scale of inequality in the UK, the government would have been better served by increasing taxes on a banking sector turning in its most profitable results in decades, or via a wealth tax on the very wealthiest in our society,” High Pay Centre spokesperson Paddy Goffey said.
At the same time, in addition to the latest minimum wage increases, businesses are still smarting from the government’s decision in the previous budget to require employers to make national insurance – social security – contributions for lower-paid workers.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if we start to see some impact on employment, given the weakening labour market situation,” said John Forth, professor of human resource management at City St George’s, University of London.
Driffield said the extra wage costs would be hard for employers in some sectors to bear, for instance in the hospitality industry.
However, higher employment costs for more skilled workers, such as lab technicians, could encourage more investment in training by employers, Driffield added.
Britain is behind other countries such as France in productivity and growth, due to low levels of public and private investment, according to the British government’s own figures. Britain’s GDP-per-hour-worked has grown by 0.6 percent since 2010, compared with around 1.0 percent in France, according to a report from Britain’s prime minister’s office in 2025.
“One of the big differences between the UK and France is that the French labour market is great if you are an insider,” said Driffield.
“Business will invest in you, but getting in is quite hard. If you are a North African migrant living in one of those banlieues (outer suburbs of Paris), you are frozen out. In Britain, you have a labour market that is very good at getting people into jobs, but not very good in training.”
Tenants and residents of apartments in England are facing escalating service charges, paid to landlords to maintain their properties and carry out necessary repairs, sources tell The Sentinel.
The unexpected service charge hikes are affecting tenants renting lower-cost social housing as well as those who own their own leasehold properties, and even those living in retirement apartments.
Suzanne Muna, secretary of the Social Housing Action Campaign (SHAC), says it is easier for landlords to extract extra cash from service charges than from rents, which can attract more scrutiny.
Service charges have been rising for a number of years. Britain has been struggling to tame inflation since the Brexit vote, the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, and costs of building materials and labour have risen. Insurance and safety costs have also risen after a deadly fire at Grenfell Tower in west London in 2017. However, service charges are often rising far more quickly than inflation, Muna says.
“It’s not just insurance for which people are being charged hundreds of percentage points in increase every year, it’s all sorts of things — cleaning for example, going up hundreds of percentage points. Well, why?”
Fiona, for example, lives in a one-bedroom shared housing apartment — seen as an affordable way to get on the housing property ladder — in the New Capital Quay development in Greenwich, southeast London. She says her service charge has unexpectedly risen this year, to more than 3,500 pounds. Fiona did not give her last name because of the sensitivity of the issue.
“The services provided are sub-par. One of the lifts in our block has been out of service for two weeks…and weekly cleaning hasn’t been carried out for weeks, despite us paying for this service,” Fiona says.
Fiona pays her service charge to Hyde Housing Association. However, a Hyde spokesperson told The Sentinel that Hyde mainly collected the service charges on behalf of the development’s managing agent, Galliard Homes.
“We’re working with our customers at New Capital Quay to ensure that the managing agent delivers good services that represent value for money,” the spokesperson said, adding that “costs associated with essential lift maintenance and necessary repairs to the building have also led to some increased costs.”
A Galliard Homes spokesperson said the increased service charges at New Capital Quay were mainly related to an increase in reserve fund contributions “to fund known capital expenditure projects over the next 20 years, as well as to provide for any unanticipated major works.”
Many apartment owners in England own their properties on a leasehold basis. This means they do not fully own their homes but own it on a long lease, agreed with a freeholder. Freeholders collect a service charge to maintain the apartment buildings, or may appoint a managing agent to manage the property on their behalf.
Mithuna Maran, who owns a three-bedroomed leasehold apartment in the Waterside development in Watford, north of London, says her service charge has nearly doubled this year, to more than 3,500 pounds. This is despite gaps in the maintenance of the building.
“Essential services are being neglected, serious issues remain unresolved, and large companies are repeatedly failing in their obligations without accountability,” she says.
“If no one challenges this behaviour, they will continue increasing charges without justification — effectively taking money from residents in broad daylight.”
Waterside developers Bellway Homes said it could not comment on service or maintenance charges, as these were managed by PBM Management.
“We can confirm that we remain in dialogue with leaseholder representatives regarding service charges for the development,” Bellway added.
