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Category: Academic Analysis

  • MIL-OSI Global: Detroit’s next mayor can do these 3 things to support neighborhoods beyond downtown

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Deyanira Nevárez Martínez, Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, Michigan State University

    Detroit stands at a pivotal moment.

    Mayor Mike Duggan is preparing to leave office after 11 years at the end of 2025. The city’s next leader will inherit not only a revitalizing downtown but also neighborhoods like Belmont, Petosky-Otsego and Van Steuban that are grappling with housing instability and decades of neglect and disinvestment.

    My research on housing insecurity, homelessness and urban governance, along with broader scholarship on equitable development, suggests that Detroit’s future depends on more than marquee developments like the Michigan Central Station Development. It depends on strengthening neighborhoods from the ground up.

    Here are three strategies that could help Detroit’s next mayor build a just and resilient city by focusing on transitional neighborhoods:

    Stabilize housing and prevent displacement

    Stable housing is the foundation of thriving communities.

    Yet, housing instability in Detroit is both widespread and deeply entrenched. Before the pandemic, roughly 13% of Detroiters, or about 88,000 people, had been evicted or forced to move within the previous year. Families with children faced the highest risk.

    Many Detroiters had little choice but to remain in deteriorating housing, crowd into shared living arrangements or relocate elsewhere because of an estimated shortfall of 24,000 habitable housing units.

    While building more housing is essential, preventing displacement requires more than new construction. It also demands policies that preserve affordability and protect tenants. Researchers have found that household stabilization policies, such as legal representation in eviction court, rent control and property tax relief, have the most immediate impact.

    In Detroit, addressing the wave of expiring Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, or LIHTC, units remains an urgent priority. When units reach the end of their compliance period in this federal program, typically 15 years, owners are no longer required to maintain affordable rents and can raise prices. This “conversion to market rate” often results in the loss of affordable housing for low-income residents.

    In response to a projected loss of 10,000 units by 2023, Detroit launched the Preservation Partnership that secured affordability commitments for about 4,000 units. However, it remains difficult to determine exactly how many of the at-risk units were ultimately lost, and when, due to reporting lags, inconsistencies and overlapping affordability programs.

    Despite the city’s efforts, a 2023 analysis found that a substantial affordability gap persists, with many households unable to comfortably afford market-rate housing without spending more than 30% of their income, which is the standard set by the Department of Housing and Urban Development for affordability.

    The Michigan State Housing Development Authority continues to support affordable housing through tax credit allocations. However, a growing number of LIHTC properties in areas experiencing redevelopment are reaching the end of their affordability periods, putting them at risk of converting to market rate. National estimates suggest that nearly 350,000 units could lose affordability by 2030 and over 1 million by 2040 without sustained local and regional preservation efforts.

    Stabilizing Detroit’s housing market means ensuring that those who stayed during the hardest times are not pushed out as reinvestment takes hold. To achieve this, the next mayor could expand rental assistance and support tenant organizing efforts. This is particularly needed in transitional neighborhoods where renters come together to fight unfair evictions, improve housing conditions and push for more stable rents.

    Reclaim and reimagine vacant land for community benefit

    Many view Detroit’s vast tracks of vacant land, estimated in the hundreds of thousands of parcels, as blight. But they could also be seen as a public asset and a generational opportunity if brought together with the right public strategies.

    Land trusts can turn empty lots into valuable neighborhood spaces. A land trust is a nonprofit that holds land for the community and keeps housing affordable over the long term, a key to preventing displacement.

    Research also shows that greening strategies can improve community health, cohesion and equity. Cities like Philadelphia and Cleveland have launched urban greening initiatives that transform vacant lots into community gardens, small parks and tree-filled spaces. Research shows that these projects can help stabilize property values and strengthen neighborhoods by reducing blight, encouraging investment and creating safer, more attractive environments.

    Detroit has a land bank, a public agency that manages vacant and foreclosed properties. The city has also invested in some green infrastructure. But experts say that these efforts require stronger city leadership, teamwork across departments and real input from residents. These are areas where Detroit still has room to grow.

    By collaborating with residents to cocreate a land use vision, the next mayor could prioritize community ownership and ecological restoration instead of speculative redevelopment.

    Invest in social infrastructure

    Neighborhood strength is about more than buildings — it’s about people.

    As the Brookings Institution notes, economic opportunity is key to long-term safety, and investing in youth is a proven violence reduction strategy.

    Detroit’s neighborhoods have long faced a lack of investment in schools, recreation centers and social services. This leaves families vulnerable and fuels cycles of poverty and criminalization. Under these conditions, young people, especially Black and brown youth, are more likely to be policed, punished and pushed into the criminal justice system.

    A 2021 study found that the Detroit Public Schools Community District reported 2% of its students experienced homelessness, despite 16% of households with children reporting recent eviction or forced moves. This gap reveals major service and awareness gaps. And when families fall through those gaps, it’s often children who suffer the most.

    Addressing these gaps requires investing in mental health services, youth development programs and violence prevention, rather than relying solely on policing or incarceration. These approaches recognize that true public safety comes from access to stable jobs, quality education and supportive services that meet people’s health, housing and social needs. Some of the most effective strategies include restorative justice in schools and outreach to older adults and residents experiencing homelessness.

    These are not luxuries. They are essential infrastructure for neighborhood vitality.

    The work ahead

    Detroit is often held up as a cautionary tale of urban decline, or more recently, as a comeback story driven by downtown revitalization. But in my opinion, its true test lies in what comes next: whether the city can translate momentum into equity for the communities that have long been left behind.

    The next mayor has the chance to shift the narrative by centering housing justice, reclaiming land for public good and investing in the people who make Detroit a city worth fighting for.

    Read more of our stories about Detroit.

    Deyanira Nevárez Martínez is a trustee of the Lansing School District Board of Education and is currently a candidate for the Lansing City Council Ward 2.

    – ref. Detroit’s next mayor can do these 3 things to support neighborhoods beyond downtown – https://theconversation.com/detroits-next-mayor-can-do-these-3-things-to-support-neighborhoods-beyond-downtown-254755

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How your genes interact with your environment changes your disease risk − new research counts the ways

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Arun Durvasula, Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences, University of Southern California

    Nature and nurture both determine how likely you are to develop a particular disease. Hiroshi Watanabe/DigitalVision via Getty Images

    Sitting in my doctor’s examination room, I was surprised when she told me, “Genetics don’t really matter for chronic disease.” Rather, she continued, “A person’s lifestyle, what they eat, and how much they exercise, determine whether they get heart disease.”

    As a researcher who studies the genetics of disease, I don’t fully disagree – lifestyle factors play a large role in determining who gets a disease and who doesn’t. But they are far from the entire story. Since scientists mapped out the human genome in 2003, researchers have learned that genetics also play a large role in a person’s disease risk.

    Studies that focus on estimating disease heritability – that is, how much genetic differences explain differences in disease risk – usually attribute a substantial fraction of disease variation to genetics. Mutations across the entire genome seem to play a role in diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, which is about 17% heritable, and schizophrenia, which is about 80% heritable. In contrast to diseases such as Tay-Sachs or cystic fibrosis, where mutations in a single gene cause a disease, chronic diseases tend to be polygenic, meaning they’re influenced by multiple mutations at many genes across the whole genome.

    Every complex disease has both genetic and environmental risk factors. Most researchers study these factors separately because of technical challenges and a lack of large, uniform datasets. Although some have devised techniques to overcome these challenges, they haven’t yet been applied to a comprehensive set of diseases and environmental exposures.

    In our recently published research, my colleague Alkes Price and I developed tools to leverage newly available datasets to quantify the joint effects that genetic and environmental risk factors have on the biology underlying disease.

    Aspirin, genetics and colon cancer

    To illustrate the effect gene-environment interactions have on disease, let’s consider the example of aspirin use and colon cancer.

    In 2001, researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center were studying how regularly taking aspirin decreased the risk of colon cancer. They wondered whether genetic mutations that slowed down how quickly the body broke down aspirin – meaning aspirin levels in the body would stay high longer – might increase the drug’s protective effect against colon cancer. They were right: Only patients with slow aspirin metabolism had a decreased risk of colon cancer, indicating that the effectiveness of a drug can depend on a person’s genetics.

    This raises the question of how genetics and different combinations of environmental exposures, such as the medications a patient is taking, can affect a person’s disease risk and how effective a treatment will be for them. How many cases of genetic variations directly influencing a drug’s effectiveness are there?

    Rather than ‘nature versus nurture,’ a more accurate way of describing gene-environment interactions is ‘nature through nurture.’

    The gene-environment interaction of colon cancer and aspirin is unusual. It involves a mutation at a single location in the genome that has a big effect on colon cancer risk. The past 25 years of human genetics have shown researchers that these sorts of large-effect mutations are rare.

    For example, an analysis found that the median effect of a genetic variant on height is only 0.14 millimeters. Instead, there are usually hundreds of variations that each have small but cumulative effects on a person’s disease risk, making them hard to find.

    How could researchers detect these small gene-environment interactions across hundreds of spots in the genome?

    Polygenic gene-environment interactions

    We started by looking for cases where genetic variants across the genome showed different effects on a person’s biology in different environments. Rather than trying to detect the small effects of each genetic variant one at a time, we aggregated data across the entire genome to turn these small individual effects into a large, genome-wide effect.

    Using data from the UK Biobank – a large database containing genetic and health data from about 500,000 people – we estimated the influence of millions of genetic variants on 33 complex traits and diseases, such as height and asthma. We grouped people based on environmental exposures such as air pollution, cigarette smoking and dietary patterns. Finally, we developed statistical tests to study how the effects of genetics on disease risk and biomarker levels varied with these exposures.

    We found three types of gene-environment interactions.

    First, we found 19 pairs of complex traits and environmental exposures that are influenced by genetic variants across the genome. For example, the effect of genetics on white blood cell levels in the body differed between smokers and nonsmokers. When we compared the effects of genetic mutations between the two groups, the strength of gene-environment interaction suggested that smoking changes the way genetics influence white blood cell counts.

    Second, we looked for cases where the heritability of a trait varies depending on the environment. In other words, rather than some genetic variants having different effects in different environments, all of them are made stronger in some environments. For example, we found that the heritability of body mass index – the ratio of weight to height – increased by 5% for the most active people. This means genetics plays a larger role in BMI the more active you are. We found 28 such trait-environment pairs, including HDL cholesterol levels and alcohol consumption, as well as neuroticism and self-reported sleeplessness.

    Third, we looked for a type of gene-environment interaction called proportional or joint amplification. Here, genetic effects grow with increased environmental exposures, and vice versa. This results in a relatively equal balance of genetic and environmental effects on a trait. For example, as self-reported time spent watching television increased, both genetic and environmental variance increased for a person’s waist-to-hip ratio. This likely reflects the influence of other behaviors related to time spent watching television, such as decreased physical exercise. We found 15 such trait-environment pairs, including lung capacity and smoking, and glucose levels and alcohol consumption.

    Environmental factors, such as cigarette smoke and the medications you take, can interact with your genes in unexpected ways.
    jaouad.K/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    We also looked for cases where biological sex, instead of environmental exposures, influenced interactions with genes. Previous work had shown evidence of these gene-by-sex interactions, and we found additional examples of the effects of biological sex on all three types of gene-environment interactions. For example, we found that neuroticism had genetic effects that varied across sex.

    Finally, we also found that multiple types of gene-environment interactions can affect the same trait. For example, the effects of genetics on systolic blood pressure varied by sex, indicating that some genetic variants have different effects in men and women.

    New gene-environment models

    How do we make sense of these distinct types of gene-environment interactions? We argue that they can help researchers better understand the underlying biological mechanisms that lead from genetic and environmental risks to disease, and how genetic variation leads to differences in disease risk between people.

    Genes related to the same function work together in a unit called a pathway. For example, we can say that genes involved in making heme – the component of red blood cells that carries oxygen – are collectively part of the heme synthesis pathway. The resulting amounts of heme circulating in the body influence other biological processes, including ones that could lead to the development of anemia and cancer. Our model suggests that environmental exposures modify different parts of these pathways, which may explain why we saw different types of gene-environment interactions.

    In the future, these findings could lead to treatments that are more personalized based on a person’s genome. For example, clinicians might one day be able to tell whether someone is more likely to decrease their risk of heart disease by taking weight loss drugs or by exercising.

    Our results show how studying gene-environment interactions can tell researchers not only about which genetic and environmental factors increase your risk of disease, but also what goes wrong in the body where.

    Arun Durvasula has received funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Science.

    – ref. How your genes interact with your environment changes your disease risk − new research counts the ways – https://theconversation.com/how-your-genes-interact-with-your-environment-changes-your-disease-risk-new-research-counts-the-ways-252139

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Challenges to high-performance computing threaten US innovation

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jack Dongarra, Emeritus Professor of Computer Science, University of Tennessee

    Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Frontier supercomputer is one of the world’s fastest. Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, CC BY

    High-performance computing, or HPC for short, might sound like something only scientists use in secret labs, but it’s actually one of the most important technologies in the world today. From predicting the weather to finding new medicines and even training artificial intelligence, high-performance computing systems help solve problems that are too hard or too big for regular computers.

    This technology has helped make huge discoveries in science and engineering over the past 40 years. But now, high-performance computing is at a turning point, and the choices the government, researchers and the technology industry make today could affect the future of innovation, national security and global leadership.

    High-performance computing systems are basically superpowerful computers made up of thousands or even millions of processors working together at the same time. They also use advanced memory and storage systems to move and save huge amounts of data quickly.

    With all this power, high-performance computing systems can run extremely detailed simulations and calculations. For example, they can simulate how a new drug interacts with the human body, or how a hurricane might move across the ocean. They’re also used in fields such as automotive design, energy production and space exploration.

    Lately, high-performance computing has become even more important because of artificial intelligence. AI models, especially the ones used for things such as voice recognition and self-driving cars, require enormous amounts of computing power to train. High-performance computing systems are well suited for this job. As a result, AI and high-performance computing are now working closely together, pushing each other forward.

    Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s supercomputer El Capitan is currently the world’s fastest.

    I’m a computer scientist with a long career working in high-performance computing. I’ve observed that high-performance computing systems are under more pressure than ever, with higher demands on the systems for speed, data and energy. At the same time, I see that high-performance computing faces some serious technical problems.

    Technical challenges

    One big challenge for high-performance computing is the gap between how fast processors are and how well memory systems can keep up with the processors’ output. Imagine having a superfast car but being stuck in traffic – it doesn’t help to have speed if the road can’t handle it. In the same way, high-performance computing processors often have to wait around because memory systems can’t send data quickly enough. This makes the whole system less efficient.

    Another problem is energy use. Today’s supercomputers use a huge amount of electricity, sometimes as much as a small town. That’s expensive and not very good for the environment. In the past, as computer parts got smaller, they also used less power. But that trend, called Dennard scaling, stopped in the mid-2000s. Now, making computers more powerful usually means they use more energy too. To fix this, researchers are looking for new ways to design both the hardware and the software of high-performance computing systems.

    There’s also a problem with the kinds of chips being made. The chip industry is mainly focused on AI, which works fine with lower-precision math like 16-bit or 8-bit numbers. But many scientific applications still need 64-bit precision to be accurate. The greater the bit count, the more digits to the right of the decimal point a chip can process, hence the greater precision. If chip companies stop making the parts that scientists need, then it could become harder to do important research.

    This report discusses how trends in semiconductor manufacturing and commercial priorities may diverge from the needs of the scientific computing community, and how a lack of tailored hardware could hinder progress in research.

    One solution might be to build custom chips for high-performance computing, but that’s expensive and complicated. Still, researchers are exploring new designs, including chiplets – small chips that can be combined like Lego bricks – to make high-precision processors more affordable.

    A global race

    Globally, many countries are investing heavily in high-performance computing. Europe has the EuroHPC program, which is building supercomputers in places such as Finland and Italy. Their goal is to reduce dependence on foreign technology and take the lead in areas such as climate modeling and personalized medicine. Japan built the Fugaku supercomputer, which supports both academic research and industrial work. China has also made major advances, using homegrown technology to build some of the world’s fastest computers. All of these countries’ governments understand that high-performance computing is key to their national security, economic strength and scientific leadership.

    The U.S.-China supercomputer rivalry explained.

    The United States, which has been a leader in high-performance computing for decades, recently completed the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project. This project created computers that can perform a billion billion operations per second. That’s an incredible achievement. But even with that success, the U.S. still doesn’t have a clear, long-term plan for what comes next. Other countries are moving quickly, and without a national strategy, the U.S. risks falling behind.

    I believe that a U.S. national strategy should include funding new machines and training for people to use them. It would also include partnerships with universities, national labs and private companies. Most importantly, the plan would focus not just on hardware but also on the software and algorithms that make high-performance computing useful.

    Hopeful signs

    One exciting area for the future is quantum computing. This is a completely new way of doing computation based on the laws of physics at the atomic level. Quantum computers could someday solve problems that are impossible for regular computers. But they are still in the early stages and are likely to complement rather than replace traditional high-performance computing systems. That’s why it’s important to keep investing in both kinds of computing.

    The good news is that some steps have already been taken. The CHIPS and Science Act, passed in 2022, provides funding to expand chip manufacturing in the U.S. It also created an office to help turn scientific research into real-world products. The task force Vision for American Science and Technology, launched on Feb. 25, 2025, and led by American Association for the Advancement of Science CEO Sudip Parikh, aims to marshal nonprofits, academia and industry to help guide the government’s decisions. Private companies are also spending billions of dollars on data centers and AI infrastructure.

    All of these are positive signs, but they don’t fully solve the problem of how to support high-performance computing in the long run. In addition to short-term funding and infrastructure investments, this means:

    • Long-term federal investment in high-performance computing R&D, including advanced hardware, software and energy-efficient architectures.
    • Procurement and deployment of leadership-class computing systems at national labs and universities.
    • Workforce development, including training in parallel programming, numerical methods and AI-HPC integration.
    • Hardware road map alignment, ensuring commercial chip development remains compatible with the needs of scientific and engineering applications.
    • Sustainable funding models that prevent boom-and-bust cycles tied to one-off milestones or geopolitical urgency.
    • Public-private collaboration to bridge gaps between academic research, industry innovation and national security needs.

    High-performance computing is more than just fast computers. It’s the foundation of scientific discovery, economic growth and national security. With other countries pushing forward, the U.S. is under pressure to come up with a clear, coordinated plan. That means investing in new hardware, developing smarter software, training a skilled workforce and building partnerships between government, industry and academia. If the U.S. does that, the country can make sure high-performance computing continues to power innovation for decades to come.

    Jack Dongarra receives funding from the NSF and the DOE.

    – ref. Challenges to high-performance computing threaten US innovation – https://theconversation.com/challenges-to-high-performance-computing-threaten-us-innovation-255188

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Taking intermittent quizzes reduces achievement gaps and enhances online learning, even in highly distracting environments

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jason C.K. Chan, Professor of Psychology, Iowa State University

    More Americans are learning remotely. Drazen/E+ via Getty Images

    Inserting brief quiz questions into an online lecture can boost learning and may reduce racial achievement gaps, even when students are tuning in remotely in a distracting environment.

