essay present time

• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Tenses and time

Tenses refer to different forms of a verb or verb phrase. We use different tenses to talk or write about different times. For example, we usually use present tense verb forms to talk about states, events or actions that happen or are happening in the present time. We usually use past tense verb forms to talk about past time, to describe events, states or actions that have finished. We can also use past tense forms to refer to present time, for example, for reasons of politeness or indirectness ( I was wondering if you wanted a drink ) and present tense forms to refer to past time, for example, for dramatic effect.

There is no future tense form of verbs in English. We refer to future time in several different ways for different functions, for example, using the present tense or be going to or will .

Click on a topic to learn more about these tenses.

Word of the Day

make ends meet

to have just enough money to pay for the things that you need

Fakes and forgeries (Things that are not what they seem to be)

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• Israel-Hamas War

Ben Stiller: Why I Can’t Stay Silent About the Suffering in Israel and Gaza

W hat a time we are all living through. Like so many people, I have been watching the awful events happening in the Middle East over the last year and trying to determine how to react. I have been seeing the brazen antisemitic incidents in my own city and feeling a mix of anger, fear, and astonishment that we are at this place in our country. Saying nothing at this point feels like I am betraying my own conscience. But what do you say? How does one express the complicated and very real feelings in this scary world of social media, where it seems any sentiment opens you to online vitriol from one side or another? The issues we are dealing with are so nuanced and complicated that short statements cannot in any way express fully what I want to say from my heart. As a public advocate for refugees, I’ve been struggling to reconcile my silence with that work. Please bear with me as I explain. And to be clear, what I say here is my personal view, not that of any organization–it’s just how I feel.

I was given the opportunity in 2016 to work with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights, and building a better future for people forced to flee their homes because of conflict and persecution. The agency was created to help the millions who fled the Second World War and leads international action to protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, ensuring that everyone has the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge from violence, persecution, or war at home.

With UNHCR I have visited refugees and those impacted by war and violence in Lebanon, Guatemala, Jordan, Poland, and Ukraine. I visited Lebanon just before the eighth anniversary of the Syrian conflict and met refugee families struggling to survive, among the millions living on the razor’s edge. I went to Kyiv after the full-scale Russian invasion and talked to people whose lives have been upended by this senseless war. I’ve advocated for refugees at the UN and in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, imploring the U.S. government not to look away from this global humanitarian crisis. I say this not to toot my own horn, but to explain that for me, if I am to speak out about these issues in these places, I can’t ignore the crisis that is front and center in the world right now.

I am Jewish. I’m also half Irish. My father’s mother came to the United States as a refugee from Poland. His father’s grandfather came from Ukraine, where over 100,000 Jewish people lost their lives in the ethnic pogroms that preceded the great horror of the Holocaust by just two decades. My mother’s grandparents came from Ireland seeking a better life. They arrived in New York with a surplus of hope and not much else.

My dad served in the U.S. Army at the end of World War II. He met my mom and they got married–he was Jewish, she was Catholic. At the time that was an issue. They dealt with judgment from both sides of their families and the outside world. They turned that tension into humor and based their stand-up comedy act on their ethnic differences, which brought them together – and brought them success.

My mom converted to Judaism when they married. Ours was not a religious household, but we learned the traditions of inclusion and tolerance. After my Bar Mitzvah, I didn’t really go back to synagogue too often. But I always felt connected to my heritage, both Irish and Jewish, and valued the bonds I saw formed by both sides of my family. Eventually they came together through my parents’ love for each other. It was a palpable and beautiful thing I experienced as a child. As a kid growing up surrounded by that love, in New York City in the ‘70s, I never really experienced antisemitism. Where we find ourselves now is a place I never thought I would be.

Like so many Jews I grieve for those who suffered in the barbaric Hamas attack on October 7 and for those who have suffered as a result of those atrocities . My heart aches for the families who lost loved ones to this heinous act of terrorism and for those anxiously waiting these long months for the return of the hostages still in captivity. It’s a nightmare. I also grieve for the innocent people in Gaza who have lost their lives in this conflict and those suffering through that awful reality now.

I detest war, but what Hamas did was unconscionable and reprehensible. The hostages have to be freed. Terrorism must be named and fought by all people of conscience on the planet. There is no excuse for it under any circumstances.  

I stand with the Israeli people and their right to live in peace and safety. At the same time, I don’t agree with all of the Israeli government’s choices on how they are conducting the war. I want the violence to end, and the innocent Palestinian people affected by the humanitarian crisis that has resulted to receive the lifesaving aid they need. And I know that many in Israel share this sentiment.

I believe, as many people in Israel and around the world do, in the need for a two-state solution, one that ensures that the Israeli people can live in peace and safety alongside a homeland for the Palestinian people that provides them the same benefits.

I also see a troubling conflation in criticism of the actions of the Israeli government with denunciations of all Israelis and Jewish people. And as a result, we are seeing an undeniable rise in global antisemitism. I am seeing it myself, on the streets of the city I grew up in. It isn’t right and must be denounced.

Antisemitism must be condemned whenever it happens and wherever it exists. As should Islamophobia and bigotry of all kinds. There is a frightening amnesia for history in the air. We must remind ourselves that we can only manifest a more hopeful, just, and peaceful future by learning from the past.

Obviously I am no politician or diplomat. I have no solutions for these world conflicts and claim to offer none. I think I, like so many people, am struggling with how to process this all. But as an advocate for displaced people, I do believe this war must end. As I write this, there are about 120 million people all over the world who have been displaced by conflicts. In the Middle East, in Ukraine, Sudan, and many other countries. They all deserve to live in safety and peace. The human suffering must end. We must demand this of our leaders. Peace is the only path.

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Temporal Curiosity: Exploring the Past, Present, and Future

Anne-Laure Le Cunff

The idea of time travel has captivated human imagination for centuries. In H.G. Wells’ classic 1895 novel The Time Machine , the protagonist invents a device that allows him to travel through time, exploring the distant future. While we may still be far from physically traversing time, there is a way to embark on a temporal journey using nothing more than your mind and curiosity.

This phenomenon, known as “chronesthesia” in psychology, refers to our ability to mentally project ourselves into the past or future. By pairing this practice with your curiosity, you can gain profound insights into the past, fully immerse yourself in the present, and imagine more possibilities for the future.

The Temporal Nature of Curiosity

As humans, we have a remarkable ability to direct our curiosity through time. Unlike other animals that primarily live in the present (although that’s a subject of scientific debate ), we can consciously choose to explore the past, engage with the present, or imagine the future.

What I call temporal curiosity is the practice of actively directing our curiosity across time – past, present, future – to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves, others, and the world around us.

Past curiosity. Directing our curiosity towards the past can help us understand our origins and learn from history. By exploring past experiences from your own life (including your early childhood) and those of previous generations (including the lives of your parents and ancestors), you can gain insights as to why you are the person you are.

Present curiosity. When we focus our curiosity on the present, we start to appreciate the little things more. This means deeper conversations with friends and family – really listening to their thoughts and experiences. This means noticing details in your surroundings that you might usually overlook. In short, uriosity about the present moment can help you live life more fully.

Future curiosity. Finally, when we let our curiosity lead us into the future, we start to imagine all sorts of possibilities. We might wonder what inventions could make our lives easier, or we could think creatively about potential challenges. Asking “what if” and dreaming up ideas encourages us to be proactive in creating the kind of world we want to live in.

Directing your curiosity towards the past, present, and future can have profound effects on your personal growth and well-being. Studies have found that mentally time-traveling to the past – particularly when you reminisce about positive past experiences – can boost your mood and increase your sense of self-continuity.

This contributes to a more coherent narrative identity and better self-understanding. You know yourself better and you feel better.

In the present, being curious about others’ life stories and experiences can foster empathy and lead to more constructive conversations. Curiosity-driven exploration of the present moment has also been linked to better well-being.

Lastly, being curious about the future can boost your creativity and help you come up with new ideas. Engaging in future-oriented time travel has been found to enhance creative thinking by allowing you to mentally explore and evaluate different possibilities.

When you tap into your curiosity about the past, present, and future, you can better understand yourself, build stronger relationships, improve your well-being, and be more creative.

How to Time-Travel with Curiosity

Curiosity is a powerful tool that you can use proactively. By setting aside time to intentionally focus your curiosity on different time periods (past, present, future) and aspects of your life (world, others, self), you can grow both personally and professionally.

The following nine questions are designed to help guide and structure your practice of temporal curiosity. You can use them as prompts in your journal, as discussion starters with a coach, or as a fun activity with a friend or partner.

Past Curiosity:

• World – What historical event can you learn from?
• Others – What can you learn from your family’s past experiences?
• Self – How has a past experience shaped you?

Present Curiosity:

• World – What current global issue do you want to understand better?
• Others – What questions could you ask to understand someone better?
• Self – What aspect of your daily life can you explore with fresh eyes?

Future Curiosity:

• World – What future possibilities capture your imagination?
• Others – How can you envision your relationships evolving?
• Self – What personal growth path(s) are you curious to explore?

Curiosity is a fundamental human trait that drives us to explore, learn, and grow. However, in the busyness of daily life, it’s easy to let it fade into the background. That’s why it’s crucial to consciously make space for curiosity – whether you choose to direct it towards the past, the present, or the future.

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A question about 'present' time.

I've had this thought for a while, but don't quite know how to word it. If there's a hypothetically infinitely small unit of time between the past and the future, (ie, if I move my hand each motion from the next happens an infinitely small unit of time away from the past or future) then how can 'the present' or 'now' exist? Are we not perpetually in both the past or future?