PBM Management told The Sentinel that the service charge had risen at Waterside “primarily due to new statutory requirements under the Building Safety Act.”
Freeholders say that inflation has been a major factor in rising service charges, and that errors in the charges are often a result of administrative mistakes, rather than a deliberate attempt to overcharge leaseholders, according to a report published in June 2025 by the housing committee of the London Assembly.
However, Muna says bad practice is widespread.
“It might be something like — it says that our windows are being cleaned regularly, but they still look really dirty — and then you’ve got the really black and white stuff, like — they are charging us for lift maintenance, but we don’t have a lift in our building.”
SHAC is proposing a system to make it easier for tenants and residents to dispute service charges and is campaigning to get the topic debated in Parliament.
Muna says the issue of escalating service charges “is not individualised, it’s systemic. It’s happening everywhere, it’s on an industrial scale.”
At lunchtime on an ordinary autumn Tuesday, co-working space Shoreditch Exchange is buzzing with young office workers. In the heart of one of London’s trendiest quarters, people are playing table tennis, enjoying free coffee from the workplace’s own barista and taking part in the day’s special activity – soap-making.
The COVID pandemic upended the way that we work. Working from home, or cafés, was once the preserve of freelance writers and designers – now hybrid working has become the norm for many office staff.
Co-working, in which freelancers or employees of different firms share office space, and often leisure facilities, existed before the pandemic. But as big firms increasingly demand their employees back in the office five days a week, where does co-working fit in?
“The world of co-working has completely changed,” David Kaiser, chief executive of Oneder, which operates Shoreditch Exchange, told The Sentinel in an interview.
It’s no longer just about freelancers sharing space, but also about big companies who want to scale the size of their office space up and down more easily, Kaiser said. Companies are renting whole floors in co-working spaces, where lease lengths tend to be shorter than for traditional offices, though this gap is narrowing.
Mandeep Soor, CEO and co-founder of AI start-up Bendi, is enthusiastic about Shoreditch Exchange. “In the year we’ve been here, we’ve grown as a start-up and then shrunk again — and the team has been super flexible,” she said. “We’ve also made a bunch of friends here with other founders at the same stage as us, sharing everything from tips around funding to testing the early versions of our product.”
However, the model remains of co-working spaces providing facilities such as free tea and coffee and social activities such as yoga or running clubs.
At one point, co-working seemed like it might have been a bubble. Lockdowns and work from home mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic dented the appeal of these short-term office tenancies. Co-working giant WeWork, for example, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for its U.S. and Canadian businesses in November 2023. However, it came out of bankruptcy last year.
The global flexible office market is projected to triple from $45.24 billion in 2025 to $136.46 billion by 2032, according to Fortune Business Insights. And Britain is in the forefront of this trend. Co-working was available in 4,315 locations in the UK and Ireland in the third quarter of 2025, making the region “one of the most extensively networked markets in the world”, according to a report from co-working listing service Coworking Cafe.
It’s unusual for people to come into a co-working space every day, Kaiser said, reflecting continued demand from staff for flexible working. Around 1.1 million employees say they left a job in the last year due to a lack of flexible working, according to a report from UK human resources professional body CIPD. This is particularly the case for younger employees, the report said.
However, half of organisations which offer hybrid working have put incentives in place to encourage employees to be at their workplace more often, the CIPD report said.
“Every company has a different approach to mandated office work but the majority of companies want people in the office, for productivity, for the culture, to avoid loneliness,” Kaiser said.
“To get people back to an office, you have to entice them. You need to create these environments that are vibrant and fun and offer experiences they can’t get anywhere else. You also need office wifi, good coffee, good connectivity – you have to get the basics right.”
Doron Meyassed, CEO of holiday home platform Plum Guide, said that his staff were excited to be at Shoreditch Exchange “because of the atmosphere, the welcoming team and the variety of events”.
Fleura Bardhi, professor of marketing at City St George’s, University of London, said demand for co-working reflected “how much consumption is embedded in work”.
“Your lifestyle is blended with work. For young generations, it’s very important to be in workplaces that fit their consumer identity,” she told The Sentinel, adding that some co-working spaces allow pets and storage, “it’s an extension of their living spaces”.