    That’s a main finding of our recent research published in Communications Psychology. With co-authors Dahwi Ahn, Hymnjyot Gill and Karl Szpunar, we present evidence that adding mini-quizzes into an online lecture in science, technology, engineering or mathematics – collectively known as STEM – can boost learning, especially for Black students.

    In our study, we included over 700 students from two large public universities and five two-year community colleges across the U.S. and Canada. All the students watched a 20-minute video lecture on a STEM topic. Each lecture was divided into four 5-minute segments, and following each segment, the students either answered four brief quiz questions or viewed four slides reviewing the content they’d just seen.

    This procedure was designed to mimic two kinds of instructions: those in which students must answer in-lecture questions and those in which the instructor regularly goes over recently covered content in class.

    All students were tested on the lecture content both at the end of the lecture and a day later.

    When Black students in our study watched a lecture without intermittent quizzes, they underperformed Asian, white and Latino students by about 17%. This achievement gap was reduced to a statistically nonsignificant 3% when students answered intermittent quiz questions. We believe this is because the intermittent quizzes help students stay engaged with the lecture.

    To simulate the real-world environments that students face during online classes, we manipulated distractions by having some participants watch just the lecture; the rest watched the lecture with either distracting memes on the side or with TikTok videos playing next to it.

    Surprisingly, the TikTok videos enhanced learning for students who received review slides. They performed about 8% better on the end-of-day tests than those who were not shown any memes or videos, and similar to the students who answered intermittent quiz questions. Our data further showed that this unexpected finding occurred because the TikTok videos encouraged participants to keep watching the lecture.

    For educators interested in using these tactics, it is important to know that the intermittent quizzing intervention only works if students must answer the questions. This is different from asking questions in a class and waiting for a volunteer to answer. As many teachers know, most students never answer questions in class. If students’ minds are wandering, the requirement of answering questions at regular intervals brings students’ attention back to the lecture.

    This intervention is also different from just giving students breaks during which they engage in other activities, such as doodling, answering brain teaser questions or playing a video game.

    Why it matters

    Online education has grown dramatically since the pandemic. Between 2004 and 2016, the percentage of college students enrolling in fully online degrees rose from 5% to 10%. But by 2022, that number nearly tripled to 27%.

    Relative to in-person classes, online classes are often associated with lower student engagement and higher failure and withdrawal rates.

    Research also finds that the racial achievement gaps documented in regular classroom learning are magnified in remote settings, likely due to unequal access to technology.

    Our study therefore offers a scalable, cost-effective way for schools to increase the effectiveness of online education for all students.

    What’s next?

    We are now exploring how to further refine this intervention through experimental work among both university and community college students.

    As opposed to observational studies, in which researchers track student behaviors and are subject to confounding and extraneous influences, our randomized-controlled study allows us to ascertain the effectiveness of the in-class intervention.

    Our ongoing research examines the optimal timing and frequency of in-lecture quizzes. We want to ensure that very frequent quizzes will not hinder student engagement or learning.

    The results of this study may help provide guidance to educators for optimal implementation of in-lecture quizzes.

    The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

    Jason C.K. Chan receives funding from the USA National Science Foundation.

    Zohara Assadipour does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Taking intermittent quizzes reduces achievement gaps and enhances online learning, even in highly distracting environments – https://theconversation.com/taking-intermittent-quizzes-reduces-achievement-gaps-and-enhances-online-learning-even-in-highly-distracting-environments-254046

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump is making it easier to fire federal workers, but they have some legal protections – 3 essential reads

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Amy Lieberman, Politics + Society Editor, The Conversation

    An estimated 2% of federal civil servants could soon find their jobs are no longer secure under the Trump administration. iStock/Getty Images Plus

    The Trump administration is moving ahead with policy changes that would make it easier to fire some federal workers.

    The Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, filed proposed regulations in the Federal Register on April 23, 2025, that would reclassify about 50,000 career civil servants as “at-will” employees.

    Trump’s first administration attempted similar changes, known as by some as Schedule F but those plans were not implemented.

    An estimated 2% of nearly all of the 3 million federal workers would then experience a shift in how the government classifies their jobs, renaming their classification “Schedule Policy/Career.”

    It is not entirely clear which workers will be reclassified, since the process is largely at Trump’s discretion.

    “This will allow agencies to quickly remove employees from critical positions who engage in misconduct, perform poorly, or undermine the democratic process by intentionally subverting Presidential directives,” the Office of Personnel Management proposal reads.

    Trump supports these changes and says they can help remove corrupt or unqualified workers. Critics maintain that the changes will allow the administration to fire federal employees the administration sees as not supporting its agenda.

    Trump is expected to sign another executive order in the next few weeks that would formally reclassify certain federal job positions as Schedule Policy/Career.

    Here are three stories from The Conversation’s archive about the rights of federal civil servants.

    Former U.S. Agency for International Development employees terminated by the Trump administration collect their belongings at USAID headquarters in February 2025.
    Chip Somodevilla/Gety Images

    1. When a president fired half of the civil service

    Before Trump was elected to a second term in November 2024, he promised he would fire as many as 50,000 civil servants and replace them with people loyal to him.

    Nearly 200 years before that, President Andrew Jackson took office in 1828 and promptly fired about half of the government’s civil service. He replaced these employees with political loyalists. This shift became known as the spoils system.

    “The result was not only an utterly incompetent administration, but widespread corruption,” write Sidney Shapiro, a professor of law at Wake Forest University, and Joseph P. Tomain, a professor of law at the University of Cincinnati.

    Samuel Swartwout, for example, was a Jackson former Army friend whom he selected to serve as collector of customs in New York. The job was well paid and prestigious, and “involved collecting taxes and fees on imported goods that arrived in the nation’s busiest port.”

    “But a congressional investigation showed that Swartwout had stolen a little more than US$1.2 million during his tenure, or about $40 million in today’s dollars,” Shapiro and Tomain write.

    Jackson also found that he could not legally influence hiring at all federal agencies, including the U.S. Post Office, and easily place his own high-level appointees there.

    Today, some federal workers, including U.S. Border Patrol agents, would be exempt from Trump’s reclassification plans.



    Read more:
    Donald Trump wants to reinstate a spoils system in federal government by hiring political loyalists regardless of competence

    An 1830 political cartoon by Thomas Nast about civil service reform shows five people bowing down at a statue of Andrew Jackson.
    Fotosearch/Getty Images

    2. Federal workers have protections against partisan attacks

    Federal workers have had federal legal protections for their hiring and firing in place since the 1880s. This has helped federal employees thwart moves by presidents like Jackson aiming to “control a lot of workers who would serve the president,” and not the American people, according to James L. Perry, a scholar of public affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington.

    The 1883 Pendleton Act ensures that “government workers are hired based on their skills and abilities, not their political views,” Perry says. Congress updated this law in 1978 with the Civil Service Reform Act, which provides additional “protections for workers against being fired for political reasons.”

    “Those rules cover about 99% of staff in the federal civil service. Currently, there are just about 4,000 political appointees,” Perry told Jeff Inglis, an editor at The Conversation U.S., in February 2025.

    Perry points out that the Trump administration’s proposed restructuring would also likely be unpopular among Americans. As many as 87% of Americans have said they want a merit-based, politically neutral civil services, according to Perry



    Read more:
    Trump’s moves to strip employment protections from federal workers threaten to make government function worse – not better

    .

    3. A precarious moral and ethical tightrope

    Leading into Trump’s second term, federal government workers were advised by colleagues to “stay calm and keep their heads down,” and draw minimal attention to their work. This includes not directly using terms like climate change and human rights, which they correctly thought the administration would target, according to Jaime L. Kucinskas, a sociologist at Hamilton College.

    There were some unknowns about how Trump’s second administration would act. But many civil servants also likely understood that “this pressure is real” under the new administration and could affect their day-to-day work, Kucinskas writes.

    Kucinskas interviewed 66 career civil servants from 2017 through 2020. A number of these workers told Kucinskas that working under the first Trump administration caused their mental health and morale to decline. The experience also worsened their productivity and innovation at work.

    “Among a sizable proportion of the people I spoke with, the pressures at work became too much; about a quarter of those I spoke with quit during the first Trump administration,” Kucinskas wrote in January 2025.

    Some civil servants chose to not speak openly about their work experiences with the first Trump administration, including mid-level civil service workers who watched as political appointees “fought over policy agendas levels above them,” according to Kucinskas. Other employees tried to simply keep their work moving, regardless of the politics at play.

    “Yet, even among those who felt most alone, I found they had many experiences in common with others who also felt isolated in trying to walk a precarious moral and ethical tightrope between their desire to faithfully serve the elected president – under chaotic leadership and insufficient and sometimes questionably legal guidance,” Kucinskas wrote, “and do quality work upholding the law and benefiting the nation and the American public



    Read more:
    Civil servants brace for a second Trump presidency

    .”

    This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

    – ref. Trump is making it easier to fire federal workers, but they have some legal protections – 3 essential reads – https://theconversation.com/trump-is-making-it-easier-to-fire-federal-workers-but-they-have-some-legal-protections-3-essential-reads-256313

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: South African companies aren’t innovating enough: why support during tough economic times matters

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Amy Kahn, Research Specialist at the Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators, Human Sciences Research Council

    South Africa’s innovation fund, announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in the 2025 state of the nation address, was a response to the country’s urgent need for inclusive and sustainable economic growth.

    Evidence from South Africa shows that public financial support for innovation influences the investment that businesses make in innovation.

    The fund will focus on providing venture capital to tech start-ups from higher education institutions. In practice, its activities will complement several programmes that offer different forms of investment for innovation. These include the long-standing research and development tax incentives; the Technology Acquisition and Development Fund; and the SA SME Fund.

    For these programmes to be effective, it’s important to understand the factors that either prohibit or enable innovation activity and innovation in businesses.

    The South African Business Innovation Survey provides unique data on innovation activity and performance in the industry and services sectors. It’s performed over a three-year cycle by the Human Sciences Research Council’s Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators for the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation.

    Analysis of data from 2019-2021 provides important evidence for designing effective innovation policy support.

    A key finding of the survey was that 62% of South African businesses carried out innovation activities between 2019 and 2021. This was noticeably lower than in the previous (2014-2016) survey round, when the rate was 70%. The reason might be the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many businesses said that they had to make changes to their existing innovation activities between 2019 and 2021.

    It is expected that the innovation-active rate may rise again in the next round. (Data for the 2022-2024 reference period will be collected in 2025.)

    These results show that support for businesses is more pressing during times of economic crisis. It allows them to adapt and mitigate the negative impacts on their innovation projects.

    South Africa’s business innovation picture

    Less than two-thirds of South African businesses were innovation-active during 2019-2021. In addition, a significant proportion had innovation activities that did not result in product or process innovations.

    An innovation-active business is one that undertakes activities intended to result in an innovation. Examples include research and experimental development, training or acquiring new equipment or machinery.

    An innovation can be a new or improved product (including goods or services), introduced to the market. Or it can be a new or improved business process, implemented by the business.

    Businesses that are innovation-active make a greater contribution to the economy and society compared with businesses that don’t innovate. The most recent Business Innovation Survey found that the computer sector had the highest proportion of businesses with innovation activities. It also found that innovation-active businesses had more skilled labour and greater access to external knowledge than other businesses.

    Building human capabilities was an important component of innovation activity. Nearly half (47%) of innovation-active businesses reported training as an activity.

    Businesses that did not carry out formal innovation activities (such as R&D or patenting), and did not collaborate with other institutions, were most likely to have abandoned or not completed their innovation activities.

    Innovations tended to be incremental rather than radical. More businesses with product innovations reported improving existing goods and services rather than making new goods and services available to their customers. Only 10% of product innovators had “new to the world” innovations. Just over 50% had innovations that were new to their business only.

    Innovation-active businesses were more likely to sell their goods and services in international markets. Businesses with novel product innovations that were attractive to international markets were likely to be from the technical sectors and acquired more intellectual property rights.

    Over a third (36%) of innovative businesses considered the high costs of innovating to be highly important. Competition and the dominance of established businesses were also commonly cited barriers. Just over 40% of businesses that operated in domestic markets only, and innovated by modifying existing products from elsewhere, had more than 50 competitors. Businesses that introduced new-to-market (more novel) products faced less competition.

    Innovation has two types of social effects. New goods or services can affect the lives of consumers and end users; and the innovation that happens within a business can have positive impacts on employees.

    The survey revealed both effects. The most important outcomes of innovations were improved working conditions, improved quality of goods and services, and improved quality of life and well-being.

    Growing South Africa’s innovation economy

    Encouraging innovation requires targeted incentives for business. But can the precision of the support be improved?

    We make a number of recommendations:

    • Support mechanisms, including funding, should be tailored for different targets. This can be done by grouping businesses according to the types of activities they undertake to innovate.

    • Businesses should also be grouped according to their R&D and collaboration activities. That makes it possible to design more targeted support mechanisms.

    For example, we recommend that businesses that perform R&D and that collaborate with others require interventions to support those activities.

    • Improve South Africa’s R&D as a proportion of its GDP. At the moment it is too low. Countries that innovate with a healthy ratio of gross domestic expenditure on R&D have delivered robust economic growth. Government can promote business R&D through policy tools like tax incentives.

    • Policy instruments for businesses that do not perform R&D or collaborate should encourage knowledge-intensive innovation and building interactive capabilities.

    • Group businesses based on their innovation outcomes to help design more tailored support. We suggest several examples of policy interventions based on the novelty of innovations, market reach, and the ability of businesses to develop innovations in-house.

    Finally, policymakers should recognise that most businesses aren’t able to produce radical innovations. Support should rather help them take smaller innovative steps.

    Gerard Ralphs and Katharine McKenzie contributed to the research for this article.

    The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) receives funding from the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI) to conduct the Business Innovation Survey (BIS). Amy Kahn is the project manager of the BIS.

    – ref. South African companies aren’t innovating enough: why support during tough economic times matters – https://theconversation.com/south-african-companies-arent-innovating-enough-why-support-during-tough-economic-times-matters-253881

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Soon, your boss will have to pay your wages and super at the same time. Here’s how everyone could benefit

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Hodgson, Professor, Curtin Law School and Curtin Business School, Curtin University

    Dragon Images/Shutterstock

    If you have a job in Australia, you’ve probably noticed each of your payslips has a section telling you how much superannuation will be paid alongside your wages.

    But while your wages are deposited in your bank account however frequently you receive a payslip – whether that’s weekly, fortnightly or monthly – it’s a different story for your super.

    Under current superannuation laws, employers are only required to pay super into an employee’s nominated fund at least four times a year – 28 days after the end of each quarter – although many do pay more regularly.

    But that’s set to change. From July 1 2026, new “payday super” rules will require employers to pay super into the employee’s fund within seven days of wages.

    This reform was announced in the 2023–24 federal budget, allowing employers, superannuation funds and software providers three years to set up compliant systems. But it hasn’t yet been legislated.

    Now, some industry groups are calling for a further delay of up to two years. So, who are these reforms designed to benefit? And does business really need more time to get ready?

    Missing or incorrect super

    Missing or incorrect super payments present a huge problem for Australia’s retirement system.

    The Super Members Council claims one in four Australians are missing out on the correct amount of superannuation contributions.

    Missing super payments are a multi-billion dollar problem.
    Wara1982/Shutterstock

    The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) estimates A$5.2 billion of guaranteed superannuation went unpaid in 2021–22.

    This can be due to payroll errors, misclassification under an award or, in extreme cases, non-payment of superannuation as a form of wage theft. All these things can be harder to spot when super is paid less frequently.

    Rules only requiring super to be paid quarterly may have been appropriate 30 years ago, in the early days of the superannuation guarantee. Business systems were often not computerised, and wages were often paid in cash.

    Times have changed

    Payroll systems are now much more sophisticated.

    From 2018, the federal government rolled out the single-touch payroll program that requires employers to report wages in real time, including details of superannuation guarantee withheld from an employee’s wages.

    The government is already benefiting from the increased automation of data submitted through this system.

    Single-touch payroll data helps improve official labour statistics and provides up-to-date income information for employees through the MyGov portal.

    Sending real-time data to Centrelink addresses one of the major flaws underpinning the Robodebt scandal, which used an averaging system to estimate fortnightly earnings.

    Benefits for employees

    In simple terms, the coming changes are basically a change in timing. Payments will be transferred to an employee’s super fund in the same way their wages are transferred directly to their bank account.

    Once bedded down, the changes will provide benefits across the board to employees, employers and the government.

    Currently, if an employee believes the correct amount of superannuation is not being paid to their fund, they are expected to follow this up directly with the ATO.

    Unfortunately, many employees presume the withheld amount shown on the payslip has already been paid into their super account.

    Unless a member is actively monitoring their super balance, they may be unaware that the amount shown on their payslip is not being paid into their fund on a timely basis.

    Payday super changes could help employees more easily check their super is being paid.
    Chay_Tee/Shutterstock

    Benefits for business

    Employers should also benefit from these changes, many of whom already do transfer superannuation when wages are paid.

    Currently, superannuation guarantee payments are run on a separate payment cycle to payroll, coinciding with payment of tax liabilities. If payments are on the same cycle as payroll, it should make budgeting easier, and ensure the separate super payment run is not overlooked.

    This assumes, of course, that the business is not relying on unpaid superannuation contributions to manage their cash flows elsewhere in the business. If that is the case, payday super changes will help protect the employee if the employer runs into financial difficulties.

    The change will also allow the tax office to match deductions and payments in real time to detect fraud – and check that super is actually being paid. This can reduce audit costs and – in the long run – reduce reliance on the aged pension as super account balances improve.

    Why wait any longer?

    So, with all of these expected benefits, why has the financial services sector this month asked for implementation to be delayed further – by up to two years? The building blocks of the system – electronic payments to transfer funds and the government’s single-touch payroll gateway – are already in place.

    One challenge is legislative. Although announced in May 2023, the draft legislation was only released for consultation in March 2025.

    The Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 needs extensive amendments to rewrite references to the calculation and payment of the superannuation guarantee charge.

    The draft legislation also makes some changes to definitions that may impact on how systems must be set up for payday super. Although not intended to change entitlements, they need to be made accurate in the software.

    Still, payday super has the potential to strengthen Australia’s superannuation system, protecting employee contributions and smoothing the payment system for employers. Concerns around its implementation are largely due to the time it has taken for the draft legislation to emerge.

    Following the election, the federal government has the numbers to pass this legislation as a matter of priority.

    Helen Hodgson has received funding from the ARC, AHURI and CPA Australia. Helen is the Chair of the Social Policy Committee and a Director of the National Foundation for Australian Women (NFAW). Helen was a Member of the WA Legislative Council from 1997 to 2001, elected as an Australian Democrat. She is not a current member of any political party. She is a Registered Tax Agent and a member of the SMSF Association, CPA Australia and The Tax Institute. Helen has superannuation with Unisuper and jointly owns positively geared rental properties.