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Book review: Intimate and creative, Jennifer Brice’s long-evolving essays present her sharp mind at work

“Another North: Essays in Praise of the World That Is”

“Another North: Essays in Praise of the World That Is,” by Jennifer Brice

By Jennifer Brice; Boreal Books/Red Hen Press, 2024; 240 pages; $17.95.

It used to be said that “essays don’t sell, nobody wants to read them.” That was never really true, and, in the hands of a gifted writer like Jennifer Brice, we can delight in the form defined by essayist and teacher Phillip Lopate as “a record of a mind tracking its thoughts.”

“The great promise of essays,” Lopate wrote, “is the freedom they offer to explore, digress, acknowledge uncertainty; to evade dogmatism and embrace ambivalence and contradiction; to engage in intimate conversation with one’s reader and literary forbears; and to uncover some unexpected truth, preferably via a sparkling prose style.”

Brice, the author of two previous books — ”The Last Settlers,” a work of documentary journalism, and “Unlearning to Fly,” a memoir — has compiled a dozen exemplary essays written over the course of 25 years. They are both intimate and intelligent, and they shine in their use of creative forms and their “sparkling” language.

Born and raised in Fairbanks, Brice has taught English and Creative Writing at East Coast colleges (presently Colgate University) for many years. Now at the start of her sixth decade, with three grown daughters, she’s been willing to look back at her family and personal history, her relationships to others, the person she was and is still becoming, and her influences. Readers will very much feel in conversation with a sharp and inquisitive mind, and Alaska readers may especially find resonance with their own lives.

The first essay, “Another North,” opens as a sleep-deprived “gray-haired professor of English” lands at the Fairbanks airport on winter solstice. The wobbliness she feels about a change in runway signs sets her up for a series of short segments that gather a story that “could begin anywhere” but does begin in 1961, when “the woman who will become our protagonist’s mother,” a newly minted nurse, leaves New York City and drives to Fairbanks for her first job. Then, in 1962, “Carol Ann’s husband of just a few months” is taking off from the Fairbanks airport on his first solo flight. 1964, Carol Ann parks the pram with baby Jennifer outside the Second Avenue Co-op and tells the family husky to “mind the baby” while she shops. Then 1967 and the Fairbanks flood, the start of pipeline construction, a prom, a crush, homesick years at an east coast women’s college, learning to fly “in order to prove something to myself, although it’s not yet clear just what that might be.” In just 12 pages, with specific details, digressions through time and place, and reflections on identity, direction, and love, Brice introduces her mode of thinking about the large and small things that influence a life and leads readers into the expanses of her mind.

The second essay, “Playing Bridge with Robots,” continues with a similarly segmented form and inquiry. Here, Brice toggles between her obsession with the game of bridge — especially playing it on-line with computer-generated partners — and her long friendship with another writer (one who will be recognized by Alaska readers.) At first the back-and-forth play might seem odd, but connections gradually emerge as the friendship slows and founders. “We weren’t doing what I am doing right this minute, which is trying to capture some fugitive truth about her. Or about me and her. Or maybe just about me.”

The remaining essays continue the pattern of employing unusual structures to contain fragments of memory, thought, and reconciliation, along with references to literary works and cultural phenomena. “On Keeping House,” is formatted around a series of possible guides to, literally, homemaking but more expansively to living as a woman.

“Occasional Lapses into Indulgence” examines the author’s complicated relationship with her “fabulist” grandmother and includes excerpts from letters between the two and her grandmother’s correspondence with the writer James Michener and various political figures. (Grandmother Brice felt free to advise them on their clothing.)

“I Am the Space Where I Am” discusses Brice’s move to upstate New York (where a neighbor instructed her on just what she needed to do with her house and yard to fit in) and how she squared her love for her Fairbanks home with her adopted one. “After Alaska,” she writes, “being in New York is a little bit like being on Prozac: the highs are not as high, the lows not as low.”

One of the longest, most creative, and most personally revealing essays, “My Essay on Flowers and How Things End” takes the form of an abecedarian, in which each of the 26 sections begins with a letter of the alphabet, in this case naming a flower. A is for Astroemeria (a showy lily), B for bittersweet, and so on. While each section references a flower, the passages are not about the flowers per se but associated with the author’s life, in particular her relationships with men. Time here is fluid, flowing back and forth across decades to tie together a bouquet of self-discoveries.

Because Brice’s essays were written at different times, with different purposes, and are meant to stand alone, some facts and even scenes reappear throughout the book. In another writer’s hands, these could be repetitive and annoying, but the different contexts in which they’re presented multiply their effect. The family origin myth, central to the entire book, returns with increasing meaning, and only at the end does Brice uncover an astonishing truth about it.

Poignant, funny, introspective, sparkling in its language, “Another North” deserves a place, not just on a shelf of essays, but among the books we turn to for appreciating the gifts and burdens of our lives.

Nancy Lord is a Homer-based writer and former Alaska writer laureate. Her books include "Fishcamp," "Beluga Days," and "Early Warming." Her latest book is "pH: A Novel."

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• Health and Body

Friday essay: ‘an engineering and biological miracle’ – how I fell for the science, and the poetry, of the eye

Study uncovers earth’s inner core slowing down, backtracking, melissa caddick mystery shows we need more research of a rare kind – marine forensics.

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My first encounter came as a medical student. Under high magnification, I examined a colleague’s iris, the coloured part of their eye encircling the pupil.

I watched as the muscle fibres moved rhythmically, undulating between dilation and constriction. It looked like an underwater plant, swaying in a current.

Mesmerising. But in a busy university curriculum the experience quickly faded, to be replaced by the next clinical rotation. I forgot ophthalmology; “maybe orthopaedic surgery or emergency medicine are for me”, I thought.

But eyes returned, this time while I was a junior doctor in residency. Assisting in surgery, I observed a patient’s retina through an operating microscope. Here was a cinematic view of the orb, as if viewed from a spacecraft over a Martian landscape.

The internal surface glowed blood orange (the colour once ascribed to its rich blood supply, now attributed to a layer of underlying pigmented cells). Within this landscape ran red rivulets, a network of branching blood vessels.

The Greek anatomist Herophilus thought this pattern resembled a casting net, leading to “retiform” (meaning reticular or netlike), which became “retina” in contemporary language (the light-sensitive film at the back of the eye). I was struck by the intricacy of this secret globe, this gallery of miniature art.

The term “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” took on new connotations, and I turned to pursuing ophthalmology. Aside from the organ’s intrinsic appeal, I was struck by the technicality of eye surgery, and the apparent mystique of ophthalmologists themselves.

These unruffled surgeons appeared to float above the general fray, waltzing around the hospital with fancy eye equipment and clever jargon. No one really knew what they did, but they looked cool.

Acceptance into ophthalmology specialist training was notoriously competitive, with only one or two doctors accepted each year in our state. “Why not,” I thought, and went for it, planning my campaign for eligibility. Among other things, this included me experiencing blindness for 24 hours, by using a blindfold as part of a fundraising event, and conducting research on childhood eye disease in Iran, my country of origin.

Nine years later I was a qualified ophthalmologist, having learned the eye’s workings in both health and when diseased. I had come to view the eye as an engineering and biological miracle.

Mammals with seeing brains

A wonderfully elastic ball, the eye can be thought of as housing a camera at the front. This camera focuses incoming light through compound lenses (the cornea and crystalline lens), which are separated by an aperture (the pupil), to form a fine beam.

This beam travels towards a transducer (an electronic device turning one form of energy into another) at the back of the eye (the retina). The transducer converts photons into electrical signals at a rate of around 8.8 megabits (million bits) per second , just shy of a decent ethernet connection.

Carried in an insulated cable (the optic nerve), this electrical current runs backwards through the brain, to the visual cortex. This is the part of the brain that sits just in front of the bony bulge at the back of your skull.

Here is vision’s supercomputer, where incoming, semi-processed data is organised into a final experience of shapes, colours, contrast and movement. Et voila, there you have it: high-definition, stereoscopic human vision.

While the front part of the eye is mainly composed of water, the back is nature’s version of bioelectronics (the convergence of biology and electronics).

Eyesight, then, is an interplay of light, water and electricity, in networks both elemental and complex. This exquisite balance may be further demonstrated through two examples.

First, consider the structure of the cornea. This is the clear “windscreen” at the front of the eye, the only completely transparent tissue in the human body. Its living cells are a plexus of water and collagen, glass-like and liquid enough to permit light, sturdy enough to withstand trauma. Here again lies a balance between the eye’s delicacy and its resilience.

Second, let’s look at the eyes’ development, as direct extensions of our brains. When we are embryos from weeks three to ten, two folds appear on our forebrains (the forward-most portion of our brain). These folds extend forwards, becoming stalks. In turn, they are capped with little cups that turn into globes, later encased in eyelids and lashes.

The brain stretches forward, in other words, to form its own eyes. It’s brain tissue, then, that watches the world – we are the mammals with seeing brains.

Photographs revert to negatives

The descriptions above could perhaps be characterised as a meeting of science and lyricism. This is no accident. While ophthalmology concerns itself with optics, a mathematical affair, I was the schoolkid who loved English class.

Whether writing short stories, or nodding to hip-hop’s street poetry, I was drawn to language. These days I’m predominantly a doctor and family man, and only a dilettante as a writer. Still, I seek language out in the micro-gaps of a day, predawn before the kids wake, or on train rides to and from work.

There’s nothing glamorous about this, and nor is it special. Doctor-writers are far from rare – think of history’s Anton Chekhov or William Carlos Williams , the US’s Atul Gawande , or our own Karen Hitchcock or Michelle Johnston . So far, I’m the only writerly eye surgeon I know of (any others out there – shout!).

Author Margaret Lobenstine believes this sort of “renaissance soul” resides in all of us; after all, we have two cerebral hemispheres, one for reason and one for art (in truth though, the hemispheres cooperate on most tasks).

Let’s pivot fully from eyeballs to writing then, and specifically to poetry, my favoured sandpit.

Robert Frost said, “to be a poet is a condition, not a profession”. Most poets write, I believe, because they must, not because it’s fun or easy (although occasionally it’s both). Sometimes we write to understand or at least to name something, to gather up the events and emotions that move us, dangling like threads to be spooled up into something resembling sense.

In a medical day, I am periodically struck by a patient encounter that leaves me reeling. Perhaps it’s an unexpected confession, or a scrap of a life story. Either way, it’s the emotional charge that, like a vein of gold, points towards a buried poem.

Let’s take a real-life example from my practice, an elderly lady whom we shall call Iris (pun intended).

Iris presents to me with failing vision. Examining her eyes, I see “geographic atrophy”, little islands of missing retinal tissue worn away over time. This is a form of incurable, age-related, macular degeneration. It results in permanent loss of central vision, with peripheral vision remaining intact.

It’s not good news; my stomach tightens as I prepare to deliver it.

Iris replies, tearily, that she just lost her husband of 60 years. She’s now alone and becoming blind. I’m taken aback – what can one honestly say to this?

Sure, there are visual magnifiers, home modifications, other practical aids that may guardrail her physical safety. But her anguish goes beyond this; she’s on the edge of a personal precipice, and teetering. There’s electricity in the consult room, a lightning-rod moment for sure.

How might a poet view this scene? Placing Iris in the centre, let’s start with her appearance – her auburn-dyed hair, her knobbly walking stick, her potpourri perfume – enough to make her real. In addition to portraiture, poetry deals in metaphors; what are some for Iris’s grief?

Colour photographs revert to their negatives, old-fashioned film stark and inverting reality, her life recognisable yet draining of hue.

Turned over, her hourglass clumps onto the table, sand trickling away from having had, towards loss, the two bulbs painfully, inextricably linked.

Good poetry must go further, seeking the patterns beneath the surface. What precisely is it about Iris that moves me so? She is losing things, important things. Witnessing this touches my deepest fears, knowing that, like an unwelcome house guest, loss visits us all, sometimes staying for good.

As my Persian countryman Rumi wrote, “this human being is a guest house”. Losing our own physical abilities or our loved ones, what would become of us?

Distilling this further, what exactly is loss, its weight and texture?

Inversions, your cherished glass of shiraz shatters on the tiles, your laden table upended. Warmth whistles out through the cracks, cold rises up. Midnight: your reasons for living dwindle, walking out the door one by one.

Dark, heavy material no doubt; well, welcome to medicine, and to real life. No wonder Iris’s visit rattles me. The poet must face this discomfort, exploring the interplay between the miniscule and the panoramic, the worldly and the transcendent.

Tasked with creating visions for life, from its mundane to its profoundest moments, poets, then, are our seers.

Anger and solace

I’m now in my 18th year working exclusively with eyes, the latter half as a qualified consultant ophthalmologist. These days, the toughest conditions I face are diseases without a cure, such as Iris’s geographic atrophy, or vision loss that could have been prevented, such as solar retinopathy .

In other scenarios, there are eye diseases caused by modern living. An example of this is diabetic eye disease, which disproportionately affects Indigenous people. When compared with non-Indigenous people, Indigenous Australians suffer three times the rate of vision loss from diabetes .

The reasons for this are manifold, and include the easy access to sugar-laden beverages in many Indigenous communities . As ophthalmologists, we deal with the downstream effects of high blood sugar levels. This manifests as “diabetic macular oedema”, where a swelling at the back of the eye leads to loss of vision .

Fortunately, we have good treatments for this condition . But prevention is far better than cure. As one measure, why don’t we impose a sugar tax, as more than 100 other countries have done? . By introducing refined sugars into a healthy traditional diet, modern Australia has arguably created this problem. By corollary, we have a duty to solve it .

This is an opportunity for resistance and empowerment .

Hauled over on ships, white crystals in barrels – dispossession’s sweetener – now sat on shelves, bright bottles singing cheap songs to thirsty eyes. We’ll brand you yet: mark your barrels ‘poison’.

Conditions like this, where modern society harms people – for astronomical corporate profits, mind you – are infuriating.

Thankfully, there is solace in my ongoing fascination with the eye. There are moments of sheer beauty; images of fluorescein angiography , for example, where the retina’s blood vessels are highlighted with a fluorescent dye as a diagnostic tool.

These angiograms remind me of lightning storms in our state’s northwest, where cloud-to-cloud and sheet lightning flash in the night sky in split-second forks and streams. Much as power and charge flow in the sky, so blood is distributed in the back of the eye.

Also spurring me on are patients’ success stories, where sight is restored or blindness prevented.

Twenty years in a Thai refugee camp, now sat in front of me, grandma from Myanmar. Twenty years to lose light – this cataract surgery won’t return your nation, grandma, but at least it’s restored your sight.

These stories abound, such is the privilege of my profession.

A race between science and time

There may even be hope for Iris. Her condition, geographic atrophy, is caused in part by her immune system, and its complement proteins. This network of proteins marks selected entities (typically pathogens or tumour cells) for destruction by immune cells such as lymphocytes, phagocytes and macrophages.

For reasons including localised inflammation and reduced oxygen delivery, this response can, in ageing, be misdirected towards healthy retinal tissue, leading to its destruction – a process akin to friendly fire in battle.

For Iris, the cavalry may be cresting the hill. In 2023, two new medications were approved for the treatment of geographic atrophy in the US. Both block targets within our complement system and, while not curative, have been shown to slow (although not reverse or stop) the disease. By late 2024, we should know whether one of these drugs, pegcetacoplan, is approved in Australia.

Starter’s pistol fires! A race afoot between science and time. Do the molecules work and – as the clock chimes – will they cross the line to save sight?

Hessom Razavi , Associate professor, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

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UPSC Essays Simplified: Structure and Flow of a good essay– the third step

How to build a 'structure and flow' in a good essay our expert takes you through the third stage of writing an essay in upsc essentials' new series. don't miss the essay exercise towards the end of the article..

How to write essays for UPSC Civil Services Exams?   This is one of the most popular questions among aspirants. In UPSC Essentials’ special series  UPSC Essays Simplified , we take you through various steps of writing a good essay. While there is no set formula or fixed criteria prescribed,  Manas Srivastava  talks to  Ravi Kapoor , our expert, in this new series who guides the aspirants with a simplified framework on how to write a good essay. Don’t miss  ‘The Essay Exercise’  towards the end of the article.

Ravi Kapoor focuses on the following steps of pre-writing and writing stages which will help aspirants to write a ‘good essay’.

Today, we will focus on Step 3. 

About our Expert:   Ravi Kapoor IRS (R) , has now ditched his coveted rank of deputy commissioner and has offered free quality mentorship to UPSC aspirants, drawing upon his ten years of experience to create customised and productive curriculum. Through a free mentorship programme, he integrates tailored educational materials, psychological principles, visual learning techniques, and a strong emphasis on mental well-being into his teaching skills granting aspirants a chance to learn from his expertise.

How to have a ‘Structure and Flow’ in a good essay?

Everyone knows that an essay should be broken down into an introduction, body and conclusion. But what is written inside these 3 components and HOW it is written makes the difference between an essay fetching average or excellent scores.

Structuring and flow refer to the organisation of the essay and your ideas therein.

A good structure is a way of organising information that fits well with the essay topic and the ideas you wish to present in your arguments such that the reader can make sense of the entire write-up without much effort.

Good flow refers to how your arguments and counterarguments connect from one to another such that the reader finds it logically connected and easy to comprehend.

An essay without these elements will appear to be disorganized, jargoned, hard to comprehend and overall, complicated.

Contrary to popular belief, flow and structure are not subjective writing skills that are inborn in good writers but can be learned and improved upon. What follows is a series of structuring techniques that will help you choose the best one for any essay topic you may encounter.

What are different types of structures? 

1. 2 side face-off:.

This is the oldest trick in the book. While writing the body of the essay, you divide it into arguments and counterarguments. In other words, you compare one side of the debate with the other.

For example:

“Thinking is like a game; it does not begin unless there is an opposite team”

The body of the essay can be divided into 2 parts- one agreeing with the statement and one disagreeing with it as follows:

Thinking is reciprocal as thought builds on other thoughts. The Socratic method, championed by Socrates, is a testament to this idea. Socrates would go around Athens spreading knowledge by asking questions and inciting dialogue which would lead the conversationist to the point of realization about something new and profound.

Similarly, when Einstein said he was standing on the shoulders of giants, he meant that his theory of relativity was built using many ideas developed by mathematicians and physicists who came before him.

The reciprocal nature of thought helps to improve it by allowing dissent and counterarguments much like a game of chess. An example is the Case study pioneered by Harvard Business School wherein one case is debated upon in detail considering various strategies before arriving at the optimal one.

While dissent and opposition can lead to many a good idea, there are more ways for thought to develop into ideas within human consciousness. Human cognition is too complex to be restricted to one mode of thinking. A Case in point is intuitive or creative thinking that can arise spontaneously without the interlocking of two human intelligences.

For instance, creative geniuses often hit upon their best ideas out of the blue in ‘Eureka’ moments that seem to arise from within the subconscious mind without the presence of an opponent.

Another example is ‘thought-experiments’ used by philosophers that are designed to be introspective exercises that one engages with, with oneself. Thought experiments are indispensable tools for philosophers and physicists to offer insight into a profound problem of logic and metaphysics.