However, Kaiser said it was not just young people who use co-working space: “We have a variety of ages in our buildings, a variety of sectors, from tech to law firms to financial services.”
Two-year-old Oneder already operates four co-working spaces in London, with two more to open in 2026.
Bardhi said traditional offices should take lessons from co-working on how to attract employees, “it made work meaningful, so that’s why people stayed.” But Bardhi also said there was a risk in making your office more fun: “If everything is work, your hobby is work, there are no boundaries.”
Bardhi said that for some people, it gets to the point where they say “I’m burnt out of having fun. I don’t want to see anybody, I don’t want to play any more.”
But for Kaiser, fun is part of the appeal, as co-working offers a space “people want to come to, not have to go to”.
Sydney’s Bondi Beach, usually a symbol of sun and surf, became a site of terror this week when two gunmen attacked a Hanukkah festival, killing 16 people and injuring dozens more. Soon after, the New South Wales Police confirmed that the weapons used were legally obtained firearms, properly licensed and owned under existing laws.
The attack, which appeared to explicitly target people in the Jewish community, has forced Australia to confront a prickly question left unresolved by the government’s response decades ago to a mass shooting in the Tasmanian city of Port Arthur: Can strict gun laws alone prevent such mass violence?
Modern laws born of tragedy
Australia’s current gun laws were created in the wake of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, when a lone gunman killed 35 people. After this tragedy, federal and state leaders formalized the National Firearms Agreement, which banned most semi-automatic weapons. By contrast, handguns (pistols) were not outright banned. Licensed owners may possess handguns, registered to the owner only for approved reasons (chiefly target shooting) and subject to strict regulation. It introduced uniform licensing standards nationwide and implemented longer waiting periods. It also financed a national buyback program to take guns off the street that destroyed more than 650,000 firearms.
Over time, however, implementation of the law began to vary across jurisdictions. States and territories retained authority over licensing and possession of firearms, and this led to inconsistencies in enforcement. A 2025 report by the Australia Institute, an independent public policy think tank based in Canberra, highlights how license revocation rates in New South Wales have been nearly double those in Queensland. At the same time, the National Firearms Register, first agreed to by the National Cabinet in 2023, was rolled out in stages from mid-2024 and will not be fully operational until mid-2028. The register is intended to allow police national access to up-to-date firearm ownership and license status. At the time of the Bondi Beach attack, it was not yet fully implemented.
By 2025, Australia had more than four million registered firearms, a figure that critics say reflects rising firearm numbers despite strict laws. The same report published last year by the Australia Institute found that there were 25 percent more guns in Australia in 2025 than there were at the time of the Port Arthur tragedy. The same report found that 1 in 3 firearms in New South Wales were located not in rural or regional areas, but in major cities. Cecilia Milton, 74, who has worked in New South Wales in a non-profit organization that rehabilitates criminals, agreed while having a chat with The Sentinel. “Back in the day, we never saw firearms as much as I saw them in the last two decades. Homicide convicts often told us how easy it was for them to get hold of a firearm. Then came 3D printing.”
Immediate policy response
Within hours of the Bondi massacre, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese convened an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet. The leaders agreed to commit to “strong, decisive and focused action on gun law reform,” including renegotiating the National Firearms Agreement to ensure it would remain robust in a changed security environment.
The government flagged several key reforms now being developed by police ministers and attorneys-general:
Lowering caps on the number of firearms per individual, responding directly to the fact that police said the older alleged shooter held six legally registered guns.
Revisiting license renewals. Australian firearms licences are not indefinite and must be renewed periodically. In practice, the police send reminders as the expiry date nears, and failure to renew causes the licence to lapse.
Implementing citizenship requirements for firearm licenses, meaning non-citizens could face stricter conditions.
Promising a crackdown on 3D-printed firearms, high-capacity magazines, and certain types of ammunition and equipment.
States have also proposed specific legislative changes. In New South Wales, Premier Chris Minns called parliament back in session to tighten classifications of certain shotguns, restrict magazine capacities and empower police to revoke licenses without tribunal appeal.
In response to the hate
Voices from the Jewish community, whose members were directly targeted by the attack, have been central to the public conversation. At victims’ funerals and national vigils, leaders have condemned both the violence and what they describe as a slow governmental response to rising antisemitism in the country.