    – ref. Soon, your boss will have to pay your wages and super at the same time. Here’s how everyone could benefit – https://theconversation.com/soon-your-boss-will-have-to-pay-your-wages-and-super-at-the-same-time-heres-how-everyone-could-benefit-256564

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Men are shaving off their eyelashes on TikTok. Here’s why that might be a bad idea

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Meyer, Senior Lecturer, Anatomy and Pathology, James Cook University

    Bhatakta Manav/Shutterstock

    Videos of men removing their eyelashes, by trimming or shaving, have been circulating on social media in recent weeks. This trend is based on the idea short eyelashes look more masculine.

    Hair can tell us a lot about our social and cultural values. As the Canadian sociologist Anthony Synnott says, it can represent embedded ideas about biological sex, such as “opposite sexes have opposite hair” and “head hair and body hair are opposite”.

    But do sex differences have any basis in biology? And what about the health risks of tampering with your lashes?

    If the idea of a buzzing razor coming near your eyes makes you nervous, there’s good reason.

    Does sex determine eyelash length?

    Most warm-blooded animals have eyelashes. Human eyelashes begin to develop in the womb at around seven weeks and by six months they are fully formed.

    Typically, we have 100 to 150 lashes on the upper eyelid that grow in two or three rows. There are half as many eyelashes on the lower lid.

    Eyelash length is usually around one-third of the eye’s width. Lower lashes are shorter (6–8 millimetres) compared to the upper lashes (8–12mm).

    The density, length, thickness and curl of eyelashes are determined by your genetics. But there is no evidence these anatomical differences are linked to sex.

    This means the idea men “naturally” have short eyelashes – and women’s are longer, darker and thicker – is based in culture, not biology.

    Regardless of your sex or gender, eyelashes serve several important functions.

    What are eyelashes for?

    Protection

    Eyelashes provide a barrier against dust, debris, bugs, bacteria and chemicals (such as hairspray and deodorants), stopping them from entering the eyes.

    Tears form a fluid film that covers the eye to keep it lubricated. Eyelashes also prevent air drying out this film.

    From an aerodynamic point of view, medium-length lashes (8mm) are ideal for stopping the eye’s surface from drying out. Very short lashes can expose the surface to air, while very long lashes can channel more air flow towards it.

    Eyelashes also shield our eyes from glare, reducing how much light enters the eye by up to 24%.

    Sensation

    Eyelashes are highly sensitive, so touching the eyelashes triggers a blink reflex that makes the eye shut. This protects it from unwanted materials.

    Blinking also activates the release of tears and distributes them across the eyes’ surface.

    Social interaction

    Eyelashes help us communicate. Blinking slowly can signal attentiveness or flirtation – and eyelashes make this more appealing.

    Wearing mascara or fake eyelashes emphasises the eyelashes and can make the eyes look larger and more expressive.

    Eyelashes form in the womb by six months of pregnancy, and are not linked to male or female sex.
    DUSITARA STOCKER/Shutterstock

    So, what if you don’t have eyelashes?

    People can lose their eyelashes for various reasons.

    For example, chemotherapy for cancer often results in hair loss – including eyelashes – as does alopecia, an autoimmune condition which causes the body to attack its own hair follicles.

    Some people also pull out their eyelashes when they are anxious or stressed.

    If you can’t stop this behaviour, and your eyelash loss is noticeable and affects day-to-day life, you may have a condition called trichotillomania.

    The compulsion to cut or shave hair (rather than pull it out) is known as trichotemnomania.

    If you’re worried, you should speak to your doctor to get support.



    Read more:
    ‘I wanted to stop … but I also wanted to pull’. 1 in 50 people have trichotillomania – a new memoir unpacks compulsive hair-pulling

    No matter how hair is lost, without eyelashes you will likely feel greater discomfort. More foreign particles can enter the eye – exposing you to greater risk of infection – and you will blink more to try to wash them away.

    More air on the eyes’ surface can also make them feel dry and irritated.

    Is removing eyelashes risky?

    Putting sharp blades near your eyes means if you are bumped, slip, or even blink, you risk injury to the eyelid or cornea (the clear, dome-shaped covering at the front of your eyeball).

    Anything that goes near your eye should be very clean. If blades aren’t sterile, bacteria can lead to blepharitis (eyelid inflammation) or conjunctivitis (“pink eye”).

    Will shaved eyelashes grow back?

    Cutting eyelashes doesn’t remove the hair follicle.
    art4stock/Shutterstock

    Yes. If eyelashes are trimmed or shaved, the hair bulb and follicle (the sac surrounding the hair) remains in the skin of the eyelid, allowing the hair to keep growing.

    Eyelashes grow at an average rate of 0.12mm per day, or 3.6mm a month. It could take up to three or four months for your eyelashes to grow back to their typical length.

    Shaving does not affect the length, thickness and darkness of your regrown eyelashes – these will grow back the same as before (unless there has been irreversible damage to the follicle itself).

    Sex, gender, and eyelashes

    Perceptions of sex and gender differences in eyelashes persist, thanks in part to social norms and media portrayals.

    For example, a 2023 study from the United States surveyed 319 people (142 men and 177 women) of diverse ethnic backgrounds about eyelash length in women. Men and women of all backgrounds said images of female faces with no or short eyelashes were the least attractive, regardless of ethnicity.

    Cartoon characters illustrate how deeply ingrained and socially constructed these gender differences are. Compare Minnie Mouse’s long, thick lashes with Mickey Mouse, who has none.

    Cartoons often depict women with exaggerated lashes and male characters with none at all.
    Loren Javier/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

    This is not a thing of the past, as the masculine- and feminine-presenting characters of a popular current children’s cartoon Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir still demonstrate.

    The top row depicts masculine-presenting characters with no lashes, and the bottom row shows feminine-presenting characters with long and plentiful eyelashes.
    Zagtoon Wiki

    In reality, all bodies and features, including eyelashes, are naturally diverse.

    Body autonomy means recognising that personal choices about appearance are valid and should be respected without judgement. But when altering your body, it’s important to also know the health risks.

    Amanda Meyer is affiliated with the Australian and New Zealand Association of Clinical Anatomists, the American Association for Anatomy, and the Global Neuroanatomy Network.

    Monika Zimanyi is affiliated with the Australian and New Zealand Association of Clinical Anatomists and the Global Neuroanatomy Network.

    – ref. Men are shaving off their eyelashes on TikTok. Here’s why that might be a bad idea – https://theconversation.com/men-are-shaving-off-their-eyelashes-on-tiktok-heres-why-that-might-be-a-bad-idea-256222

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: What is the ‘glass cliff’ phenomenon – and why do women often find themselves on the precipice?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kerrie-Anne Hammermeister, PhD Candidate in the School of Humanities and Communication, University of Southern Queensland

    GoodStudio/Shutterstock

    Speaking to the media after being named leader of the Liberal Party, Sussan Ley was asked if this appointment was an example of the “glass cliff effect”.

    Ley said “I don’t accept that”. She went on:

    I do say it sends a signal to the women of Australia that the Liberal Party has elected its first woman leader but my agenda is much more than that.

    Most of us are familiar with the concept of the “glass ceiling”, a metaphor used to describe the invisible barriers which prevent women from succeeding in senior leadership – and Ley could be seen as breaking the glass ceiling of the Liberal party.

    But the “glass cliff” applies to women who are elevated to positions of leadership in a time of crisis, meaning they are perceived as having a high probability of failure and will take the fall for their organisation.

    The glass cliff evokes imagery of a woman being at the top of a mountain cliff. Being on the cliff is a dangerous position: there is a high chance of falling – or being pushed off.

    Times of misfortune

    Against the historical backdrop of male-dominated leadership, the metaphor was coined to reflect women’s experience of leadership selection in times of organisational misfortune and crisis.

    The “glass cliff” has sometimes been invoked in misogynist ways to downplay the strengths of women in leadership, saying they have been put in a position of leadership with the express belief they will fail. But it does describe a commonly seen phenomenon which is important to observe and understand.

    There are many prominent examples of women who have been associated with the phrase.

    British Prime Minister Liz Truss was elevated to the role at a time of significant uncertainty, and was in the position for just 45 days.

    US Presidential candidate Kamala Harris was given minimal time to campaign and establish herself as a genuine opponent to Republican candidate Donald Trump.

    Former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, who was appointed when the tech company was failing and share prices were down before being unceremoniously dumped via a phone call.

    ‘Think female’

    Some academics believe that these women aren’t placed in the position of the glass cliff to be the fall guy, but instead these appointments relate to women’s perceived ability to handle organisational crises. They propose an alternative phrase: “think crisis – think female”.

    This phrase suggests women leaders perform better than men in a crisis, partly due to the assumption that women will garner more support than men in such times.

    It is based on stereotypes of women’s perceived ability to build and repair relationships and reputations.

    Both phrases link women leaders and crises. But the glass cliff explains how women are elevated into positions of leadership in turbulent times and are blamed when organisations fail.

    Professional risk

    The phenomenon of the glass cliff is a professional risk for women in leadership.

    Organisations may prey on the career ambitions of outgroup women, knowing that they are more likely to accept any leadership position, even a precarious one, in order to advance their career.

    The privilege of the ingroup men, on the other hand, means they are protected from taking on a leadership position with risk and volatility.

    Women leaders taking on these roles in turbulent times are also exposed to greater scrutiny from internal and external stakeholders, including individual performance criticism.

    If a woman leader then fails, her performance is seen to reinforce gender stereotypes about women’s leadership competency.

    Further complicating this context are gendered stereotypes that assume women leaders have exceptional people skills, meaning senior women in high-risk leadership roles receive less support and fewer resources than their male counterparts.

    The glass cliff presents a double bind for women leaders. If women leaders behave in stereotypically feminine ways they are seen as weak or indecisive. By contrast, if they behave counter to this they are labelled as harsh and aggressive.

    Either way, the glass cliff awaits.

    The glass cliff phenomenon draws our attention to the way in which women are set up to fail in high-risk risk leadership roles. But the metaphor also reveals the ongoing gender discrimination and stereotype bias women experience in taking on professional leadership roles.

    Kerrie-Anne Hammermeister does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. What is the ‘glass cliff’ phenomenon – and why do women often find themselves on the precipice? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-glass-cliff-phenomenon-and-why-do-women-often-find-themselves-on-the-precipice-256072

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Young detainees often have poor mental health. The earlier they’re incarcerated, the worse it gets

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emaediong I. Akpanekpo, PhD Candidate, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney

    Populist rhetoric targeting young offenders often leads to kneejerk punitive responses, such as stricter bail laws and lowering the age of criminal responsibility. This, in turn, has led to more young people being held in detention.

    In Australia, the number of young people held in detention facilities increased by 8% (from 784 to 845) between the June quarter of 2023 and the June quarter of 2024.

    But what if some of these young people were treated and helped, rather than incarcerated? A series of recently published studies examining mental health in the youth justice population suggests treatment would be more beneficial than punitive measures – some of which may even promote persistent offending.

    Increased incarceration

    New South Wales saw a 31% increase in young people in detention between 2023 and 2024.

    Increases in youth detention numbers have also been reported in Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania and South Australia over the same period.

    About 60% of young people in detention are First Nations youth.

    Custody as a catalyst

    Young people in the justice system have significantly higher rates of mental ill-health and adverse childhood experiences than their peers in the general population.

    However, less clear is how involvement in the justice system, particularly custody, affects the severity and trajectory of these mental health issues over time.

    Our team examined how exposure to the justice system affected mental health among young people in NSW. We analysed administrative health and justice data over two years post-supervision.

    These data came from more than 1,500 justice-involved youth who participated in the Young People in Custody Health Survey in 2003, 2009 and 2015 and Young People on Community Orders Health Survey between 2003 and 2006.

    We found young people who had spent time in custody faced markedly higher rates of subsequent psychiatric hospitalisation compared with those supervised in the community.

    The risk of psychiatric hospitalisations was higher for those with multiple custody episodes. This demonstrates the significant negative impact of incarceration on the mental health of young people long after they are released.

    We also examined how the impact of custody on psychiatric hospitalisations differed by age.

    We found psychiatric hospitalisation rates were similar among youth aged 14–17 years who had been supervised in the community, compared with those aged 18 and older.

    However, youth aged 14–17 who were placed in custody were hospitalised at significantly higher rates than their older peers aged 18 and above.

    This suggests incarceration is particularly harmful for younger offenders.

    How does this affect crime?

    When we examined the long-term consequences of youth detention on subsequent offending, we found conviction during adolescence, especially before the age of 14, significantly increased the likelihood of later entering the adult prison system.

    Those who were incarcerated during adolescence faced a fivefold increase in the risk of being incarcerated as an adult, compared with young people who’d never been in custody.

    This suggests it may be beneficial to delay the involvement of young people in the justice system to help prevent repeat offending in the future.

    Breaking the cycle

    So what can be done to help?

    In NSW, laws allow young people with mental health conditions to be diverted from judicial processes into treatment. Such laws for young people also exist in other states, although specific models vary.

    While research shows those diverted into treatment have a lower risk of reoffending, less than half of eligible youth receive this option.

    How do we help those who miss out? Our studies examined whether going to mental health services voluntarily (without a court order) could help reduce recidivism.

    Among boys who had been in custody, we found they were 40% less likely to reoffend if they received mental health treatment after release than those who did not receive such treatment.

    A similar, but larger, benefit was observed among boys supervised in the community. There, mental health treatment was associated with a 57% reduction in reoffending risk.

    Evidence-based reform

    Evidence shows punitive measures do not deter youth crime, but instead are likely to perpetuate cycles of offending into adulthood.

    Policymakers should reimagine youth justice to protect young people and create real pathways to rehabilitation.

    Raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to delay the onset of formal contact with the justice system aligns with developmental science and prevents early criminalisation of young people.



    Read more:
    Locking up young people might make you feel safer but it doesn’t work, now or in the long term

    Enhancing routine mental health screening in the justice system and expanding access to diversion programs is warranted.

    Our findings on the benefits of routine mental health treatment highlight the potential for more integrated approaches. When combined with wraparound services for health and education, they could be even more effective.

    As detaining a young person costs around $1 million annually, mental health treatment-based approaches make sound financial sense too.

    Tony Butler receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

    Emaediong I. Akpanekpo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Young detainees often have poor mental health. The earlier they’re incarcerated, the worse it gets – https://theconversation.com/young-detainees-often-have-poor-mental-health-the-earlier-theyre-incarcerated-the-worse-it-gets-252376

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Political parties can recover after a devastating election loss. But the Liberals will need to think differently

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

    Australia has just had its second landslide election in a row.

    In 2022, there was a landslide against the Liberals, but not to Labor, which fell over the line (as a majority government) by three seats and with just over 32% of the primary vote. But the Coalition – actually Liberal – loss of seats, at 19, was the kind of result usually associated with the term “landslide”.

    In 2025, we have a genuine landside to Labor. At the time of writing, the ABC has declared a Labor gain of 15 seats (78 to 93), but with the strong likelihood of one more, and an outside chance of another.

    Labor’s share of the two-party preferred vote sits at 54.8%. To add a bit of historical perspective: Labor’s two-party preferred vote is lower than the Coalition’s in the so-called Vietnam election of 1966 (56.9%) and the Dismissal election of 1975 (55.7%), but better than John Howard’s in 1996 (53.6%) and Tony Abbott’s in 2013 (53.5%). The Coalition managed 94 seats in a slightly smaller House of Representatives of 148 (compared to 150 at the 2025 election) in 1996. Labor might also land on 94 this time, once the counting is done.

    For Labor, it is a victory on a scale only rivalled – and indeed slightly overshadowed statistically – by John Curtin’s wartime election in 1943, when Labor gained 49 seats in a House of 74. That was two-thirds of the available seats and perhaps 58% of the two-party preferred vote. (The full distribution of preferences only came in later elections). In 2025, Labor is likely to land on just under 63% of the House.

    Big majorities carry their own headaches, as Labor’s factional wrestling of recent days reminds us. But a big loss is a much worse ordeal for the loser.

    First, there is the problem of finding a leader. He, or she, will be selected from depleted ranks. They will often inherit a demoralised party that will lack belief in its ability to return to office in a single term – allowing that there has been no one-termer in Australian federal politics since the Scullin government (1929-32).

    Sussan Ley, the new Liberal leader, will realise – or should realise – that as a leader elected following such a defeat, her chances of ever making it to the prime ministership are slim.

    Since the second world war, a new leader chosen after a loss of office has never become prime minister. Peter Dutton, who became opposition leader in 2022, joined Billy Snedden (after 1972), Kim Beazley (1996), Brendan Nelson (2007) and Bill Shorten (2013) as those who never went on to lead the country.

    But any leader who slips into the role – either re-elected or for the first time – after a big loss is a long shot to make it. The best example we have from the postwar era is Gough Whitlam, elected leader in February 1967 after one of the biggest landslides in Australian political history, won by Harold Holt at the 1966 election. It is therefore worth revisiting what he did to get there.

    Whitlam biographers such as Graham Freudenberg and Jenny Hocking have offered us a detailed picture of Whitlam’s systematic work on reforming the party and policy as part of his pitch to the people. The Liberals could do worse than think in those terms as they contemplate their rebuild. They have vast work to do on all of those fronts.

    As a party, Labor was a basketcase in 1967. In Victoria, it was dominated by a group of left-wing unionists and members who seemed more concerned with maintaining ideological purity than winning elections. Whitlam taunted them at the state conference in 1967 that “certainly, the impotent are pure”.

    But between 1967 and 1972, Whitlam and his allies – some of them on the left outside Victoria – modernised the party’s structures and rules, and moderated left-wing domination of the Victorian branch. Alongside these reforms came a comprehensive policy overhaul – the formulation of what Whitlam reverentially called “The Program” – drawing on a vast network of experts across the country and the most compelling models from other countries.

    This was paired with a redesign of the party’s image that helped it win back a vast number of voters at the 1969 election, culminating in the remarkable, election winning “It’s Time” campaign in 1972.

    It was a six-year effort, and it was far from easy. But it is perhaps the best modern example we have of what a shattered party needs to do to win back office.

    Labor faced similar challenges after 1975 and, although the process was messier, Bob Hawke’s eventual election in March 1983 owed much to a process of reform of Labor party, policy and image led by Bill Hayden between 1977 and 1983. This time, it was the Queensland branch of the party – Hayden’s own – that needed an overhaul, which it received through federal intervention of the kind applied to Victoria a decade before.

    Labor also worked out a Prices and Incomes Accord with the union movement, designed to avoid many of the economic and political problems experienced by Whitlam in government, such as runaway inflation. Hayden, like Whitlam before him, crafted an electable opposition. Hawke, however, reaped the benefit after he replaced Hayden on the eve of the 1983 campaign.

    There are lessons here for the Liberals. First, they can no longer avoid party reform. Their post-election reviews of recent times often read like Gothic tales: indeed, I could recommend the Western Australian one after the 2021 state election only to those with stomachs capable of standing up to slasher movies.

    Second, the 2025 election revealed a Coalition policy wasteland. Some, such as the idea of a nuclear power plants across the country, were daft. Others, like cuts to the fuel excise for a year – coinciding with a decline in petrol prices – were dross. Others again simply made it appear the Coalition was making it up as it went along. It would be hard to conceive of anything further removed from the best examples we have of policy rebuilding by shattered parties.