2.Dimensional analysis:

It has become fashionable to break the essay topic into various dimensions such as Social, Cultural, Historical, Economic etc. But this is not a one-size-fits-all method and may or may not work with every essay topic.

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in the school…”

While this topic can be written about based on various dimensions such as economic, historical, social etc, it is not necessarily the best structure for it.

Instead, a better way to present the information in this essay topic would have a mix of chronology and analysis in the following way-

We are blank slates when we are born onto which society and culture leave their imprint. Through childhood and adolescence, the education system seeks to put us through a treadmill of learning, hoping for a fully functional human to emerge at the end. Sadly, the world that awaits a young adult after school is often very different from what the education system has imparted.

Memorization, exams, grades and NCERT books amount to nothing in a world driven by start-ups, ChatGPT and Social Media influencers…. Please note that the dimensions such as social, cultural and historical factors can also be mentioned in the body of the essay as supporting content ideas.

In most essay topics, these dimensions are best used to describe the reasons and impact of an issue or debate instead of as just a structure.

3. Timeline and Chronology

Some essay topics are uniquely suited for a chronological structure wherein you take the reader through a historical journey or evolution such as :

“History is a series of victories won by the scientific man over the romantic man”

This topic is about the ancient debate between rationality and idealism. To write well about it, you would have to trace the through major historical intellectual movements such as the Scientific Revolution, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, etc. While doing so, you could mention how each stage was relevant for rational thinking versus idealism with relevant examples.

While you do so chronologically, remember to also present a balanced approach in your arguments- On every stage, you can mention how rational thinking and idealism have been in a tight relationship, but both have been an integral part of human consciousness representing creativity and logic. You may also mention how this to and fro has enriched human civilisation and led to the development of science and art.

4. Anecdotes and stories

Many students like to start their essays with an anecdote- a personal story or an imaginary one about characters highlighting the debate presented in the essay topic. While this is not a bad strategy, it requires a fair amount of creative writing ability to pull off properly. It is also important to mention that anecdotes are not the most suitable vehicle to comprehensively deal with the essay topic as not all arguments can easily fit into a personal story.

An example of a good use of anecdotal structure is:

“Not all who wander are lost”

About 2000 years ago, a wandering prince changed the world by questioning the most profound and radical assumptions about human existence. Prince Siddhartha was bathed in luxury and wanted for nothing. But when we saw the naked reality of the world and all its suffering, he could not silence his mind to the questions that we take for granted- why is there suffering and death? If suffering is inevitable then what is the point of life? Is there peace to be found or are we doomed to suffer in this life?

He wandered for years in search of answers, as lost as a soul can be. But in the end, it was his wandering that changed the world forever. When he became the Buddha, he not only found himself but saved millions of others from being lost themselves….

Anecdotes can make for good hooks or introductions to an essay but may not serve well to cover the entire body of the essay.

The Essay Exercise

Important points to note: 

• You can choose which type of structure to use- there is no single best choice.
• You may use more than 1 type of structure.
• You may use structures for introduction, body and conclusion.

Subscribe  to our  UPSC newsletter  and stay updated with the news cues from the past week.

The UPSC articles of  Indian Express  is now on Telegram.  Join our Telegram channel-  Indian Express  UPSC Hub and stay updated with the latest Updates. For your answers, queries and suggestions write at  manas.srivastava@ indianexpress.com .

Manas Srivastava is currently working as Deputy Copy Editor with The Indian Express (digital) and majorly writes for UPSC-related projects leading a unique initiative known as UPSC Essentials. In the past, Manas has represented India at the G-20 Youth Summit in Mexico. He is a former member of the Youth Council, GOI. A two-time topper/gold medallist in History (both in graduation and post-graduation) from Delhi University, he has mentored and taught UPSC aspirants for more than four years. His diverse role in The Indian Express consists of writing, editing, anchoring/ hosting, interviewing experts, and curating and simplifying news for the benefit of students. He hosts the YouTube talk show called ‘Art and Culture with Devdutt Pattanaik’ and a LIVE series on Instagram and YouTube called ‘You Ask We Answer’.His talks on ‘How to read a newspaper’ focus on newspaper reading as an essential habit for students. His articles and videos aim at finding solutions to the general queries of students and hence he believes in being students' editor, preparing them not just for any exam but helping them to become informed citizens. This is where he makes his teaching profession meet journalism. He is also currently working on a monthly magazine for UPSC Aspirants. He is a recipient of the Dip Chand Memorial Award, the Lala Ram Mohan Prize and Prof. Papiya Ghosh Memorial Prize for academic excellence. He was also awarded the University’s Post-Graduate Scholarship for pursuing M.A. in History where he chose to specialise in Ancient India due to his keen interest in Archaeology. He has also successfully completed a Certificate course on Women’s Studies by the Women’s Studies Development Centre, DU. As a part of N.S.S in the past, Manas has worked with national and international organisations and has shown keen interest and active participation in Social Service. He has led and been a part of projects involving areas such as gender sensitisation, persons with disability, helping slum dwellers, environment, adopting our heritage programme. He has also presented a case study on ‘Psychological stress among students’ at ICSQCC- Sri Lanka. As a compere for seminars and other events he likes to keep his orating hobby alive. His interests also lie in International Relations, Governance, Social issues, Essays and poetry. ... Read More

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British Academics Despair as ChatGPT-Written Essays Swamp Grading Season

‘It’s not a machine for cheating; it’s a machine for producing crap,’ says one professor infuriated by the rise of bland essays.

By  Jack Grove for Times Higher Education

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The increased prevalence of students using ChatGPT to write essays should prompt a rethink about whether current policies encouraging “ethical” use of artificial intelligence (AI) are working, scholars have argued.

With marking season in full flow, lecturers have taken to social media in large numbers to complain about AI-generated content found in submitted work.

Telltale signs of ChatGPT use, according to academics, include little-used words such as “delve” and “multifaceted,” summarizing key themes using bullet points and a jarring conversational style using terms such as, “Let’s explore this theme.”

In a more obvious giveaway, one professor said an advertisement for an AI essay company was  buried in a paper’s introduction ; another academic noted how a student had  forgotten to remove a chatbot statement  that the content was AI-generated.

“I had no idea how many would resort to it,” admitted  one U.K. law professor .

Des Fitzgerald, professor of medical humanities and social sciences at  University College Cork , told  Times Higher Education  that student use of AI had “gone totally mainstream” this year.

“Across a batch of essays, you do start to notice the tics of ChatGPT essays, which is partly about repetition of certain words or phrases, but is also just a kind of aura of machinic blandness that’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t encountered it—an essay with no edges, that does nothing technically wrong or bad, but not much right or good, either,” said Professor Fitzgerald.

Since  ChatGPT’s emergence in late 2022 , some universities have adopted policies to allow the use of AI as long as it is acknowledged, while others have begun using AI content detectors, although  opinion is divided on their effectiveness .

According to the  latest Student Academic Experience Survey , for which Advance HE and the Higher Education Policy Institute polled around 10,000 U.K. undergraduates, 61 percent use AI at least a little each month, “in a way allowed by their institution,” while 31 percent do so every week.

Professor Fitzgerald said that although some colleagues “think we just need to live with this, even that we have a duty to teach students to use it well,” he was “totally against” the use of AI tools for essays.

“ChatGPT is completely antithetical to everything I think I’m doing as a teacher—working with students to engage with texts, thinking through ideas, learning to clarify and express complex thoughts, taking some risks with those thoughts, locating some kind of distinctive inner voice. ChatGPT is total poison for all of this, and we need to simply ban it,” he said.

Steve Fuller, professor of sociology at the  University of Warwick , agreed that AI use had “become more noticeable” this year despite his students signing contracts saying they would not use it to write essays.

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He said he was not opposed to students using it “as long as what they produce sounds smart and on point, and the marker can’t recognize it as simply having been lifted from another source wholesale.”

Those who leaned heavily on the technology should expect a relatively low mark, even though they might pass, said Professor Fuller.

“Students routinely commit errors of fact, reasoning and grammar [without ChatGPT], yet if their text touches enough bases with the assignment, they’re likely to get somewhere in the low- to mid-60s. ChatGPT does a credible job at simulating such mediocrity, and that’s good enough for many of its student users,” he said.

Having to mark such mediocre essays partly generated by AI is, however, a growing complaint among academics. Posting on X,  Lancaster University  economist  Renaud Foucart  said marking AI-generated essays “takes much more time to assess [because] I need to concentrate much more to cut through the amount of seemingly logical statements that are actually full of emptiness.”

“My biggest issue [with AI] is less the moral issue about cheating but more what ChatGPT offers students,” Professor Fitzgerald added. “All it is capable of is [writing] bad essays made up of non-ideas and empty sentences. It’s not a machine for cheating; it’s a machine for producing crap.”

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Article contents

Narrative theory.

• Didier Coste Didier Coste Universite Bordeaux Montaigne
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.116
• Published online: 28 June 2017

The narrative mode of world-representation and world-building is omnipresent and far exceeds the domain of literature. Since literature is not necessarily narrative and narrative not necessarily literary, the study of narrative in a literary context must confront narrative and literature in a dual way: How does the presence of narrative affect literature? And how does literariness affect narrative? The basic terminology needs to be clarified by comparing English with the vocabulary of other natural languages. No consensus has been reached, even in the West, on the nature of narrative discourse.

The entire history of poetics shows that, before the middle of the 20th century, little attention was paid to the narrative components of literary texts qua narrative—that is, insofar as the same narrative elements could equally be found in non-aestheticized uses of verbal and non-verbal languages. Aristotelian poetics, based on the mimesis of human action, keeps its grip on narrative theory. The post-Aristotelian triad separated more sharply the lyric from the epic and dramatic genres, but modern narrative theories, mostly based on the study of folk tales and the novel, have still failed to unify the field of literary narrative, or have done it artificially, dissolving narrative discourse into the undifferentiated experience of human life in linear time.

The Western “rise of the novel,” in Ian Watt’s sense, and its worldwide expansion, turned the question of fiction, not that of narrativity, into the main focus of narrative studies. Later, the emergence of formalism and semiotics and the “linguistic turn” of the social sciences pushed the narrative analysis of literary texts in the opposite direction, with all of its efforts bearing on minimal, supposedly deeper units and simple concatenations. The permanent, unresolved conflict between an analytical and constructivist view grounded in individual events and a holistic view concerned with story-worlds and storytelling leaves mostly unattended such fundamental questions as how narrative is used by literature and literature by narrative for their own ends.

Literary narrativity must be thoroughly reconsidered. A critical, transdisciplinary theory should submit to both logical and empirical trial—on a large number of varied samples—and narrative analyses that would take into account the following concepts used to forge methodological tools: discrimination (between the functions of discourse genres and between pragmatic roles in literary communication); combination rules (whether linear or not); levels (as spatial placing, as interdependence and hierarchical authority); scale and spatiotemporal framing and backgrounding , especially the (dominant) time concepts in a particular cultural context. The preconditions for analysis begin by investigating the relation between aesthetic emotions and narrative in other cultural domains than the West and the English-speaking world.

Literary narrativity and social values concur to link the rhetorical manipulation of narrative with its aestheticization. The pleasure and fear of cognition combine with strategies of delusion to either acquiesce to the effects of time and violence or resist them; routine and rupture are alternatively foregrounded, according to needs.

• literary aesthetics
• narrativity
• reader response
• spatiotemporal framing

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When is the first 2024 presidential debate between Trump and Biden? Date, time, moderators, how to watch

President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump will face off for their first debate of the 2024 election cycle later this month.

CNN, the host of the June 27 debate in Atlanta , recently released additional rules: Both candidates' microphones will be muted until it is their turn to speak, and they won't be allowed to interact with campaign staff during the two commercial breaks.

Trump and Biden skirted the  Commission on Presidential Debates and opted for earlier debates this year. The second debate is scheduled for Sept. 10, hosted by ABC.

Here is everything you need to know about watching the first presidential debate:

Who is Dana Bash? What to know about the moderator ahead of the June Presidential Debate

Who is Jake Tapper? What to know about the moderator ahead of the June Presidential Debate

When is the first Biden-Trump debate?

The first debate will be held on June 27, 2024.

What time is the presidential debate?

The CNN Presidential Debate will begin at 9 p.m. ET.

How can I watch the first debate between Trump and Biden?

CNN will host the first election debate between the two candidates in its Atlanta studio.

The debate will air live on CNN, CNN International, CNN en Español and CNN Max.

For those without a cable subscription, the debate will be streaming on CNN.com , the network said in a news release.

Who are the moderators for the first Biden-Trump debate?

CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will moderate the debate.

Who is eligible to participate in the debates?

To qualify for participation, candidates must meet the following criteria, according to CNN:

• "Fulfill the requirements outlined in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution
• "File a Statement of Candidacy with the Federal Election Commission
• "A candidate's name must appear on a sufficient number of state ballots to reach the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidency prior to the eligibility deadline
• "Agree to accept the rules and format of the debate
• "Receive at least 15% in four separate national polls of registered or likely voters that meet CNN's standards for reporting."

It is unlikely that independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  will meet the requirements to participate in the debate.

Contributing: Sudiksha Kochi

• The exponential growth of solar power will change the world

An energy-rich future is within reach

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I t is 70 years since AT&T ’s Bell Labs unveiled a new technology for turning sunlight into power. The phone company hoped it could replace the batteries that run equipment in out-of-the-way places. It also realised that powering devices with light alone showed how science could make the future seem wonderful; hence a press event at which sunshine kept a toy Ferris wheel spinning round and round.

Today solar power is long past the toy phase. Panels now occupy an area around half that of Wales, and this year they will provide the world with about 6% of its electricity—which is almost three times as much electrical energy as America consumed back in 1954. Yet this historic growth is only the second-most-remarkable thing about the rise of solar power. The most remarkable is that it is nowhere near over.

To call solar power’s rise exponential is not hyperbole, but a statement of fact. Installed solar capacity doubles roughly every three years, and so grows ten-fold each decade. Such sustained growth is seldom seen in anything that matters. That makes it hard for people to get their heads round what is going on. When it was a tenth of its current size ten years ago, solar power was still seen as marginal even by experts who knew how fast it had grown. The next ten-fold increase will be equivalent to multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight in less than the time it typically takes to build just a single one of them.

Solar cells will in all likelihood be the single biggest source of electrical power on the planet by the mid 2030s. By the 2040s they may be the largest source not just of electricity but of all energy. On current trends, the all-in cost of the electricity they produce promises to be less than half as expensive as the cheapest available today. This will not stop climate change, but could slow it a lot faster. Much of the world—including Africa , where 600m people still cannot light their homes—will begin to feel energy-rich. That feeling will be a new and transformational one for humankind.

To grasp that this is not some environmentalist fever dream, consider solar economics. As the cumulative production of a manufactured good increases, costs go down. As costs go down, demand goes up. As demand goes up, production increases—and costs go down further. This cannot go on for ever; production, demand or both always become constrained. In earlier energy transitions—from wood to coal, coal to oil or oil to gas—the efficiency of extraction grew, but it was eventually offset by the cost of finding ever more fuel.

As our essay this week explains, solar power faces no such constraint. The resources needed to produce solar cells and plant them on solar farms are silicon-rich sand, sunny places and human ingenuity, all three of which are abundant. Making cells also takes energy, but solar power is fast making that abundant, too. As for demand, it is both huge and elastic—if you make electricity cheaper, people will find uses for it. The result is that, in contrast to earlier energy sources, solar power has routinely become cheaper and will continue to do so.

Other constraints do exist. Given people’s proclivity for living outside daylight hours, solar power needs to be complemented with storage and supplemented by other technologies. Heavy industry and aviation and freight have been hard to electrify. Fortunately, these problems may be solved as batteries and fuels created by electrolysis gradually become cheaper.

Another worry is that the vast majority of the world’s solar panels, and almost all the purified silicon from which they are made, come from China. Its solar industry is highly competitive, heavily subsidised and is outstripping current demand—quite an achievement given all the solar capacity China is installing within its own borders. This means that Chinese capacity is big enough to keep the expansion going for years to come, even if some of the companies involved go to the wall and some investment dries up.

In the long run, a world in which more energy is generated without the oil and gas that come from unstable or unfriendly parts of the world will be more dependable. Still, although the Chinese Communist Party cannot rig the price of sunlight as OPEC tries to rig that of oil, the fact that a vital industry resides in a single hostile country is worrying.

It is a concern that America feels keenly, which is why it has put tariffs on Chinese solar equipment. However, because almost all the demand for solar panels still lies in the future, the rest of the world will have plenty of scope to get into the market. America’s adoption of solar energy could be frustrated by a pro-fossil-fuel Trump presidency, but only temporarily and painfully. It could equally be enhanced if America released pent up demand, by making it easier to install panels on homes and to join the grid—the country has a terawatt of new solar capacity waiting to be connected. Carbon prices would help, just as they did in the switch from coal to gas in the European Union.

The aim should be for the virtuous circle of solar-power production to turn as fast as possible. That is because it offers the prize of cheaper energy. The benefits start with a boost to productivity. Anything that people use energy for today will cost less—and that includes pretty much everything. Then come the things cheap energy will make possible. People who could never afford to will start lighting their houses or driving a car. Cheap energy can purify water, and even desalinate it. It can drive the hungry machinery of artificial intelligence. It can make billions of homes and offices more bearable in summers that will, for decades to come, be getting hotter.

But it is the things that nobody has yet thought of that will be most consequential. In its radical abundance, cheaper energy will free the imagination, setting tiny Ferris wheels of the mind spinning with excitement and new possibilities.

This week marks the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. The Sun rising to its highest point in the sky will in decades to come shine down on a world where nobody need go without the blessings of electricity and where the access to energy invigorates all those it touches. ■

For subscribers only: to see how we design each week’s cover, sign up to our weekly  Cover Story newsletter .

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “The solar age”

Leaders June 22nd 2024

Ai will transform the character of warfare, emmanuel macron’s project of reform is at risk, how to tax billionaires—and how not to, javier milei’s next move could make his presidency—or break it, india should liberate its cities and create more states.

From the June 22nd 2024 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

More from Leaders

Nigel Farage’s claim that NATO provoked Russia is naive and dangerous

It is also a wilful misreading of history

Technology will make war faster and more opaque. It could also prove destabilising

A snap election in France reveals the flimsiness of his legacy

It doesn’t need more government. It needs more governments

Radical experiments with the currency could spell disaster

Closing loopholes would be a better bet than a levy on unrealised capital gains

Secret’s out! Amazon announces the official dates for Prime Day — we have early deals to shop now

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All about Céline Dion's documentary: Where to watch 'I Am: Celine Dion'

Céline Dion is giving fans an inside look at her life in her new documentary, "I Am: Celine Dion."

In the trailer , Dion's love of performing is on display, as is her longing to get back to the stage. The singer had to cancel the remainder of her world tour in 2023 due to health issues associated with her stiff person syndrome diagnosis.

This progressive, neurological disorder causes muscle stiffness in the torso and limbs, and a heightened sensitivity to noise, touch and emotional stress, which can set off painful muscle spasms, according to the  National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

"I'm working hard everyday, but I have to admit, it's been a struggle. I miss it so much. The people, I miss them," she says while tearing up.

Dion hasn't performed onstage in about four years. However, she has made some public appearances.

Dion presented an award to Taylor Swift at the 2024 Grammy Awards, where she was accompanied onstage by her adult son, René-Charles.

In an interview with People , she said she was fearful about experiencing a crisis onstage because she didn't want to feel overstimulated by the audience.

"I didn’t want anything bad to happen," she said.

She has also attended hockey games in recent months with her sons . In addition to René-Charles, the 56-year-old has 13-year-old twins Nelson and Eddy. She shared her kids with husband René Angélil, who died in 2016 .

However, Dion appears to be doing her best to return to the stage.

"If I can't run, I'll walk. If I can't walk, I'll crawl — and I won't stop," she says in the trailer.

She made a similar vow about returning to performing in an interview ahead of the documentary's release with TODAY co-anchor Hoda Kotb .

“I’m going to go back onstage, even if I have to crawl,” Dion said. “Even if I have to talk with my hands, I will. I will.”

Read on to learn all about Dion's documentary.

What is 'I Am: Celine Dion' about?

According to Prime Video , this documentary gives fans a "raw and honest behind-the-scenes look at the iconic superstar’s struggle with a life-altering illness."

The "inspirational documentary" spotlights the music that has "guided" Dion throughout her life, while displaying "the resilience of the human spirit." Viewer discretion is also advised, as "the film contains powerful scenes of medical trauma."

How to watch 'I Am: Celine Dion'?

"I Am: Celine Dion" is set to be released on Prime Video on June 25 at 3 a.m. ET.

The film was also shown in theaters for one weekend only from June 21 to June 23 before its streaming release.

Joyann Jeffrey is a trending news reporter based in New York City

Travis Kelce responds to Taylor Swift’s dancer’s post about London performance: ‘More memories to come’

Jewelry designer spills details on Taylor Swift’s new ring, which features Travis Kelce’s jersey number: EXCLUSIVE

A 6-year-old boy drowned at his New Jersey summer camp

Popeyes is adding boneless wings to its menu: How to try them for free

Restaurants.

Alanis Morissette sings ‘Ironic’ with her 8-year-old: ‘You are my dream daughter’

These stories are dividing the internet. What's your vote?

World's tallest dog dies just days after earning title, Guinness World Records announces

Pets & animals.

Travis Kelce recalls the moment he started to 'really fall' for Taylor Swift

Pop culture.

Black music month: Game-changing artists from every genre that are worth the listen

Eddie Murphy says his ‘Shrek’ character, Donkey, is getting his own movie

What each side hopes to gain in the presidential debate

Advisers to Biden are pushing him to show himself as a vigorous president, while advisers to Trump hope he will rein in his excesses.

Donald Trump’s campaign argues that Joe Biden is a feeble incompetent — disconnected from reality as his aides shuttle him around the world, in the words of one Trump adviser , like the cadaver in the 1989 comedy film “Weekend at Bernie’s.”

Biden’s campaign describes Trump as an “unhinged” extremist with dictatorial designs who “snapped” when he lost the 2020 election , forfeiting the ability to do anything other than focus on growing his own power.

The two caricatures — built on selective editing, blasted out by well-funded electoral machines and amplified through partisans on social media — have come to define the early months of the general election, giving voters on both sides of the spectrum punching bags for their discontent.

But for the population of voters likely to decide the election — a group that dislikes the choice and wants neither man to return to office — the cacophony of recrimination has done little to clarify the choice.

Thursday’s presidential debate in Atlanta will, among other things, offer both men a rare chance to prove their opponents wrong in real time, as they stand together onstage, without edits, before what promises to be an enormous national audience. Voters who get to make the final call in the voting booth will be offered a 90-minute window into what is real and what is spin about their major-party choices.

Aware of the stakes, advisers to both candidates have been preparing their bosses to avoid traps set by their opponents. Biden’s aides hope to present a vigorous president — in command of the issues, able to take Trump on directly and explain to the American people his own accomplishments in office. Trump’s advisers have been coaching their candidate to focus on the issue advantages in the polls, reaffirming the image of him as a tough businessman ready to disrupt Washington that got him elected in 2016.

“If the former president focuses on those issues that Americans care about, immigration, crime, big pocketbook issues, inflation … he’s victorious,” said David Urban, a former Trump campaign adviser and GOP strategist. “If he focuses on the past election, personal grievance, I think those things probably won’t serve him as well.”

Others have been even more explicit in their definition of Trump’s goal for the event, which is to downplay the irascible and explosive leader that Biden describes.

“I think what Donald Trump wants to do is make this about issues and why he was a better president than Joe Biden was and will be a better president again,” said Trump’s longtime pollster Jim McLaughlin. “It’s about a vision. He can give a lot of examples and real-life stories about how he brought peace to the Middle East, brought inflation down, secured the border and kept people safe.”

Kate Bedingfield, a former communications adviser to Biden, agreed that Trump’s most obvious path was to try to avoid the explosive outbursts that tarred him after their first meeting in the 2020 campaign. The Biden operation will be ready for the shift, she said, and can overcome it by Biden appearing aggressive.

“For Biden, the goal is to be on offense and driving Trump to his biggest vulnerabilities,” she said. “There is every expectation that the disciplined Trump shows up, but even if that is the case the opportunity for Biden is huge.”

The stakes have led both campaigns to take extraordinary measures in hopes that their candidate will play against type. Biden’s coterie of advisers have undertaken a deliberate and extensive process at Camp David to prepare the president to overperform expectations, as he did in this year’s State of the Union address, to demonstrate his command of the issues and the office that he holds. Trump advisers, faced with a candidate less interested in debate preparation, have repeatedly tried to emphasize that the former president’s top priority is to highlight his difference with Biden on issues such as inflation and immigration.

The structure of the confrontation could also help determine its outcome. Both Trump and the moderators at CNN have accepted Biden’s terms for the meeting: There will be no studio audience, two commercial breaks and microphones that immediately shut off when a candidate does not have the floor.

At stake is not just possible movement in the polls, which have shown some slight improvement for Biden since Trump’s felony convictions in New York. Both campaigns also hope to use the event as a chance to engage directly with voters, hoping to yield both campaign donations and, in the case of the Biden campaign, a resurgence in volunteer energy.

The debate will be aired across major broadcast and cable channels, with CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, PBS, Univision channels and other cable news networks planning to take the event live at 9 p.m. Eastern time. The moderators are CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley and co-chair Lara Trump are hosting a watch party and fundraiser the night of the debate, which will include several potential vice-presidential contenders. According to an invitation obtained by The Washington Post, Trump may deliver post-debate remarks.

The Biden campaign on Sunday announced plans for 300 debate watch parties and more than 1,600 events this week across targeted states. Some of those events are organized around the two-year anniversary Monday of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion , a move that was made possible by Trump’s three appointments to the court.

The Biden campaign has also increased its spending on television and digital ads in the run-up to the debate, spending more than twice as much in mid-June as it spent in mid-May, according to AdImpact. Total spending last week was nearly $9.2 million, according to AdImpact, compared with almost no spending by the Trump campaign.

Biden has sequestered himself since Thursday with nearly all of his senior team at the presidential retreat at Camp David to prepare. Among those present are former White House counsel Bob Bauer, who played Trump in 2020 debate prep sessions, and former chief of staff Ron Klain, who has led Democratic nominee debate prep sessions for decades.

In total, 16 senior White House and campaign officials are expected to join Biden before he departs for the debate Thursday, including current chief of staff Jeff Zients, message and polling guru Mike Donilon, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden advisers said.

Trump has been warming up in public, addressing both a Philadelphia arena rally Saturday and a gathering of Christian conservatives at a conference in Washington.

Trump mocked Biden for taking time to prepare and the moderators he will face. “He’s sleeping now because they want to get him good and strong,” Trump said in Philadelphia. “Think of it. There is no audience. It’s like death.”

Trump also asked supporters at the rally how he should handle Biden, suggesting he may not have fully embraced the advice of his campaign team. “Should I be tough and nasty and just say, ‘You’re the worst president in history,’ or should I be nice and calm and let him speak?” Trump asked. He laughed when a member of the audience suggested a “50/50” approach, and then answered his own question: “Be tough. Be tough.”

The Trump team in recent weeks has opted for more informal policy sessions with different outside supporters, according to people familiar with the planning. Sens. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) are among those who have helped Trump in preparing. Vance participated in a session about the economy, according to a person familiar with the meeting, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The approach reflects the challenges Trump advisers have had in past elections trying to get Trump to sit for conventional debate preparations. People involved in the sessions before the first debate of the 2020 cycle have described it as a chaotic environment, with little rehearsal actually taking place. The campaign has adopted the position this year that traditional prep is not needed.

“President Trump takes on numerous tough interviews every single week and delivers lengthy rally speeches while standing, demonstrating elite stamina,” Trump senior adviser Jason Miller said in a statement. “He does not need to be programmed by staff.”

But there are signs that Trump was moving away from the doddering caricature he has long tried to paint about his opponent. In a recent interview on the “All-In” podcast, the former president took a different tone.

“I assume he’s going to be somebody that will be a worthy debater,” Trump said on the podcast. “I don’t want to underestimate him.”

Election 2024

Get the latest news on the 2024 election from our reporters on the campaign trail and in Washington.

Who is running?: President Biden and Donald Trump secured their parties’ nominations for the presidency . Here’s how we ended up with a Trump-Biden rematch .

Presidential debates: Biden and Trump agreed to a June 27 debate on CNN and a Sept. 10 debate broadcast by ABC News. Here are the rules for the CNN presidential debate .