Things will always be different now for the Jewish community, said the co-chief executive officer of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Alex Ryvchin on National Television. “This stops life, this destroys worlds. Things will always be different for us,” he said. “Things can’t go back to normal. It’s fundamentally changed this country.”
In the aftermath of Sunday’s Bondi Beach attack, Andrew Klein, a celebrated Australian professional speaker and master of ceremonies wrote a post on Facebook, which has since been shared many times over. “We are many things today — but we are not shocked or surprised. Sadly, we all felt this was kind of inevitable,” Klein wrote. “Sunday was tragically the logical end point to what we have experienced in this country over the past 2 and bit years. We all felt this was on the cards; the writing was on the wall.”
“I published a widely circulated article on LinkedIn precisely one year ago today called ‘Make Australia Safe Again’ just after the torching of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne,” Klein added, “arguing that if our Government continued to remain inert, paralysed and impotent in tackling anti-semitism, then we all knew what would come next.”
The same sentiments have been shared by members of the Australian Muslim community. One Bondi Beach shooting witness recounted to a Sentinel reporter the terror of the shooting. Mehreen and her husband Junaid (whose names have been changed to conceal their identities) were just leaving Bondi Beach when they saw the tragedy unfold, and they described how they fled the scene but sheltered nearby at a motel to help in case anyone from the Jewish Community needed it. “The rise of extremism in Australia has amplified antisemitism, increased Islamophobia, and led to more instances of hate speech and hate crimes against members of both communities,” said Mehreen, an early education worker from Sydney.
They asked not to be identified for fear of being targeted themselves, something they never expected when they migrated to this country in 2014.
The Alannah & Madeline Foundation, an advocacy group for strong gun laws created by the families of victims of the Port Arthur Massacre, echoed the call for new limits on the number of firearms individuals can own, better tracking systems and more robust license renewal processes. “The community, rightly, expects our gun laws to place tight restrictions on gun ownership and use – and for there to be fewer, not more, guns in our community, especially in light of Sunday’s tragedy,” Sarah Davies, the organization’s CEO, said in a statement to the press.
Uncomfortable resistance to gun laws
Rishav Kale, a political studies teacher from Federal College, Victoria, breaks it down. “Australia’s constitutional framework complicates reform,” Kale said. Firearms regulation sits with the states, and federal influence is exercised mainly through consensus. Police can act on statutory thresholds, but intelligence agencies cannot revoke licenses, creating enforcement gaps. Even if information is shared between state and federal agencies, “there is no legal trigger compelling decisive action,” Kale said.
At Monday’s hastily convened National Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and state and territory leaders unanimously agreed on the need for intense, focused action to strengthen gun laws, including renegotiating the National Firearms Agreement to keep regulations robust in response to evolving security concerns.
Yet the question remains: Will they succeed? There already has been publicly observable variation in state responses and some signals of caution or resistance from specific states. Any fractures that exist along state lines will undermine the effectiveness of new laws. Because firearm regulation lies with the states under the Australian Constitution, unanimous state support is required for a robust National Firearms Agreement.
Unlike Port Arthur, the Bondi massacre unfolded in a more complex political landscape, where terrorism, antisemitism, and border security dominate voter concerns. Intelligence briefs from agencies like the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation have highlighted the rising tide of extremism and ideological shifts that encompass not just antisemitic violence but also broader extremist trends targeting multiple minority groups.
However, this also raises the question of whether even the strictest gun laws can fully prevent ideologically driven violence The lesson of Port Arthur is, perhaps: No — highlighting the need for comprehensive measures (intelligence, counter-radicalization, and community resilience efforts) alongside any legislative reforms.
UPDATE: After this story appeared, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced funding for a new gun buyback campaign to be managed by the country’s states and territories to target surplus, newly banned, and illegal firearms. It could become the country’s largest gun buyback campaign since Port Arthur.
“Are you thinking about a PhD?” The truth was, I had never imagined I would end up in Sweden, much less complete a graduate degree in a Nordic country. A PhD felt like a distant, unlikely idea. So I answered, “I’m not sure.”
An associate professor overheard us. She turned and said discreetly: “You need to be 110% certain. There are happy doctors, but there are no happy doctoral students.”