    Finally, there are the people. Who, exactly, are the Liberals trying to win over? From May 2022, Dutton seemed to have his eye on Labor voters in the outer suburbs, but he did very little that was likely to win them over. He did even less to win over groups who have turned decisively away from the Liberals in recent years, such as women and the young.

    Whatever efforts they made to win over the so-called multicultural communities, such as Chinese-Australian voters, were undone by clumsy messaging from the ministerial ranks about “spies”. In the end, it often seemed that Dutton – and possibly also most of the survivors of 2022 – didn’t have their hearts in appealing to the kinds of voters who had turned to the teals, Labor and Greens in 2022. They preferred to commune with their own.

    The impotent are still pure: the Liberals emerge from the 2025 campaign unsullied by a dalliance with strangers. They now have their reward. Whether a party organisation with branches dominated by the ideologue, the conservative, the elderly and the eccentric can act as an instrument for forging a new electoral alliance of the kind that set up the party in the 1940s for decades of success must be considered doubtful. There is no Robert Menzies on the horizon. And there is no Liberal movement speaking a language of progress rather than reaction.

    This is the greatest crisis faced by Australia’s centre right since 1943 – and we can be certain that, unlike Ben Chifley, Anthony Albanese won’t do his opponents the favour of trying to nationalise the banks.

    Frank Bongiorno does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Political parties can recover after a devastating election loss. But the Liberals will need to think differently – https://theconversation.com/political-parties-can-recover-after-a-devastating-election-loss-but-the-liberals-will-need-to-think-differently-232695

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: In Indonesia, Albanese has a chance to reset a relationship held back by anxiety and misperceptions

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hangga Fathana, Assistant Professor of International Relations, Universitas Islam Indonesia (UII) Yogyakarta

    Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has wasted little time taking his first overseas trip since Labor won a historic victory in Australia’s federal election. He’ll head to Indonesia today to meet the country’s new president, Prabowo Subianto.

    With both nations entering new political chapters, the visit carries symbolic weight. But it will also have practical importance.

    Despite the two nations’ proximity and strengths, the relationship has often been held back by outdated perceptions and strategic hesitation. This is a timely opportunity to reset the relationship.

    Prabowo’s emerging foreign policy

    Prabowo succeeded outgoing President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in October after a decade of his infrastructure-driven and globally engaged leadership.

    Prabowo, a former army general and defence minister, had projected a populist and nationalist image during his 2024 election campaign. He frequently emphasised Indonesia’s food self-sufficiency, military strength and national sovereignty.

    Since taking office, however, he has moderated his tone. While seen by some in the West as assertive, he has signalled a willingness to strengthen bilateral defence ties with Australia. He also has an interest in modernising Indonesia’s military and engaging more transparently with partners.

    Still, questions remain about how he will shape Indonesia’s foreign policy. This includes whether he will maintain Jokowi’s emphasis on multilateralism and economic diplomacy. Both are key to the tone and outcomes of Albanese’s visit.

    Prabowo’s leadership style is nuanced. Despite his polarising image, Indonesia’s foreign policy is still shaped by pragmatism and non-alignment. As such, Prabowo will likely focus on balancing relations with China, the United States and Russia, while protecting Indonesia’s sovereignty.

    Indonesia’s decision to join BRICS, the economic group that includes both China and Russia, for example, should be seen as a diplomatic hedge, not a new geopolitical alignment.

    Other recent decisions, such as providing aid to Fiji, suggest an increasingly outward-facing regional posture.

    Albanese should offer Prabowo credible alternatives to Russian and Chinese engagement through trade, technology and education exchanges, rather than reacting to Jakarta’s moves with suspicion.

    Opportunities for cooperation

    In his election campaign, Albanese reaffirmed his government’s commitment to working closely with Southeast Asia. He also promised a foreign policy grounded in diplomacy, climate cooperation and economic diversification.

    This provides a strong incentive for both leaders to deepen ties. For Australia, deepening ties with Indonesia supports its Indo-Pacific strategy. The goal: promoting a stable and inclusive regional order, particularly amid concerns over growing strategic competition between the US and China.

    For Indonesia, Australia offers investment, education partnerships, and critical expertise in clean energy and innovation.

    A free-trade agreement signed in 2019 provides a platform for deeper integration and less competition in certain industries.

    For example, there are huge opportunities to collaborate in clean energy, particularly after the neighbours signed a climate partnership last year. The agreement will secure supplies of lithium for Indonesia’s EV battery production, while Australia will gain more export markets for its critical minerals.

    People-to-people ties are also vital, while education remains a longstanding pillar of the bilateral relationship.

    Both countries face skills shortages in key sectors. Indonesia needs skilled workers in health care, clean technology and digital literacy. Australia has shortages in critical infrastructure, aged care and engineering.

    There are good opportunities here for student exchanges, joint employment training programs and other vocational collaborations.

    New Australian university campuses in Indonesia are a positive step, but they remain commercially focused and concentrated in elite, urban areas. With over 4,000 universities across the archipelago, these partnerships could go much further.

    Where tensions might arise

    The relationship is not without friction. Australia’s involvement in the AUKUS agreement, and its close alignment with the United States and United Kingdom, has raised concerns for Indonesia, which has long championed non-alignment.

    Jakarta has voiced unease over the perceived risks of nuclear submarine proliferation in the region.

    Albanese’s visit is a key opportunity to clarify that AUKUS involves nuclear-powered — not nuclear-armed — submarines. He should also reinforce Australia’s commitment to transparency over the deal. This is essential to avoiding misunderstandings and building trust.

    A more recent flashpoint is speculation around a possible Russian military presence in Indonesia — a claim the Indonesian government has firmly denied.

    Indonesia’s response exemplifies its longstanding commitment to strategic autonomy. However, the whole ordeal reveals the complexity of Jakarta’s foreign relations, which often involve balancing ties with competing powers.

    For Australia, acknowledging Indonesia’s independent foreign policy — rather than interpreting it through a great-power rivalry lens — is critical to sustaining mutual trust.

    A chance to re-anchor the relationship

    This moment offers both governments the chance to move beyond symbolic gestures toward a deeper, more inclusive and people-centred partnership.

    Amid global fragmentation, trust is not just desirable — it’s essential. And while differences remain, they are not insurmountable when guided by mutual respect, strategic patience and a commitment to genuine cooperation.

    For Australia, the challenge is to move past strategic anxiety and invest in a resilient, multidimensional relationship with Indonesia. This visit could be the first step in doing just that.

    Hangga Fathana does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. In Indonesia, Albanese has a chance to reset a relationship held back by anxiety and misperceptions – https://theconversation.com/in-indonesia-albanese-has-a-chance-to-reset-a-relationship-held-back-by-anxiety-and-misperceptions-256321

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: As US ramps up fossil fuels, communities will have to adapt to the consequences − yet climate adaptation funding is on the chopping block

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Bethany Bradley, Professor of Biogeography and Spatial Ecology, UMass Amherst

    Salt marshes protect shorelines, but they’re already struggling to survive sea-level rise. John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images

    It’s no secret that warming temperatures, wildfires and flash floods are increasingly affecting lives across the United States. With the U.S. government now planning to ramp up fossil fuel use, the risks of these events are likely to become even more pronounced.

    That leaves a big question: Is the nation prepared to adapt to the consequences?

    For many years, federally funded scientists have been developing solutions to help reduce the harm climate change is causing in people’s lives and livelihoods. Yet, as with many other science programs, the White House is proposing to eliminate funding for climate adaptation science in the next federal budget, and reports suggest that the firing of federal climate adaptation scientists may be imminent.

    As researchers and directors of regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers, funded by the U.S. Geological Survey since 2011, we have seen firsthand the work these programs do to protect the nation’s natural resources and their successes in helping states and tribes build resilience to climate risks.

    Here are a few examples of the ways federally funded climate adaptation science conducted by university and federal researchers helps the nation weather the effects of climate change.

    Protecting communities against wildfire risk

    Wildfires have increasingly threatened communities and ecosystems across the U.S., exacerbated by worsening heat waves and drought.

    In the Southwest, researchers with the Climate Adaptation Science Centers are developing forecasting models to identify locations at greatest risk of wildfire at different times of year.

    Knowing where and when fire risks are highest allows communities to take steps to protect themselves, whether by carrying out controlled burns to remove dry vegetation, creating fire breaks to protect homes, managing invasive species that can leave forests more prone to devastating fires, or other measures.

    The solutions are created with forest and wildland managers to ensure projects are viable, effective and tailored to each area. The research is then integrated into best practices for managing wildfires. The researchers also help city planners find the most effective methods to reduce fire risks in wildlands near homes.

    Wildland firefighters and communities have limited resources. They need to know where the greatest risks exist to take preventive measures.
    Ethan Swope/Getty Images

    In Hawaii and the other Pacific islands, adaptation researchers have similarly worked to identify how drought, invasive species and land-use changes contribute to fire risk there. They use these results to create maps of high-risk fire zones to help communities take steps to reduce dry and dead undergrowth that could fuel fires and also plan for recovery after fires.

    Protecting shorelines and fisheries

    In the Northeast, salt marshes line large parts of the coast, providing natural buffers against storms by damping powerful ocean waves that would otherwise erode the shoreline. Their shallow, grassy waters also serve as important breeding grounds for valuable fish.

    However, these marshes are at risk of drowning as sea level rises faster than the sediment can build up.

    As greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and from other human activities accumulate in the atmosphere, they trap extra heat near Earth’s surface and in the oceans, raising temperatures. The rising temperatures melt glaciers and also cause thermal expansion of the oceans. Together, those processes are raising global sea level by about 1.3 inches per decade.

    Adaptation researchers with the Climate Adaptation Science Centers have been developing local flood projections for the regions’ unique oceanographic and geophysical conditions to help protect them. Those projections are essential to help natural resource managers and municipalities plan effectively for the future.

    Researchers are also collaborating with local and regional organizations on salt marsh restoration, including assessing how sediment builds up each marsh and creating procedures for restoring and monitoring the marshes.

    Saving salmon in Alaska and the Northwest

    In the Northwest and Alaska, salmon are struggling as temperatures rise in the streams they return to for spawning each year. Warm water can make them sluggish, putting them at greater risk from predators. When temperatures get too high, they can’t survive. Even in large rivers such as the Columbia, salmon are becoming heat stressed more often.

    Adaptation researchers in both regions have been evaluating the effectiveness of fish rescues – temporarily moving salmon into captivity as seasonal streams overheat or dry up due to drought.

    In Alaska, adaptation scientists have built broad partnerships with tribes, nonprofit organizations and government agencies to improve temperature measurements of remote streams, creating an early warning system for fisheries so managers can take steps to help salmon survive.

    Managing invasive species

    Rising temperatures can also expand the range of invasive species, which cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars each year in crop and forest losses and threaten native plants and animals.

    Researchers in the Northeast and Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Centers have been working to identify and prioritize the risks from invasive species that are expanding their ranges. That helps state managers eradicate these emerging threats before they become a problem. These regional invasive species networks have become the go-to source of climate-related scientific information for thousands of invasive species managers.

    The rise in the number of invasive species projected by 2050 is substantial in the Northeast and upper Midwest. Federally funded scientists develop these risk maps and work with local communities to head off invasive species damage.
    Regional Invasive Species and Climate Change Network

    The Northeast is a hot spot for invasive species, particularly for plants that can outcompete native wetland and grassland species and host pathogens that can harm native species.

    Without proactive assessments, invasive species management becomes more difficult. Once the damage has begun, managing invasive species becomes more expensive and less effective.

    Losing the nation’s ability to adapt wisely

    A key part of these projects is the strong working relationships built between scientists and the natural resource managers in state, community, tribal and government agencies who can put this knowledge into practice.

    With climate extremes likely to increase in the coming years, losing adaptation science will leave the United States even more vulnerable to future climate hazards.

    Bethany Bradley receives funding from the US Geological Survey as the University Director of the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center.

    Jia Hu has receives funding from the US Geological Survey as the University Director of the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center.

    Meade Krosby receives funding from the US Geological Survey as the University Director of the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center.

    – ref. As US ramps up fossil fuels, communities will have to adapt to the consequences − yet climate adaptation funding is on the chopping block – https://theconversation.com/as-us-ramps-up-fossil-fuels-communities-will-have-to-adapt-to-the-consequences-yet-climate-adaptation-funding-is-on-the-chopping-block-256307

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: From GPS to weather forecasts: the hidden ways Australia relies on foreign satellites

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Steer, Chair, Australian Centre for Space Governance, Australian National University

    Japan Meteorological Agency via Wikimedia

    You have probably used space at least 20 times today. Satellites let you buy a coffee with your phone, book a rideshare, navigate your way to meet someone, and check the weather.

    Satellites are also essential for monitoring floods, cyclones and bushfires, and supporting the people they affect. Farmers depend on satellite data, too, as does everyone trying to understand and tackle climate change, not to mention our military.

    Yet Australia’s access to space services depends almost entirely on satellites owned and run by foreign governments and companies. In an increasingly uncertain world, having our own sovereign space technology is becoming even more important for security.

    But what exactly do we need to secure? And how can space help us do it? My colleagues and I at the Australian Centre for Space Governance have thought through these questions and presented them in a policy paper series – and we have some recommendations for the government.

    Space services are essential

    Since 2022, the Australian government has considered space technology to be “critical infrastructure”. In other words, if the space-based services we use were destroyed or disrupted, it “would have a debilitating impact on Australia’s defence and national security, a destabilising effect on the population, and cause significant damage to the economy”.

    However, Australia is entirely dependent on foreign partners for space-based services such as communications and Earth observation.

    Another crucial kind of satellite-powered service is “position, navigation and timing” – things like GPS, which is owned and operated by the US government. Even a temporary loss of these services could pose significant risks to Australia’s telecommunications and energy systems, as well as disaster response.

    According to Australia’s 2024 National Defence Strategy, space capabilities are “equally as important as the maritime, land and air domains”. But we are in many respects simply users of space infrastructure that belongs to partner countries for our military needs. There are opportunities to increase our role in these partnerships if we place more emphasis on how Australia can be a contributor.

    An uncertain world

    Almost all the satellite data that supports our agriculture, banking, transport, climate monitoring, bushfire and flood response – and connects rural, remote and regional Australians – comes from the US, Europe and Japan. This dependency poses significant risks.

    If any of those countries have to prioritise their own national needs in a natural disaster – such as the Sea of Japan earthquake in January last year – we might lose access. Even temporary loss of service can be disruptive, such as the temporary outage in 2023 of a UK satellite that impacted farmers in Australia and New Zealand.

    The same might happen if any of those countries stopped providing data for political or national security reasons.

    These risks are only increasing as our dependency on satellite services grows, and our relationship with the United States may become less certain.

    What do we want from space?

    Many of Australia’s international partners are also questioning their dependence on the US, and prioritising their domestic needs. Many have national space policies, or at least a clear idea of what sovereign space capabilities they want to invest in. This is what Australia needs, too.

    Greater cooperation on new space technologies could help our shared interests with our neighbours. Obvious areas include regional security, climate response, supporting agriculture, and internet connectivity needs.

    One obstacle, as we discovered when we ran a national public opinion survey last year, is that Australia doesn’t have a clear vision of what it wants from space.

    In government, too, there is little shared understanding of how satellites and related infrastructure feed in to our national priorities and needs.

    At present, thinking about space is usually the domain of specialists in government. But a better option would be “mainstreaming” space – making it part of the everyday, business-as-usual thinking of policymakers across government.

    Sovereign satellites

    Our country already excels at what’s called the “ground segment” for space – things like satellite dishes and data management. One example is the satellite dish operated by Geoscience Australia in Alice Springs, on land leased from the Indigenous-owned business, the Centre for Appropriate Technology. But we don’t have any sovereign satellites.

    In 2023, the government scrapped a billion-dollar project including four Earth-observation satellites, citing budget constraints. In 2024, a planned military-grade satellite communications system worth $7 billion was also cancelled due to lack of cash.

    But in 2025, it’s a new term of government. New minister for industry and science Tim Ayres may revisit these decisions. It certainly aligns with his support for a “Future Made in Australia”.

    This time around, the space industry and researchers will need to do a better job at communicating why satellites matter so much to our national well-being and security.

    Cassandra Steer has received funding in the past from the Department of Defence, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Geoscience Australia and Home Affairs. She is Chair and founder of the Australian Centre for Space Governance.

    – ref. From GPS to weather forecasts: the hidden ways Australia relies on foreign satellites – https://theconversation.com/from-gps-to-weather-forecasts-the-hidden-ways-australia-relies-on-foreign-satellites-256440

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Mark Carney’s cabinet: A course correction on gender, but there’s more work ahead

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jeanette Ashe, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, King’s College London

    Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has unveiled his federal cabinet in his first major opportunity to define his newly elected government’s direction.

    For academics and activists concerned with gender equity, the cabinet announcement was a crucial litmus test for Carney’s approach to inclusive governance. Overall, Carney demonstrated a significant course correction with cabinet appointments that reflect a clear commitment to gender parity going forward.

    Carney entered office amid mounting scrutiny. His first cabinet, swiftly formed following his swearing-in as prime minister to replace Justin Trudeau, broke with his predecessor’s near decade-long tradition of gender-balanced cabinets.

    Controversially, Carney also eliminated the Minister for Women and Gender Equality (WAGE) upon taking office in March. This decision prompted sharp criticism from feminist organizations, including the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, Women’s Shelters Canada, YWCA Canada and Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights.

    Demanded a reversal

    They wrote and signed an open letter to Carney in March at the annual gathering of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

    These groups viewed the removal of WAGE not only as a symbolic loss but as one with tangible, negative policy implications for millions of women and gender-diverse individuals across Canada. They argued: “Gender equality is not an afterthought; it is the backbone of a strong economy and resilient society.”

    Investing in feminist policies, including health care, childcare and pharmacare is, in other words, good for business, they said.

    In response to this organized feminist pushback, Carney has revised his approach. His cabinet comprises 28 full ministers: 14 women and 15 men, including the prime minister. In addition, Carney appointed 10 junior ministers as secretaries of state: four women and six men. WAGE has also now been restored as a full ministry.

    Men hold the most substantive posts

    While reinstating gender parity in cabinet marks an improvement, it is not without caveats. While women now make up almost half of both cabinet tiers, it’s not sufficient. Substantive representation, in which women hold influential decision-making positions, is lacking.

    A closer look reveals Carney’s appointments may be seen as a form of gender-washing — symbolically inclusive, but not substantively so.



    Read more:
    Gender washing: seven kinds of marketing hypocrisy about empowering women

    Notably, men hold five of the six most powerful positions in his core cabinet: finance, justice and attorney general, government House leader, president of the King’s Privy Council and president of the Treasury Board. Only one of these key roles — foreign affairs — was awarded to a woman, Anita Anand.

    This reflects persistent gender trends identified by scholars like Roosmarijn de Geus and Peter Loewen, who found in 2021 that women are under-represented in Canada in the more influential or “masculine” portfolios such as finance and defence, and over-represented in those perceived as caring or social in nature.