Key dates and events: From January to June, voters in all states and U.S. territories will pick their party’s nominee for president ahead of the summer conventions. Here are key dates and events on the 2024 election calendar .

Abortion and the election: Voters in about a dozen states could decide the fate of abortion rights with constitutional amendments on the ballot in a pivotal election year. Biden supports legal access to abortion , and he has encouraged Congress to pass a law that would codify abortion rights nationwide. After months of mixed signals about his position, Trump said the issue should be left to states . Here’s how Biden’s and Trump’s abortion stances have shifted over the years.

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The analysis of collective orientation and process feedback in relation to coordination and performance in interdependently working teams

Effective teamwork is not only essential for teams themselves, but also for organizations and our society. To facilitate team processes and enhance team performance, feedback interventions are a widely used means. However, different types of feedback (i.e., individual vs. team-level feedback, performance vs. process feedback) can have various effects leaving the question of their effectiveness unanswered. This is especially important when team members’ attitudes (namely collective orientation) are considered. Thus, understanding the interplay between types of feedback and team members’ attitudes would reveal new opportunities for fostering reliable teamwork. The methodology of the present study is based on a laboratory approach. Teams ( N = 142) of two worked together over four scenarios to extinguish forest fires in a microworld. We examined the effects of collective orientation on team coordination and team performance. To understand the interplay between feedback and attitudes we examined the effect of different feedback interventions on team performance and on a change in collective orientation. For analyzing multilevel mediation and changes over time, Bayesian multilevel models were applied. Results show a positive relationship between collective orientation and team performance mediated by coordination. Additionally, team-level process and performance feedback seem to be slightly more beneficial for maintaining performance over time with increasing difficulty of the task compared to individual-level process feedback. Feedback can lead to an increase in collective orientation if these values are low at the beginning. Our research highlights the importance of collective orientation and feedback interventions on team processes and performance for interdependently working teams.

This article is published in the Journal "PLoS One" (2024).

Bibliographic information

Title:  the analysis of collective orientation and process feedback in relation to coordination and performance in interdependently working teams . .

Written by:  V. Hagemann, M. Rieth, K. N. Klasmeier

in: PLoS One, Volume 19, Issue 3, 2024.  pages: 1-22, Project number: F 2549, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0297565

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Bronny James Reveals His Favorite NBA Player Of All-Time

Ben stinar | 3 hours ago.

Bronny James will be among the most discussed prospects with the 2024 NBA Draft this week.

James played one season of college basketball for the USC Trojans before declaring for the draft.

On Monday, NBA Future Starts Now released a clip of James being asked who his favorite player is.

He named his father.

Reporter: "Favorite NBA player. Past or present?"

James: "LeBron James."

You’ll never guess Bronny’s favorite player 👀 The 2024 #NBADraft presented by State Farm begins Wednesday, June 26 at 8pm/et on ABC/ESPN  pic.twitter.com/N46MlFfqM1 — NBA Future Starts Now (@nbafuturenow) June 24, 2024

Bronny finished his one season with the Trojans with averages of 4.8 points, 2.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists per contest while shooting 36.6% from the field and 26.7% from the three-point range in 25 games.

He was ranked (by ESPN ) as the 20th best high school player in the class of 2023.

For years, there has been rumblings that LeBron would want to play with Bronny in the NBA.

However, Rich Paul told ESPN's Jonathan Givony that they are not a package deal.

Via Givony on June 19: "Rich Paul also says that there is no package deal option for LeBron and Bronny with the Suns or Lakers: "The Lakers can draft Bronny, and LeBron doesn't re-sign. LeBron is also not going to Phoenix for a minimum deal. We can squash that now.""

Rich Paul also says that there is no package deal option for LeBron and Bronny with the Suns or Lakers: "The Lakers can draft Bronny, and LeBron doesn't re-sign. LeBron is also not going to Phoenix for a minimum deal. We can squash that now." https://t.co/uQIOHV5Qev — Jonathan Givony (@DraftExpress) June 19, 2024

LeBron is coming off his sixth season with the Los Angeles Lakers.

He averaged 25.7 points, 7.3 rebounds, 8.3 assists and 1.3 steals per contest while shooting 54.0% from the field and 41.0% from the three-point range in 71 games.

This summer, James can become a free agent if he declines his $51.4 million player option .

Ben Stinar is the NBA reporter for Fastbreak on FanNation.

Follow @BenStinar

Election latest: Another Tory under investigation over election bets - as Labour to return £100,000 in donations

A former Tory candidate who was dropped for betting on the date of the election has vowed to clear his name, as the Labour Party and more police officers also become embroiled in the escalating scandal.

Tuesday 25 June 2024 23:00, UK

• General Election 2024

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Election betting scandal

• Labour candidate suspended | Party to return donations
• Welsh Conservative under investigation
• Dropped Tory candidate vows to 'clear name'
• More police officers accused of betting on election date
• Jon Craig: This has exposed quite a sleazy side of politics
• Live reporting by Faith Ridler and (earlier)  Tim Baker
• Car crash outside PM's country house
• Four arrested in grounds of Sunak's constituency home
• Reform drops in new poll after Farage's Putin comments
• Starmer says children 'worried' about possible move into No 10

Election essentials

• Manifesto pledges: Alliance | Conservatives | DUP | Greens | Labour | Lib Dems | Plaid | Reform | SNP | Sinn Fein | Workers
• Trackers:  Who's leading polls? | Is PM keeping promises?
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• Read more:  Who is standing down? | Key seats to watch | What counts as voter ID? | Check if your constituency is changing | Guide to election lingo | How to watch election on Sky News

We'll be back at 6am with all the latest from the general election campaign.

There are just eight days of campaigning left until the polls open on 4 July, and political parties from across the House of Commons are busy trying to win your votes.

Join us from the morning for more live updates.

After days of furore directed at Rishi Sunak for the election betting scandal, now a Labour candidate is under investigation by the Gambling Commission for his own betting activity - and is immediately suspended.

Is this an equaliser in one of the grubbiest electoral sagas of recent elections? Quite possibly not.

There is no doubting the utter dismay in Labour HQ at the revelation that they too have a candidate caught up in the betting scandal.

It lends itself to the easy narrative that there's a plague on all politicians' houses - everyone as bad as each other.

However, if the facts are as presented, the scale of the challenge for the Tories is of a different order of magnitude to that now facing Labour.

Labour's Kevin Craig was  suspended immediately  after the party was informed by the Gambling Commission of the probe.

You can read more from our deputy political editor Sam Coates below:

It's 10pm - here's your late night general election bulletin.

Today has had a heavy focus on the Conservative betting scandal - but there's been plenty more for us to sink our teeth into.

• The Conservatives have announced they will no longer be supporting the two candidates being investigated over placing bets on the election date;
• Laura Saunders and Craig Williams will still appear in on their respective ballots - but won't be supported by the party; 
• Mr Williams has since shared a video statement, claiming he "committed an error of judgement, not an offence" and insisting: "I intend to clear my name" ; 
• And Russell George , a Conservative member of the Senedd, has stepped back from the Welsh shadow cabinet as he faces an investigation over alleged bets;
• In other news, four men have been arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass in the grounds of the prime minister's home , police have confirmed;
• The arrests are connected to a protest by the Youth Demand campaign group, which has staged a number of actions against both the Conservative government's performance and Labour's proposed policies.
• Labour has suspended a candidate today for betting that he would not win in his seat on 4 July .  Kevin Craig has apologised for the "huge mistake" he made in betting against himself;
• The party, meanwhile, has announced plans to tackle knife crime ;
• Sir Keir appeared at an event with actor Idris Elba as they discussed introducing a long-term strategy to tackle the issue;
• Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has taken part in an hour-long debate with Conservative Home Secretary James Cleverly , taking in both legal and illegal migration;
• The minister said he does not "envisage" a Tory government leaving the European Court of Human Rights, despite the PM's threats to do so;
• And Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has opened up about looking after his disabled son in an interview with Beth Rigby .

Don't forget, Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge is back tonight at 7pm.

And if you're heading home from work, you might also be interested in today's Electoral Dysfunction , all about that photo of Sir Keir and his wife enjoying a Taylor Swift concert at Wembley.

The latest episode of the Electoral Dysfunction podcast is out, with Sky political editor Beth Rigby chatting to former Scottish Conservative leader Baroness Ruth Davidson, and ex-Labour adviser Baroness Ayesha Hazarika.

You can listen to the podcast in full below:

👉  Click here to follow Electoral Dysfunction wherever you get your podcasts  👈

Scotland Secretary Alister Jack has tonight denied breaking any Gambling Commission rules "on any occasion".

It comes after the BBC reported he had told the broadcaster he placed wagers on June and July polling dates.

However, in a statement he said: "I am very clear that I have never, on any occasion, broken any Gambling Commission rules.

"Specifically, I did not place any bets on the date of the general election during May (the period under investigation by the Gambling Commission).

"Furthermore, I am not aware of any family or friends placing bets."

"And for the avoidance of doubt that based on my comment above the Gambling Commission have obviously not contacted me."

Our live poll tracker collates the results of opinion surveys carried out by all the main polling organisations - and allows you to see how the political parties are performing in the run-up to the general election.

It shows a drop in support in recent days for Labour and the Tories - with a jump for Reform and the Liberal Democrats.

Read more about the tracker here .

There are seemingly three things on the minds of British people at the moment - the Euros, the election, and Taylor Swift.

But while the Royal Family have been quick to send their backing to England's footballers and catch the pop star's Eras shows at Wembley, they'll be keeping their distance from the politics.

That's despite the fact that, apart from the monarch, the royals are technically allowed to vote in UK general elections.

Sky News explains why they don't.

Rhun ap Iorwerth, the leader of Plaid Cymru, was also asked about a manifesto commitment to make it a criminal offence for elected politicians to knowingly mislead the public.

Former prime minister Boris Johnson was suspended from parliament for misleading the Commons - does Mr Iorwerth think he should go to prison?

He says legislation to "make it clear there are consequences if you are found to be purposefully deceptive" could be "part of the world of building trust in politicians and politics".

It's noted how difficult it would be to prove someone had purposefully deceived parliament.

Building that trust is a key focus for his party, he says.

"We believe this is important because one of the questions that I've been asked a lot during the course of this election campaign and MPs over the past year, is how do we build trust in politicians?"

That brings our coverage of tonight's Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge to an end, but the show returns tomorrow at 7pm. Stick with us for more news and analysis throughout the evening.

Sophy Ridge  asks about a report into Plaid Cymru, published before Rhun ap Iorwerth became leader, which found "a culture of harassment, bullying, and misogyny".

Has he cleaned up the party's act?

"It was a difficult time for us," Mr Iorwerth admits. "We commissioned this report on ourselves. 

"And, you know, there's a suggestion that other political parties may well benefit from doing the same themselves.

"But this was our moment."

Mr Iorwerth adds that Plaid Cymru has been "through a wake-up" and have "ticked off" all 82 recommendations the report made.

Russell George, a Conservative member of the Senedd, has stepped back from the Welsh shadow cabinet as he faces an investigation by the gambling watchdog over alleged bets on the timing of the general election.

Mr George represents Montgomeryshire in the Welsh parliament - the same area that Craig Williams, the Tory candidate who has had party support withdrawn as he faces similar allegations, represented at Westminster.

Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies said: "Russell George has informed me that he has received a letter from the Gambling Commission regarding bets on the timing of the general election.

"Russell George has stepped back from the Welsh Conservative shadow cabinet while these investigations are ongoing.

"All other members of the Welsh Conservative Group have confirmed that they have not placed any bets.

"I will not issue further comment on this ongoing process, recognising the Gambling Commission's instruction for confidentiality to protect the integrity of the process."

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How Support for Britain’s Conservative Party Is Collapsing

By Josh Holder

2024 polls suggest the Conservatives may lose most of their seats.

17.7% Ipsos Mori

16.6% YouGov

Past share of seats held

by the Conservatives

11.1% Survation

The Conservatives have dominated British politics for 14 years, holding onto power through crisis after crisis, including some of their own making.

Now, as unhappy Britons prepare to go to the polls, the Conservatives are facing the prospect of irrelevance. Polls suggest they could secure their lowest share of seats in Parliament in perhaps a century.

After a turbulent five years of government, their base has fractured.

Some are going left, with the party polling around 20 percentage points behind Labour. Others are heeding the lure of the hard right, with a third of those Britons who voted Conservative last time now saying they will support the anti-immigration Reform party, led by Nigel Farage.

Polls suggest the election results could be catastrophic for the Conservatives. While polling often narrows as an election gets closer, Conservative fortunes have shown little sign of improving.

Here are some key reasons why:

Voters feel the country is worse off

Many voters say they feel the Conservative party has left Britain in a worse state than before it came to power.

Promising to finalize Brexit, which took Britain out of the E.U., was a big vote winner for Conservatives in the last election. Britons have other concerns now. This time, they say, the biggest issues are the economy and health care, followed by immigration. And voters think Labour is better prepared to handle all three, according to polling from YouGov.

Voters’ top issues are no longer Conservative strengths

What Britons said were the top issues facing the country

Immigration

Environment

Defense and security

Welfare benefits

Source: YouGov polling on June 10, 2024 and Dec. 1, 2019

Note: Crime and immigration were tied on 22 percent when polled on Dec. 1, 2019, but crime polled as a higher concern on average in the ten polls prior.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s predecessor, Liz Truss, set off an economic crisis after she announced plans for tax cuts, deregulation and borrowing.

Seven and a half million people are waiting for elective care from the National Health Service, five million more than when the Conservatives took power in 2010.

And despite Conservative pledges to reduce immigration, net migration reached an all-time high in 2023.

The loss in confidence in Conservatives to address these issues has followed a period of intense change and turmoil.

The Conservatives oversaw steep spending cuts after the 2009 financial crisis, arguing that austerity would restore public finances. Prime Minister David Cameron called the divisive Brexit referendum in 2016, and then resigned.

Since the last election, the government has had to grapple with Covid-19, an energy crunch after Russia cut gas supplies to Europe, and high inflation. It has also lurched through a series of self-inflicted crises, cycling through three prime ministers and five chancellors, who are responsible for economic policy.

The Conservatives’ most reliable voters are deserting them

More than half the people who voted for the Conservatives in the last election tell pollsters that they now plan to vote for a different party.

Most Conservative voters plan to vote for somebody else

2019 election

2024 election polling

Fewer than half

of Conservative voters

say they are sticking

with the party.

A third said they

would switch to the

Reform party.

11% plan to

switch to Labour.

Liberal Democrats.

Most Conservative voters plan

to vote for somebody else

of Conservative

voters say they are

sticking with

Most Conservative voters plan to

vote for somebody else

2024 polling

voters say they

are sticking with

would switch to

the Reform party.

Source: Average of YouGov polls June 6 to 18, 2024

Those voters who say they will abandon the Conservatives include some of the party’s most reliable supporters.

Over the last few decades, age has replaced class as the main predictor of political support in Britain, with Conservatives winning more older voters. In the last election, the age at which someone was more likely to vote Conservative than Labour was roughly 40 or older.

Now, polling suggests that Conservatives are only ahead in one age group: people over age 65.

How party support has changed since the 2019 election

Conservative party

Conservative support has dropped across the board, even among older voters who formed their base.

Labour party

Labour has gained support — except among young people, who are moving toward smaller parties, like the Greens.

Source: YouGov polling on June 10, 2024 and Dec. 17, 2019

Conservative candidates could be wiped out in Britain’s youngest areas, according to the latest polling from YouGov. And Labour seems poised to make a significant dent among older constituencies too, with the center-left Liberal Democrats eroding Conservative control of seats across the age groups.

In the last election, some of the most deprived areas of the country — based on factors like income, housing and health — voted for the Conservative Party for the first time.

When ballots are counted this time, polls suggest, the party’s supporters may be far less broad-based economically, given how Labour is polling among lower-income people.

At the same time, Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader, has ruthlessly moved the party to the center since taking it over, doing so at the risk of alienating some of the party’s more left-wing supporters. He has made a U-turn on a pledge to spend £28 billion per year on a green investment plan, saying that the country could no longer afford it, and he has been less critical of Israel over civilian deaths in Gaza than many supporters would like.

Polls suggest this approach is costing Labour support among 18- to 24-year-olds as they gravitate to smaller parties, including the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. The seat of Bristol Central — a city with a large amount of young, educated voters in southwest England — could be won by the Green party for the first time.

Losing seats in Labour’s historic heartlands, and beyond

After a disastrous performance in the last election, Labour needs to win an extra 120 seats in Parliament compared to the last election to gain power. It’s an extraordinary number, and a daunting task. Mr. Starmer, the party’s leader, is also unpopular, surveys show, although his standing in polling has improved throughout the campaign.

But the latest polling suggests Labour could win seats across the country and transform Britain’s electoral map.

Labour could win back its historic heartlands it lost at the last election

Conservatives

Plaid Cymru

2019 election result

2024 election estimate,

based on YouGov poll

Industrial heartlands

could return to Labour

after many backed

Boris Johnson.

No polling for

Northern Ireland.

Labour reliably carries

inner London. This year,

it may also clean up in

commuter towns.

In the south west, the

Conservatives could

also lose seats to the

Liberal Democrats .

could return to

Labour after many

backed Boris

heartlands could

return to Labour

Source: YouGov seat estimates

One key test for Labour will be whether it can win back postindustrial heartlands in the Midlands and north of England, traditionally known as the “red wall.” Many of these seats turned over to Conservative candidates for the first time in 2019 after voters there backed Brexit.

The geography of each party’s voter base is crucial in this election, as Britain’s electoral system rewards parties with highly concentrated voter bases.

The Liberal Democrats are showing particular strength in a small number of wealthier, older seats in England's south, where it is competing with the Conservative Party for seats rather than Labour. Pollsters expect it to win 30 to 50 seats, almost all at the expense of the Conservatives.

Losing Brexit voters to the far-right

One of the biggest unknowns is how well the hard-right Reform Party will perform.

Nigel Farage, who shook up the campaign in early June when he took over as Reform’s leader, hopes to capitalize on discontent among Conservative voters and rising concern about immigration to win seats in parliament. In the longer term, Farage said he hopes to be a candidate for prime minister by 2029, when the following election would be scheduled.

His gamble appears to be paying off, with a recent YouGov poll finding Reform passing the Conservatives by drawing support from nearly one in five voters surveyed.

Where Reform is finding the most support

2024 estimated vote share,

Not standing

White, working class areas like these overwhelmingly voted for Brexit. They are also some of Reform’s strongest areas.

Reform is polling

poorly in inner

poorly in inner London.

“It’s the geography of that support that is so, so dangerous for the Conservatives,” said Will Jennings, a political science professor at the University of Southampton. Unlike the Liberal Democrats, Reform’s voter base is spread thinly across the country, and, while that makes it difficult to win seats, it could split the right-wing vote across the country and cause the Conservatives to lose more seats to Labour.

“Reform picking up 15 to 20 points in some of those constituencies would potentially allow — even if they also pick up a little bit of Labour's votes as well — Labour to overturn huge majorities,” Mr. Jennings said.

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