Recent data suggest she wasn’t wrong.
A nationwide longitudinal research studying the impact of PhD studies on mental health, tracked over 20,000 PhD students in Sweden between 2006 and 2017, has shown that doctoral training itself is linked to declining mental health. Using health records, psychiatric medication prescriptions, specialist care visits, and hospitalizations, the study was able to avoid reliance on self-reported stress or even fear from judgement allegations, while capturing real care-seeking behavior.
These studies found that before starting a PhD, students used psychiatric medication at rates similar to graduates who stopped at the master’s level. Medication use rises sharply immediately after beginning the PhD. By the fifth year, prescriptions for psychiatric drugs are roughly 40% higher than pre-PhD levels. After graduation, medication use declines substantially. These patterns are consistent across disciplines, genders, and backgrounds, except for medical and health sciences students, whose clinical duties provide different support structures.
This is not new in Sweden
This is not the first study to report similar results. In 2022, the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) found in this study that roughly 7% of PhD students receive treatment or a diagnosis for depression, and 5% for anxiety, in any given year. While these numbers are lower than earlier survey-based estimates, they are still higher than those of peers not pursuing a PhD. IFN researchers concluded that this mental health decline develops during the PhD program, indicating a causal effect of doctoral studies on wellbeing. Factors such as high expectations, lack of formal training, social isolation, and financial insecurity contribute to the manifestation and diagnoses of mental health conditions.
Likewise, the Swedish Public Health Agency (Folkhälsomyndigheten), found that in 2023 mental health-related stress, burnout, and antidepressant use rose among young adults, with school-related stress particularly affecting girls. By that time, universities acknowledged gaps in mental health support, while national reports continued to show increasing rates of anxiety and depression among young people.
In the case of PhD students, they are particularly vulnerable because they are both students and full-time employees. Several studies have investigated how this impacts their mental health, revealing concerning patterns. These studies suggest that it is the doctoral program itself and not a preexisting vulnerability, that drives this deterioration in their mental health.
Add the immigration stress factor
There are other factors that can contribute to this diagnosis, as international students face additional hurdles. The SULF Doctoral Candidate Association (2025) reported in this other study that non-EU/EEA PhD students face structural obstacles that can amplify stress: long residence permit processing times, unclear criteria for permit assessment, and limited options for appeal. These rules often prevent students from traveling for conferences, fieldwork, or personal reasons, restricting mobility and professional development. The report highlights a double dependency: students rely on their supervisors and universities to maintain their legal status while simultaneously meeting strict thesis deadlines. Delays caused by migration procedures can reduce the time available for research, forcing compromises that other doctoral students do not face.
These findings resonate with broader media reporting in Sweden, which has increasingly highlighted unclear expectations, power imbalances with supervisors, academic isolation, and a culture of overwork within doctoral programs. For international students, these pressures are compounded by relocation challenges, cultural adaptation, and social isolation.
“So much depends on your supervisors,” said Amira Perez, a PhD candidate in Stockholm University. “When you’re an international student dealing with homesickness, cultural barriers, or even the death of someone back home, having supervisors who understand is crucial. In my case, I went through personal tough moments that led to a burnout. I’m grateful that my supervisors understood and recognized what burnout and depression looked like. But I know I was lucky, and that this isn’t the case for many international PhD students in Sweden.”
Both studies also indicate that non-EU and non-Swedish PhD students are particularly vulnerable, as they are often less familiar with their rights and may not always recognize when a supervisor’s behavior has crossed a professional boundary.
Taken together, the evidence paints a consistent picture: doctoral studies in Sweden carry a substantial mental health burden, particularly for international students navigating both academic and migration systems. These studies underscore the need for targeted mental health support, clear institutional guidance, and policy reforms to reduce the psychological toll of doctoral education while supporting Sweden’s goal of internationalizing its higher education system.
The thin line between endurance and resignation
The researchers of these studies note that these findings are not just descriptive but also a call to action. They argue that the mental health strain experienced by PhD students in Sweden needs to be recognized as a structural issue, not an individual failure of resilience.
In other words, this is not a matter of students needing to “cope better,” but of universities and policymakers needing to provide clearer expectations, more stable funding, better supervisory support, and accessible mental health resources.