    While women are at Canada’s cabinet table, most do not have seats with the greatest views. Equity in numbers does not yet translate to equity in influence.

    Formalizing gender parity

    Overall, Canada’s broader trends in political representation remain troubling. The 2025 election saw a decrease in both the proportion of women candidates and elected MPs.

    Canada has now slipped to 70th in the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s global ranking for women in national parliaments. With only 30.9 per cent of parliamentary seats held by women, Canada falls well below peer countries such as the United Kingdom (40.5 per cent) and New Zealand (45.5 per cent).

    Relying on the electoral fortunes of a single party to push for and uphold gender equity in Canada’s Parliament is unsustainable.

    Carney has now shown responsiveness to feminist public critique — a pragmatic move given the high number of women who supported the Liberal Party. If he wants to demonstrate ongoing commitment, his next step could be institutionalizing gender parity in ways that outlast any single leader or party. Such a change would ensure equity in politics is justice-based, not leader-based.

    More specifically, Parliament could amend the Parliament of Canada Act to require gender-balanced cabinets. Legislated gender quotas for political parties would also help ensure a minimum baseline of equitable representation in the House of Commons.



    Read more:
    Women in politics: To run or not to run?

    More than 100 countries have adopted such quotas. Canada could join them given most Canadians support their use.

    The Speaker of the House of Commons could also be tasked with producing annual gender-sensitive assessments of Parliament, policy outputs and government structures.

    Overall, Carney’s new cabinet is a win for feminist advocacy, but it cannot be the final word. Canada needs legal mechanisms, cultural shifts and institutionalized reforms to ensure its democratic institutions are truly representative.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Mark Carney’s cabinet: A course correction on gender, but there’s more work ahead – https://theconversation.com/mark-carneys-cabinet-a-course-correction-on-gender-but-theres-more-work-ahead-256541

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Using a blue inhaler alone is not enough to manage your asthma

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Hughes, Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice, University of Sydney

    New Africa/Shutterstock

    Inhalers have been key to asthma management since the 1950s. The most common, salbutamol, comes in a familiar blue-coloured inhaler (or “puffer”).

    This kind of “rescue inhaler” brings quick relief from asthma symptoms. You may know these inhalers by their brand names such as Ventolin, Asmol or Zempreon.

    But there is growing evidence that using this kind of inhaler without treating the underlying condition may not only be ineffective – it could actually increase the risk of an asthma attack.

    Next month, the National Asthma Council is releasing updated guidelines that reflect this shift. Here’s what’s changing and what you need to know.

    What is a bronchodilator?

    Bronchodilators such as salbutamol act by relaxing smooth muscle in the airways. While they don’t address inflammation, which is the key cause of asthma, bronchodilators are effective at quickly opening up constricted airways.

    This means for people experiencing typical asthma symptoms – such as tightness of the chest and shortness of breath – a puff of salbutamol brings relief within ten minutes. The effect can last up to six hours.

    Salbutamol relaxes the airway muscles that tighten due to asthma.
    BlueRingMedia/Shutterstock

    Salbutamol is used by people with asthma and other respiratory conditions, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (which includes chronic bronchitis and/or emphysema). As part of a management plan made with a doctor, salbutamol is used to relieve shortness of breath when it occurs.

    In Australia, more than 60% of salbutamol is purchased over the counter (without a prescription) in pharmacies. Many of these purchases may be for people with infrequent asthma symptoms, meaning less than twice a month.

    However, we now know there are safer and more effective ways for people with infrequent asthma to manage it in the long term.

    So, what’s wrong with using salbutamol?

    Treating symptoms is only one part of asthma management. Salbutamol doesn’t address the root cause – why the airways of people who get asthma become constricted in the first place.

    It’s a bit like taking pain relief for a swollen elbow without treating the tendonitis causing the pain.

    In asthma, chronic inflammation is usually a result of genes and environment interacting.

    Some people have airways that overreact to triggers in the environment. These triggers include pollens, moulds and dust mites, or air that is cold or humid.

    Over the long term, chronic inflammation can lead to changes in the airways. The airway walls become thicker and produce more mucus, allowing less space for air to flow through them.

    Using short-acting treatments such as salbutamol without addressing chronic inflammation in the airways poses risks.

    Salbutamol can become less effective with regular use. This means people with shortness of breath don’t gain the relief they expect and need, and paradoxically, their airways may become more “twitchy” (sensitive to environmental triggers) and inflamed. One response to this is people use more salbutamol and the problem is compounded.

    Strong data links increased use of short-term inhalers such as salbutamol to higher risk of asthma flare-ups, hospital admissions and even death.

    Purchasing three or more salbutamol inhalers per year is considered overuse.

    According to asthma guidelines in Australia and globally, needing salbutamol for symptom relief on more than two days a week is an indicator of poorly controlled asthma, requiring review and possibly anti-inflammatory treatment.

    Using your blue inhaler more than two days a week may indicate poorly controlled asthma.
    Kotcha K/Shutterstock

    What do the new guidelines recommend?

    In 2019, the Global Initiative for Asthma, an independent not-for-profit organisation, radically changed its recommendations for salbutamol use. This is based on its committee of asthma experts reviewing the evidence.

    Australian asthma guidelines from the National Asthma Council are set to follow suit.

    The council’s 2025 Australian Asthma Handbook now states that salbutamol alone is inadequate treatment for asthma in adults or adolescents.

    Previously, the guidelines recommended people with infrequent symptoms to use salbutamol when needed and “alone” – that is, without an anti-inflammatory preventer.

    The new recommendations specifically warn against anyone with asthma using a short-acting bronchodilator such as salbutamol by itself, due to the increased health risks mentioned above.

    People with asthma who use salbutamol, for example, should also use an anti-inflammatory treatment that provides preventive cover, such as an inhaled corticosteroid.

    The 2025 Australian Asthma Handbook now recommends anti-inflammatory relievers from day one when it comes to asthma treatment in adults and adolescents.

    These inhalers contain, in a single dose (one puff), both a bronchodilator (to relieve symptoms) and a low-dose anti-inflammatory corticosteroid (to treat underlying inflammation).

    They are recommended instead of salbutamol-only inhalers for symptom relief, even for those whose symptoms are infrequent.

    When used in place of salbutamol-only inhalers, anti-inflammatory relievers have demonstrated improvements in quality of life for people with asthma, as well as lower risks of hospitalisations and death.

    In the case of children with asthma, global guidelines emphasise the use of anti-inflammatory inhalers and discourage over-reliance on bronchodilators.

    Will I need to change my inhaler?

    Currently, combination anti-inflammatory relievers are only available with a prescription from a doctor. These prescriptions with repeats can allow people with asthma up to 12 months of treatment.

    In Australia you can still buy salbutamol in a pharmacy without a prescription, after consultation with a pharmacist.

    However, if you have asthma and you’re concerned about the new guidance, you should speak to your pharmacist or doctor for advice.

    Stephen Hughes receives research grant funding from the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care Medical Research Future Fund, The Australian Research Council and Asthma Australia. He is a past Board Member of the National Asthma Council of Australia and current member of its Finance and Risk Management Committee.

    Bandana Saini has received funding from 1) Australian Government Department of Health Initiatives (via MRFFs or Community Pharmacy Agreement based investigator initiated grants, 2) National Health and Medical Research Council or from 3) organisations such as Asthma Australia.

    – ref. Using a blue inhaler alone is not enough to manage your asthma – https://theconversation.com/using-a-blue-inhaler-alone-is-not-enough-to-manage-your-asthma-250133

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: ‘The pope is Peruvian!’ How 2 decades in South America shaped the vision of Pope Leo XIV

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Matthew Casey-Pariseault, Associate Clinical Professor of History, Arizona State University

    Faithful hold a photo of Robert Prevost, who was elected Pope Leo XIV, in front of the Cathedral of Chiclayo, Peru, where he served as bishop for several years. AP Photo/Manuel Medina

    In his first appearance as Pope Leo XIV on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, the man born Robert Francis Prevost spoke for 10 minutes in Italian. Then he transitioned to Spanish and, with a big grin, gave a greeting to his “beloved diocese of Chiclayo in Peru.”

    Many Peruvians were overjoyed with the election of Leo, whom they are proud to claim as a fellow citizen. “The Pope is Peruvian!” reported the live coverage on Latina Noticias, one of the main national networks. Other news outlets around Lima, where I live, shared similar headlines. Within minutes, all of Peru knew that the new pope, who was born and raised in Chicago, had served in Peru for over two decades and was nationalized as a citizen in 2015.

    During his time in the South American nation, he lived alongside his parishioners through a bloody civil war, a decade-long dictatorship and an unstable post-dictatorship period that has so far led to three former presidents being handed prison sentences. Amid these challenges, Prevost became part of Peruvian society – and, eventually, a leader within it.

    Prevost’s leadership roles in Chicago and Rome were essential in his formation. But as a scholar of religion in Latin America, I believe that it is his time in Peru that has best prepared him to take on the challenges of directing the global Catholic Church. In Peru, where Catholicism permeates public life, Prevost encountered deep social and political challenges in ways that bishops in many other countries may never face so directly.

    Missionary during war and dictatorship

    Prevost first arrived in Peru in 1985. A member of the Order of St. Augustine, the young man had been sent to its mission in Chulucanas, in the northern province of Piura. Chulucanas is about 30 miles east of the regional capital, where the desert coast begins to rise up into the Andes.

    After a year, Prevost left to finish his doctoral degree and serve briefly in Illinois. But he soon returned to Peru, serving as a missionary in the northern city of Trujillo. He stayed there through the remainder of the 1980s and 1990s, amid civil war between the government and various militant groups – primarily the Maoist guerrillas of Sendero Luminoso, or “Shining Path,” who aimed to install a communist state.

    The violence hit other regions more severely, but Trujillo and the surrounding area were home to car bombs, sabotaged electrical grids and brutal military dragnet operations. Prevost accompanied Peruvians through some of the darkest days of the country’s history.

    During these years, Prevost trained future clergy and served as a parish priest. One fellow Augustinian recalled that Prevost played a key role in recruiting and training Peruvian candidates to the priesthood. Prevost also founded the Trujillo parish of Nuestra Señora de Montserrat, where his parishioners knew him as “Padre Roberto.”

    As the country transitioned away from the civil war period, which ultimately left nearly 70,000 dead, Prevost remained in Peru. During the 1990s, President Alberto Fujimori’s government built a polarizing legacy by undermining democracy and citizenship rights while capturing the two most powerful guerrilla leaders.

    Peruvian families carry remains of recently identified relatives who were killed years ago, during the insurgency, to the cemetery for burial in 2022.
    AP Photo/Martin Mejia

    As I show in my research, religion and politics are deeply intertwined in Peru. By the 1990s, the Peruvian Catholic Church was divided between members who spoke out in defense of human rights and those who defended the often brutal tactics of the government. Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, who was then the archbishop of Ayacucho – the Andean stronghold of Sendero Luminoso – became a spokesperson for the pro-state faction, framing defenders of human rights as apologists for terrorism.

    Prevost was among those who maintained a critical view of any party, including the government, that committed human rights abuses. Diego Garcia-Sayan, the country’s former minister of justice and foreign affairs, recently wrote an op-ed praising Prevost’s willingness to speak out against attempts to legalize the death penalty and to defend embattled human rights organizations.

    From Chiclayo to the Vatican

    After returning to the United States in 1999, Prevost rose through the leadership ranks of the Augustinian order. He was sent back to Peru in 2014, when Pope Francis named him the apostolic administrator, and later bishop, of the northern diocese of Chiclayo.

    As bishop, Prevost emerged as a voice for democracy and justice. In a 2017 public statement to national media, he urged former President Fujimori to “personally ask forgiveness for the great injustices that were committed and for which he was prosecuted.”

    During his tenure as bishop, Prevost helped guide his community through the COVID-19 pandemic. He also played a key role ministering to Chiclayo’s growing population of Venezuelan migrants.

    Venezuelan Betania Rodriguez on May 10, 2025, shows a photo taken with Pope Leo XIV at a migrant shelter in Chiclayo, Peru.
    AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo

    Meanwhile, he was gaining the confidence of his peers, as well as Pope Francis. Prevost was given a leadership role in the Peruvian Conference of Bishops and played a central role during Francis’ 2018 visit to Peru. In 2023, Francis named Prevost prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops, the oversight body for naming new bishops across the world.

    Prevost took the position in Rome but was sad to leave Peru again. “This time, again, it will be hard for me to leave here,” Prevost told Peruvian media.

    In recent years, Prevost has taken on causes central to Francis’ papacy. He was a key actor in the Vatican investigations of a Peruvian organization, Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana, which was found to have committed dozens of sexual and psychological abuses dating back to the 1970s. Francis dissolved the organization in 2025. Prevost has also developed an increased focus on Indigenous and environmental rights, in line with Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato Si and 2019 conference for bishops in the Amazon.

    Local celebrations

    Photographs and memes celebrating the Peruvian pope have flown around social media and WhatsApp groups in Peru. The photos of Prevost eating traditional dishes from the north coast are especially popular. AI-generated memes of the pope wearing the Peruvian national soccer jersey or eating ceviche with an Inca Kola soda are making the rounds.

    In Chicalayo and Trujillo, in addition to official church celebrations, thousands have taken to the streets to express their joy with placards and chants.

    Leo XIV has clearly brought the memory of his years in Peru with him to the Vatican. He has chosen Edgard Rimaycuna, a Peruvian priest whom the pope knew from his time in Chiclayo, as his personal secretary.

    I believe the challenges that Leo guided his parishioners through in two decades in Peru should offer valuable lessons for the new pope to build on the legacy of Francis, the first Latin American pope.

    Matthew Casey-Pariseault does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. ‘The pope is Peruvian!’ How 2 decades in South America shaped the vision of Pope Leo XIV – https://theconversation.com/the-pope-is-peruvian-how-2-decades-in-south-america-shaped-the-vision-of-pope-leo-xiv-256415

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The pay equity puzzle: can we compare effort, skill and risk between different industries?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gemma Piercy, Lecturer, Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Waikato

    Getty Images

    Last week’s move by the government to amend pay equity laws, using parliamentary urgency to rush the reforms through, caught opposition parties and New Zealanders off guard.

    Protests against the Equal Pay Amendment Bill have continued into this week, driven to some extent by disappointment that an apparent political consensus on the issue has broken down.

    In 2017, the National-led government passed a forerunner to the current legislation for the health sector only, the Care and Support Workers (Pay Equity) Settlement Act. Later, in opposition, National also supported the Labour government’s Equal Pay Act in 2018, as well as the Equal Pay Amendment Act in 2020.

    That legislation was designed to extend a pay equity process to all occupations and create a clearer pathway for making pay equity claims. With both major parties seemingly aligned, some 33 pay equity claims were under way.

    Those claims – all halted now – involve the education, health and social services sectors. As such, the government would have to meet the costs of successful claims.

    This explains why one rationale for the law change has been that the claims were potentially too expensive. The other rationale (preferred by Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden) is that the existing policy wasn’t sufficiently rigorous in determining the validity of some claims.

    In reality, both the cost and the policy framework allowing equity claims to proceed are interrelated: the more permissive the framework, the higher the potential cost to the government and employers.

    But while equal pay for equal work is the goal, it’s important to understand that equal pay and pay equity are not the same thing.

    Equal pay is about making sure men and women are paid at the same rate in a specific occupation.

    Pay equity, on the other hand, involves a more complex process. It aims to establish pay relativities between famale-dominated industries and other sectors using specific criteria. And herein lies the core of the argument.

    Comparing different work sectors

    According to van Velden, the framework for comparing different kinds of work was too loose, or simply not realistic:

    You have librarians who’ve been comparing themselves to transport engineers. We have admin and clerical staff […] comparing themselves to mechanical engineers. We don’t believe we have that setting right.

    On the surface, this may seem logical. And previous policy advice provided to the government suggests the recent law change will move New Zealand’s framework into line with other countries.

    But using a proxy method of comparison between types of work in different industries or sectors remains central to any pay equity claim.

    That’s because pay equity seeks to make visible and fix the deep, structural inequalities that have historically seen women’s work undervalued compared to men’s work. It’s about ensuring jobs that are different but of equal value are paid similarly, as a way to achieve gender equality.

    Women’s employment is still concentrated in lower-paying industries and occupations, so comparisons have to be made with other sectors.

    The factors used to measure that relativity are known as “comparators”. Rather than using tools developed and tested under the previous legislation, the new system will introduce “a hierarchy of comparators”, with a preference for comparators to be chosen within the same industry or occupation making the pay equity claim.

    Comparators are selected to help compare the nature of different kinds of work in male-dominated and female-dominated industries. This is based on an assessment of skills, experience and qualifications, level of responsibilities, types of working conditions and degree of effort.

    The assessment is completed through in-depth interviews with workers in comparison occupations. It uses resources such as Employment New Zealand’s skills recognition tool to evaluate the validity of those comparators.

    Different kinds of cost

    The subjective nature of valuing different kinds of work is part of the problem, of course. But New Zealand research shows only part of the gender pay gap can be attributed to objectively measurable pay differences within specific industries. Pay equity is about addressing both the objective and subjective elements contributing to that gap.

    We’ll need to carefully monitor the new system to see whether its narrower comparator requirements affect its capacity to close the gender pay gap.

    Treasury’s concerns also need to be considered. The former budget allocation of NZ$17 billion over four years suggests the costs of settling pay equity claims may be considerable.

    On the other hand, they may be bearable. Last year in the United Kingdom, for example, Birmingham City Council was effectively bankrupt and feared pay equity claims might be a final straw. In the end, the costs were not as high as initially anticipated.

    Finally, focusing exclusively on reducing fiscal cost risks other costs rising instead. Women who are paid less than they should be will struggle to put food on the table, pay back student loans, get onto the property ladder, contribute to Kiwisaver and afford their retirement.

    Without pay equity, in other words, there is less economic activity in general.

    Gemma Piercy received funding from the Pay Equity Unit (2004-2009), part of the former Department of Labour, now Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

    Bill Cochrane and Suzette Dyer do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. The pay equity puzzle: can we compare effort, skill and risk between different industries? – https://theconversation.com/the-pay-equity-puzzle-can-we-compare-effort-skill-and-risk-between-different-industries-256464

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump moves to gut low-income energy assistance as summer heat descends and electricity prices rise

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Conor Harrison, Associate Professor of Economic Geography, University of South Carolina

    Cities like Houston get high humidity in addition to the heat, making summer almost unbearable without cooling. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

    The U.S. is headed into what forecasters expect to be one of the hottest summers on record, and millions of people across the country will struggle to pay their power bills as temperatures and energy costs rise.

    A 2023 national survey found that nearly 1 in 4 Americans were unable to pay their full energy bill for at least one month, and nearly 1 in 4 reported that they kept their homes at unsafe temperatures to save money. By 2025, updated polling indicated nearly 3 in 4 Americans are worried about rising energy costs.

    Conservative estimates suggest that utilities shut off power to over 3 million U.S. households each year because the residents cannot pay their bills.

