| The fast fashion industry, which generates 12kg of textile waste per person in Europe each year, is facing pressure to change. France has approved a measure that will require ultra-fast fashion brands to pay a 5€ penalty per item, and the European Commission wants to tack 2€ onto each EU-bound shipment and end an exemption on customs duties for orders under 150€. For companies in the sector, it could get costly to keep going cheap. But there's also a raft of initiatives aimed at altering the way people think about clothes. Sweden has more than halved VAT on clothing and footwear repairs, and the Netherlands has reduced it for services including replacing zips and adjusting sizes. France has created a voucher that offers a discount for repairs in certified workshops, and Spain has mandated that textile brands provide info on the durability of their products. If you wear the same old thing to work every day, you might be on-trend in the years to come. Ireland votes for a new president next week, and one of the candidates is a Protestant from one of the three Ulster counties not included in the formation of Northern Ireland in 1921. Heather Humphreys, standing for the centre-right Fine Gael party, describes herself as a republican and also acknowledges her unionist heritage. It has emerged that Humphreys' husband once belonged to the Orange Order, an organisation some in Ireland associate with enduring sectarianism. Her background has, therefore, raised some interesting questions about religion, identity and post-conflict community relations in modern Ireland. You'd be forgiven for wondering just what the heck is going on in French politics, which saw the reinstatement of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu four days after he resigned last week. But something concrete happened in parliament on Tuesday: Lecornu pledged to suspend pension reform, which the government forced into law without a vote in 2023, until after the 2027 presidential election. That is big news for the hundreds of thousands of people who publicly protested the reform, which raised the retirement age from 62 to 64, and for those concerned about the potential effect of the suspension on France's coffers. Lecornu's move also put the spotlight on the Socialist Party, which had demanded his pledge. One way that farmers prevent crop-eating moths from reproducing is by spreading synthetic pheromones that lead males away from females. But it can be expensive to replicate the exact blend that is needed in a factory. To address this problem, researchers identified the scent-making gene and then silenced it with Crispr, a gene-editing tool — "we effectively created an 'unsexy' moth", explains one. By inserting the gene into yeast or plants, the pheromones can now be made "naturally and cheaply", she writes. |
 Albert Navarro García, Universitat de Girona The EU and national governments have proposed legislation to curb the industry's environmental impacts. |
| |  Peter John McLoughlin, Queen's University Belfast Heather Humphreys is a republican but has family ties to the Orange Order. | |  Benjamin Morel, Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas Will the new French government last? The suspension of the controversial reform until after the 2027 French presidential election was key to the Socialist Party agreeing not to support a potential no-confidence vote in the government. | | |
 Marie Inger Dam, Lund University Scientists have learned how to turn off moths' sex signals – this could help farmers fight pests without pesticides. |
| |  Christo Atanasov Kostov, IE University Moscow's provocations may seem rash and incoherent, but they're all part of a conscious, focused strategy. | |  Jon Andoni Duñabeitia, Universidad Nebrija Digital duplicates of our brains could revolutionise mental healthcare. |  Daniele Curci, Università di Siena In his lyrics, the folksinger and herald of US postwar social struggles described his era. In some ways, it resembles our own. | |  Rosie Young, Quadram Institute Previously inactive people who started lifting weights showed significant changes in their gut bacteria within eight weeks. | | |
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Francesco Grillo, Bocconi University The EU should make more of its emissions successes as a diplomatic tool. -
Kristian Kongshøj, Aalborg University; Troels Fage Hedegaard, Aalborg University As wolves reappear, Danes are divided – a new poll shows just how much. -
Sylvain Kahn, Sciences Po Being honest about US influence during Donald Trump's second term could help Europe resist it. | |
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