If Sweden wants to continue attracting international researchers and developing high-quality academic work, the conditions under which doctoral students live and work must be taken seriously as a matter of policy, not personal endurance.
How to cope with the stress of a PhD
Annika Wappelhorst, a PhD student in Media and Communication Science at Jönköping University is in her third year, but from the beginning she was mindful that maintaining her well-being would be essential to succeeding in her studies. Outside academia, she teaches yoga, enjoys reading fiction and non-fiction novels, and takes long walks around the nearby lake. Based on her experience, she shared a few strategies that have helped her maintain a healthier balance during their studies such as establishing clear work hours, staying organized and planning ahead, among other things.
“I don’t want people to think that pursuing a PhD in Sweden is the worst decision you can make,” Annika says. “What’s important is that you know your rights, how to identify unkind behaviours in supervision, and understand where to turn for help if something doesn’t feel right.”
If you feel that your PhD studies are affecting your mental health, there are several resources you can turn to for support. In an emergency, contact a psychiatric emergency room or call 112. For guidance on where to seek care or advice about available services, you can call 1177. Most universities also offer support through a PhD student ombudsman or their occupational health service. Additionally, the Swedish union for doctoral students (SULF) offers support, advice, and advocacy to help PhD candidates have good working conditions at universities across Sweden.
The evidence is clear: Swedish universities must treat doctoral mental health as an institutional responsibility, not an individual challenge. Until then, knowing your rights and where to find help isn’t optional—it’s survival.
In September, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) demanded that the federal government regulate Article 63 of Brazilian law within 45 days, aiming to increase digital accessibility. Ten years after the law was enacted, the provision has never been regulated, which prevents the establishment of mandatory standards and penalties for those who fail to comply.
A survey by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) revealed that only 3% of the country’s websites are considered accessible. Data like this shows that companies’ negligence toward this legal requirement remains a persistent issue, one that not only excludes part of the population but also overlooks its competitive market implications.
Given this scenario, it is essential to understand what digital accessibility is: the creation of environments, platforms, and content that can be used by anyone, regardless of physical, sensory, cognitive, or social conditions. This includes compatibility with screen readers, color contrast, image descriptions, captions, keyboard navigation, and sign language resources.
The most widely adopted international reference is the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), which defines the standards that websites and apps must follow. By regulating Article 63, Brazil intends to finally establish similar parameters.
Who is most affected?
With the advancement of the internet, it has become increasingly common for essential public services to be digitalized. Over a 30-year period, the digital evolution has been extraordinary . Today, it is possible to pay bills from anywhere in the world, without going to a bank or waiting in line. This shift is seen as positive, as it speeds up tasks and makes mobility more practical.
However, the central question remains: is this convenience accessible to everyone?
Recent IBGE data shows that 20.5 million Brazilians are still considered digitally excluded because they do not use the internet. These individuals are primarily older adults, people with disabilities, and people with low education or income levels. Democratizing this access is essential so that internet use does not become a privilege, as the online world is now central to research, leisure, creativity, and bureaucracy.
The lack of digital accessibility directly affects citizens’ lives. Failures in apps and digital domains cause many Brazilians to miss out on benefits and lose important deadlines because they cannot complete basic steps on digital platforms. In many cases, people must give up their autonomy and rely on others, exposing them to vulnerabilities that could have been avoided with more inclusive design.
This situation became evident in 2025, when the Federal Prosecutor’s Office investigated the accessibility of Brazil’s main government website, https://gov.br, and deemed that the platform’s facial recognition step was not accessible enough for visually impaired individuals.. Even after the addition of features such as a voice assistant and extended validation time, the service was still not considered adequate by the MPF.
In an exclusive interview with Yuvoice, Joyce Rocha shared her digital experience as an autistic woman. The accessibility specialist highlighted that companies’ disregard for digital inclusion largely stems from the ableism embedded in society, which seeks to undermine the independence of people with disabilities.
“This belief comes very much from ableism. Many think there is no need for such services, assuming these individuals depend on ‘third parties’. […] They are condemned to be seen only as vulnerable.”
Joyce also stresses the importance of sensitivity during the creation of these resources. With the rise of artificial intelligence and the automation of accessibility by many companies, Rocha believes that much of the design’s human sensitivity is lost during product transcription, directly affecting user experience.