    This problem of high energy prices isn’t lost on the Trump administration.

    On the first day of his second term in 2025, President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency by executive order, saying that “high energy prices … devastate Americans, particularly those living on low- and fixed incomes.”

    Secretary of Energy Christopher Wright raised concerns about utility disconnections and outlined a mission to “shrink that number, with the target of zero.”

    Yet, the administration’s 2026 budget proposal zeros out funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, the federal program that administers funding to help low-income households pay their utility bills. And on April 1, 2025, the administration laid off the entire staff of the LIHEAP office.

    During the hottest periods, even nighttime temperatures might not drop below 90 in Phoenix. Without air conditioning, homes can become dangerously hot.
    Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

    Many people already struggle to cobble together enough help from various sources to pay their power bills. As researchers who study energy insecurity, we believe gutting the federal office responsible for administering energy bill assistance will make it even harder for Americans to make ends meet.

    The high stakes of energy affordability

    We work with communities in South Carolina and Tennessee where many residents struggle to heat and cool their homes.

    We see how high energy prices force people to make dangerous trade-offs. Low-income households often find themselves choosing whether to buy necessities, pay for child care or pay their utility bills.

    One elderly person we spoke with for our research, Sarah, explained that she routinely forgoes buying medications in order to pay her utility bill. Another research participant who connects low-income families to energy bill assistance in Tennessee said: “I’ve gone into these homes, and it’s so hot. Your eyes roll in the back of your head. It’s like you can’t breathe. How do you sit in here? It’s just unreal.”

    Unfortunately, these stories are increasingly common, especially in low-income communities and communities of color.

    Electricity prices are predicted to rise with worsening climate change: More frequent heat waves and extreme weather events drive up demand and put pressure on the grid. Furthermore, rising energy demand from data centers – supercharged by the increasing energy use by artificial intelligence – is accelerating price increases.

    Shrinking resources for assistance

    LIHEAP, created in 1981, provides funding to states as block grants to help low-income families pay their utility bills. In fiscal year 2023, the program distributed US$6.1 billion in energy assistance, helping some 5.9 million households avoid losing power connections.

    The program’s small staff played critical roles in disbursing this money, providing implementation guidelines, monitoring state-level fund management and tracking and evaluating program effectiveness.

    A long line of utility customers wait to apply for help from the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program in Trenton, N.J., in 2011. In 2023, around 6 million households benefited from LIHEAP.
    AP Photo/Mel Evans

    LIHEAP has historically prioritized heating assistance in cold-weather states over cooling assistance in warmer states. However, recent research shows a need to revisit the allocation formula to address the increasing need for air conditioning. The layoffs removed staff who could direct this work.

    It is unlikely that other sources of funding can fill in the gaps if states do not receive LIHEAP funds from the federal government. The program’s funding has never been high enough to meet the need. In 2020, LIHEAP provided assistance to just 16% of eligible households.

    Our research has found that, in practice, many households rely on a range of local nonprofits, faith-based organizations and informal networks of family and friends to help them pay their bills and keep the power on.

    For example, a research participant named Deborah reported that when faced with a utility shut-off, she “drove from church to church to church” in search of assistance. United Way in South Carolina received over 16,000 calls from people seeking help to pay their utility bills in 2023.

    These charitable services are an important lifeline for many, especially in the communities we study in the South. However, research has shown that faith-based programs do not have the reach of public programs.

    Without LIHEAP, the limited funds provided by nonprofits and the personal connections that people patch together will be stretched even thinner, especially as other charitable services, such as food banks, also face funding cuts.

    What’s ahead

    The $4.1 billion that Congress allocated to LIHEAP for the 2025 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, has already been disbursed. Going forward, however, cuts to LIHEAP staff affect its ability to respond to growing need. Congress now has to decide if it will kill the program’s future funding as well.

    Maricopa County in Arizona, home to Phoenix, illustrates what’s at stake. Annual heat-related deaths have risen 1,000% there in the past decade, from 61 to 602. Hundreds of these deaths occurred indoors.

    Cooling becomes essential during Arizona’s extreme summers. Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, reported more than 600 heat-related deaths in 2024.
    AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin

    We believe gutting LIHEAP puts the goal of energy affordability for all Americans – and Americans’ lives – in jeopardy. Until more affordable energy sources, such as solar and wind power, can be scaled up, an expansion of federal assistance programs is needed, not a contraction.

    Increasing the reach and funding of LIHEAP is one option. Making home weatherization programs more effective is another.

    Governments could also require utilities to forgive past-due bills and end utility shut-offs during the hottest and coldest months. About two dozen states currently have rules to prevent shut-offs during the worst summer heat.

    For now, the cuts mean more pressure on nonprofits, faith-based organizations and informal networks. Looking ahead to another exceptionally hot summer, we can only hope that cuts to LIHEAP staff don’t foreshadow a growing yet preventable death toll.

    Etienne Toussaint, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, and Ann Eisenberg, a law professor at West Virginia University, contributed to this article.

    Conor Harrison receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    Elena Louder receives funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    Nikki Luke receives funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She previously worked at the U.S. Department of Energy.

    Shelley Welton receives funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    – ref. Trump moves to gut low-income energy assistance as summer heat descends and electricity prices rise – https://theconversation.com/trump-moves-to-gut-low-income-energy-assistance-as-summer-heat-descends-and-electricity-prices-rise-256194

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How redefining just one word could strip the Endangered Species Act’s ability to protect vital habitat

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mariah Meek, Associate Professor of Integrative Biology, Michigan State University

    Green sea turtles, like this hatchling in Florida, are endangered due in part to habitat destruction and fishing nets. Keenan Adams/USFWS

    It wouldn’t make much sense to prohibit people from shooting a threatened woodpecker while allowing its forest to be cut down, or to bar killing endangered salmon while allowing a dam to dry out their habitat.

    But that’s exactly what the Trump administration is proposing to do by changing how one word in the Endangered Species Act is interpreted.

    For 50 years, the U.S. government has interpreted the Endangered Species Act as protecting threatened and endangered species from actions that either directly kill them or eliminate their habitat.

    Most species on the brink of extinction are on the list because there is almost no place left for them to live. Their habitats have been paved over, burned or transformed. Habitat protection is essential for their survival.

    The golden-cheeked warbler breeds only in Texas, primarily in Texas Hill Country. It has been losing habitat as development expands in the region.
    Steve Maslowski/USFWS, CC BY

    As an ecologist and a law professor, we have spent our entire careers working to understand the law and science of helping imperiled species thrive. We recognize that the rule change the Trump administration quietly proposed could green-light the destruction of protected species’ habitats, making it nearly impossible to protect those endangered species.

    The public, which has long supported the Endangered Species Act, has until May 19, 2025, to comment on the proposal.

    The legal gambit

    The Endangered Species Act, passed in 1973, bans the “take” of “any endangered species of fish or wildlife,” which includes harming protected species.

    Since 1975, regulations have defined “harm” to include habitat destruction that kills or injures wildlife. Developers and logging interests challenged that definition in 1995 in a Supreme Court case, Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter of Communities for a Great Oregon. However, the court ruled that the definition was reasonable and allowed federal agencies to continue using it.

    In short, the law says “take” includes harm, and under the existing regulatory definition, harm includes indirect harm through habitat destruction.

    Critical habitat throughout the U.S., including many coastlines and mountain areas. Note: Alaska is not to scale.
    U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

    The Trump administration is seeking to change that definition of “harm” in a way that leaves out habitat modification.

    This narrowed definition would undo the most significant protections granted by the Endangered Species Act.

    Why habitat protection matters

    Habitat protection is the single most important factor in the recovery of endangered species in the United States – far more consequential than curbing direct killing alone.

    A 2019 study examining the reasons species were listed as endangered between 1975 and 2017 found that only 17% were primarily threatened by direct killing, such as hunting or poaching. That 17% includes iconic species such as the red wolf, American crocodile, Florida panther and grizzly bear.

    In contrast, a staggering 81% were listed because of habitat loss and degradation. The Chinook salmon, island fox, southwestern willow flycatcher, desert tortoise and likely extinct ivory-billed woodpecker are just a few examples. Globally, a 2022 study found that habitat loss threatened more species than all other causes combined.

    As natural landscapes are converted to agriculture or taken over by urban sprawl, logging operations and oil and gas exploration, ecosystems become fragmented and the space that species need to survive and reproduce disappears. Currently, more than 107 million acres of land in the U.S. are designated as critical habitat for Endangered Species Act-listed species. Industries and developers have called for changes to the rules for years, arguing it has been weaponized to stop development. However, research shows species worldwide are facing an unprecedented threat from human activities that destroy natural habitat.

    Under the proposed change, development could be accelerated in endangered species’ habitats.

    Gutting the Endangered Species Act

    The definition change is a quiet way to gut the Endangered Species Act.

    It is also fundamentally incompatible with the purpose Congress wrote into the act: “to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved [and] to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species.” It contradicts the Supreme Court precedent, and it would destroy the act’s habitat protections.

    Northern spotted owls, like these fledglings, living in old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest are listed as threatened species because of habitat loss.
    Tom Kogut/USFS, CC BY

    Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum has argued that the recent “de-extinction” of dire wolves by changing 14 genes in the gray wolf genome means that America need not worry about species protection because technology “can help forge a future where populations are never at risk.”

    But altering an existing species to look like an extinct one is both wildly expensive and a paltry substitute for protecting existing species.

    The Catalina Island fox is endemic to Catalina Island. Habitat loss, diseases introduced by domestic dogs, and predators have diminished the population of these small foxes to threatened status.
    Catalina Island Conservancy/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

    The administration has also refused to conduct the required analysis of the environmental impact that changing the definition could have. That means the American people won’t even know the significance of this change to threatened and endangered species until it’s too late, though if approved it will certainly end up in court.

    The ESA is saving species

    Surveys have found the Endangered Species Act is popular with the public, including Republicans. The Center for Biological Diversity estimates that the Endangered Species Act has saved 99% of protected species from extinction since it was created, not just from bullets but also from bulldozers. This regulatory rollback seeks to undermine the law’s greatest strength: protecting the habitats species need to survive.

    Congress knew the importance of habitat when it passed the law, and it wrote a definition of “take” that allows the agencies to protect it.

    Mariah Meek has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and several state agencies. In addition to being a professor, she is also the Director of Research for The Wilderness Society.

    Karrigan Börk receives grant funding from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and several California state agencies. He is on the Advisory Board of Water Audit California, an organization that works to protect California’s public trust resources.

    – ref. How redefining just one word could strip the Endangered Species Act’s ability to protect vital habitat – https://theconversation.com/how-redefining-just-one-word-could-strip-the-endangered-species-acts-ability-to-protect-vital-habitat-256424

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Russia-China ties on full display on Victory Day – but all is not as well as Putin is making out

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

    Chinese troops participating in Russia’s Victory Day parade in Red Square, Moscow, on May 9 is a clear indication that President Xi Jinping is fully committed to his “no-limits” partnership with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

    Xi’s own attendance of the parade, which came as part of a state visit to Russia, underlines that China is not only supporting Russia. It signified that Beijing wants this support to be understood clearly in Kyiv, Washington and European capitals.

    Travelling to Moscow and having his troops goose-step down Red Square was not a last-minute decision by Xi. Nor was the multitude of agreements signed by the two leaders and their joint declaration anything but part of a well established pattern of deepening relations between Russia and China.

    This trend has accelerated since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But the breadth and depth of China’s commitment to Russia at this particular moment is undoubtedly related to the broader upheaval in the international order that has been worsened since Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    The Trump administration, possibly spooked by market wobbles, has taken steps to restore stability. China and the US have agreed a deal to slash the import tariffs they have imposed on each other. But uncertainty remains – above all about how the complex relationships in the triangle of Washington, Beijing and Moscow will work out and where this will leave the rest of the world.



    Read more:
    Trump, Xi and Putin: a dysfunctional love triangle with stakes of global significance

    On May 8, in the wake of Xi and Putin’s meetings in Moscow, Russia and China released a joint statement. It stressed the intention of the two leaders to “enhance the coordination of their approaches and to deepen the practical cooperation on maintaining and strengthening global strategic stability, as well as to jointly address common challenges and threats in this sphere”.

    They reiterated this determination in their press statements afterwards. Putin emphasised that he and Xi “personally control all aspects of [the] Russia-China partnership and do all we can to expand the cooperation on bilateral issues and the international agenda alike”.

    A Chinese read-out from the talks was similarly clear on the alignment between the countries. Xi reportedly said that “in the face of unilateralist countercurrents, bullying and acts of power politics, China is working with Russia to shoulder the special responsibilities of major countries and permanent members of the UN Security Council”.

    This unequivocal display of how close Moscow and Beijing are – as well as Putin and Xi personally – is important for both nations. For Russia, it remains important to demonstrate that western attempts at international isolation have not succeeded.

    For China, the very public consolidation of ties with Russia is above all a signal to the US. China is keen to stress that Trump’s efforts to engineer a split between Moscow and Beijing, which the American president described as necessary to “un-unite” the two nations during an interview with US talk show host Tucker Carlson in November 2024, have largely failed.

    However, beyond the glossy surface of the celebrations in Moscow, all is not as well for Russia as Putin is trying to make out. For all the public displays of friendship between Xi and Putin, the relationship between the two countries remains highly asymmetrical.

    Russia would not be able to continue to wage its war against Ukraine without Chinese support. Trade between Russia and China is critical to propping up the Russian war economy, reaching a record high of nearly US$250 billion (£190 billion) in 2024. Their trade has increased by more than 60% since 2021, yet it is only marginally up since 2023.

    China’s diplomatic clout is also helpful for Russia. If Beijing had taken an unequivocal stance opposing Moscow’s aggression, fewer leaders in the developing world would have sided with Putin.

    In this case, Russia would probably have lost organisations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Brics group of emerging economies as platforms to further its broader agenda of restoring its erstwhile status as a great power.

    In that agenda, Putin has been moderately successful. But with South Africa and India’s leaders absent from Russia’s Victory Day commemorations, the list of attendees was shorter than at the Brics summit in Kazan, Russia, in October 2024.

    A doubled-edged sword

    Notably absent from the celebrations in Moscow was high-level representation from North Korea and Iran. These are two key allies of Russia with whom Moscow signed strategic partnership agreements in June 2024 and January 2025, respectively.

    Tehran simply sent its ambassador to Moscow to attend. However, it may have compensated Putin in a different and materially more significant way.

    According to reports, Iran is readying a delivery of launchers to enable Russia to use the short-range ballistic missiles already delivered last year. This would further add to Russia’s reliance on Iranian hardware in Ukraine, which has so far been most visible in the use of Iranian-made Shahed drones.

    North Korea dispatched a military delegation led by three-star general Kim Yong-bok. Kim is widely considered the commander of North Korean forces fighting alongside Russian troops in the Kursk region of western Russia, where Ukrainian forces seized territory in August 2024 as a possible bargaining chip in future negotiations with Russia.

    Putin officially acknowledged the participation of North Korean troops in this operation in a statement on April 28. This acknowledgment came two days after he had announced the defeat of Ukrainian forces there in a highly choreographed and televised meeting with his chief of general staff, Valery Gerasimov.

    The demonstration of Russia’s close relationships with its three core allies – China, Iran and North Korea – is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it clearly indicates that Putin is far from isolated on the international stage.

    But it also signals that Russia has become a lot more dependent on these relationships than would befit Putin’s dreams of restoring Russia’s great-power status. Neither can be much comfort to Ukraine and its allies, unfortunately.

    Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

    – ref. Russia-China ties on full display on Victory Day – but all is not as well as Putin is making out – https://theconversation.com/russia-china-ties-on-full-display-on-victory-day-but-all-is-not-as-well-as-putin-is-making-out-256385

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Arctic ice is vanishing – our bold experiment is trying to protect it

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Shaun Fitzgerald, Director, Centre for Climate Repair, University of Cambridge

    The author and colleagues exploring in the Canadian Arctic. Real Ice

    Like ice in a drink, Arctic sea ice keeps things cold – until it melts. Using the same principle, some scientists are investigating whether they can make sea ice thicker and better able to cool the planet. I recently returned from Cambridge Bay in the far north of Canada, where I saw some early experiments in practice.

    Over the winter months, the build-up of sea ice around Cambridge Bay and across the Arctic helps keep the sea water underneath close to the freezing temperature, which for saltwater is around -1.8°C.

    These conditions are broadly maintained even through the early summer until the ice begins to melt and break up. The white ice cover, which reflects a large portion of the sun’s energy, is then replaced by dark blue water, which has the opposite effect. Now absorbing more sunlight, the water warms up.

    Such has been the balanced perennial cycle of sea ice in the Arctic, but recent decades of global warming might be putting it in jeopardy.

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    Over the past 30 years, sea ice in the Arctic has decreased. Rising air temperatures coupled with warmer water flowing in from further south have meant the ice starts to form later in the year and melt earlier.

    With less sea ice, there are longer periods in summer where more of the sun’s energy is absorbed rather than reflected into space. This creates a feedback loop – the warmer the water, the less sea ice is formed; the less sea ice there is, the warmer it gets.

    The author (in blue) and colleagues on the ice near Cambridge Bay in March 2025.
    Real Ice

    My trip to Cambridge Bay was as part of a team of scientists and engineers who have gathered together with local communities in the Arctic and two umbrella projects: Real Ice and Arctic Reflections. These groups want to research whether anything can be done to temporarily slow down or even reverse the loss of sea ice.

    The ultimate solution is, undoubtedly, deep and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But with slow progress over the past few decades, additional measures may buy us time.

    Buying time

    Several big ideas are currently being explored. The first involves pumping seawater on top of existing ice to try and promote ice growth on top of the sea ice.

    Usually, any new sea ice that forms naturally does so on the underside of the ice. The process of freezing gives off some energy, which must escape through the ice above – a good insulator.

    The idea of pumping on top of the ice is that by bypassing the insulating effect, more sea ice might form – and the heat it gives off can be transferred to the cold winter Arctic air or directly radiated out to space.

    The author, pumping water onto ice.
    Real Ice

    The second idea stems from the realisation that snow is an even better insulator than ice. The proposal is therefore to pump just enough water onto the snow to flood it.

    As it freezes and turns into solid ice, it becomes much more conductive than snow. In turn, this will enable more sea ice to form naturally on the underside of sea ice.

    A third idea is derived from the observation that as sea ice melts in the early summer, melt ponds form on the surface. These melt ponds are much darker and absorb more heat than the original ice.

    So the idea is to explore whether it might be possible to drill small holes in the ice to drain them, exposing reflective ice and slowing the melt.

    These ideas might sound fanciful, but the dramatic changes in the Arctic warrant investigation into interventions that could have an impact sooner than cutting emissions or removing greenhouse gases.

    Can we really save sea ice?

    Crucially, the research is focused on developing our understanding of these potential ideas. The research could show that they are impractical, unfeasible or would potentially make things worse.

    For example, if pumping sea water onto sea ice leads to thicker ice at the end of the winter, that may not be much use if the ice is so much saltier that it melts more quickly.

    Therefore, researchers are using a combination of mathematical modelling, laboratory experiments, and limited-scale field experiments to address fundamental questions. A research project funded by the UK government has just been launched which includes modelling of thickening of sea ice.

    A further one including additional outdoor experiments will be starting soon funded by the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) as part of its Exploring Climate Cooling programme.

    These experiments will be conducted in close collaboration with local communities and under Aria’s stringent governance framework, prioritising safety and environmental monitoring. The goal is to gather essential real-world data to rigorously assess if this intervention warrants further consideration.

    The initial results and observations from preliminary field experiments are inconclusive but encouraging. For example, the ice formed by pumping sea water onto sea ice appears to become less salty (and therefore less prone to melting) over a few weeks.

    The brine which forms as seawater freezes on the surface is more dense than the ice and appears to migrate downwards through the ice. This seems theoretically plausible, but it is too early in the experiments to be confident in the results.

    If this research suggests that thickening sea ice works, then the next step will be to engage with more Arctic locals and various policymakers, and determine whether scaled-up testing of some of these approaches would be appropriate.

    Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Shaun Fitzgerald currently receives funding from NERC on a project which includes modelling of Rethickening of Arctic Sea Ice. Shaun will also shortly be receiving funding from ARIA on a further project on Rethickening of Arctic Sea Ice.

    – ref. Arctic ice is vanishing – our bold experiment is trying to protect it – https://theconversation.com/arctic-ice-is-vanishing-our-bold-experiment-is-trying-to-protect-it-254534

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Amazon’s new robot has a sense of touch, but it’s not here to replace humans

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kartikeya Walia, Lecturer, Department of Engineering, Nottingham Trent University

    Amazon has just unveiled its newest warehouse robot called Vulcan, which has a “sense of touch”. Designed to gently stow items using pressure-sensitive gripping and artificial intelligence (AI), Vulcan is now being tested in two Amazon facilities, in Spokane, Washington state, US, and Hamburg, Germany.

    The robot is part of Amazon’s long-term investment in warehouse automation. The inevitable question that always comes up is: will robots like this replace human workers? In short: not yet, and probably not completely. In fact, Vulcan is a good example of how robotics are being designed to work with people, not against them.

    Vulcan is designed to assist warehouse workers in stowing – the process of placing items into storage bins (called pods) before they’re picked, packed and shipped. Human pickers often work at different height levels when they’re stowing, with repetitive bending, reaching or climbing of steps.

    Amazon has divided the workspace into zones: the “kneel and lunge” zone (low height), the “power” zone (mid height), and the “ladder” zone (high height). Vulcan is designed to operate in the lowest and highest zones – the most physically demanding areas for humans – to reduce the risk of injury and improve efficiency.

    Amazon’s new Vulcan robot.

    The “sense of touch” comes from Vulcan’s force-sensitive gripper. This adjusts how firmly it should hold each item. Using AI, Vulcan can predict the right amount of force to use, squeezing gently for soft, squishy items, and more firmly for flat or rigid ones.

    It also uses a clever flat prong to make space inside the bins, packing things more
    efficiently, almost like playing a game of Tetris.

    Right now, Vulcan can match the speed of a human worker and operate for around 20 hours a day. The movements are fast, hence it still works behind a protective safety fence. However, it’s not flawless – it can only handle objects up to about 8lbs (3.6kg) and struggles with round items.

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    The human factor

    So, does this mean fewer jobs for humans? New technologies often raise concerns about job losses – and in some cases, with good reason. Some roles will inevitably disappear as robots become more commonplace, especially those that are dull, dirty, or dangerous. But that’s only part of the picture.

    From what I’ve seen in my own research and experience with robotics, automation
    doesn’t usually eliminate jobs entirely – it changes them. Amazon insists that
    Vulcan is being introduced not to replace staff, but to reduce the physical strain of repetitive tasks and support faster, safer warehouse operations.

    Importantly, Amazon also runs a Mechatronics and Robotics Apprenticeship Program – a free course for workers to upskill and move into more technical roles,
    often with a pay increase of up to 40%. The company also runs other upskilling programmes.

    Though it’s also worth repeating here that Amazon has been the subject of criticism and complaints from employees about its intensive working conditions (Amazon says its employees’ safety and health is its top priority and that some inaccurate information has gone around), these kinds of upskilling initiatives are key to the future of work in environments that use robots. As machines take over the repetitive tasks, humans will move into roles involving assembly, commissioning, maintenance, quick repair, and eventually, system reconfiguration.

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    In theory, a fully automated, 24/7 “lights-out” warehouse sounds like a dream for
    business – no breaks, no injuries, no wages. But in practice, completely removing
    humans from the shop floor is incredibly risky. Robots and automation systems,
    especially those that are used in an environment as complex as Amazon’s logistics and warehouse management chain, can break down.

    If even one component in the workflow fails – a sensor, a motor, or a software module – and there are no humans around to spot it or fix it quickly, the entire operation could grind to a halt. In high-volume environments like Amazon warehouses, even an hour of downtime could cost a fortune.

    Keeping humans in the loop provides the flexibility and quick thinking that complex
    systems still depend on. It’s a safety net no algorithm can yet replace. It’s also a way to adapt to changes quickly, something that rigid automation often can’t do.

    Vulcan isn’t Amazon’s first robot, and it won’t be the last. Earlier systems like Sparrow could handle about 60% of the company’s inventory. With Vulcan, that number jumps to 75%. That’s certainly progress, but it also shows the limits of automation.

    There’s still a long way to go before a robot can match the flexibility, judgement and care of a human worker. The future of robotics in warehouses won’t be about replacing people, it will be about working alongside them, easing physical strain, increasing efficiency, and creating new types of jobs.

    We’re already seeing shifts in the industry. Modular robots are built using a core set of hardware “modules” that can be combined and recombined to form a customised machine. These are making it easier to tailor automation.

    An example of a reconfigurable modular robot.

    At the same time, vendor lock-in – where companies rely on proprietary hardware and software from a single supplier – is becoming less common. Instead, firms like Amazon are increasingly developing their own bespoke components to better suit their operational needs. A shift towards in-house, self-deployable robotics would mean that companies will need more technically skilled workers who can assemble, modify, and maintain these systems.

    For now, Vulcan is a glimpse of what’s coming: smarter robots, safer work and
    hopefully, a future where technology supports people, not the other way around.

    Kartikeya Walia receives funding from the EPSRC and UKRI.

    – ref. Amazon’s new robot has a sense of touch, but it’s not here to replace humans – https://theconversation.com/amazons-new-robot-has-a-sense-of-touch-but-its-not-here-to-replace-humans-256273

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The trend for ‘quiet’ and ‘soft’ quitting is a symptom of our deteriorating relationship with work

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By John-Paul Byrne, Lecturer, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences

    shutterstock Hananeko_Studio/Shutterstock

    How do you feel about your work? Do its daily demands leave you burned out and drained of energy?

    Do you find yourself reducing how much effort you make to engage in some “quiet” or “soft” quitting? Or maybe you dream of taking a more decisive step and joining the “great resignation”.

    The prevalence – and popularity – of these responses suggests that there has been quite a change in many people’s attitude to the way they earn a living. Some think that this change stems from a post-COVID evaluation of work-life balance. Others say it’s an individual form of industrial action.

    However, these explanations keep the spotlight firmly on workers rather than the work itself. Perhaps the truth lies in a fundamental deterioriation in people’s relationship with their work and maybe the work needs to shoulder some of the responsibility.

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    Our experience of working, and its impact on our lives, is about more than what goes on within the office or school or hospital or factory which pays our wages. Even something as simple (yet important) as the number of hours someone works might be the result of a complex combination of national law, professional expectations and an organisation’s resources.

    This is where something known as the “psychosocial work environment” comes in – an approach (especially popular in Scandinavia) which examines the various structures, conditions and experiences that effect an employee’s psychological and emotional wellbeing.

    Research in this field suggests that there are three conditions vital to the modern work experience: autonomy, boundary management and “precarity”.

    Autonomy is about how much control and influence you have when it comes to doing your job and is key to how most employees feel about their work.

    Low levels of autonomy can leave people feeling overwhelmed and powerless. But high levels can also be detrimental, leading to excessive levels of individual responsibility and overwhelming hours.

    Ideally, you should have enough autonomy to feel a sense of flexibility and self-determination – but not so much that you feel you need to always be available and constantly on the clock.

    Setting boundaries

    Boundary management is the ability to manage the physical and mental boundaries between work and non-work lives. Achieving a suitable work-life balance has become even more important in a world of hybrid working.

    But in jobs with high levels of autonomy and responsibility, boundaries can become blurred and unpredictable. Phones ping with work related notifications, and leisure becomes work at the swipe of a screen.

    All of this can lead to feelings of anxiety and exhaustion. The goal here is to set clear boundaries that bring predictability and clarity around work time and demands. This provides flexibility which is empowering rather than exploitative.

    Finally, “precarity” refers to a lack of stability and security in life. It refers specifically to a harmful state of uncertainty which is typically associated with job insecurity (zero hours contracts for example).

    This uncertainty and insecurity can dominate daily work time (and free time), leading to feelings of stress and anxiety. It can also have a negative impact on personal finances and career plans.

    Looking for a way out.
    Aleutie/Shutterstock

    Income and contract security can help here, although people working in insecure jobs often have little power when it comes to persuading their employers to make the necessary changes.

    But addressing the deteriorating relationship between employees and their work means confronting certain core conditions. Reflecting on the psychosocial elements of employment can help to identify the gap between expectation and actual experience.

    Before experiencing burnout or resorting to quitting (in any of its forms), this approach encourages employees and employers to reflect on two key questions. How does work make you feel? And what are the things that cause those feelings?

    Research on psychosocial work environments provides some guidance. It suggests that workers are more likely to thrive when they have autonomy that feels like control rather than abandonment, and flexibility and clarity that allows for a good work-life balance. They also need security that offers certainty in the present – and confidence in the future.

    John-Paul Byrne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. The trend for ‘quiet’ and ‘soft’ quitting is a symptom of our deteriorating relationship with work – https://theconversation.com/the-trend-for-quiet-and-soft-quitting-is-a-symptom-of-our-deteriorating-relationship-with-work-248787

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: ‘The red Welsh way’: Welsh Labour attempts to distance itself from the UK party

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Nye Davies, Lecturer in Politics, Cardiff University

    David Michael Bellis/Shutterstock

    More than two decades ago, Rhodri Morgan, then first minister of Wales, put “clear red water” between Welsh Labour and the UK party. It’s a phrase that became one of the most enduring cliches in Welsh politics.

    Now, his successor Eluned Morgan is trying to chart a fresh course with a new slogan: “the red Welsh way”. In a recent speech, Morgan set out Welsh Labour’s core values ahead of the 2026 Senedd (Welsh parliament) election: “Solidarity, equality, sustainability and justice.” These, she argued, are progressive principles rooted in Wales’ political traditions.

    But the speech also had a clear strategic purpose: to reassert Welsh Labour’s distinct identity at a time when its dominance in devolved politics is under pressure.

    Morgan pledged to stand up for Wales whenever she believed it was being neglected by Westminster or when UK government policies disproportionately harmed the nation. Deploying nationalistic language, while insisting she is not a nationalist, Morgan invoked a history of exploitation in Wales and vowed that such injustices would not be tolerated under Welsh Labour’s watch.

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    It was also a notable shift in rhetoric. During the 2024 general election, Welsh Labour leaned heavily on the idea of “two governments at both ends of the M4” working together. Morgan’s speech also represents her most forthright attempt yet to replenish the red waters between the Welsh government and Keir Starmer’s leadership, and her most passionate defence of Welsh Labour as a distinct entity.

    Poll pressure

    On the very same day, a new poll placed Welsh Labour in third place, behind Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. The polling comes with the familiar caveats. It is only one poll, a lot can change in the course of a year and it would be unwise to underestimate the strength of Welsh Labour’s electoral machine.

    Nevertheless, while the Senedd is expanding from 60 to 96 members, Welsh Labour’s presence within it is at risk of shrinking.

    Morgan’s speech implicitly recognises that the Labour brand is tainted. With the UK government chasing Reform UK’s voter base in light of recent election results, the red Welsh way feels like an effort to reclaim ground from Plaid Cymru, to which Welsh Labour appears to be losing support, particularly from left-leaning and Welsh-identifying voters.

    Morgan will hope that formulating a new image (or, rather, resurrecting an old one) can revive the party’s fortunes and allow it to continue its over 100 years dominance of Welsh politics.

    There is logic to this strategy. I have argued before that Welsh Labour thrives when it articulates a clear, values-driven Welsh identity. But there are now formidable obstacles in Morgan’s path.

    First, trying to position a party that has been in government for 26 years as an insurgent force is challenging. The clear red water rhetoric, rooted in progressive principles, has not always been matched in reality.
    Strained public services and entrenched poverty in Wales undermine Welsh Labour’s claims to achieving social justice. While constitutional constraints and funding limitations from Westminster are real, slogans alone do not shield people from hardship.



    Read more:
    Devolving justice and policing to Wales would put it on par with Scotland and Northern Ireland – so what’s holding it back?

    Ultimately, after years of austerity, people in Wales are looking for a party that will offer them hope of a brighter future. Instead of slogans, Welsh Labour will need to show the electorate that it is making a tangible difference to people’s lives. As Morgan herself insisted in the speech: “Less chat, and more do.”

    Second, Morgan faces a further challenge from an emboldened Welsh parliamentary Labour party (PLP). A recent Politico article documents the various ways in which the central Labour party is attempting to have a greater say in Welsh Labour’s affairs, from manifesto writing to candidate selection. One Labour figure was quoted as stating: “The Welsh PLP hate the Senedd group.”

    Amid reports that Morgan accused Welsh MPs of not standing up for Wales, a Labour Senedd member has warned of “simmering discontent” with Westminster.

    A party at a crossroads

    Among these challenges, Welsh Labour will struggle with its claim to be standing up for Wales when judged against outcomes. Repeated failures to secure rail funding, further devolution and even consideration for the effects of policy changes on Wales, suggest that Welsh Labour’s voice in Westminster still struggles to carry weight. That’s even under a Labour-led UK government.

    In truth, the red Welsh way reflects a party caught in a strategic bind. It’s eager to differentiate itself, but hamstrung by its own long-term incumbency, internal divisions and limited power.

    As the 2026 Senedd election draws closer, Welsh Labour will throw everything at shifting the narrative. But as things stand, the clear red water that once symbolised distance from Westminster has become muddied.

    Nye Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. ‘The red Welsh way’: Welsh Labour attempts to distance itself from the UK party – https://theconversation.com/the-red-welsh-way-welsh-labour-attempts-to-distance-itself-from-the-uk-party-256496

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How breast tissue density affects your risk of breast cancer

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Justin Stebbing, Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University

    Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock

    Breast density is a significant yet often overlooked factor in breast cancer awareness, risk assessment and screening practices. Understanding what breast density is, how it affects breast cancer risk and what it means for screening can help women make informed decisions about their health.

    Breast density refers to the proportions of glandular and connective tissue compared to fatty tissue in the breast, as seen on a mammogram. Simply put, dense breasts have more glandular and fibrous tissue and less fat.

    On a mammogram, both dense tissue and tumours appear white, making it harder to detect abnormalities in women with dense breasts. This masking effect can lead to cancers being missed during routine screening, which is why breast density is not just a risk factor for developing breast cancer, but also for having it go undetected until it is more advanced.

    Recent large-scale studies have confirmed that women with dense breasts face a higher risk of developing breast cancer compared to women with less dense, fattier breasts. For example, a major study involving more than 33,000 women found that those with dense breasts were nearly twice as likely to develop breast cancer than those with low breast density.

    This increased risk is seen across both pre-menopausal younger women and post-menopausal older women, although the proportion of women with high breast density tends to decrease with age.

    In practical terms, women with the lowest breast density have about a 6% lifetime risk of developing breast cancer after age 50, while those with the highest density face a risk closer to 15%.

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    The impact of breast density on cancer detection is also significant. Mammography, the standard screening tool, is less sensitive in women with dense breasts. While mammograms can detect about at least nine out of ten cancers in women with mostly fatty breasts, the sensitivity drops to about seven out of ten in women with extremely dense breasts.

    This means that tumors can be missed, leading to what are known as “interval cancers”, cancers that are diagnosed between regular screenings, often at a more advanced stage.

    Supplemental screening methods, such as MRI scanning, can help detect cancers that mammography might miss in women with dense breasts, and some pilot studies have shown that additional cancers are found this way.

    Breast density is now recognised as one of the most important risk factors for breast cancer, even as much as family history or other commonly discussed risk factors.

    About 40% of women fall into the higher density categories, and dense breasts are common in younger women, those taking hormone replacement therapy, and those with certain genetic backgrounds and ethnicities. However, breast density can also be influenced by lifestyle and hormonal factors, and it tends to decrease with age and higher body mass index and obesity.

    Given the importance of breast density, there has been a growing movement to ensure women are informed about their own breast density after mammograms, and to address this appropriately. A recent UK survey showed that most women aren’t aware of their breast density.

    In the US, new regulations require that all women undergoing mammography be notified if they have dense breasts and be advised about the associated risks. This aims to empower women to have more informed discussions with their healthcare providers about their personal risk and the potential need for additional screening.

    Despite the increased risk, it is important to remember that the majority of women with dense breasts will not develop breast cancer. Breast density is just one factor among many, and decisions about screening and risk reduction should be made on an individual basis.

    For women with dense breasts, discussing options for supplemental screening with their doctor is recommended. While there is currently no widely accepted intervention to reduce breast density, in my own research, I’m exploring new ways to address this risk factor.

    In summary, breast density is both a common and significant risk factor for breast cancer, and it can complicate the detection of cancer through standard mammography.

    Women should be aware of their breast density status, understand its implications for both risk and screening, and work with their doctors to determine the best approach for their individual situation. As awareness grows and screening practices evolve, the hope is that more cancers will be detected earlier, improving outcomes for all women.

    Justin Stebbing does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. How breast tissue density affects your risk of breast cancer – https://theconversation.com/how-breast-tissue-density-affects-your-risk-of-breast-cancer-256028

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Everyone isn’t ‘a little bit autistic’ – here’s why this notion is harmful

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aimee Grant, Senior Lecturer in Public Health and Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow, Swansea University

    MDV Edwards/Shutterstock

    I recently had a medical appointment and explained that I’m autistic. It affects how I communicate and understand information, and sometimes I’m misinterpreted as being rude. The person nodded and replied: “Well, everyone’s a little bit autistic.” They then shared something they struggle with, sometimes, when they haven’t had enough sleep.

    It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard that line, and I doubt it’ll be the last. It happens often – not only in doctors’ surgeries but in social situations, on social media and many other places besides. And it’s not just me. Online spaces are full of autistic adults and the parents of autistic children expressing frustration at this phrase.

    So where does the idea come from, that autistic traits are merely universal human behaviour, just to an exaggerated degree in autistic people?

    To answer that, we need to understand what autism is. Autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental difference. You’re either born autistic, or you’re not. It’s not something you develop over time.