Future outlook
The expansion of accessibility and the tightening of regulations are not limited to Brazil, but are happening worldwide. In June 2025, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) came into force, establishing mandatory legal requirements aimed at eliminating technological barriers and ensuring equal access to digital services.
In the United States, the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) has for years established legal accountability for companies that fail to ensure accessibility in their products and services.
With the growing enforcement of digital inclusion, companies are prioritising not only the inclusive aspect but also in the pursuit of market competitiveness. One example is Microsoft, which, in response to regulatory developments, redesigned its products and documentation in advance to implement new inclusive features. The company’s approach shows that accessibility is not only a matter of rights but also of market strategy, where those who adapt quickly gain an advantage.
Five years after the discovery that beers from the Brazilian brand Backer were contaminated, an incident which caused the deaths of ten consumers and left 19 others with permanent injuries, all defendants have been acquitted due to insufficient evidence.
The decision was issued by the 2nd Criminal Court of Belo Horizonte on November 4, 2025. The justification was that there was not enough proof to hold any of the accused personally responsible. According to Judge Alexandre Magno de Resende Oliveira, the complaint filed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office failed to demonstrate “who, individually, acted or omitted themselves in a criminal manner.”
Background
The case began in January 2020, when several people were hospitalized in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais with symptoms such as kidney failure, blindness, and neurological disorders. Investigations revealed that all victims had consumed beverages produced by Backer Brewery, based in Belo Horizonte.
Reports from the Civil Police and Anvisa (Brazil’s National Health Surveillance Agency) confirmed the presence of the toxic substances diethylene glycol and monoethylene glycol, both commonly used as antifreeze. According to the investigation, the contamination resulted from a manufacturing defect caused by a leak in the cooling system that allowed toxic fluid to mix with the beer.
At least ten deaths and 19 severe injuries were confirmed. Consumption of the contaminated beers led to permanent sequelae, including vision loss and neurological damage.
At the time, the Minas Gerais Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPMG) charged ten individuals linked to Cervejaria Três Lobos, the company that owns the Backer brand, with manslaughter, bodily harm, and crimes against consumer relations. The defendants included company partners, directors, and production and maintenance technicians.
Initially, the owners were accused of having knowingly taken the risk of contamination by keeping the factory operational despite technical failures. However, two of them were acquitted after evidence showed they had no management authority within the company. The third partner, responsible only for marketing, was also acquitted for having no direct involvement with product manufacturing.
Regarding the six engineers and technicians, the judge concluded that all were subordinate employees without decision-making power over the industrial process. The court also noted that responsibility for the refrigeration system lay with the technical supervisor, who had since passed away, and the industrial operations manager, who was not charged.
The tenth defendant, accused of perjury for allegedly lying about a label replacement at a supplier, was also acquitted under the principle of reasonable doubt, due to lack of concrete evidence.
In summary, the court found no individualized evidence of criminal negligence that could justify a conviction, even though the episode was acknowledged as a systemic failure within the company.
Aftermath and Civil Liabilities
Despite the criminal acquittal, Cervejaria Três Lobos still faces civil obligations. In July 2023, the MPMG reached a compensation agreement with Backer to provide financial reparations to the victims and their families. The deal stipulates payments of R$ 500,000 per victim and R$ 150,000 per immediate family member for material and moral damages.
So far, no victim has received payment, as Backer is undergoing judicial recovery (similar to bankruptcy protection), delaying compensation. The company maintains that the contamination was accidental and denies ever using toxic substances intentionally in its brewing process.
The acquittal has shocked victims and their families, who remain without compensation or accountability for the tragedy. Speaking to O Estado de Minas, Mirza Quintão Utsch, daughter of victim Antônio Márcio Quintão de Freitas, who died after drinking Backer beer on New Year’s Eve 2020, said:
“It’s extreme negligence to have a leaking tank, poison so many people, and not be held responsible for it.”
Despite the verdict, the Public Prosecutor’s Office announced it is considering an appeal to the Minas Gerais Court of Justice (TJMG). If accepted, the acquittal could be upheld or partially overturned, leading to a new trial. Until a final conviction is reached, all defendants remain free.