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    Historically, autism has been underdiagnosed among many groups of people, although least affecting white boys. That isn’t because other people are less likely to be autistic.

    It’s because diagnostic practices and clinical assumptions have been based on a narrow idea of what autism “looks like”. It fails to recognise that many autistic people – but especially girls and women – “mask” their autism. This means they suppress their natural autistic behaviour to reduce the chance of a negative response from those around them. Fortunately recognition of masking is changing, albeit slowly.

    Challenges

    The challenges an autistic person faces, and the distress we may experience, arise from our interactions with other people or the environment around us as a result of our neurological differences.

    Autism affects how we experience the world, how we communicate and how we process sensory information. Communication can be challenging for us, especially in settings where social expectations aren’t clearly defined.

    We may also struggle with certain lights, sounds or textures. These experiences can fluctuate depending on how many difficult things have already happened to us that day, our hormone levels, and consequently how overwhelmed we already are.

    Autistic people often find comfort in familiarity and routine, and can become overwhelmed by unexpected change. To manage that, many autistic people “stim”, which is short for self-stimulatory behaviour, and can include doing things like rocking or tapping, or fidgeting with an object. These repetitive movements can help calm us down or regulate sensory overload.

    When I teach about autism, I sometimes ask students to think about how they react to sensory discomfort or disruption. There’s usually a long list of things. For instance, being irritated by roadworks, bothered by scratchy clothes or stressed out by a house move. These are all human traits. But they don’t mean you’re autistic.

    Life is often stressful, so cortisol levels rise accordingly. That doesn’t mean you’re autistic. It means your nervous system is working as it should. Likewise, noticing loud noises or being anxious about change is perfectly normal. But it doesn’t mean your brain is wired the same way as someone who is autistic.

    There are clear differences between autistic and non-autistic people, not just in the kinds of challenges they experience, but in how often and how intensely those challenges occur. Research shows that autistic people have significantly higher rates of sensory sensitivity, communication differences, repetitive behaviour and social difficulties than non-autistic people. For most autistic people, these aren’t things that happen once in a while. They are constant features of life.

    If you think this sounds like you, there is a chance that you could be autistic. While we expect around 3% of people to be autistic, only around 1% of adults are diagnosed.

    So, when someone says “everyone is a little bit autistic”, they’re relying on a myth that flattens those differences. It suggests a spectrum from “not autistic” to “very autistic”, with everyone fitting somewhere on that line.

    That’s understandable, because we don’t have a biological test for autism, to give a clear yes or no answer. Instead, questionnaires are often used to initially assess the likelihood of being autistic. But you can’t be a “little bit” autistic.

    The term “autism spectrum disorder” was first used in 1994 in diagnostic manuals, to bring together people diagnosed with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, a contentious name linked to Nazi genocide.

    Many autism researchers argue that we shouldn’t be dividing autistic people into different groups, as support needs can vary from day to day. Others dislike the term “autism spectrum” because it can be misleading. It’s too often misunderstood as a fixed linear scale. In reality, autism is multidimensional. Different people have different combinations of strengths, needs and experiences. Two autistic people may have little in common apart from their diagnosis.



    Read more:
    Why the autism jigsaw puzzle piece is such a problematic symbol

    The “everyone’s a bit autistic” myth can be actively harmful. It’s often used to dismiss the challenges we face or to argue that autistic people don’t really need support. It also contributes to a culture where autism becomes the punchline. Non-autistic people do something like parking in the same space each day, but attribute it to being “a little bit autistic”.

    For decades, autistic people weren’t given a platform to share our experiences. The stories told about us, especially in the media, were often created by non-autistic people, and were full of stereotypes. That’s starting to change, but those outdated ideas persist.

    Use empathy

    So, the next time an autistic person tells you what they’re struggling with, please don’t respond by comparing it to your own mild discomfort. Try empathising instead: “I’m sorry” or “that sounds really hard”. And if you can, ask if there’s anything you could do to help. Even small accommodations can make a big difference to someone’s comfort and wellbeing.

    Because no, not everyone is “a little bit autistic”. And saying that doesn’t help us – it makes it harder for us to be seen, heard and supported.

    Aimee Grant receives funding from the Wellcome Trust and UKRI. She is a non-executive director of Disability Wales.

    – ref. Everyone isn’t ‘a little bit autistic’ – here’s why this notion is harmful – https://theconversation.com/everyone-isnt-a-little-bit-autistic-heres-why-this-notion-is-harmful-256129

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Could the assisted dying bill fall at the next hurdle?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Daniel Gover, Senior Lecturer in British Politics, Queen Mary University of London

    Almost six months after MPs backed the principle of assisted dying, the terminally ill adults (end of life) bill – sponsored by Labour backbencher Kim Leadbeater – is set to return to the House of Commons chamber on May 16 to undergo further debate.

    This is the report stage of the bill’s passage, during which MPs will consider whether to make further amendments to the bill, followed by a third reading, when MPs vote on the bill in its final form. After this, the bill would then need to complete a similar process in the House of Lords.

    There had been fears that because this is a backbench private member’s bill, the assisted dying bill would not be subjected to meaningful scrutiny. But these fears have not been borne out in practice.

    Between January and March, a committee of MPs considered the bill over 29 separate sittings, heard evidence from around 50 expert witnesses, and received hundreds of written submissions from the public – all unheard of on backbench bills. The committee made many detailed amendments to the bill, informed partly by this evidence. It is the amended version of the bill that is now being put to MPs.

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    When MPs debated the bill’s second reading in November, an absolute majority supported the legislation – by 330 to 275. But second reading is a vote only on the bill’s principle.

    Several MPs indicated that they could vote the other way next time if changes were not made to the specifics of the legislation. So it is not certain that the bill will pass so easily at third reading – or indeed that it will pass at all.

    During the bill’s committee scrutiny, over 150 amendments were made. Although the majority of these were put forward by Leadbeater herself – for instance to improve the bill’s operability after discussions with civil servants – around 40 of them were proposed by other MPs – including many led by MPs who voted against the bill at second reading.

    They cover a range of topics, including the training for medical staff involved in assisted dying to identifying domestic abuse and coercive control, and a requirement that those considering an assisted death should be given information about palliative care alternatives.

    Concerns raised by some disability groups have also led to a new requirement for a disability advisory board that will feed into the implementation of the law and report on its impact on disabled people. Such changes may provide some reassurance to wavering MPs.

    But other issues remain unresolved. One example is the question of whether medical practitioners may raise assisted dying with a patient rather than leaving it to them. This is now the subject of a change proposed by Meg Hillier, the senior Labour MP who chairs the high-profile Liaison Committee and a vocal opponent of the bill.

    A bumpy road ahead?

    Even if MPs can agree on the text of the bill itself, it nonetheless faces significant procedural hurdles. This is because there is very little House of Commons time for private members’ bills – typically just 13 Fridays per annual session for all bills. This in practice means they must usually complete their report stage in a single five-hour sitting to stand any chance of passing.

    The key challenge is that MPs could table large numbers of amendments, and speak at length, meaning that the bill runs out of time. The bill’s supporters can counter this by attempting to move the “closure” – which if successful brings that part of the debate to a close – but this requires at least 100 MPs to vote in support. This is a high threshold on most Fridays, though may be possible in this case.

    Even then, it may not be enough. Much will depend on key decisions by the Speaker – in particular, how he groups the amendments up for debate. In recent years, the trend has been towards all amendments being discussed together in a single group.

    But if he splits them up into more than one group, this would likely mean “closure” is required multiple times – creating a high risk that the debate overruns the available five hours.

    If the bill does not complete report stage in a single day, it would then drop down the queue behind any other bills awaiting report on the next available Friday. This is usually fatal to a bill’s passage.

    Yet something unusual may be about to occur in this case. As things stand, the next bill in line is scheduled to begin its committee stage only this week, after a long – and quite possibly tactical – delay. It is therefore possible that the assisted dying bill could secure a second day for report.

    To the Lords…and back?

    Yet any delay in the bill’s Commons passage would present further complications down the line. If the bill requires two days for report, this would push the final third reading vote to June 13 or 20. If it passed, the bill would then need to go through an equivalent series of stages in the House of Lords.

    Lords scrutiny is likely to be rigorous on the bill. The chamber contains many members with expertise directly relevant to this bill – including medical, legal, disability advocacy and health. They are likely to want to scrutinise the bill in depth and to make their own amendments. Yet if peers make any changes, these would then need to be approved by the Commons.

    As things stand, the last available sitting Friday for private members’ bills in the Commons is scheduled for July 11, potentially leaving less than a month for Lords scrutiny. This is a very tight timetable, and it is very possible the bill could run out of time.

    One way of addressing this would be for the Lords to expedite its scrutiny of this bill. If not, ministers would need to provide additional time for any final Lords amendments to the bill to be considered – something for which there is recent precedent. Since 2010, two regular private members’ bills have had stages for MPs to approve Lords amendments (in 2019 and 2023); in both cases these required ministers to make available additional Fridays.

    Daniel Gover does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Could the assisted dying bill fall at the next hurdle? – https://theconversation.com/could-the-assisted-dying-bill-fall-at-the-next-hurdle-256512

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Closing off social care jobs to migrant workers will only harm a sector that’s already in crisis

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Majella Kilkey, Professor of Social Policy, University of Sheffield

    shurkin_son/Shutterstock

    One big talking point to emerge from the UK government’s recently announced plans to reform the immigration system was the proposal to end recruitment of social care workers from overseas. Anyone who has experienced the sector recently will know that it is hugely dependent on workers from abroad. So the move – laid out in a new white paper which went further than many expected – will have huge implications.

    For those international workers already sponsored to work in the sector, a transition period will allow them to extend their visa until 2028. Other overseas nationals already in the UK with the right to work will be able to switch to a job in social care.

    Critics have argued for overhauling the visa system that allows employers to recruit care workers from overseas amid evidence of widespread and systemic exploitation of workers. But the plan to completely axe the health and care visa, without any proposed alternative, was unexpected.

    In fact, a 2024 strategy for adult social care, published by industry body Skills for Care, acknowledged that international workers are “crucial” for the sector. It also recommended that the UK’s immigration policy recognise the sector’s need to recruit care workers from abroad.

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    The government’s decision to make reducing net migration the central plank of its immigration policy explains its apparent disregard of the care sector’s recommendation. This is based on the belief, contradicted by research, that becoming even tougher on migration will fight off the electoral threat posed by the rightwing Reform party.

    In fact, the share of net migration taken up by the care worker visa has been falling. This is not least because of the previous government’s decision to ban those on the visa from bringing their dependants.

    Care work was categorised as “low-skilled” work by the previous Conservative government when it introduced its new global points-based immigration system in January 2021. This categorisation made the sector particularly vulnerable in the context of the white paper’s preference for migration into “higher-skilled” jobs because of its purported economic benefits.

    This approach privileges particular sectors over others, leaving the care sector facing huge labour gaps. Yet, in contrast to the white paper’s position, evidence shows that 54% of people in the UK favour making it easier for people to come to the UK to do care work, implying that the public recognise the value of this sector.

    In contrast, while only 27% favour making it easier for people to come to work in the financial sector, the white paper proposes to give preferential treatment to this sector.

    The government’s vision is that “British workers” will replace migrants in the care sector. The white paper, however, presents no evidence that migrant workers have been displacing “British workers” in the industry. Instead, it acknowledges that low rates of domestic recruitment and retention are “largely driven by historic levels of poor pay and poor terms and conditions”.

    This is a systemic issue. Despite care being crucial to human survival and society’s functioning, the work that it requires is either unpaid or hugely underpaid.

    Labour unions and research evidence highlight the the key barriers to recruitment and retention: low rates of pay in the sector, the prevalence of zero-hours contracts (21% in March 2024), the limited opportunities for training and career progression, as well as the low status of care work.

    The government has defended its white paper by pointing to its plans to address these recruitment and retention challenges, most notably through measures like the fair pay agreement, the employment rights bill and the care workforce pathway, which aim to improve pay and conditions in the sector. But Care England has said these initiatives are “years away from delivery” and underfunded.

    The proposed fair pay agreement, through which the government hopes to tackle the staffing crisis in social care, would give care workers stronger collective bargaining powers and provide stricter enforcement of agreements on pay, terms and conditions. The government’s impact assessment suggests, however, that the agreement will increase costs to councils, as well as those funding their own care. Higher costs to councils would need to be mitigated by increased investment from central government.

    Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, and Christina McAnea, general secretary of trade union Unison, have said that the white paper’s depiction of care work as “low-skilled” adds to its low social status. It also runs contrary to the professionalisation agenda set out in the government-endorsed care workforce pathway. And, of course, it undermines efforts to attract “British workers” into the sector.

    A crisis in staffing

    In the meantime, the latest data from industry body Skills for Care show that the sector has 131,000 vacancies in England alone. Its vacancy rate at 8.3% is higher than the 6.9% for the NHS, and significantly higher than the 2.8% for the economy as a whole.

    The same data source estimates that 540,000 new social care posts will be needed by 2040 to meet rising demand, as more people live longer with major illnesses and disabilities. Relatives are put under immense pressure to fill these care gaps, without the pay or resources to do so.

    Without the international care workers who have helped the social care sector keep its head above water since Brexit, the prospects look unimaginably bleak for the health and wellbeing of workers in the sector. And this is before we consider the impact on some of society’s most vulnerable people who need their care and support, as well as their families and kin.

    Majella Kilkey receives funding from UKRI-ESRC.

    Jayanthi T. Lingham receives funding from the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF).

    – ref. Closing off social care jobs to migrant workers will only harm a sector that’s already in crisis – https://theconversation.com/closing-off-social-care-jobs-to-migrant-workers-will-only-harm-a-sector-thats-already-in-crisis-256626

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Threat of enslavement hangs over reported plans to deport migrants from US to Libya

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London

    Human rights organisations have expressed alarm at possible US plans to send a group of migrants from Vietnam, Laos and the Philippines to Libya on a military flight. They have pointed to the appalling conditions migrants face there, which the US State Department described as “harsh and life-threatening” in its 2023 Libya review.

    The review quoted the UN support mission in Libya and civil society groups as saying they had “numerous reports of women subjected to forced prostitution in prisons or detention facilities”. A UN fact-finding mission to Libya, also in 2023, made similarly shocking allegations about conditions in Libya’s network of official migrant detention centres.

    Such centres are run by the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration, an official entity of the Libyan interior ministry. But, in reality, it is Libya’s complex patchwork of militias that is in control.

    Based on interviews with more than 100 migrants, the report concluded that it had “reasonable grounds to believe that migrants were enslaved in detention centres … in Abu Salim, Zawiyah and Mabani, as well as in places of detention in al-Shwarif, Bani Walid, Sabratah, Zuwarah and Sabha”.

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    There is no evidence that the proposed US scheme is in any way connected to the Libyan organisations involved in slavery. Trump has also denied any knowledge of the Libya deportations, referring journalists questioning him about it to the US Department of Homeland Security.

    But the situation is dire for the tens of thousands of refugees and migrants who wind up in Libya each year in an attempt to cross into Europe. The threat of enslavement poses a real threat to anyone sent there.

    Concern about slavery in Libya was perhaps most visibly highlighted in a CNN report from 2017. After receiving grainy footage of a slave sale, CNN sent journalists to Libya to gather evidence. They reported uncovering nine migrant slave auction sites.

    In their report, which gained widespread international attention, the journalists wrote:

    Carrying concealed cameras into a property outside the capital of Tripoli last month, we witness[ed] a dozen people go ‘under the hammer’ in the space of six or seven minutes.

    ‘Does anybody need a digger? This is a digger, a big strong man, he’ll dig,’ the salesman, dressed in camouflage gear, says. ‘What am I bid, what am I bid?’ Buyers raise their hands as the price rises, ‘500, 550, 600, 650 …’ Within minutes it is all over and the men, utterly resigned to their fate, are being handed over to their new ‘masters’.

    After the auction, we met two of the men who had been sold. They were so traumatised by what they’d been through that they could not speak, and so scared that they were suspicious of everyone they met.

    Unlike the Libyan media, which questioned the credibility of the CNN report, Libya’s authorities denounced the migrant slave auctions and said they would launch a formal investigation. But there is no indication that the proposed investigation has changed the operation of the detention centres.

    CNN journalists witnessed migrants being sold at auctions in 2017.

    CNN’s findings were replicated by other investigations. Shamsuddin Jibril, a Cameroonian migrant who saw men traded publicly in the streets of the Libyan town of Sabha, told the Guardian in 2017: “[The slave traders] took people and put them in the street under a sign that said ‘for sale’. They tied their hands just like in the former slave trade, and drove them … in the back of a Toyota Hilux”.

    These practices are still happening. David Yambio, who himself experienced enslavement in Libya, is now the president of the Refugees in Libya movement. I spoke to Yambio while writing my book, Unbroken Chains: A 5,000 year history of African enslavement. He told me:

    From my own experience, and through my daily work with Refugees in Libya, I can confirm that slavery is taking place inside Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration detention facilities.

    I was held in places in such conditions between 2019 and 2022. To this day, people are still being enslaved inside these centres: Tariq al-Sikka, Ain Zara, Abu Salim, Al-Nasr in Zawiya, Al-Mabani, Bir Al-Ghanam, Al-Assah, Al-Maya, Ganfouda and Ajdabiya. The list goes on.

    Just hours ago, I was in contact with around 130 women still enduring the same conditions inside Al-Nasr detention centre (known as Osama Prison) in Zawiya. It is concerning and it is an indisputable fact.

    The Libyan route

    Libya is one of the leading destinations for migrants attempting to reach Europe through Africa. In April 2025 alone, the European border force, Frontex, recorded 15,718 migrants from across the world making what they term “illegal border crossings” by traversing the central Mediterranean from Libya.

    One of the largest groups seeking to reach Europe via Libya are Eritreans. Work led by Mirjam van Reisen of Leiden University has provided firsthand accounts of Eritreans describing the situation in the Tajoura detention centre, where Libyans come to select people to work.

    The labourers are often referred to as slaves. One interviewee said: “Every morning when someone comes there, he says: ‘We need five eubayd, which means five slaves. I need five slaves.’ Everybody that is hearing that one, they are feeling angry.” Their forced labour ranges from farm and construction work to road work and garbage collecting.

    Some refugees manage to raise funds from friends and family members to escape captivity. They are held in detention centres until they are deported or traffickers receive fees for taking them across the Mediterranean. Research by the UN suggests this ranges between US$850 (£644) and US$4,500 (£3,400) per crossing.

    US officials say the military could start flying migrants to Libya imminently. However, authorities in Tripoli have rejected the use of Libyan territory as a destination for deporting migrants without its knowledge or consent.

    There are also judicial hurdles. On May 7, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that the deportation of immigrants to Libya would be in violation of a court order he issued in March.

    However, the Trump administration’s record suggests it does not always follow such rulings. This leaves the migrants in considerable jeopardy.

    Martin Plaut does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Threat of enslavement hangs over reported plans to deport migrants from US to Libya – https://theconversation.com/threat-of-enslavement-hangs-over-reported-plans-to-deport-migrants-from-us-to-libya-256145

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –