NewzIntel.com

Category: Academic Analysis

  • MIL-OSI Global: Nigeria’s oil-rich Rivers State under emergency: sending in the army isn’t the answer

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Al Chukwuma Okoli, Reader (Associate Professor) Department of Political Science, Federal University of Lafia, Nigeria, Federal University Lafia

    President Bola Tinubu recently declared a state of emergency in Nigeria’s oil-rich Rivers State, in the country’s south-south region.

    Prior to this decision, governance in Rivers State was practically paralysed as a result of a power struggle between the Governor, Siminalayi Fubara and his predecessor, Nyesom Wike, now the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

    Rivers is at the heart of Nigeria’s once restive oil producing Niger Delta region and the emergency rule declaration was pronounced following reports of explosions rocking oil pipelines. Security scholar Al Chukwuma Okoli unpacks the implications of this development for security in the oil region previously known for militancy.

    What does declaring a state of emergency mean?

    The president has placed the governor, the deputy governor and the legislative arm of government on a six months suspension. He has appointed Vice Admiral Ibok-Étè Ibas, a retired Navy chief, as the state administrator. This means democratic institutions, except courts, have been suspended in Rivers State.

    Section 305 of Nigeria’s 1999 constitution empowers the president to declare a state of emergency when:

    • the federation is at war

    • the federation is in imminent danger of invasion or involvement in a state of war

    • there is actual breakdown of public order and public safety in any part of the country requiring extraordinary measures to avert danger

    • there is an occurrence or imminent danger of the occurrence of any disaster or natural calamity

    • there is any danger which clearly constitutes a threat to the existence of the federation

    • The Governor of a State may, with the sanction of a resolution supported by two-thirds majority of the state House of Assembly, request the President to issue a Proclamation of a state of emergency in the State

    The president can also make the decision if the governor of the affected state fails within a reasonable time to make a request.

    Is the state of emergency an effective response to the recent bombings?

    The state of emergency is a response to a dire internal security situation in which there is actual or threat of a breakdown of law and order. It applies also if security of lives and property is no longer guaranteed.

    In other words there’s been a major breach of governability in the area.

    There is an argument that the civil and security situations in Rivers State – and the civil unrest amid wanton destruction and vandalisation of oil and gas installations – calls for urgent intervention given the pivotal role of petroleum sector in sustaining the Nigerian economy.

    Oil and gas account for 40% of Nigerian government revenues and for around 92% of the value of all exports. Rivers State is a key oil producing area and hosts several major oil companies and critical oil infrastructure.

    Nevertheless, the emergency approach to the security crisis in Rivers State is, at best, problematic. Apart from amounting to unnecessary securitisation of politics and governance, it’s not capable of addressing the political undercurrents of the crisis.

    At the heart of the problem is the unresolved – or badly addressed – partisan and personality clashes between the suspended Governor Siminalayi Fubara and his estranged predecessor and political godfather, Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

    The suspension of the Governor and the State Assembly may be strategically expedient. But it will fail to address the fundamental issues at stake without a concomitant suspension of Wike as the Federal Capital Territory Minister.

    This is because at the heart of the entire crisis is a power struggle between Wike and Fubara. As the immediate past governor of Rivers State, Wike influenced the emergence of Fubara as his successor during the 2023 general elections.

    They fell apart soon after the election. Wike who had become a minister and close ally of President Tinubu is believed to have influenced his loyalists in the Rivers State House of Assembly to oppose the governor. They were in the process of impeaching the governor before the state of emergency was imposed.

    Wike and Fubara’s power tussle has also led to a gradual return of Niger Delta militancy with former militants taking sides with the two political gladiators.

    Given this background, the emergency rule in Rivers state will be associated with consolidated military operations to quell the rising militancy. This, too, is likely to escalate the crisis.

    In handling the Rivers crisis, President Tinubu should have considered some historical precedents. Negotiations have fared a lot better than the military options in the region.

    The most recent armed conflict in the region arose in the early 1990s over tensions between foreign oil corporations and Niger Delta ethnic groups who feel cheated in the way their natural resources are exploited. The militant groups became notorious for their violent attacks on oil infrastructure and kidnapping of oil workers.

    Military response to this crisis did not seem to yield results until the Nigerian government introduced a disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programme, known locally as the amnesty program. This was introduced in 2009 and was aimed at members of armed militant groups that were present in the Niger Delta region.

    Following this intervention, there has been relative peace in the recent past. Essentially, the emergency rule in Rivers state is likely to bring about a dramatic backlash in the sustenance of the gains of post-Amnesty peace-building in the Niger-Delta.

    What are the security implications of explosions rocking oil installations?

    Destruction of petroleum installations will bring about significant setback in the efficiency and functionality of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry. It will trigger production cuts and revenue losses capable of affecting the country’s petroleum earnings.

    This will be devastating considering the place of the industry in the national economy.

    In addition, the vandalisation of oil pipelines and other installations will lead to widespread environmental degradation and disaster. In turn this will affect the livelihood and ecological security of local communities.

    As experience from government’s use of force in the region in the early 1990s have shown, the declaration of a state of emergency may result in the renewal of piracy, cultism, hostage-taking, and kidnapping. This will in turn be a setback for the gains of peace building already recorded in the area since the introduction of the Niger Delta Amnesty program in 2009.

    Lastly, one of the most likely outcomes of the emergency rule will be the return of inter-militant fighting and vendetta. Already, lines are drawn between the militants aligned with Wike and Fubara.

    Such a development may dovetail into a major inter gang war with devastating implications for peace and development of the Niger Delta region.

    What approach should the appointed administrator take?

    The aftermath of the emergency declaration in Rivers State is dicey.

    To make progress with his mandate – which is to restore order in the state – the administrator needs to adopt a completely depoliticised approach to the partisan dispute that’s led to the current crisis. He has to initiate a credible peace process that is holistic and capable of alleviating the fears and doubts of parties.

    The administrator has to adopt a strictly non-partisan, multi-stakeholder and inclusive approach to dealing with the crisis. All the aggrieved parties must be treated fairly and reasonably.

    There must be a conscious effort at buildings bridges at local levels. These should be aimed at eliciting the buy-in of critical stakeholders and interested parties such as the militant groups and supporters of Wike and Fubara.

    Lastly, the administrator has to be conscious and sensitive to the local issues and sensibilities that are at the root of the crisis.

    Local problem require local remedies. An inward looking solution that carries everyone along, addresses the underlying issues and grievances, restores trust and goodwill, and transcends partisan divides, is the only route that will bring about a lasting solution to the Rivers state.

    Al Chukwuma Okoli teaches Political Science at Federal University of Lafia, Nigeria. An Associate Professor of Security Governance, Okoli has consulted for Center for Democracy and Development, Yaradua Foundation, Partners West Africa (Nigeria), CLEEN Foundation, African Union, UN Women, United Nations Development Programme, etc..He has received funding from the Tertiary Education Fund (Nigeria). A triple Laureate of Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), Okoli s a member of Conflict Research Network West Africa and Amnesty International.

    – ref. Nigeria’s oil-rich Rivers State under emergency: sending in the army isn’t the answer – https://theconversation.com/nigerias-oil-rich-rivers-state-under-emergency-sending-in-the-army-isnt-the-answer-252672

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: South Africa hasn’t given individuals access to the African Court – this needs to be fixed

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Frans Viljoen, Professor of International Human Rights Law, Centre for Human Rights, and acting SARChI Chair in International Constitutional Law, University of Pretoria

    US President Donald Trump’s second term has brought South Africa’s domestic human rights record into stark international prominence. Based on misinformation, Trump’s anti-South African campaign seems designed to weaken South Africa’s image as an international torch bearer for human rights.

    At the heart of the issue lies American resentment about South Africa’s submission in December 2023 to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of a case alleging that Israel has violated the 1948 Genocide Convention.

    South Africa has won accolades for its principled and courageous submission of the ICJ case. Nevertheless, its role in advancing human rights on the African continent has been more ambiguous.

    My research has focused on the African regional human rights architecture, set up under the African Union (AU) as a continental bulwark for human rights. The primary continental judicial body for human rights is the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, based in Arusha, Tanzania.

    South Africa has fallen short in one key aspect when it comes to championing human rights on the continent: it has failed to sign up to accepting direct individual access to the court. This matters because almost all cases submitted to and decided by the court have reached it in this way.

    South Africa’s role in African human rights system

    One of the first human rights treaties South Africa formally accepted after its full embrace of democracy in 1994 is the core African Union human rights treaty, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Since then, it has made significant contributions to the charter monitoring body, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

    Two prominent South African human rights experts served as members of the 11-member continental human rights watchdog. Professor Barney Pityana, who was also the first chair of the South African Human Rights Commission, served between 1997 and 2003; and Advocate Pansy Tlakula, who had been the chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission, served from 2005 to 2017.

    When the idea of establishing a continental human rights court to complement the protective mandate of the African Commission was flagged, South Africa played a pivotal role by stepping forward to host the inaugural drafting meeting for the enabling instrument, bringing together experts from around the continent to Cape Town in 1995.

    This was the first building block that culminated in the adoption of an optional protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the establishment of an African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, allowing for the creation of an African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

    South Africa was also one of the first states to accept the court’s jurisdiction in 2002. Today, 34 of the 55 African Union member states have formally accepted the protocol, thereby agreeing to the court’s jurisdiction. Two South Africans have been part of the 11 judges of the court.

    Since it became operational, the African Court has adjudicated several human rights cases, including those affecting marginalised groups such as persons with albinism in Tanzania.

    In these cases, the court has been instrumental in defining the scope of human rights guarantees under the charter and related treaties. It also defined appropriate measures that states should take to respect, protect and fulfil these rights.

    A missing piece

    South Africa falls short when it comes to the most crucial measure of the African Court – the acceptance of direct individual access.

    A case by an individual or group against a state party to the charter can end up before the court in one of two ways.

    First, a case can reach the court indirectly, via the commission. In this scenario, an individual initially submits a case alleging human rights violations by a state to the commission. The commission then has a discretion to refer the case to the African Court. This access route applies to all 34 states that have become party to the court protocol. However, this route has yielded a very small number of cases – three in total – being submitted to the court.

    Complex reasons account for this. One of them seems to be linked to an unfortunate institutional turf war between the commission and the court, manifesting itself in an unwillingness on the part of the commission to have its findings ‘reviewed’ by the court.

    Second, a case can reach the court directly, when an individual or nongovernmental organisation (NGO), after exhausting domestic remedies, submits a case directly. But this is only possible if a state has made a declaration to accept the competence of individuals and NGOs with observer status with the commission to directly access the court.

    So far, the majority of cases handled by the African Court reached it along this avenue. Around 260 judgements have been delivered in respect of direct access cases.

    Of the 34 states parties accepting the court’s jurisdiction, only seven currently allow their nationals direct access to the court. They are Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Malawi, Mali, Niger and The Gambia. While 12 states have made the optional declaration, five of them have subsequently changed their mind, and withdrawn their optional acceptance of direct access to the court. Rwanda was the first to withdraw its acceptance, in 2016. The most recent withdrawal, on 7 March 2025, was by Tunisia.

    The reasons for withdrawal differ. But a common thread is the aggravation of governments for being held accountable by the court for human rights violations, often of the most marginalised persons, or of political opponents of the ruling government.

    The most immediate consequence of these withdrawals has been a drop in the number of cases submitted to the African Court. In 2024, only 15 new cases were submitted. There were 66 in 2019.

    Why direct individual access matters

    It’s not clear why South Africa has not (yet) accepted direct access to the court. But there are compelling reasons for it to do so.

    First, allowing direct access from South African courts to the African Court would serve to complement domestic human rights protection by allowing for redress and reparations beyond the national level. This will be in line with the South African constitution. It will also be in line with the principle of subsidiarity, in terms of which recourse to the African Court will only be possible after all domestic remedies had been exhausted.

    Second, bolstering the effectiveness of the court is an investment in African institutions, and will underscore South Africa’s full embrace of its African identity. And if it accepts the court’s direct access jurisdiction, it will become the AU member state with the largest population and economy to do so.

    The right moment

    The court protocol, which South Africa has ratified, requires that a declaration accepting direct individual access be made. The relevant provision (article 34(6)) stipulates that state parties to the court protocol are required to (“shall”) make such a declaration. What is left to the discretion of states is the timing. According to the protocol, these states “shall” do so “at the time of the ratification of this protocol or any time thereafter”.

    There has never been a more opportune and important time for South Africa to make this declaration.

    The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights risks being underused and receding into irrelevance. This is happening in a landscape increasingly inimical to rights and rights institutions. South Africa should signal to other states that it accepts independent judicial scrutiny of its human rights record as the logical end result of having helped create the African Court.

    Frans Viljoen 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. South Africa hasn’t given individuals access to the African Court – this needs to be fixed – https://theconversation.com/south-africa-hasnt-given-individuals-access-to-the-african-court-this-needs-to-be-fixed-252749

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Starmer’s plan to ‘build baby build’ risks more American-style car-dominated sprawl

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By James White, Professor of Planning and Urban Design, University of Glasgow

    The UK’s Labour government has promised to “take an axe to red tape” through “bold reforms to the planning system”. It hopes to kickstart economic growth by generating the “biggest building boom in a generation”.

    It seems that the aim to “build baby build”, in Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s words, trumps all else. However, this raises important questions about the government’s parallel ambition to reach net zero by 2050.

    As researchers of urban planning, we worry that plans to hand more power to developers will simply result in more low-density, car-dependent suburbs. These developments are cheap and efficient to build, which is why they underpin the profits of the larger housebuilders.

    But research has consistently demonstrated they are land hungry, poorly designed, unsustainable and damaging to nature.

    The UK instead needs a fundamental rethink of its approach to housing and development as part of the transition to a low carbon future. Any future urban growth must be achieved while simultaneously reducing the amount of land, energy and materials used.

    Redesigning existing towns and cities

    We recently launched a research project, Urban Retrofit, to explore how the UK’s towns and cities can be redesigned to support the transition to net zero. The good news is that we already know a lot about how to make places more environmentally sustainable.

    It is about renovating buildings to improve energy efficiency, like adding insulation and installing things like heat pumps. It includes building at higher densities, using brownfield land better, and adapting streets to encourage safer walking and cycling.

    We can make it easier to travel on public transport and seamlessly transfer between buses, trains and trams. And we can plant indigenous trees and plants to provide wildlife habitats and cool urban areas, and slow down rainwater to help prevent floods.

    Skyscrapers and renovated warehouses in Manchester.
    Alejandro M. Ferrer / shutterstock

    A retrofitting approach to urban development can also have wider benefits, such as bringing derelict buildings back into use or creating spaces to grow food. It is important that these efforts do not exacerbate existing inequalities, though.

    If higher density neighbourhoods are created in places with high house prices, for example, it will be essential to guarantee people can still afford to live in them. This will mean building more social housing.

    Some of the initiatives outlined in Labour’s planning reforms recognise the need to build more sustainably. These include support for some more affordable housing, and higher density development allowed “near transport hubs” and “central to local communities”. It also includes financial packages for local authorities seeking to “unlock housing on brownfield sites”.

    Low density and car-dependent

    The bad news is that there is little evidence that greener urban growth can be realised without further harming the environment. The necessary transformation certainly won’t happen without curbing the development industry’s appetite for the energy-inefficient, low-density and car-dependent neighbourhoods, retail parks and workplaces that already sprawl around the edges of urban areas.

    And that won’t be possible while politicians fall back on blaming an already under-resourced planning system, rather than tackling this deeper problem in our approach to development.

    Policy support for brownfield development is unlikely to convince housebuilders to take on these financially risky sites. This is especially true if, under Labour’s other proposals, local authorities will be required to grant developers planning permission on previously undeveloped land.

    The government is already redefining parts of the green belt as grey belt to make more land available for development. And much of that land will be in precisely those locations developers prefer, on the edges of settlements where costs are usually lower, profits are higher and sites are relatively similar and easier to develop.

    Building new homes here is easy and cheap – but worse for the environment.
    Nick Beer / shutterstock

    As the planning system is pushed to make ever more land available for development, Labour’s reforms will embolden the industry to continue seeking permission for unsustainable urban expansion.

    An array of landowners, developers, land agents, lawyers, consultants, builders and shareholders will likely make a lot of money. But more people will be locked into unsustainable lifestyles while time, resources and energy are focused away from the challenges of adapting our existing settlements.

    As our project is exploring, there is an urgent need to first retrofit within existing towns and cities, especially in suburban areas that were built for the automobile age.

    This will require much more positive ambitions for the planning system and big changes to the ways the development industry operates. It will also require a willingness to ask much more searching questions about the sustainability of going all out for growth.

    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 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    James White receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. He is Principal Investigator of Urban Retrofit (ES/Z50278/1) and Co-Investigator of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (ES/W012278/1).

    Andy Inch receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. He is Co-investigator on both Urban Retrofit (ES/Z502728/1) and another project called Planning for Nature (ES/Z503459/1)

    – ref. Starmer’s plan to ‘build baby build’ risks more American-style car-dominated sprawl – https://theconversation.com/starmers-plan-to-build-baby-build-risks-more-american-style-car-dominated-sprawl-251316

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Our new study indicates maternal exposure to relatively low fluoride levels may affect intelligence in children

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Maria Kippler, Associate Professor, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet

    Alena Matrosova/Shutterstock

    Fluoride occurs naturally in drinking water, especially well water, but the concentrations are generally low in public water supplies. In some countries, such as the US, Canada, UK, Australia and Ireland, fluoride is commonly added to the public water supply at around 0.7mg per litre to prevent tooth decay. The World Health Organization guideline for fluoride in drinking water is 1.5mg per litre.

    Given the concern that fluoride in drinking water might affect children’s intelligence, the addition of this mineral to drinking water has become controversial. Consensus among researchers about the precise nature of the link between fluoridation and intelligence is lacking and the existing evidence is widely debated.

    The US National Toxicology Program’s, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, most recent evaluation states with moderate confidence that higher fluoride exposure (above the World Health Organization guideline) is consistently associated with decreased child intelligence, while they conclude that more research is needed to understand the effects at lower fluoride exposure levels.



    Read more:
    Fluoride: very high levels in water associated with cognitive impairment in children

    A new study my colleagues and I conducted found that relatively low exposure to fluoride during the foetal stage (as a result of the mother’s exposure to fluoride) or in the child’s early years may affect their intelligence.

    For the study, which was published in Environmental Health Perspectives, we followed 500 mothers and their children in rural Bangladesh, where fluoride occurs naturally in the drinking water, to investigate the link between early life exposure to fluoride and children’s intelligence.

    Psychologists evaluated the children’s cognitive abilities at five and ten years of age, using standard IQ tests. The exposure to fluoride in the mothers during pregnancy and children at five and ten years of age was determined by measuring the concentrations in urine samples. Urine samples reflect the continuing exposure from all sources, such as drinking water, food and dental products (such as toothpaste and mouthwash). Urine samples are the most accurate way of determining fluoride exposure in people.

    Increasing urinary concentrations of fluoride in pregnant women were linked to decreasing intelligence in their children at five and ten. Even the lowest fluoride concentrations were associated with decreases in the children’s cognition. The average maternal urinary fluoride concentration was 0.63mg per litre, with the vast majority of concentrations falling between 0.26 and 1.4mg per litre.

    The children’s average urinary fluoride concentrations at five and ten years of age (0.62 and 0.66mg per litre, respectively) were similar to those of their mothers during pregnancy.

    Among children who had more than 0.72mg per litre of fluoride in their urine by age ten, increasing urinary fluoride concentrations were associated with lower intelligence. In children with less fluoride in their urine, there were no consistent associations with their intelligence. So childhood exposure seemed to be less detrimental than the exposure during early foetal development.

    Out of the cognitive abilities measured, associations of both maternal and child urinary fluoride concentrations were most pronounced with nonverbal reasoning and verbal abilities. There were no consistent differences between boys and girls.

    We didn’t find a link between fluoride concentrations in the urine of the five-year-olds and their intelligence. This could be due to the shorter exposure time or that urinary fluoride concentrations aren’t as reliable in younger children owing to greater variations in how much fluoride is taken up and stored in the body, particularly in the bones.

    As well as the children’s urinary fluoride concentration, the fluoride concentrations in drinking water were measured at the age of ten for a random subset of the studied children. The average was 0.20mg per litre, which is well below the WHO guideline value for fluoride in drinking water.

    The concentrations in drinking water tracked with the concentrations in urine, confirming that water is a main source of exposure. Still, we couldn’t exclude the possibility that there were contributions from other sources. Fluoride in toothpaste is important for preventing tooth decay, but it’s important to encourage small children not to swallow the toothpaste during brushing.

    Limitations

    A limitation of our study is that we measured fluoride only in one urine sample at each time point. As a large fraction of the absorbed fluoride is excreted in some hours, one measurement may give uncertain levels for the individual. However, as the exposure largely comes from water it can be assumed that the intake is rather constant over time.

    Another limitation is that the intelligence tests that were used have not been standardised for the Bangladeshi population. As a result, we did not convert the results to IQ scores (with an average of 100) that can be compared across populations.

    Our findings support previous well-designed studies from Canada and Mexico, where exposure levels obtained below the existing WHO guideline for fluoride in drinking water were associated with impaired cognitive development.

    Similar findings were recently provided when combining multiple studies from several countries. It was noted that at low exposure levels, findings with cognitive development were more conclusive among studies estimating fluoride exposure via urine than among studies that relied on concentrations in drinking water only. This highlights that imprecise estimation of the exposure can lead to difficulties in assessing the true impact on cognitive development.

    Taken together, the concern about the effect of fluoride on children’s intelligence at low exposure levels is further strengthened by our study. In particular exposure during foetal development, but also prolonged childhood exposure seems to be of concern.

    Still, as this is an observational study, no firm conclusions can be drawn about causalities. There is still a need for more well-designed research studies on low-level fluoride exposure and cognitive development, in combination with experimental studies to determine the possible molecular mechanisms driving it. Collectively, this will create a robust basis for reviewing fluoride health risks and thresholds for drinking water, foods, and dental care products, especially for children.

    Maria Kippler receives funding from Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning.

    – ref. Our new study indicates maternal exposure to relatively low fluoride levels may affect intelligence in children – https://theconversation.com/our-new-study-indicates-maternal-exposure-to-relatively-low-fluoride-levels-may-affect-intelligence-in-children-251193

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Grateful Dead at 60: three folklore tales that inspired the band’s music

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Max Bowden, PhD Candidate, impact and influence of the Grateful Dead, University of Essex

    Dead & Company, the latest and most enduring post-Grateful Dead project, is about to take to the stage for the second time at the Las Vegas Sphere. The lineup contains original Grateful Dead rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, and one of two original drummers, Mickey Hart. They’re joined by the singer-songwriter John Mayer on lead guitar, Oteil Burbridge on bass and Jay lane on second drums.

    It has now been 60 years since the Grateful Dead formed. The US rock band first played at Ken Kesey’s “acid tests” in La Honda, California, in 1965. There, attendees would consume large doses of LSD and spend the night enjoying psychedelic projections and the Dead’s intermittent musical stylings.

    Before this, a number of the band members had well-established careers in the Californian Bay Area folk scene. Lead guitarist Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter performed folk and bluegrass together in the early 1960s.

    Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

    Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions was another project that involved a number of artists who would go on to form the Grateful Dead. The band’s innate chaos was already clear. Playing an early gig at a coffee house, they were described by the host as “just a panic to watch”.

    This chaotic approach is something that continued. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 1971, Garcia said: “Hunter and I always had this thing where we liked to muddy the folk tradition by adding our own versions of songs … taking a well-founded tradition and putting in something that’s totally looped”.

    This revitalising understanding of folk adds an element of Grateful Dead fun, contributing to some of their most enduring and interesting songs. Here are three examples of the folk tales that inspired their music.

    1. Stagger Lee (1978)

    On Christmas Day 1895, two Texans named Lee “Stack” Shelton and Billy Lyons had a disagreement, which ended with Billy snatching Stack’s hat, and Stack shooting him to get it back. This simple story blossomed over time, often richly embellished, into song, folk tale and theatre.

    Hunter and the Dead turned the classic folk tale of murder on its head. In most songs about the incident, the focus is on the slightly renamed “Stagger Lee” and “Billy DeLyon”. Most renditions focus on the details and morality of the murder, or the nuance of Stagger as a proto-gangster, and a victim of racist policing.

    Grateful Dead performing Stagger Lee in 1978.

    The version that the Grateful Dead released is different, with only the first verse dedicated to the murder itself. The body of the song centres the journey of widowed Deliah DeLyon, now in pursuit of justice.

    She first pleads with a policeman for help saying “you’ll arrest the girls for turning tricks, but you’re scared of Stagger Lee,” before going to the bar herself, emasculating Stagger Lee, and dragging him to city hall.

    These changes attack hyper-masculine versions of the song and suggest an alternate perspective that prioritises the previously unheard.

    2. Casey Jones (1970)

    Casey Jones (1863-1900) was a renowned train engineer from Mississippi. He was known for his punctuality and skill, but was killed in a wreck after missing a signal in dense fog.

    Jones was the only fatality in the train crash and his actions are said to have saved the passengers and the train’s fireman. Just like Stagger Lee, this folk hero has been sung about from many different perspectives.

    In the one folk rendition, covered by Pete Seeger, Jones was a union scab, crashing his train though a slavish obedience to his bosses. In Johnny Cash’s song, he was a true hero. But in Grateful Dead’s song, he was a cocaine-addicted speed freak.

    Grateful Dead performing Casey Jones in 1977.

    By bringing Casey Jones into the 1970s, the Dead sought to use folk to give a contemporary moral warning. Hunter philosophises throughout, referencing both the story of the crash and his own shortsightedness when he writes “got two good eyes, but we still don’t see”.

    The Grateful Dead’s approach to folk is at once firmly rooted in tradition and with one foot in the future.

    3. Terrapin Station (1977)

    The first part of one of the Dead’s most famous musical suites is an adaptation of The Lady of Carlisle.

    This folk song tells a story of a lady choosing between two suitors – a soldier and a sailor. To decide, she throws her fan into a lion’s den and challenges the men to retrieve it.

    In traditional versions of the song the lady is fragile, becoming catatonic after delivering her challenge, but Hunter’s changes to the song elevate her. This section of the suite, Lady with a Fan, weaves this into an overarching narrative about the illuminating power of stories.

    Grateful Dead performing Terrapin Station in 1977.

    In the song, a speaker is retelling the story of The Lady of Carlisle while a magical fire conjures images as they happen. Here we see the protagonist emboldened, her “eyes alight with glowing hair,” and much more directly telling the men “I will not forgive you, if you will not take the chance”.

    After the sailor retrieves the fan, the meta-narrative challenges the listener. “You decide if he was wise,” the narrator sings, telling us “the storyteller makes no choice”. Hunter and the Dead again seek to use folklore to explore narrative and stories, their powerful influence on the world and our perspective.

    This visionary approach to folk helped ground the band’s musical catalogue in history, elevating folk music and offering curious listeners threads that lead into the narrative past.

    Max Bowden received a bursary from the Folklore Society.

    – ref. Grateful Dead at 60: three folklore tales that inspired the band’s music – https://theconversation.com/grateful-dead-at-60-three-folklore-tales-that-inspired-the-bands-music-249798

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: UK businesses face a big tax hike. So what does it mean for workers and the economy?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Phil Tomlinson, Professor of Industrial Strategy, Co-Director Centre for Governance, Regulation and Industrial Strategy (CGR&IS), University of Bath

    The hospitality sector will be among the most seriously affected. cktravels.com/Shutterstock

    Employers in the UK are about to be hit with a hefty tax rise. From April 1 2025, their national insurance contributions are rising to 15% on salaries above £5,000, instead of 13.8% on salaries above £9,100.

    Unsurprisingly, business owners are not happy. Since the change was announced last autumn, many have complained about the effect it will have on their ability to invest and hire staff. Care homes, supermarkets and GP surgeries are among those who have voiced their concerns, and a recent survey found that 54% anticipate raising prices.

    Some industries will be affected more than others. The hospitality sector, for example, expects around £1 billion in additional costs (alongside an inflation-busting minimum wage increase, which also comes into play on April 1). Partly because of these changes, manufacturing confidence has already taken a hit, contributing to a decline in overall GDP since the start of the year.

    But Rachel Reeves, the UK’s chancellor, has not budged, arguing that she needs to raise £40 billion in tax revenue to fund infrastructure and public services, and to address what she calls a “black hole” in the public finances.

    She had previously condemned the Conservative government’s employer national insurance hike in 2022 as a “tax on jobs”. Yet a Labour party manifesto pledge not to raise personal income tax, employees’ national insurance or VAT, has effectively left her with few options.

    As a result, the burden has been placed firmly on businesses. But in the UK’s sluggish economy, any added cost pressures could push struggling firms into pay freezes and cutbacks.

    Others may seek ways to mitigate the national insurance rise through creative accounting, by offering salary sacrifice schemes (such as cycle-to-work or electric vehicle purchase programmes) instead of direct wage increases.

    Some firms will no doubt explore other cost-cutting measures, such as reducing office space by encouraging more remote work. Or they may shift towards gig economy models, where they employ workers as “subcontractors” rather than as salaried staff. Larger firms might even move jobs abroad.

    Productivity push?

    But there could be an upside to all of this. Despite being politically sensitive, there is an economic argument for raising employment costs as a way of driving innovation and productivity. And some enterprising businesses may respond to the financial pressure by investing in labour-saving technology.

    For years the UK has relied on a low-wage, loosely regulated labour market. This has allowed businesses to hire and fire with ease, but has also led to persistently low levels of investment and weak productivity growth.

    Put simply, UK workers are often using outdated tools and equipment, making them less productive compared with their international competitors. Over time, this depresses wages, lowers economic growth (and living standards) and limits funding (through tax raised) for public services.

    Raising employment costs may now incentivise businesses to invest in automation and efficiency-enhancing technologies. The feasibility of this shift depends on what economists call the “elasticity of substitution” – the ease with which labour can be replaced by technology while maintaining (or improving) output.

    And evidence suggests automation and AI can drive productivity improvements even in traditionally labour-intensive industries. For instance, in social care, AI may be used to create personalised treatment plans, while robots could provide patients with physical, social and cognitive support.

    So far, the UK care sector has been slow to adopt such technology, lagging behind the likes of Australia, the Netherlands and Japan.

    Robotic care.
    Stock-Asso/Shutterstock

    Similarly, in hospitality, there are opportunities to use AI for predictive ordering and automated waste management. This could help hotels and restaurants reduce food waste, streamline supply chains and improve their profitability. Some businesses are also exploring robotic concierge services and automated customer interactions.

    Incentives and stability

    To ensure businesses embrace these productivity-boosting innovations, government support is essential. A well-designed industrial strategy is still needed to position the UK at the forefront of the “industry 4.0” technological revolution.



    Read more:
    The UK’s new industrial strategy is welcome, but here’s what is missing

    And, critically, businesses also need confidence in the broader economic outlook. Yet with continuing geopolitical uncertainty, trade tensions and fears of a global recession, the future feels fragile.

    The government’s challenge lies in encouraging businesses to adopt a strategy which ensures that investment in innovation actually materialises, and the benefits emerge swiftly. If businesses fail to adapt, or if productivity gains take too long, then the national insurance hike could just result in higher costs without any boost to growth.

    Ultimately, success hinges on whether businesses view this tax rise as a burden to absorb or an incentive to modernise. In the coming months and years, the government will need to show it is willing to offer businesses more support – and improve their confidence levels – if there is to be a revival in investment and productivity.

    Phil Tomlinson receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for Made Smarter Innovation: Centre for People-Led Digitalisation, and from the Innovation and Research Caucus (IRC).

    David Bailey receives funding from the ESRC’s UK in a Changing Europe Programme.

    – ref. UK businesses face a big tax hike. So what does it mean for workers and the economy? – https://theconversation.com/uk-businesses-face-a-big-tax-hike-so-what-does-it-mean-for-workers-and-the-economy-252325

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Debate over H-1B visas shines spotlight on US tech worker shortages

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Moshe Y. Vardi, Professor of Computer Science, Rice University

    Babson College graduate students from India type on their computers in Wellesley, Mass., on June 30, 2016. AP Photo/Charles Krupa

    A heated debate has recently erupted between two groups of supporters of President Donald Trump. The dispute concerns the H-1B visa system, the program that allows U.S. employers to hire skilled foreign workers in specialty occupations – mostly in the tech industry.

    On the one hand, there are people like Donald Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon, who has called the H-1B program a “total and complete scam.” On the other, there are tech tycoons like Elon Musk who think skilled foreign workers are crucial to the U.S. tech sector.

    The H-1B visa program is subject to an annual limit of new visas it can issue, which sits at 65,000 per fiscal year. There is also an additional annual quota of 20,000 H-1B visas for highly skilled international students who have a proven ability to succeed academically in the United States.

    The H-1B program is the primary vehicle for international graduate students at U.S. universities to stay and work in the United States after graduation. At Rice University, where I work, much of STEM research is carried out by international graduate students. The same goes for most American research-intensive universities.

    As a computer science professor – and an immigrant – who studies the interaction between computing and society, I believe the debate over H-1B overlooks some important questions: Why does the U.S. rely so heavily on foreign workers for the tech industry, and why is it not able to develop a homegrown tech workforce?

    The US as a global talent magnet

    The U.S. has been a magnet for global scientific talent since before World War II.

    Many of the scientists who helped develop the atomic bomb were European refugees. After World War II, U.S. policies such as the Fulbright Program expanded opportunities for international educational exchange.

    Attracting international students to the U.S. has had positive results.

    Among Americans who have won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, medicine or physics since 2000, 40% have been immigrants.

    In 2023, U.S.-born Louis Brus, left, shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry with U.S. immigrants Alexei Ekimov, born in the former USSR, and Moungi Bawendi, born in France.
    AP Photo

    Tech industry giants Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google were all founded by first- or second-generation immigrants. Furthermore, immigrants have founded more than half of the nation’s billion-dollar startups since 2018.

    Stemming the inflow of students

    Restricting foreign graduate students’ path to U.S. employment, as some prominent Trump supporters have called for, could significantly reduce the number of international graduate students in U.S. universities.

    About 80% of graduate students in American computer science and engineering programs – roughly 18,000 students in 2023 – are international students.

    The loss of international doctoral students would significantly diminish the research capability of graduate programs in science and engineering. After all, doctoral students, supervised by principal investigators, carry out the bulk of research in science and engineering in U.S. universities.

    It must be emphasized that international students make a significant contribution to U.S. research output. For example, scientists born outside the U.S. played key roles in the development of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. So making the U.S. less attractive to international graduate students in science and engineering would hurt U.S. research competitiveness.

    Computing Ph.D. graduates are in high demand. The economy needs them, so the lack of an adequate domestic pipeline seems puzzling.

    Where have US students gone?

    So, why is there such a reliance on foreign students for U.S. science and engineering? And why hasn’t America created an adequate pipeline of U.S.-born students for its technical workforce?

    After discussions with many colleagues, I have found that there are simply not enough qualified domestic doctoral applicants to fill the needs of their doctoral programs.

    In 2023, for example, U.S. computer science doctoral programs admitted about 3,400 new students, 63% of whom were foreign.

    It seems as if the doctoral career track is simply not attractive enough to many U.S. undergrad computer science students. But why?

    The top annual salary in Silicon Valley for new computer science graduates can reach US$115,000. Bachelor’s degree holders in computing from Rice University have told me that until recently – before economic uncertainty shook the industry – they were getting starting annual salaries as high as $150,000 in Silicon Valley.

    Doctoral students in research universities, in contrast, do not receive a salary. Instead, they get a stipend. These vary slightly from school to school, but they typically pay less than $40,000 annually. The opportunity cost of pursuing a doctorate is, thus, up to $100,000 per year. And obtaining a doctorate typically takes six years.

    So, pursuing a doctorate is not an economically viable decision for many Americans. The reality is that a doctoral degree opens new career options to its holder, but most bachelor’s degree holders do not see beyond the economics. Yet academic computing research is crucial to the success of Silicon Valley.

    A 2016 analysis of the information technology sectors with a large economic impact shows that academic research plays an instrumental role in their development.

    Why so little?

    The U.S. is locked in a cold war with China focused mostly on technological dominance. So maintaining its research-and-development edge is in the national interest.

    Yet the U.S. has declined to make the requisite investment in research. For example, the National Science Foundation’s annual budget for computer and information science and engineering is around $1 billion. In contrast, annual research-and-development expenses for Alphabet, Google’s parent company, have been close to $50 billion for the past decade.

    Universities are paying doctoral students so little because they cannot afford to pay more.

    Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at a Google I/O event in Mountain View, Calif., on May 14, 2024.
    AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

    But instead of acknowledging the existence of this problem and trying to address it, the U.S. has found a way to meet its academic research needs by recruiting and admitting international students. The steady stream of highly qualified international applicants has allowed the U.S. to ignore the inadequacy of the domestic doctoral pipeline.

    The current debate about the H-1B visa system provides the U.S. with an opportunity for introspection.

    Yet the news from Washington, D.C., about massive budget cuts coming to the National Science Foundation seems to suggest the federal government is about to take an acute problem and turn it into a crisis.

    Moshe Y. Vardi receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the US Office of Naval Research.

    – ref. Debate over H-1B visas shines spotlight on US tech worker shortages – https://theconversation.com/debate-over-h-1b-visas-shines-spotlight-on-us-tech-worker-shortages-248711

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Scientists in Antarctica: why they’re there and what they’ve found

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By David William Hedding, Associate Professor in Geography, University of South Africa

    A media storm blew up in mid-March 2025 when a researcher at South Africa’s isolated Sanae IV base in Antarctica accused one of its nine team members of becoming violent.

    The Conversation Africa asked geomorphologist David William Hedding, who has previously carried out research from the frozen continent, about the work researchers do in Antarctica, what conditions are like and why it matters.

    What do researchers focus on when they’re working in Antarctica?

    Currently, the main focus of research in the Antarctic revolves around climate change because the White Continent is a good barometer for changes in global cycles. It has a unique and fragile environment. It’s an extreme climate which makes it highly sensitive to any changes in global climate and atmospheric conditions. Importantly, the Antarctic remains relatively untouched by humans, so we are able to study processes and responses of natural systems.

    Also, the geographic location of Antarctic enables science that is less suitable elsewhere on the planet. An example of this is the work on space weather (primarily disturbances to the Earth’s magnetic field caused by solar activity). Studying space weather is significant because the magnetic field of the Earth can impact communication platforms, technology, infrastructure and even human health.

    How many countries have teams working there? Where does South Africa fit in?

    Currently, about 30 countries have research stations in the Antarctic but these bases serve a far wider community of researchers. Collaboration is a key component of research in the Antarctic because many study sites are isolated, logistics are a challenge and resources are typically limited.

    The South African base in Antarctica, named SANAE IV usually has between 10 and 12 researchers and base personnel. This research station is situated on a nunatak (a mountain piercing through the ice) in Western Dronning Maud Land. It is an extremely remote location approximately 220km inland from the ice-shelf.

    The researchers and base personnel remain in Antarctica for approximately 15 months working through the cold and dark winter months.

    What have been some of the biggest ‘finds’?

    The biggest research finding from the Antarctic was the discovery of the ozone hole in 1985 by scientists from the British Antarctic Survey. This discovery led to the creation and implementation of the Montreal Protocol, a treaty to phase out chlorofluorocarbons (synthetic chemical compounds composed of chlorine, fluorine, and carbon) which destroy ozone. This was a major breakthrough in terms of slowly healing the ozone layer.

    The second most significant piece of research to come from the Antarctic has been the use of ice cores to reconstruct past climates. Ice cores preserve air bubbles which provide a wealth of information about the conditions of the atmosphere over time. Importantly, ice cores provide an uninterrupted and detailed window into the past 1.2 million years. This is important because only by understanding past climates and the earth’s responses to those changes are we able to predict future responses. This is significant because of the imminent threats resulting from anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change.

    What conditions do scientists work under?

    Conducting research in the Antarctic is extremely difficult for three primary reasons: remoteness, the cold and daylight.

    The remoteness of many study sites makes it difficult to reach. Distances are vast from the limited number of bases in the Antarctic. Thus, logistics for science in the Antarctic is a major challenge and requires collaboration and planning. For example, the geologists from the University of Johannesburg, who work from the SANAE IV base in Antarctica, often spend weeks in the field collecting samples. They travel significant distances via snow mobile and remain self-sufficient while conducting science in tough conditions.

    These tough conditions relate specifically to the cold. Most science only occurs in the austral summer months when temperatures become marginally bearable. Also, the summer season only provides a short window in which to operate because access to Antarctic by sea is limited by extent and thickness of the sea ice.

    Lastly, during summer there is 24 hours of daylight which lengthens the working day but these conditions are also short-lived.

    Why it is important to do scientific work in the area?

    The Antarctic is intricately linked to global systems and plays a major role in influencing these systems.

    For example, climate change will cause significant melting of land-based ice in Antarctica which when added to the oceans will cause sea-level rise and disruptions to global oceanic currents. Therefore, it is critical that we obtain a better understanding of how responses of terrestrial systems, such as the Antarctic, will impact oceanic systems because ultimately changes in ocean currents will impact the oceanic food web.

    In the context of climate change, sea-level rise is a major concern as it will have global impacts for society, so it is critical that the impacts are investigated to enable society to build resilience and adapt.

    David William Hedding receives funding from the National Research Foundation.

    – ref. Scientists in Antarctica: why they’re there and what they’ve found – https://theconversation.com/scientists-in-antarctica-why-theyre-there-and-what-theyve-found-252752

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump’s phone call with Putin fails to deliver a full ceasefire – here’s what could happen next

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

    After more than two hours on the phone on Tuesday, March 17, the US president, Donald Trump, and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, agreed only to confidence-building measures, not a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. The two leaders came away from the call having agreed on a limited prisoner exchange, a suspension of attacks on energy infrastructure, and the creation of working groups to explore further steps towards a ceasefire and ultimately a peace agreement, a proposal which Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky has since agreed to in his call with the US president.

    A less charitable way of looking at the outcome of the second call between the two presidents since Trump returned to the White House would be that the ball is now back in America’s court. Putin made it crystal clear to Trump that he is not (yet) in the mood for any compromise.

    This is hardly surprising given recent events.

    The US has pressured Ukraine mercilessly into accepting a proposal for a 30-day ceasefire, which Trump hoped Russia would also agree to. But apart from a vague statement by Trump that he might consider sanctions against Russia, he has so far seemed unwilling to contemplate putting any meaningful equivalent pressure on Putin.

    Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

    On the ground, Russia has gained the upper hand in the Kursk region where Ukrainian troops have ceded most of the territory they captured after a surprise offensive last summer. Once Putin’s forces, assisted by thousands of North Korean soldiers, have succeeded in driving the Ukrainians out of Russia, Kyiv will have lost its most valuable bargaining chip in negotiations with Moscow.

    Meanwhile, Russia has also made further gains on the frontlines inside Ukraine especially in parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. These are two of the four regions (the other two are Donetsk and Luhansk) that Putin has claimed for Russia in their entirety since sham referendums in September 2022, despite not yet having full control of them.

    If Russia were to capture yet more Ukrainian territory, Putin would probably find it even easier to convince Trump that his demands are reasonable. The fact that Trump already hinted at a “dividing of assets”, including the nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia – Europe’s largest before its forced shutdown in September 2022 – is a worrying indication of how far the Russian president has already pushed the envelope.

    Ukraine war: territory occupied by Russia as at March 18 2025.
    Institute for the Study of War

    But a deal solely between Russia and the US is not going to work. In that sense, time is not only on Putin’s side but also on Zelensky’s.

    The Russian readout of the call between the two presidents claimed that they had discussed “the complete cessation of foreign military assistance and the provision of intelligence information to Kyiv” as a key condition for moving forward – something that Trump subsequently denied in an interview with Fox. This means that, for now, Kyiv is likely to continue to receive US aid.

    Europe at the ready

    Perhaps more importantly in the long term, Europe is also doubling down on support for Ukraine. While Trump and Putin were discussing a carve-up of Ukraine over the phone, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, left no doubt on where the EU stands.

    In a speech at the Royal Danish Military Academy foreshadowing the publication of the commission’s Readiness 2030 white paper on bolstering European defences, she recommitted to developing European “capabilities to have credible deterrence” against a hostile Russia.

    A few hours later, the German parliament passed a multi-billion Euro package that loosens the country’s tight borrowing rules to enable massive investments in defence. This follows announcements of increased defence elsewhere on the continent, including in the UK, Poland, and by the EU itself.

    Meanwhile, the UK and France are leading efforts to assemble a coalition of the willing to help Ukraine. Representatives of the 30-member group gathered in London on March 15 for further talks.

    Afterwards, the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, released a statement saying that Ukraine’s western partners “will keep increasing the pressure on Russia, keep the military aid flowing to Ukraine and keep tightening the restrictions on Russia’s economy”.

    Undoubtedly, these measures would be more effective if they had Washington’s full buy-in – but they send a strong signal to both the Kremlin and the White House that Ukraine is not alone in its fight against Russia’s continuing aggression.

    Putin’s options

    Putin, meanwhile, may have time on his side in the short term – but he should take note of this. Russian manpower and firepower may dwarf that of Ukraine, but it would be no match for a Ukraine backed by such a coalition of the willing.

    Putin’s apparent plan to drag Trump into the minutiae of negotiating a comprehensive deal may eventually backfire in more ways than one. For a start, really detailed discussions will test the US president’s notoriously short attention span.

    But this will also buy time for Ukraine and its supporters to strengthen Kyiv’s position in future negotiations. And it will continue to strain – but not immediately break – Russia’s economy.

    For now, Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine have stalled. He is attempting to broker a complex ceasefire deal that involves separate agreements with Kyiv and Moscow, pressure on Nato allies, and an attempt to drive a wedge between Russia and China. It’s not clear how this will succeed or indeed where it will end.

    The only certainty is that they are not bringing a just and stable peace for Ukraine any closer.

    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.

    Tetyana Malyarenko 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. Trump’s phone call with Putin fails to deliver a full ceasefire – here’s what could happen next – https://theconversation.com/trumps-phone-call-with-putin-fails-to-deliver-a-full-ceasefire-heres-what-could-happen-next-252417

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ukraine war: how Zelensky rebuilt his relationship with Trump to turn the tables on Putin

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Natasha Lindstaedt, Professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex

    After Donald Trump’s “very good and productive” phone call with Vladimir Putin earlier this week, all eyes were on his subsequent call with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

    Would it, when they last met in the flesh on February 28 at the White House, descend into disastrous acrimony? Or would Zelensky manage to engage with the US president in a cooperative way that encourages him to see Ukraine and its leader in a more favourable light?

    The latter, it seems. In a post on his Truth Social site, Trump referred to their “very good telephone call”, which got the two leaders “very much on track”. Zelensky for his part, talked of a “very good” and “frank” phone call and seemed to agree with everything the US president had to say, taking pains to emphasise and praise Trump and America’s leadership.

    With his vocal support of Trump’s proposal for peace, Zelensky has put the attention back on Putin. He clearly wants to appear to be the more reasonable negotiating partner by going along with the US president’s proposals.

    In spite of Zelensky’s misgivings about how trustworthy Putin is, he has agreed to a limited ceasefire with Russia on energy infrastructure (while stressing that, unlike Putin, he agrees with Trump’s aim for a complete ceasefire).

    Zelensky clearly knows that Russia has a great deal to gain from a pause on attacks on energy grids and oil refineries, given Ukraine’s increasing capacity to use long-range drone attacks. And a maritime ceasefire, if agreed, would also favour Russia.

    Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

    But by publicly voicing Ukraine’s support for Trump’s plan for a ceasefire, Zelensky has exposed Putin’s disinterest in stopping hostilities.

    In the call, Zelensky emphasised that Ukraine was happy to support the US call for a ceasefire, without conditions. Putin, meanwhile, in his call with Trump laid out a set of frankly unreasonable demands.

    These included the complete cessation of military aid and intelligence sharing by Ukraine’s allies, including the US. He also demanded a complete halt on Ukrainian troop mobilisation and rearmament.

    The demands were so ridiculous, they were designed to get Ukraine to reject them. Interestingly Trump, when he was interviewed after his phone call with Putin, denied that the pair had discussed aid. Crucially, he didn’t say whether this was something he would agree to.

    But the fact that the two leaders discussed the possibility of an ice hockey match between their two countries is an indication of how Putin is able to manipulate the US president with flattery. It helps that Trump clearly admires Putin and has repeatedly said that he trusts the Russian leader.

    Has Putin overplayed his hand?

    But this could come with a time limit. Trump, who wants a peace deal to trumpet as a crowning achievement, could well get tired of the fact that Putin has made no concessions to allow that deal to progress.

    The Russian leader is clearly hoping that by seeming to engage with the “peace” process, while at the same time dangling the prospect of doing business with Russia – for example by offering the US the chance to explore Russia’s own reserves of rare earth minerals – he can keep Trump on side.

    But while Trump still leans toward Putin, his relationship with Zelensky seems to have improved. The Ukrainian president appears to have learned that Trump doesn’t have a long memory and that flattery goes a long way with the US president.

    Trump, meanwhile, is no longer calling Zelensky a dictator, and as yet there is no mention of halting US military aid or intelligence to Ukraine. There is the opposite, in fact, as the US has said it will assist in finding more Patriot missile defence systems after Zelensky mentioned that they were sorely needed.

    By giving Trump credit for the ceasefire initiative, Zelensky is putting the ball in Russia’s court. And his apparent receptiveness to Trump’s idea about the US taking over Ukraine’s nuclear power plants will appeal to Trump’s transactional instincts. In addition to offering Trump business deals, Zelensky is now consistently offering Trump praise for his peace efforts.

    And it’s clear from the tone of the briefing given by White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, after the call that the US was happy with how it went. Leavitt stressed Zelensky’s praise for Trump’s leadership several times.

    The White House reports on a “fantastic” phone call between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky.

    Zelensky has also successfully turned Trump’s attention to the 35,000 missing children abducted from Ukraine into Russia during the war. The US state department had stopped tracking them and had deleted the evidence it had gathered, but Trump is now vowing to return the children home.

    Putin is generally thought to be stringing these negotiations out as long as possible in order to maximise the amount of Ukrainian territory his army occupies. This could be a risky strategy.

    Ending the war in Ukraine as quickly as possible was one of Trump’s repeated campaign promises. So the question is how long Trump can remain distracted or satisfied by Putin’s false engagement with the peace process.

    The American president seems to be changing his tune on Ukraine more generally. His disastrous Oval Office press conference last month with Zelensky was viewed by some as a ploy to portray Ukraine as a difficult and ungrateful partner compared to Russia who he maintained was only interested in achieving a peaceful end to the war. Now, with Zelensky seemingly agreeing with whatever Trump says, it’s become harder for him to take that line.

    For now, at least, the pressure is back on Putin.

    Natasha Lindstaedt 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. Ukraine war: how Zelensky rebuilt his relationship with Trump to turn the tables on Putin – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-how-zelensky-rebuilt-his-relationship-with-trump-to-turn-the-tables-on-putin-252693

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump administration seeks to starve libraries and museums of funding by shuttering this little-known agency

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Devon Akmon, Director of the MSU Museum and CoLab Studio, Michigan State University

    ExplorationWorks, a children’s museum in Helena, Mont., received $151,946 in 2024 from the IMLS to expand its early childhood programs. Lisa Wareham

    On March 14, 2025, the Trump administration issued an executive order that called for the dismantling of seven federal agencies “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” They ranged from the United States Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, to the Minority Business Development Agency.

    The Institute of Museum and Library Services was also on the list. Congress created the IMLS in 1996 through the Museum and Library Services Act. The law merged the Institute of Museum Services, which was established in 1976, with the Library Programs Office of the Department of Education.

    By combining these two departments, Congress sought to create an overarching agency that could more cohesively and strategically support American museums and libraries. The agency’s mission, programs and funding have been reaffirmed through subsequent legislation, such as the Museum and Library Services Act of 2003.

    The Conversation U.S. interviewed Devon Akmon, who is the director of the MSU Museum at Michigan State University. He explained how the agency supports the nation’s cultural institutions and local communities – and what could be lost if the agency were dissolved.

    What does the Institute of Museum and Library Services do?

    The agency provides financial support to a wide array of cultural and educational institutions, including art, science and history museums, zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens and historic sites. Libraries of all types – public, academic, school and research – also benefit from the agency’s funding.

    Through grants, research and policy initiatives, the IMLS helps these institutions better serve their communities.

    Anne-Imelda Radice, right, former director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, inspects Denver city records and neighborhood histories in 2008. The volumes were digitized to make them more accessible to the public.
    Brian Brainerd/The Denver Post via Getty Images

    In the 2019 fiscal year, for example, the IMLS awarded funds to libraries in Nebraska to support economic development in 30 rural communities. The project created rotating “innovation studios” in local libraries and provided residents with tools, instructional materials and programming to foster entrepreneurship and creativity. More recently, IMLS awarded a grant to the Hands On Children’s Museum to develop a toolkit that museums across the country can use to support families with relatives who are in prison.

    For libraries, the IMLS might fund technology upgrades, such as virtual reality learning stations, AI-assisted research aids or digitization of rare books. The agency also pays for community programs that take place in libraries, from early childhood reading initiatives to workshops that help people land jobs.

    How has the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported your work at the MSU Museum?

    IMLS grants have played a vital role in enabling the MSU Museum to preserve, enhance and expand access to its collections.

    For example, we’ve used IMLS grants to develop high-quality audio aids for museum visitors who are blind or have poor vision. Recent funding has supported the digitization of over 2,000 vertebrate specimens, including rare and endangered species.

    Beyond financial support, the MSU Museum benefits from IMLS policy papers, professional training opportunities and resources developed through the National Leadership Grants for Museums program. Our staff members also contribute to national campaigns spearheaded by the IMLS, such as its Strategies for Countering Antisemitism & Hate initiative.

    Through these efforts, the IMLS, alongside the American Alliance of Museums, operate as cornerstones of learning and innovation within the museum field.

    Looking beyond Michigan State, what might be lost with its shuttering?

    The IMLS is more than a grantmaking entity – it is the only federal agency dedicated to sustaining the entire museum and library ecosystem in the United States.

    Its funding has sustained museums, advanced digital preservation, expanded accessibility for low-income communities and fueled innovation in educational programming. In 2024 alone, the agency distributed US$266.7 million through grants, research initiatives and policy development. For example, ExplorationWorks, a children’s museum in Helena, Montana, received $151,946 in 2024 from the IMLS to expand its early childhood programs that serve low-income and rural families.

    Without this support, many institutions will struggle to hire and retain qualified staff, leading to fewer exhibitions, stalled research and reduced educational outreach.

    The consequences would be particularly severe for small museums and rural museums, which lack the fundraising capacity of larger urban institutions. They’re often the only sources of cultural and historical education in their regions, and their loss would create cultural voids that cannot easily be filled.

    Trump’s executive order dictated that the Institute of Museum and Library Services and other agencies be eliminated “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” What is the applicable law in this case?

    I’m not a lawyer. But my understanding is that the “applicable law” in this case primarily refers to the Museum and Library Services Act, which, as I noted earlier, was created in 1996 and has been reauthorized multiple times since then.

    Since the IMLS was created through this congressional legislation, it cannot simply be eliminated by an executive order. Congress would need to pass a law to repeal or defund it.

    President George W. Bush signs into law the Museum and Library Services Act on Sept. 25, 2003.
    Tina Hager/White House via Getty Images

    Additionally, the Antideficiency Act prohibits federal agencies from operating without appropriated funding. If Congress were to defund the IMLS rather than repeal its authorizing statute, the agency would be forced to cease operations due to a lack of money, even if the legal framework for its existence remained intact.

    Is there anything else you’d like to add?

    Museums are among the most trusted institutions in the country. They are rare bipartisan beacons of credibility in an era of deep division.

    A 2021 American Alliance of Museums report found that 97% of Americans view museums as valuable educational assets, while 89% consider them trustworthy sources of information. A 2022 American Library Association survey revealed that 89% of voters and 92% of parents believe local public libraries have an important role to play in communities.

    More than just cultural repositories, museums and libraries bring together citizens and offer learning opportunities for everyday people. By presenting science and history through engaging, evidence-based storytelling, museums help bridge ideological divides and encourage informed discourse. People of all political stripes rely on libraries for free internet access, job searches and literacy programs.

    The Institute of Museum and Library Services is central to this work. The agency provides leadership, while funding programs and research that help museums and libraries expand their offerings to reach all Americans.

    Stripping this support would threaten the sustainability of these institutions and weaken their ability to serve as pillars of education, civic engagement and truth. I see it as a disinvestment in an informed, connected and resilient society.

    Devon Akmon receives funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. He also serves as the vice chair and secretary of the board of directors for the American Alliance of Museums.

    – ref. Trump administration seeks to starve libraries and museums of funding by shuttering this little-known agency – https://theconversation.com/trump-administration-seeks-to-starve-libraries-and-museums-of-funding-by-shuttering-this-little-known-agency-252455

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What causes the powerful winds that fuel dust storms, wildfires and blizzards? A weather scientist explains

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Chris Nowotarski, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Science, Texas A&M University

    When huge dust storms like this one in the Phoenix suburbs in 2022 hit, it’s easy to see the power of the wind. Christopher Harris/iStock Images via Getty Plus

    Windstorms can seem like they come out of nowhere, hitting with a sudden blast. They might be hundreds of miles long, stretching over several states, or just in your neighborhood.

    But they all have one thing in common: a change in air pressure.

    Just like air rushing out of your car tire when the valve is open, air in the atmosphere is forced from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure.

    The stronger the difference in pressure, the stronger the winds that will ultimately result.

    On this forecast for March 18, 2025, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, ‘L’ represents low-pressure systems. The shaded area over New Mexico and west Texas represents strong winds and low humidity that combine to raise the risk of wildfires.
    NOAA Weather Prediction Center

    Other forces related to the Earth’s rotation, friction and gravity can also alter the speed and direction of winds. But it all starts with this change in pressure over a distance – what meteorologists like me call a pressure gradient.

    So how do we get pressure gradients?

    Strong pressure gradients ultimately owe their existence to the simple fact that the Earth is round and rotates.

    Because the Earth is round, the sun is more directly overhead during the day at the equator than at the poles. This means more energy reaches the surface of the Earth near the equator. And that causes the lower part of the atmosphere, where weather occurs, to be both warmer and have higher pressure on average than the poles.

    Nature doesn’t like imbalances. As a result of this temperature difference, strong winds develop at high altitudes over midlatitude locations, like the continental U.S. This is the jet stream, and even though it’s several miles up in the atmosphere, it has a big impact on the winds we feel at the surface.

    Wind speed and direction in the upper atmosphere on March 14, 2025, show waves in the jet stream. Downstream of a trough in this wave, winds diverge and low pressure can form near the surface.
    NCAR

    Because Earth rotates, these upper-altitude winds blow from west to east. Waves in the jet stream – a consequence of Earth’s rotation and variations in the surface land, terrain and oceans – can cause air to diverge, or spread out, at certain points. As the air spreads out, the number of air molecules in a column decreases, ultimately reducing the air pressure at Earth’s surface.

    The pressure can drop quite dramatically over a few days or even just a few hours, leading to the birth of a low-pressure system – what meteorologists call an extratropical cyclone.

    The opposite chain of events, with air converging at other locations, can form high pressure at the surface.

    In between these low-pressure and high-pressure systems is a strong change in pressure over a distance – a pressure gradient. And that pressure gradient leads to strong winds. Earth’s rotation causes these winds to spiral around areas of high and low pressure. These highs and lows are like large circular mixers, with air blowing clockwise around high pressure and counterclockwise around low pressure. This flow pattern blows warm air northward toward the poles east of lows and cool air southward toward the equator west of lows.

    A map illustrates lines of surface pressure, called isobars, with areas of high and low pressure marked for March 14, 2025. Winds are strongest when isobars are packed most closely together.
    Plymouth State University, CC BY-NC-SA

    As the waves in the jet stream migrate from west to east, so do the surface lows and highs, and with them, the corridors of strong winds.

    That’s what the U.S. experienced when a strong extratropical cyclone caused winds stretching thousands of miles that whipped up dust storms and spread wildfires, and even caused tornadoes and blizzards in the central and southern U.S. in March 2025.

    Whipping up dust storms and spreading fires

    The jet stream over the U.S. is strongest and often the most “wavy” in the springtime, when the south-to-north difference in temperature is often the strongest.

    Winds associated with large-scale pressure systems can become quite strong in areas where there is limited friction at the ground, like the flat, less forested terrain of the Great Plains. One of the biggest risks is dust storms in arid regions of west Texas or eastern New Mexico, exacerbated by drought in these areas.

    A dust storm hit Albuquerque, N.M., on March 18, 2025. Another dust storm a few dats earlier in Kansas caused a deadly pileup involving dozens of vehices on I-70.
    AP Photo/Roberto E. Rosales

    When the ground and vegetation are dry and the air has low relative humidity, high winds can also spread wildfires out of control.

    Even more intense winds can occur when the pressure gradient interacts with terrain. Winds can sometimes rush faster downslope, as happens in the Rockies or with the Santa Ana winds that fueled devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area in January.

    Violent tornadoes and storms

    Of course, winds can become even stronger and more violent on local scales associated with thunderstorms.

    When thunderstorms form, hail and precipitation in them can cause the air to rapidly fall in a downdraft, causing very high pressure under these storms. That pressure forces the air to spread out horizontally when it reaches the ground. Meteorologists call these straight line winds, and the process that forms them is a downburst. Large thunderstorms or chains of them moving across a region can cause large swaths of strong wind over 60 mph, called a derecho.

    Finally, some of nature’s strongest winds occur inside tornadoes. They form when the winds surrounding a thunderstorm change speed and direction with height. This can cause part of the storm to rotate, setting off a chain of events that may lead to a tornado and winds as strong as 300 mph in the most violent tornadoes.

    How a tornado forms. Source: NOAA.

    Tornado winds are also associated with an intense pressure gradient. The pressure inside the center of a tornado is often very low and varies considerably over a very small distance.

    It’s no coincidence that localized violent winds from thunderstorm downbursts and tornadoes often occur amid large-scale windstorms. Extratropical cyclones often draw warm, moist air northward on strong winds from the south, which is a key ingredient for thunderstorms. Storms also become more severe and may produce tornadoes when the jet stream is in close proximity to these low-pressure centers. In the winter and early spring, cold air funneling south on the northwest side of strong extratropical cyclones can even lead to blizzards.

    So, the same wave in the jet stream can lead to strong winds, blowing dust and fire danger in one region, while simultaneously triggering a tornado outbreak and a blizzard in other regions.

    Chris Nowotarski receives funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and theDepartment of Energy (DOE).

    – ref. What causes the powerful winds that fuel dust storms, wildfires and blizzards? A weather scientist explains – https://theconversation.com/what-causes-the-powerful-winds-that-fuel-dust-storms-wildfires-and-blizzards-a-weather-scientist-explains-252639

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Insomnia can lead to heart issues − a psychologist recommends changes that can improve sleep

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Julio Fernandez-Mendoza, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, Neuroscience, and Public Health Sciences, Penn State

    Better sleep hygiene habits may help with insomnia. Tetra Images via Getty Images

    About 10% of Americans say they have chronic insomnia, and millions of others report poor sleep quality. Ongoing research has found that bad sleep could lead to numerous health problems, including heart disease.

    Dr. Julio Fernandez-Mendoza is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral health, neuroscience and public health sciences at Penn State College of Medicine. He discusses the need for sleep, why teenagers require more sleep than adults, and how you can get a good night’s sleep without medications.

    Julio Fernandez-Mendoza discusses heart health and sleep.

    The Conversation has collaborated with SciLine to bring you highlights from the discussion that have been edited for brevity and clarity.

    How much sleep is enough for adults and for adolescents?

    Julio Fernandez-Mendoza: Adults who report getting about seven to eight hours of sleep per night generally have the best health, in terms of both physical and mental health, and longevity.

    But that recommendation changes with age. Adults over age 65 may need just six to seven hours of sleep per night. So older people, if otherwise healthy, should not feel anxious if they’re getting just six hours. Young people need the most – at least nine hours – and some younger children may need more.

    How can insufficient sleep harm our health?

    Fernandez-Mendoza: Our team was the first to show that those complaining about insomnia – difficulty falling or staying asleep – were more likely to have high blood pressure and be at risk for heart disease.

    In both teens and adults, we found that insomnia and shortened sleep may lead to elevated stress, hormone levels and inflammation. These problems tend to show up before you develop heart disease.

    As we age, the recommended amount of sleep declines.
    National Sleep Foundation Copyright 2025 National Sleep Foundation, all rights reserved

    What about people who have more serious sleep problems?

    Fernandez-Mendoza: Good sleep hygiene habits include cutting down on caffeine and alcohol, quitting smoking and exercising regularly. I also recommend not skipping meals, not eating too late at night and not eating too much.

    But people with a persistent sleep problem may need to make more behavioral changes. Research studies point to a set of six rules that can improve your sleep. You can follow these changes consistently in the short term, and then choose how to adapt them into your lifestyle down the road.

    First, get up at the same time no matter what. No matter how much sleep you get. This will anchor your sleep/wake cycle, called your circadian rhythm.

    Second, do not use your bed for anything except sleep and sexual activity.

    Third, when you can’t sleep, don’t lie in bed awake. Instead, get out of bed, go into another room if you can, and do an activity that’s enjoyable or relaxing. Go back to bed only when you’re ready to sleep.

    Fourth, get going with daily activities even after a poor night’s sleep. Don’t try to compensate for sleep loss. If you have chronic insomnia, don’t nap, sleep in, or doze during the day or evening even after poor sleep the previous night.

    Fifth, go to bed only when you’re actually sleepy enough to fall asleep.

    And sixth, start with the amount of sleep you’re now getting – with the lowest limit at five hours – and then increase it weekly by 15 minutes.

    These six rules are evidence-based and go above and beyond simple sleep hygiene habits. If they don’t work, see a provider who can help you.

    Your teen isn’t lazy. There are reasons why adolescents sleep in.

    Do you have advice specifically for adolescents?

    Fernandez-Mendoza: Adolescence is a unique developmental period. It’s not just the obvious physical, emotional and behavioral changes that occur during adolescence and puberty – there are changes in a teenager’s brain that can alter their sleep patterns.

    When an adolescent goes through puberty, their internal clock changes so that their sleep schedule shifts to later hours. While it’s true that adolescents are more engaged at night because of their social relationships, there’s also biology behind why they want to stay up late – their internal clocks have shifted. It’s not just choice.

    School start times for most adolescents are at odds with that biological shift. So they don’t get enough sleep, which affects their performance in school. Research suggests that schools with later start times are more closely aligned with the science on child development and don’t put adolescents at risk by making them wake up earlier than their bodies are biologically inclined to.

    Parents can help their teens get better sleep. Set a time for kids to stop doing homework and put away electronics. Instead, they can watch TV with the family or read – something relaxing and enjoyable that will help them wind down before bed.

    You can also gradually move back their wake-up time. Start on weekends, waking them up 30 minutes earlier every day, including school days, until the child reaches the desired wake-up time. Don’t try to reshift them suddenly – for example, waking up a teenager at 5 a.m. like it’s the military – because that doesn’t work. They won’t get used to it, since it’s at odds with their internal clock. So, do it little by little. If that doesn’t work, see a clinical provider.

    What kind of treatments can a sleep clinician provide?

    Fernandez-Mendoza: People should get help if they feel they sleep poorly, if they’re fatigued during the day, or if they snore or grind their teeth. All these issues deserve attention.

    Some people may think a sleep provider just prescribes expensive medication, but that’s not true. There are behavioral, non-drug-based treatments that work. Cognitive behavioral therapy is the first-line treatment recommended for insomnia. Light therapy may also help, which is the use of a bright light therapy lamp at a given time during the day or evening, depending on the person’s sleep problem.

    Watch the full interview to hear more.

    SciLine is a free service based at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a nonprofit that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories.

    Julio Fernandez-Mendoza currently receives funding from the National Institutes of Health. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Sleep Research Society, a US-based not-for-profit professional association of sleep and circadian scientists.

    – ref. Insomnia can lead to heart issues − a psychologist recommends changes that can improve sleep – https://theconversation.com/insomnia-can-lead-to-heart-issues-a-psychologist-recommends-changes-that-can-improve-sleep-251017

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: 5 years on, true counts of COVID-19 deaths remain elusive − and research is hobbled by lack of data

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Dylan Thomas Doyle, Ph.D. Candidate in Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder

    National COVID-19 memorial wall for the five-year anniversary on March 11, 2025, in London, England. Andrew Aitchison/In Pictures via Getty Images

    In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers struggled to grasp the rate of the virus’s spread and the number of related deaths. While hospitals tracked cases and deaths within their walls, the broader picture of mortality across communities remained frustratingly incomplete.

    Policymakers and researchers quickly discovered a troubling pattern: Many deaths linked to the virus were never officially counted. A study analyzing data from over 3,000 U.S. counties between March 2020 and August 2022 found nearly 163,000 excess deaths from natural causes that were missing from official mortality records.

    Excess deaths, meaning those that exceed the number expected based on historical trends, serve as a key indicator of underreported deaths during health crises. Many of these uncounted deaths were later tied to COVID-19 through reviews of medical records, death certificates and statistical modeling.

    In addition, lack of real-time tracking for medical interventions during those early days slowed vaccine development by delaying insights into which treatments worked and how people were responding to newly circulating variants.

    Five years since the beginning of COVID-19, new epidemics such as bird flu are emerging worldwide, and researchers are still finding it difficult to access the data about people’s deaths that they need to develop lifesaving interventions.

    How can the U.S. mortality data system improve? I’m a technology infrastructure researcher, and my team and I design policy and technical systems to reduce inefficiency in health care and government organizations. By analyzing the flow of mortality data in the U.S., we found several areas of the system that could use updating.

    Critical need for real-time data

    A death record includes key details beyond just the fact of death, such as the cause, contributing conditions, demographics, place of death and sometimes medical history. This information is crucial for researchers to be able to analyze trends, identify disparities and drive medical advances.

    Approximately 2.8 million death records are added to the U.S. mortality data system each year. But in 2022 – the most recent official count available – when the world was still in the throes of the pandemic, 3,279,857 deaths were recorded in the federal system. Still, this figure is widely considered to be a major undercount of true excess deaths from COVID-19.

    In addition, real-time tracking of COVID-19 mortality data was severely lacking. This process involves the continuous collection, analysis and reporting of deaths from hospitals, health agencies and government databases by integrating electronic health records, lab reports and public health surveillance systems. Ideally, it provides up-to-date insights for decision-making, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, these tracking systems lagged and failed to generate comprehensive data.

    Getting real-time COVID-19 data from hospitals and other agencies into the hands of researchers proved difficult.
    Gerald Herbert/AP Photo

    Without comprehensive data on prior COVID-19 infections, antibody responses and adverse events, researchers faced challenges designing clinical trials to predict how long immunity would last and optimize booster schedules.

    Such data is essential in vaccine development because it helps identify who is most at risk, which variants and treatments affect survival rates, and how vaccines should be designed and distributed. And as part of the broader U.S. vital records system, mortality data is essential for medical research, including evaluating public health programs, identifying health disparities and monitoring disease.

    At the heart of the problem is the inefficiency of government policy, particularly outdated public health reporting systems and slow data modernization efforts that hinder timely decision-making. These long-standing policies, such as reliance on paper-based death certificates and disjointed state-level reporting, have failed to keep pace with real-time data needs during crises such as COVID-19.

    These policy shortcomings lead to delays in reporting and lack of coordination between hospital organizations, state government vital records offices and federal government agencies in collecting, standardizing and sharing death records.

    History of US mortality data

    The U.S. mortality data system has been cobbled together through a disparate patchwork of state and local governments, federal agencies and public health organizations over the course of more than a century and a half. It has been shaped by advances in public health, medical record-keeping and technology. From its inception to the present day, the mortality data system has been plagued by inconsistencies, inefficiencies and tensions between medical professionals, state governments and the federal government.

    The first national efforts to track information about deaths began in the 1850s when the U.S. Census Bureau started collecting mortality data as part of the decennial census. However, these early efforts were inconsistent, as death registration was largely voluntary and varied widely across states.

    In the early 20th century, the establishment of the National Vital Statistics System brought greater standardization to mortality data. For example, the system required all U.S. states and territories to standardize their death certificate format. It also consolidated mortality data at the federal level, whereas mortality data was previously stored at the state level.

    However, state and federal reporting remained fragmented. For example, states had no unifom timeline for submitting mortality data, resulting in some states taking months or even years to finalize and release death records. Local or state-level paperwork processing practices also remained varied and at times contradictory.

    Death record processing varies by state.
    eric1513/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    To begin to close gaps in reporting timelines to aid medical researchers, in 1981 the National Center for Health Statistics – a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – introduced the National Death Index. This is a centralized database of death records collected from state vital statistics offices, making it easier to access death data for health and medical research. The system was originally paper-based, with the aim of allowing researchers to track the deaths of study participants without navigating complex bureaucracies.

    As time has passed, the National Death Index and state databases have become increasingly digital. The rise of electronic death registration systems in recent decades has improved processing speed when it comes to researchers accessing mortality data from the National Death Index. However, while the index has solved some issues related to gaps between state and federal data, other issues, such as high fees and inconsistency in state reporting times, still plague it.

    Accessing the data that matters most

    With the Trump administration’s increasing removal of CDC public health datasets, it is unclear whether policy reform for mortality data will be addressed anytime soon.

    Experts fear that the removal of CDC datasets has now set precedent for the Trump administration to cross further lines in its attempts to influence the research and data published by the CDC. The longer-term impact of the current administration’s public health policy on mortality data and disease response are not yet clear.

    What is clear is that five years since COVID-19, the U.S. mortality tracking system remains unequipped to meet emerging public health crises. Without addressing these challenges, the U.S. may not be able to respond quickly enough to public health crises threatening American lives.

    Dylan Thomas Doyle 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. 5 years on, true counts of COVID-19 deaths remain elusive − and research is hobbled by lack of data – https://theconversation.com/5-years-on-true-counts-of-covid-19-deaths-remain-elusive-and-research-is-hobbled-by-lack-of-data-244799

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Tyrannical leader? Why comparisons between Trump and King George III miss the mark on 18th-century British monarchy

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Carla Gardina Pestana, Professor and Joyce Appleby Endowed Chair of America in the World, University of California, Los Angeles

    Are there legitimate comparisons between President Donald Trump and King George III? Rebecca Noble/Getty Images; Kean Collection/Getty Images

    George III, king of Great Britain and its colonies at the time of the American Revolution, has been maligned unfairly.

    During both the first and now the second term of President Donald Trump, commentators in the U.S. have invoked the king’s misdeeds to criticize Trump. When the president bypassed Congress to create a new government agency, appointed its head and stopped payment of millions of dollars of allocated federal funds, his critics noted that he assumed the role of Congress, a power grab that supposedly made him similar to George III. According to this criticism, the president engaged in tyranny, just as the founders accused George of doing.

    As a scholar of early America, I believe, however, that George III has gotten a bad rap. He was not the all-powerful monarch that Trump allegedly aspires to be.

    In the 1770s, the power of the British king was limited by the authority of Parliament. In that system, which Americans and others praised at the time as balanced, the king and the legislature each had specific duties and powers so that neither could control the government alone.

    George III was not an absolutist monarch, to use the language of the day for a power-hungry ruler. The English had struggled in the previous century over the extent of the king’s power. After fighting two civil wars, executing one king, and, eventually, forcing the monarch to agree to rule with Parliament rather than on his own, they believed their liberties were safeguarded.

    This system, known as limited monarchy, was the pride of Great Britain. It was also admired by the American founders. As late as 1774, in his Summary View of the Rights of British America, Thomas Jefferson praised the “free and ancient principles” of the British constitution in which “kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people.”

    Trump has been compared with King George III by many writers and commentators; the White House on Feb. 19, 2024, issued the fake magazine cover of Trump crowned like a king.
    Various

    No kingly tyranny

    Britons, whether in Great Britain or the colonies, did fear a tyrant, a controlling and abusive leader.

    Some fears came from their study of political theory, which taught that government worked best when composed of various branches that represented the concerns of the different political classes.

    As this theory went, an unbalanced government would descend into tyranny with a too-powerful monarch; oligarchy under a dominant aristocratic class; or anarchy with the people out of control. They believed these perils could be avoided only by maintaining balance.

    Even though the British did not fear imbalance or a tyrant king in their own case, they could see the danger threatening elsewhere in Europe.

    France represented a worst-case scenario. Its absolutist kings had ruled without France’s legislature – the Estates General – for more than a century and a half at the time of the American Revolution. British poet Robert Wolseley’s often reprinted poem declared: “Let France grow proud beneath the tyrant’s lust, While the rackt people crawl and lick the dust. The mighty Genius of this isle disdains Ambitious slavery and golden chains.”

    Within a few years, Anglo-American criticism of kingly tyranny in France would be validated: That country descended into a violent revolution that resulted in decades of warfare and political violence, including the execution of the entire royal family.

    This experience confirmed for the British and Americans that a balanced system was best and that they should count their blessings.

    Why revolt?

    A list of grievances held by the American Colonies against King George III, set down in Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of the American Declaration of Independence, which ultimately included 27 grievances against the king.
    MPI/Getty Images

    If the American revolutionaries admired the British system and sought to copy it in the United States, why did they reject the link to Britain and revolt in the first place?

    Americans did not revolt against the nature of British government. Rather they objected to their changing place within the British Empire. The revolutionary crisis had a number of roots, but most of them arose out of changes in the management of the relationship between the American Colonies and the imperial center.

    From the 1760s, the British government took a more activist role in its American Colonies, limiting their geographical expansion and imposing taxes directly on the population. In the past, Colonists had been free to move west, challenged only by the indigenous residents who fought to defend their lands.

    Now the British government, aiming to put an end to these wars, blocked expansion. At the same time, to pay down the debt accrued in recent war with France – and fought in part in North America – the government levied taxes not via the Colonial legislatures, as it had before, but directly on residents. This change sparked revolt and, eventually, revolution.

    Turning on the king

    American Colonists pull down a statue of King George III in New York City during the American Revolution.
    Corbis via Getty Images

    Before 1776, the Colonists believed that George III would come to their rescue and halt these changes imposed by Parliament. They thought initially that he did not realize how the new policies affected them.

    Only in 1776 did they accept that George III supported the policy changes and would not defend their rights. It was in that context that they turned on him and declared him tyrannical, blaming him for the new policies and calling for a break with Britain. As the Declaration of Independence said: “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”

    Although they complained about the tyranny of George III, their true objection was that their subordinate position within the empire gave them little leverage when opposing policies that king and Parliament agreed to impose on them.

    Once independent, the founders created a system that imitated the British model of mixed governance and created barriers – the powers of Congress and the oversight of the Supreme Court – that they hoped would safeguard their liberties against the threat of renewed tyranny.

    Carla Gardina Pestana 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. Tyrannical leader? Why comparisons between Trump and King George III miss the mark on 18th-century British monarchy – https://theconversation.com/tyrannical-leader-why-comparisons-between-trump-and-king-george-iii-miss-the-mark-on-18th-century-british-monarchy-251869

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Atlantic sturgeon were fished almost to extinction − ancient DNA reveals how Chesapeake Bay population changed over centuries

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Natalia Przelomska, Research Associate in Archaeogenomics, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

    Sturgeon can be several hundred pounds each. cezars/E+ via Getty Images

    Sturgeons are one of the oldest groups of fishes. Sporting an armor of five rows of bony, modified scales called dermal scutes and a sharklike tail fin, this group of several-hundred-pound beasts has survived for approximately 160 million years. Because their physical appearance has changed very little over time, supported by a slow rate of evolution, sturgeon have been called living fossils.

    Despite their survival through several geological time periods, many present-day sturgeon species are at threat of extinction, with 17 of 27 species listed as “critically endangered.”

    Conservation practitioners such as the Virginia Commonwealth University monitoring team are working hard to support recovery of Atlantic sturgeon in the Chesapeake Bay area. But it’s not clear what baseline population level people should strive toward restoring. How do today’s sturgeon populations compare with those of the past?

    VCU monitoring team releases an adult Atlantic sturgeon back into the estuary.
    Matt Balazik

    We are a molecular anthropologist and a biodiversity scientist who focus on species that people rely on for subsistence. We study the evolution, population health and resilience of these species over time to better understand humans’ interaction with their environments and the sustainability of food systems.

    For our recent sturgeon project, we joined forces with fisheries conservation biologist Matt Balazik, who conducts on-the-ground monitoring of Atlantic sturgeon, and Torben Rick, a specialist in North American coastal zooarchaeology. Together, we wanted to look into the past and see how much sturgeon populations have changed, focusing on the James River in Virginia. A more nuanced understanding of the past could help conservationists better plan for the future.

    Sturgeon loomed large for millennia

    In North America, sturgeon have played important subsistence and cultural roles in Native communities, which marked the seasons by the fishes’ behavioral patterns. Large summertime aggregations of lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) in the Great Lakes area inspired one folk name for the August full moon – the sturgeon moon. Woodland Era pottery remnants at archaeological sites from as long as 2,000 years ago show that the fall and springtime runs of Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser oxyrinchus) upstream were celebrated with feasting.

    Archaeologists uncover bony scutes – modified scales that resemble armor for the living fish – in places where people relied on sturgeon for subsistence.
    Logan Kistler and Natalia Przelomska

    Archaeological finds of sturgeon remains support that early colonial settlers in North America, notably those who established Jamestown in the Chesapeake Bay area in 1607, also prized these fish. When Captain John Smith was leading Jamestown, he wrote “there was more sturgeon here than could be devoured by dog or man.” The fish may have helped the survival of this fortress-colony that was both stricken with drought and fostering turbulent relationships with the Native inhabitants.

    This abundance is in stark contrast to today, when sightings of migrating fish are sparse. Exploitation during the past 300 years was the key driver of Atlantic sturgeon decline. Demand for caviar drove the relentless fishing pressure throughout the 19th century. The Chesapeake was the second-most exploited sturgeon fishery on the Eastern Seaboard up until the early 20th century, when the fish became scarce.

    Conservation biologists capture the massive fish for monitoring purposes, which includes clipping a tiny part of the fin for DNA analysis.
    Matt Balazik

    At that point, local protection regulations were established, but only in 1998 was a moratorium on harvesting these fish declared. Meanwhile, abundance of Atlantic sturgeon remained very low, which can be explained in part by their lifespan. Short-lived fish such as herring and shad can recover population numbers much faster than Atlantic sturgeon, which live for up to 60 years and take a long time to reach reproductive age – up to around 12 years for males and as many as 28 years for females.

    To help manage and restore an endangered species, conservation biologists tend to split the population into groups based on ranges. The Chesapeake Bay is one of five “distinct population segments” the U.S. Endangered Species Act listing in 2012 created for Atlantic sturgeon.

    Since then, conservationists have pioneered genetic studies on Atlantic sturgeon, demonstrating through the power of DNA that natal river – where an individual fish is born – and season of spawning are both important for distinguishing subpopulations within each regional group. Scientists have also described genetic diversity in Atlantic sturgeon; more genetic variety suggests they have more capacity to adapt when facing new, potentially challenging conditions.

    The study focused on Atlantic sturgeon from the Chesapeake Bay region, past and present. The four archaeological sites included are highlighted.
    Przelomska NAS et al., Proc. R. Soc. B 291: 20241145, CC BY

    Sturgeon DNA, then and now

    Archaeological remains are a direct source of data on genetic diversity in the past. We can analyze the genetic makeup of sturgeons that lived hundreds of years ago, before intense overfishing depleted their numbers. Then we can compare that baseline with today’s genetic diversity.

    The James River was a great case study for testing out this approach, which we call an archaeogenomics time series. Having obtained information on the archaeology of the Chesapeake region from our collaborator Leslie Reeder-Myers, we sampled remains of sturgeon – their scutes and spines – at a precolonial-era site where people lived from about 200 C.E. to about 900 C.E. We also sampled from important colonial sites Jamestown (1607-1610) and Williamsburg (1720-1775). And we complemented that data from the past with tiny clips from the fins of present-day, live fish that Balazik and his team sampled during monitoring surveys.

    Scientists separate Atlantic sturgeon scute fragments from larger collections of zooarchaeological remains, to then work on the scutes in a lab dedicated to studying ancient DNA.
    Torben Rick and Natalia Przelomska

    DNA tends to get physically broken up and biochemically damaged with age. So we relied on special protocols in a lab dedicated to studying ancient DNA to minimize the risk of contamination and enhance our chances of successfully collecting genetic material from these sturgeon.

    Atlantic sturgeon have 122 chromosomes of nuclear DNA – over five times as many as people do. We focused on a few genetic regions, just enough to get an idea of the James River population groupings and how genetically distinct they are from one another.

    We were not surprised to see that fall-spawning and spring-spawning groups were genetically distinct. What stood out, though, was how starkly different they were, which is something that can happen when a population’s numbers drop to near-extinction levels.

    We also looked at the fishes’ mitochondrial DNA, a compact molecule that is easier to obtain ancient DNA from compared with the nuclear chromosomes. With our collaborator Audrey Lin, we used the mitochondrial DNA to confirm our hypothesis that the fish from archaeological sites were more genetically diverse than present-day Atlantic sturgeon.

    Strikingly, we discovered that mitochondrial DNA did not always group the fish by season or even by their natal river. This was unexpected, because Atlantic sturgeon tend to return to their natal rivers for breeding. Our interpretation of this genetic finding is that over very long timescales – many thousands of years – changes in the global climate and in local ecosystems would have driven a given sturgeon population to migrate into a new river system, and possibly at a later stage back to its original one. This notion is supported by other recent documentation of fish occasionally migrating over long distances and mixing with new groups.

    Our study used archaeology, history and ecology together to describe the decline of Atlantic sturgeon. Based on the diminished genetic diversity we measured, we estimate that the Atlantic sturgeon populations we studied are about a fifth of what they were before colonial settlement. Less genetic variability means these smaller populations have less potential to adapt to changing conditions. Our findings will help conservationists plan into the future for the continued recovery of these living fossils.

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

    – ref. Atlantic sturgeon were fished almost to extinction − ancient DNA reveals how Chesapeake Bay population changed over centuries – https://theconversation.com/atlantic-sturgeon-were-fished-almost-to-extinction-ancient-dna-reveals-how-chesapeake-bay-population-changed-over-centuries-241104

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Australia’s PBS means consumers pay less for expensive medicines. Here’s how this system works

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bonny Parkinson, Associate Professor, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University

    The United States pharmaceutical lobby has complained to US President Donald Trump that Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is damaging their profits and has urged Trump to put tariffs on pharmaceutical imports from Australia.

    Prime Minister Anthony Albanese defended the scheme, saying Australia’s pharmaceutical subsidy scheme was “not up for negotiation”. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said he would also protect the PBS, which was the “envy of the world”.

    But what exactly is the PBS, and why does it matter?

    How did the PBS start?

    In the early 1900s, Australians had to pay for medicines out-of-pocket. Some could get free or cheap medicines at public hospitals or through Friendly Society Dispensaries, but otherwise access was restricted to those who could afford to pay.

    At the time, few effective medicines were available. But the development of insulin and penicillin in the 1920s made access to medicines much more important.

    The Constitution gave the federal government limited powers in the provision of health and welfare, which were largely the responsibility of the states. After World War II, the federal government wanted to expand these powers but it encountered several constitutional roadblocks.

    A rare successful referendum in 1946 changed that, enabling the National Health Act 1953 to pass. This established the PBS as we know it today.

    How does the PBS work in practice?

    The PBS covers the cost of medicines prescribed by doctors. Most are dispensed at community pharmacies (such as treatments for heart disease, the pill and antibiotics), but some more expensive ones are available at public hospitals or specialist treatment centres (such as chemotherapies and IVF medicines).

    In 2023–24 there were 930 different medicines and 5,164 brands listed on the PBS, costing the government $17.7 billion.

    The government negotiates the price of each medicine with the pharmaceutical company. Pharmacies then buy these medicines from wholesalers or companies.

    When a patient fills a prescription at a pharmacy, they pay a co-payment. The government pays the difference between the agreed price and the co-payment to the pharmacy – costs that may amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

    There are two co-payments: one for concession card holders ($7.70) and one for the general consumer ($31.60). When a patient hits the annual spending limit (safety net threshold), the co-payment falls to $0 for concession patients and $7.70 for the general consumer.

    Overall, patients contribute 8.4% to the total cost of the PBS, while the government pays the rest.

    How are medicine prices set?

    The PBS is split into two categories:

    – F1: new, patent-protected medicines with no competition

    – F2: medicines with multiple brands, including generics.

    F1 medicines

    To be listed on the PBS, a new medicine goes through the following process:

    1. It’s evaluated for safety, efficacy and quality.

    2. A panel of experts (including doctors, pharmacists, epidemiologists, health economists, health consumer advocates and a pharmaceutical industry representative) recommends which medicines should be listed on the PBS, based on effectiveness, safety, cost-effectiveness and the total cost on the budget of the medicine versus alternative treatments.

    3. If the panel recommends a medicine, the price and details of the listing may be further negotiated with the government. (If the panel rejects a medicine, companies may revise their application and re-submit.)

    4. Finally, the health minister, and subsequently the Cabinet, formally approves or rejects the panel’s recommendation. If approved, the medicine is listed on the PBS.

    F2 medicines

    Generic medicine companies may apply to list another brand on the PBS after a medicine loses patent protection. When this happens, the medicine moves from F1 to F2. Immediately, it incurs a mandatory price discount.

    Generic medicine companies may offer pharmacists discounts on the PBS list price (for example, ten for the price of nine). Pharmacists then encourage patients to switch to the cheaper medicine.

    Companies must disclose these discounts to the government, resulting in further price reductions.

    Is the PBS system unique?

    Australia is not special. Many countries use similar assessments to determine whether governments should subsidise new medicines, including the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the United Kingdom, Canada’s Drug Agency, and Pharmac in New Zealand.

    Small differences exist, including whether the list of medicines is a positive (and they’re subsidised) or negative (meaning they’re not subsidised), whether the lists are established at the central level (such as the PBS in Australia) or local level (such as by province in Canada) or a mixture, and how co-payments are set.

    Generic medicine companies in Australia may offer pharmacists discounts on their products.
    National Cancer Institute/Unsplash

    The biggest outlier is the US. Similar to its health system, the medicines system is a complex and decentralised mix of public and private organisations, including government agencies, independent organisations, health-care providers and payers such as health insurers.

    What are the benefits of the PBS?

    The PBS ensures all Australian patients have access to highly effective medicines. This contributes to a high life expectancy, while keeping health-care costs low relative to other developed countries.

    This has been achieved by keeping prices down for both F1 and F2 medicines. By doing so, it creates room in the government budget to fund other new medicines.

    Without the PBS, either taxes or co-payments would have to increase, or fewer medicines funded.

    Other benefits include having a level playing field for all medicines, while maintaining flexibility to fund highly effective medicines for patients with unmet needs.

    What are the drawbacks of the PBS system?

    No system is without its drawbacks and risks. The PBS’s drawbacks include:

    • limited patient involvement in the process
    • the high frequency of re-submissions and delays to PBS listing
    • companies being unwilling to submit off-patent medicines for PBS listing due to high costs and low rewards
    • the ongoing lack of high-quality clinical evidence about medicines to treat rare diseases and certain patient populations, such as children.

    Another issue is medicine shortages. When PBS-listed brands aren’t available due to supply chain issues, other non-PBS listed brands may be available at full cost to the patient. Increased medicine costs can discourage patients from filling necessary prescriptions, which can have longer-term impacts on health and health expenditure.

    Finally, companies have argued Australia’s small market size plus low PBS prices can make it financially unviable to bring new medicines to Australia.

    The PBS is a crucial part of Australia’s health system, making essential medicines affordable, while keeping costs down. Like any system, it has its challenges and there is ongoing debate about whether and how the system should change.



    Read more:
    Will the US trade war push up the price of medicines in Australia? Will there be drug shortages?

    Bonny Parkinson receives funding from the Australian government to conduct evaluations of medicines to be listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. She also supervises students funded by PhD scholarships (received by the student, not Bonny Parkinson), including the Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship and Macquarie University Australian Pharmaceutical Scholarship, with support from six pharmaceutical companies: Amgen Australia, Janssen Australia, MSD Australia, Pfizer Australia, Roche Australia, and Abbvie Australia.

    – ref. Australia’s PBS means consumers pay less for expensive medicines. Here’s how this system works – https://theconversation.com/australias-pbs-means-consumers-pay-less-for-expensive-medicines-heres-how-this-system-works-252736

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Islamic State in Somalia: the terrorist group’s origins, rise and recent battlefield defeats

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Stig Jarle Hansen, Professor of International Relations, Norwegian University of Life Sciences

    The Islamic State in Somalia is an affiliate of the transnational jihadist group Islamic State, known in short as ISIS. Based in the semi-autonomous northern Somalia territory of Puntland, the terrorist group was the target of the first foreign combat operation of the Trump administration in February 2025. Previously, the group has been linked to planned terror attacks on the Vatican and on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm. Stig Jarle Hansen, a researcher and author of several books on jihadism in Africa, examines its origins, rise and recent battlefield defeats in the mountains of Puntland.

    1. The rise of the Islamic State

    Before the establishment of the Islamic State in Somalia in 2015, the Somali jihadist group al-Shabaab had established itself in the north. The small group had extensive connections to smuggling networks. It later split into two and the future leader of the Islamic State in Somalia, Sheikh Abdulqader Muumin, emerged from one of the splinter groups.

    In Somalia, clans define the relationship between people and all actors in the society. The connections of the new group to the Ali Suleiban sub-clan enabled it to profit from the clan’s links to smuggling and maritime piracy groups.

    Puntland is the hub of communication and maritime trade between Somalia and Yemen, as well as the wider Middle East. Smuggling has gone on in the region for centuries. The rugged terrain is ideal for piracy, illegal smuggling and insurgents.

    Puntland has been more or less autonomous from the rest of Somalia for more than three decades, and the Somali government has little influence there today.

    2. The jihadist behind the Islamic State in Somalia

    Muumin lived in Sweden through the 1990s and early 2000s and later moved to the UK. Back in Somalia, he joined al-Shabaab and became a prominent figure in the group’s jihadist videos. Such videos aim to maintain morals, attract new recruits and create sympathy for the group.

    In 2015, Muumin defected to lead the Islamic State in Somalia. His second-in-command was another Ali Suleiban clansman, Mahad Moalim. In 2016, the first video of the group was circulated through Islamic State media outlets.

    A milestone for the group followed its 2017 suicide bombing of the Juba Hotel in Bosaso, Puntland’s commercial capital and sea port. This enabled the Islamic State in Somalia to pressure Bossaso-based businesses to pay it protection money, the single most important source of income. In 2017-2018, the group is believed to have been behind as many as 50 assassinations in central Somalia. The killings were a forceful tool to generate protection money.

    On 27 July 2018, the Somali group was officially designated as a full province by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. The Maktab al-Karrar regional office was based in the small Puntland chapter, giving it global responsibilities.

    The Somali group was made responsible for the central African and the Mozambique provinces of the Islamic State. Money flowed to the group from the Islamic State, as did extortion money from Bossaso, other northern Puntland cities and more infrequently from Mogadishu.

    In the first half of 2022, the US Treasury claimed that the organisation generated US$2.3 million from extortion payments, related imports, livestock and agriculture. The regional office and Muumin emerged as key financial players in east Africa, and even outside it, from their base in Buur Dexhtaal in Bari Puntland. Indeed, unnamed US officials claimed in 2023 that Muumim had been made the transnational leader of the Islamic State.

    3. An overblown reputation

    The Islamic State’s reputation in Somalia is often overstated. The group has never captured or held large territories. Its numbers in 2024 were estimated to be between 600 and 1,600. That pales in comparison to al-Shabaab in the south of Somalia.

    Its links to a planned attack on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm 2024 were probably weak and failed to hold up in court. And the jihadist linked to a planned attack in the Vatican 2018 seems to have left Islamic State prior to the planning.

    It is also doubtful that Muumin is the global leader of the Islamic State as claimed by some. That’s for two main reasons. First, an Islamic State leader has to be drawn from a tribe related to the prophet (Qureshi). Muumin is not. Second, the Islamic State in Somalia is the smallest of the Islamic State provinces in Africa. It is likely that a leader of a stronger province would have ranked higher.

    Although the income-gathering capacities of the Puntland-based group give it prominence in the Islamic State media, the Islamic State in Somalia does not rank higher than the Islamic State in the Sahara and Mozambique.

    4. Down but not out

    The Puntland authorities launched a relatively successful counter-offensive against the Islamic State in January 2025. This was combined with air support by the US and the United Arab Emirates.

    Puntland won important battles in January and February, including an attack in which it killed 70 Islamic State fighters.

    By late February, the morale of the Islamic State fighters seemed to break. With the fall of Buur Dexhtaal, the main base, in March, all the larger known bases had fallen. Many of the fleeing foreign fighters were captured.

    But the Islamic State is not defeated. The terrain enabled some of the fighters to hide. Neither Muumin, who is in his 70s, nor his second-in-command Abdirahman Fahiye have been reported killed. There are at least several hundred fighters left.

    If the Islamic State is still able to extort money from the northern business community, it could recruit from the large numbers of Oromo Ethiopian refugees in and around Bosaso, as well as locals who need jobs.

    Stig Jarle Hansen 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. Islamic State in Somalia: the terrorist group’s origins, rise and recent battlefield defeats – https://theconversation.com/islamic-state-in-somalia-the-terrorist-groups-origins-rise-and-recent-battlefield-defeats-252303

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The PKK says it will lay down its arms. What are the chances of lasting peace between Turkey and the Kurds? Podcast

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

    For over 40 years, the Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, has waged an armed insurgency against Turkey, fighting for Kurdish rights and autonomy.

    But in late February, Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK’s imprisoned founder, called for the group to lay down its arms and dissolve itself. Days later, the PKK, which is labelled as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, Europe and the US, declared a ceasefire with Turkey.

    In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to political scientist Pinar Dinc about what’s led to this moment and whether it could be the beginning of a lasting peace between Turkey and the Kurds.

    Despite being imprisoned in solitary confinement since his capture in 1999, Öcalan has remained a central figure in the Kurdish movement, both in Turkey and across the region.

    His call for the PKK to abandon its armed struggle came months after the leader of a Turkish ultra-nationalist political party launched an initiative to bring an end to the conflict.

    Over the past few decades, previous rounds of peace talks between the PKK and Turkey, most notably in 2009 and 2013-15, have collapsed.

    But Pinar Dinc, an associate professor of political science at Lund University in Sweden, says that since the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza, the situation in the Middle East has rapidly changed. “It’s mutually beneficial to put an end to this war,” she says. “Both groups recognise the necessity of addressing regional tensions.”

    Dinc says international support for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in north-eastern Syria, and its Rojava revolution, means that Turkey has been forced to recognise a new “Syrian Kurdish reality”. At the same time, she says, the Kurdish movement has also reached a limit in what it can achieve in an era of modern warfare.

     Turkey has a huge army. It’s one of the biggest armies of Nato. Now we see increased use of drones surveillance and advanced weaponry, and I think the PKK guerrillas in the Qandil mountains, what they refer to as the medya defence zones, they’re also realising that this is getting more and more difficult.

    Limited discussions began in March between the Turkish government and Kurdish political parties on a way forward in peace negotiations. Dinc says this is a real opportunity for a broader reconciliation process, but there will be real challenges in the detail of what it means for Turkey’s Kurdish population.

     The PKK is an outcome of structural problems arising from the longstanding oppression and marginalisation of Kurds in Turkey, and addressing these root causes is essential for achieving lasting peace.

    Listen to the conversation with Dinc on The Conversation Weekly podcast.

    This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany. Sound design was by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Gemma Ware is the executive producer.

    Newsclips in this episode from AP Archive, AFP News Agency, Sky News, Med TV, Gazete Duvar, DW News, Al Jazeera English and France 24 English.

    Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here.

    Pinar Dinc is the principal investigator of the ECO-Syria project, which receives funding from the Strategic Research Area: The Middle East in the Contemporary World (MECW) at the Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University, Sweden.

    – ref. The PKK says it will lay down its arms. What are the chances of lasting peace between Turkey and the Kurds? Podcast – https://theconversation.com/the-pkk-says-it-will-lay-down-its-arms-what-are-the-chances-of-lasting-peace-between-turkey-and-the-kurds-podcast-252646

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Grattan on Friday: Dutton says he could handle Donald Trump, but can any Australian PM?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

    In the Trump age, how the next government, whether Labor or Coalition, will handle foreign affairs, defence and trade is shaping as crucially important.

    It’s a weird time when your friends become almost as problematic as your potential enemies, but that’s the situation we face.

    As many have observed, Donald Trump’s long shadow hangs over our election, at a time of multiple other uncertainties. Australia, like other countries, has already felt the brunt of the president’s tariffs policy, and the government is bracing for what may be worse to come with the next round of Trump announcements in early April.

    So what face would a Peter Dutton government present to the world? And how would he handle Trump?

    On Thursday at the Lowy Institute, the opposition leader brought his international policies together. He presented a mix of bipartisanship and differences with the government. Some of the latter weren’t so much fundamental disagreements as claims Labor had failed and the Coalition would be more competent or effective.

    The most frustrating part of Dutton’s speech and answers to questions was the same old problem. For crucial details, particularly on defence spending but also on the future of foreign aid under the Coalition, we were told we’d have to wait for announcements that always seem over the horizon.

    Dutton says as prime minister he wouldn’t resile from taking on the United States when necessary. With fears about US drug companies spearheading a war on Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, he declared, “I will stand up and defend the PBS […] against any attempt to undermine its integrity, including by major pharmaceutical companies”.

    In arguing that, in general, he’d be able to deal with Trump, Dutton invoked the previous Coalition government’s success with Trump Mark 1 (though Mark 2 is very different), and the power of AUKUS to anchor relations. His early priority would be to visit Washington.

    The question Australians should ask themselves is this: “Who is better placed to manage the US relationship and engage with President Trump?” I believe that […] I will be able to work with the Trump administration Mark 2 to get better outcomes for Australia. I will talk to [Trump] about how our national interests are mutual interests.

    But, as he acknowledged, “Australia’s national interests do not always align perfectly with the interests of partners – even of our closest allies”. The way Trump is operating at the moment, it may be that a PM of either stripe will find him impossible on certain issues.

    Dutton was once an uncomplicated hawk on China. Now, he is a mix of hawkish and dovish. It’s true things have changed greatly in Australia-China relations in recent times, but another reason for Dutton’s more nuanced position is highlighted by the line in his speech that “Australia has a remarkable Chinese diaspora”. The opposition leader has an eye to the vote of Chinese-Australians.

    Dutton now walks a line that is critical of China militarily, but anxious to promote and expand the now-restored trading relationship.

    Currently, there are two major, hot conflicts in the world: the Ukraine war and the violence in the Middle East.

    On Ukraine, the Coalition and Labor are at one in their backing for President Volodymyr Zelensky, although Dutton criticises aspects of the government’s delivery of support. But they are at odds over Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s willingness to contribute to a peacekeeping force.

    “Australia can’t afford the multibillion-dollar sustainment price tag for having troops based in an ill-defined and endless European presence,” Dutton said.

    The “multibillion-dollar” price tag was overegged, but many would agree there are sound arguments for not deploying Australian forces on such a venture. On the other hand, if an Albanese government did so, you can bet the commitment would be relatively token.

    The big gulf between Labor and Coalition is over the Middle East. This has grown from a marginally different reaction after the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israelis to a major disagreement now.

    Dutton claims Labor “has viewed our relationship with Israel through a domestic policy lens and with a view to its political imperatives” – that is, the Muslim vote.

    Based on what Dutton says, a change of government would bring a substantial recalibration of Australia’s Middle East policy. One of Dutton’s “first orders of business” would be to call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “help rebuild the relationship Labor has trashed”. He added:

    Israel will be able to count on our support again in the United Nations. And given UNRWA [the Palestinian relief agency] has employed terrorists from Hamas who participated in the 7 October attacks, the organisation will no longer receive funding from a government I lead.

    The Coalition repeatedly says Australia needs to spend more on defence. It has announced $3 billion to reinstate the fourth squadron of F-35 joint strike fighters, but not said the size of the defence envelope it believes is required. Dutton said:

    We need to do nothing short of re-thinking defence, re-tooling the ADF, and re-energising our domestic defence industry, and that’s exactly what our government will do.

    That sounds like a massive task, and so it’s more than time we saw the plan and cost of it. Would the Coalition be willing to go to around 3% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence spending, as the Trump administration wants? That would require a lot of sacrifice in other policy areas.

    The Australian Financial Review this week reported Coalition sources saying it is weighing up boosting defence spending to at least 2.5% by 2029.

    When the Coalition talks up its record in defence, one should also remember the failures, chief among them the delays and chopping and changing in its submarine program. A sub-optimal performance has been bipartisan.

    Dutton was questioned on his position on aid to Pacific countries. Should Australia step up given the void left by the US shutting down aid? If a Dutton government did that, would it mean an overall aid increase, or cuts in the aid budget elsewhere?

    This was left as another black hole, although he did say the Australian government should make representations to the US for the reinstatement of particular aid programs the US had cut.

    I don’t agree with some of the funding that they’ve withdrawn, and I think it is detrimental to the collective interests in the region, and I hope that there can be a discussion between our governments about a sensible pathway forward in that regard.

    Good luck with that.

    It is hard to avoid the conclusion the overall aid program would be an easy target for the Coalition in the search for savings.

    When leaders talk, what they don’t say can be as important as what they do.

    Michelle Grattan 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. Grattan on Friday: Dutton says he could handle Donald Trump, but can any Australian PM? – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-dutton-says-he-could-handle-donald-trump-but-can-any-australian-pm-252511

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How can you tell if your child’s daycare is good quality?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Victoria Minson, Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education, Australian Catholic University

    PhotoMavenStock/Shutterstock

    This week, we heard claims of shocking abuse and neglect in Australian childcare centres on ABC’s Four Corners program.

    While 91% of services met or exceeded the national standards as of February 2025, there have also been reports of centres operating with unqualified staff, abusive practices and nutritionally substandard food.

    How can you tell if your child is going to a good quality childcare service?



    Read more:
    Amid claims of abuse, neglect and poor standards, what is going wrong with childcare in Australia?

    What are the standards?

    Australian’s childcare regulator – the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority or ACECQA – oversees national quality standards for early childhood education and care.

    Services are assessed and given a rating across seven areas including the staffing, children’s health and safety and the educational program. The ratings note whether services are “exceeding”, “meeting” or “working towards” the national standards. In some cases, they may note “significant improvement [is] required”.

    These ratings are public (you can search the national register of services) and are a useful starting point for parents.

    However, they may not reflect the current situation in a service. As the Productivity Commission noted, many services assessed as “meeting” the national standards (which
    comprise the bulk of the sector) have a gap of more than four years between assessments. Services with lower ratings are reassessed more frequently.

    But there are other ways for parents to assess the quality of their child’s early childhood education.



    Read more:
    We need more than police checks: how parents and educators can keep childcare services safe from abuse

    Do educators want to work there?

    If early childhood educators want to work at your childcare service, this is a strong sign it is a good quality service.

    One of the major issues in the early childhood sector is staff retention. Excessive workloads, not being valued by employers and poor pay are some of the reasons early childhood educators leave their jobs.

    This is a huge problem, because high-quality staff are key to providing high-quality education and care, built on strong, stable relationships with children.

    If you are considering a service, a key question to ask is how long educators have been working there? How often do they have to replace staff?

    If you are already at a service, ask yourself, are there consistent staff at drop off/pick up? Are there familiar relief educators to cover absences? Or is there unexplained high turnover?

    As a bottom line, all educators should be warm and caring and get to know every child and their family.

    Seeing the same educators when you drop off and pick up is a sign the service has a stable, committed workforce.
    PhotoMavenStock/Shutterstock

    What is the centre itself like?

    Some daycare centres market themselves to parents by offering a “barista made” coffee in the morning, yoga classes and designer interiors.

    While this might appeal to adult tastes, it is important to think about whether the centre is set up to be suitable and fun for children. For example:

    • is there space to play outside, with natural materials? It is recommended toddlers and preschoolers are physically active for at least three hours per day

    • are there plenty of different play options to appeal to different interests and different children? Or does nothing seem to be organised?

    • are toys and equipment in good condition? Are pencils sharpened and ready to use? Are there puzzle pieces missing?

    It’s important for children to have different options for play, both inside and outside.
    CrispyPork/Shutterstock



    Read more:
    Real dirt, no fake grass and low traffic – what to look for when choosing a childcare centre

    What about the activities and educational program?

    In Australia, centres need to provide play-based learning opportunities, which support children’s wellbeing, learning and development.

    This is not about teaching children to read and do algebra before they start school. It is about supporting children to have positive play experiences, so the associated learning is fun and leaves children wanting to know (and do) more.

    Services should provide children with lots of opportunities to explore in age-appropriate ways. For example, toddlers may have a sandpit with multiple tools and toys. Three- and four-year-olds may work on projects, such as building kites, or go on excursions in their local community.

    Educators should be involved in this play. Sometimes they may act as a partner, helping to extend children’s imaginations. Other times, they may support from the sideline, encouraging a child to climb to a higher part of the climbing frame than yesterday.

    They should not be telling children what to do all the time. It’s important for children to be given the time and space to test out their theories about how the world works.

    Some things to look out for include:

    • is there “cookie cutter” art (where every piece of children’s art looks the same) on the wall? Or are children given the chance to express their creativity?

    • can toys be used in more than one way, in different areas (to encourage children’s agency)? Or are toys required to be kept in certain places?

    • can educators talk about the different things they are doing to stimulate and extend children’s play and interests?

    Families should also receive clear, regular communication about their child’s development and progress. If there are issues with behaviour, the centre should provide evidence-based support that respects the rights and dignity of children (rather than punishing or shaming them).

    Finally, does your child seem to have fun at childcare? Provided there are no other issues (such as separation anxiety), do they want to go and see their educators and friends? This is a good sign of a quality service that is building children’s sense of belonging.

    Need more information?

    If you have any concerns or need more information, try talking to your centre director first. Alternatively, you can contact the regulatory authority in your state or territory.

    Victoria Minson is the Course Coordinator for the Bachelor of Early Childhood Education (Birth to Five Years) (Accelerated) at Australian Catholic University. The Victorian version of the course has received funding from the Victorian government and Victorian Department of Education

    – ref. How can you tell if your child’s daycare is good quality? – https://theconversation.com/how-can-you-tell-if-your-childs-daycare-is-good-quality-252613

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Adelaide Festival gives a hopeful vision for the future of Australian contemporary dance

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Brannigan, Associate Professor Theatre and Performance, UNSW Sydney

    Mass Movement. Morgan Sette/Adelaide Festival

    I arrived at Stephanie Lake’s premiere of Mass Movement a little late on my first day at Adelaide Festival.

    Walking down the hill from King William road towards Elder Park, the Torrens River was lit up in oranges and golds by the setting sun. A river of people came into view, winding from a thin spread on the hillside nearest me to a thick block of settled-in picnicers, back up the opposite hill to the bank of institutional buildings along the river.

    In the centre of this river, a stage crowded with performers in black and white waved and flowed: movements that passed along individuals juxtaposed with sharper unison actions, vocalisations and free-for-alls.

    I missed the solo performance that opened this outdoor performance, and the procession of dancers winding down onto the stage. But what I saw left an impression of an excellent community activation with many performers of all ages and training backgrounds, and an audience of family, friends and strangers here to see this part-human part-natural spectacle.

    Mass Movement featured 1,000 dancers, the most Stephanie Lake has ever worked with.
    Morgan Sette/Adelaide Festival

    This work sits within Lake’s body of spectacle-scale works that have become a signature for this important new-generation Australian choreographer. With 1,000 performers, the most she has ever worked with, whether bigger is better may be neither here nor there when the emphasis is on spectacle and community.

    One Single Action in an Ocean of Everything

    Established Melbourne-based choreographer Lucy Guerin’s mastery of the duet, her use of unison and tight spatial delineations, gestural detail and intensely demanding timing are all there in her most recent work, One Single Action in an Ocean of Everything.

    Dancers and choreographic collaborators Amber McCartney and Geoffrey Watson are up to the task and perfectly matched. McCartney is compact, precise but playful. Watson is more measured yet somehow looser and more sensual.

    The first half of the piece works intricate movements along a diagonal across the stage to downstage right, where a moon-like sphere hangs at head height.

    Lucy Guerin plays with themes of destruction, orthodoxy, disobedience, care and empathy.
    Gregory Lorenzutti/Adelaide Festival

    The dancers’ trajectory, and often their gaze, are locked on this object. In the upper corner on the floor are mallets. Taken up by the dancers, they become part of a percussive choreography. The spectacle of the dancers making their mark on time within the complex choreography locks us all into a ride that we anticipate will end with a smashed sphere.

    Guerin’s experience is evident in how she shapes a work. The opening sections with their tightrope-like structure are physically, temporally and spatially smashed as the material from the sphere flies across the stage.

    A broom is introduced by Watson. This precipitates a new relationship between the two dancers. Experiential chaos versus spatial order replaces the teamwork of the first half, as the two become constantly at odds with each other.

    Themes of destruction, orthodoxy, disobedience, care and empathy are not hard to draw out of this microcosm. The sound, by CS + Kreme, does great support work with its mechanical complexities, pounding meter and a high synthetic sound like a tap running in the next hotel room. The lighting design by Paul Lim is also a star.

    A Quiet Language

    A Quiet Language asks a tall order of Daniel Riley and co-director Brianna Kell: to create a performance work that spoke to the 60th anniversary of Australian Dance Theatre (ADT).

    Riley, a Wiradjuri man from Western New South Wales, took on the directorship of ADT in 2022 following Garry Stewart’s 20-year plus tenure, with Kell as artistic associate. The introduction of Indigenous leadership for the company is welcome. There is a history of cultural appropriation across many Australian dance artists, from Beth Dean and Rex Reid in the 1950s, to the complex case of Jiri Kylian’s Stamping Ground (1983) later performed by Bangarra Dance Theatre in 2019.

    It is well overdue that the rich and deep choreographic practices of our First Nations people are now being represented by leadership in a major dance company outside Bangarra.

    In A Quiet Language, the names of artists associated with the company flicker as the years scroll past on the horizontal screens at either end of the space. But the real homage might be in the tone and style of this work.

    Tie-dyed costumes by Ailsa Paterson, featuring an occasional headband, speak to the genesis of the company under the direction of Elizabeth Cameron Dalman across 1965–75.

    A Quiet Language is a homage to the choreographic history of ADT.
    Morgan Sette/ADT

    Dalman is credited as collaborator, and the company spent four weeks of development with this extraordinary artist now in her 90s.

    A Quiet Language begins with two female dancers, Yilin Kong and Zoe Wozniak, walking from one bank of audience to the other, directing their bold and curious gaze at us. They are accompanied by composer and musician Adam Page who remains on stage throughout.

    Sebastian Geilings, Zachary Lopez and Patrick O’Luanaigh join them with more playful provocations for the audience, making the school group in the bank opposite me squirm.

    We have met the dancers first as individuals, and the full cavalcade of ADT’s historical casts rests, virtually, behind the five young artists.

    This breaking of the fourth wall speaks to the radical new approach that Dalman’s work represented in the 1960s when contemporary approaches to dance were still emerging locally.

    The dancers move into group work that dominates the many phases of the piece, memorably a stormy section representing protest in theatre dance around the world in the 1960s.

    This is followed by a dark solo by Wozniak that heaves itself off the floor in tense, cramping movements, resonating with the suffering behind current international headlines.

    The dancers are credited with choreographic collaboration and it shows in their commitment to, and comfort within, the movement. This is delivered at an intense and unrelenting pitch throughout, recalling Stewart’s signature high-impact work. But the way the choreography is drawn to the floor – through tenacious connection or a giving-in that slides joyfully across its surface – feels fresh.

    The Walking Track

    I end my time in Adelaide with Karul Projects’ The Walking Track, presented by Vitalstatistix in Port Adelaide, where six performance pieces were commissioned by local First Nations dance and performance artists.

    These are dispersed on site along a walk hosted by Karul Projects’ artistic director, Thomas E.S. Kelly, a Minjungbal, Wiradjuri and Ni-Vanuatu man.

    Kelly established Karul Projects alongside Taree Sansbury, a local Kaurna, Narungga and Ngarrindjeri woman, in 2017 in Queensland, making this a rare First Nations dance company existing outside Bangarra Dance Theatre.

    The Walking Track shows the future of Australian contemporary dance is bright.
    Heath Britton/Vitalstatistix

    The all-female cast of artists – Adrianne Semmens, Alexis West, Caleena Sansbury, Janelle Egan, Kirsty Williams, Lilla Berry, Mel Koolmatrie and Pearl Berry – offered works-in-development that told stories of family, loss, displacement and environmental destruction.

    Their careful framing by Kelly on Country gave assurance that the future of Australian contemporary dance is bright.

    Walking with the small audience around Port Adelaide, I kept an eye out for the dolphins Kelly informed us were just below the surface and imagined the local Kaurna people who had gathered on the banks there before being moved on. I could feel a slowly turning tide that will, no doubt, inspire fresh creative and critical gains for Australian contemporary dance.

    Erin Brannigan 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. Adelaide Festival gives a hopeful vision for the future of Australian contemporary dance – https://theconversation.com/adelaide-festival-gives-a-hopeful-vision-for-the-future-of-australian-contemporary-dance-252300

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: If NZ wants to decarbonise energy, we need to know which renewables deliver the best payback

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Brent, Professor and Chair in Sustainable Energy Systems, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

    Getty Images

    A national energy strategy for Aotearoa New Zealand was meant to be ready at the end of last year. As it stands, we’re still waiting for a cohesive, all-encompassing plan to meet the country’s energy demand today and in the future.

    One would expect such a plan to first focus on reducing energy demand through improved energy efficiency across all sectors.

    The next step should be greater renewable electrification of all sectors. However, questions remain about the cradle-to-grave implications of investments in these renewable resources.

    We have conducted life-cycle assessments of several renewable electricity generation technologies, including wind and solar, that the country is investing in now. We found the carbon and energy footprints are quite small and favourably complement our current portfolio of renewable electricity generation assets.

    Meeting future demand

    The latest assessments provided by the Ministry of Business, Employment and Innovation echo earlier work by the grid operator Transpower. Both indicate that overall demand for electricity could nearly double by 2050.

    Many researchers believe these scenarios are an underestimate. One study suggests the power generation capacity will potentially need to increase threefold over this period. Other modelling efforts project current capacity will need to increase 13 times, especially if we want to decarbonise all sectors and export energy carriers such as hydrogen.

    This is, of course, because we want all new generation to come from renewable resources, with much lower capacity factors (the percentage of the year they deliver power) associated with their variability.

    Additional storage requirements will also be enormous. Following the termination of work on a proposed pumped hydro project, other options need investigating.

    Wind and solar are becoming the primary renewable technologies.
    Shutterstock/Kyohei Miyazaki

    Building renewable generation

    The latest World Energy Outlook published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that wind and solar, primarily photovoltaic panels, are quickly taking over as the primary renewable technologies.

    This is also true in Aotearoa New Zealand. An updated version of the generation investment survey, commissioned by the Electricity Authority, shows most of the committed and actively pursued projects (to be commissioned by 2030) are solar photovoltaic and onshore wind farms.

    Offshore wind projects are on the horizon, too, but have been facing challenges such as proposed seabed mining in the same area and a lack of price stabilisation measures typical in other jurisdictions. New legislation aims to address some of these challenges.

    Distributed solar power (small-scale systems to power homes, buildings and communities) has seen near-exponential growth. Our analysis indicates wind (onshore and offshore) and distributed solar will make an almost equal contribution to power generation by 2050, with a slightly larger share by utility-scale solar.

    Cradle-to-grave analyses

    The main goal is to maintain a stable grid with secure and affordable electricity supply. But there are other sustainability considerations associated with what happens at the end of renewable technologies’ use and where their components come from.

    The IEA’s Global Critical Minerals Outlook shows the fast-growing global demand for a suite of materials with complex supply chains. We have also investigated the materials intensity of taking up these technologies in Aotearoa New Zealand, and discussed the greater dependence on those supply chains.

    The challenges in securing these metals in a sustainable manner include environmental and social impacts associated with the mining and processing of the materials and the manufacturing of different components that need to be transported for implementation here. There are also operating and maintenance requirements, including the replacement of components, and the dismantling of the assets in a responsible manner.

    We have undertaken comprehensive life-cycle assessments, based on international standards, of the recently commissioned onshore Harapaki wind farm, a proposed offshore wind farm in the South Taranaki Bight, a utility-scale solar farm in Waikato and distributed solar photovoltaic systems, with and without batteries, across the country.

    The usual metrics are energy inputs and carbon emissions because they describe the efficiency of these technologies. They are considered a first proxy of whether a technology is appropriate for a given context.

    Beyond that, we used the following specific metrics, as summarised in the table below:

    • GWP: global warming potential (carbon emissions during a technology’s life cycle per energy unit delivered).

    • CPBT: carbon payback time (how long a technology needs to be operational before its life cycle emissions equal the avoided emissions, either using the grid and its associated emissions or conventional natural gas turbines).

    • CED: cumulative energy demand over the life cycle of a technology.

    • EPBT: energy payback time (how long a technology needs to be operational before the electricity it generates equals the CED).

    • EROI: energy return on investment (the amount of usable energy delivered from an energy source compared to the energy required to extract, process and distribute that source, essentially quantifying the “profit” from energy production).

    There is much debate about the minimum energy return on investment that makes an energy source acceptable. A value of more than ten is generally viewed as positive.

    Life cycle assessment metrics of wind and solar power in Aotearoa New Zealand.
    Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, CC BY-SA

    For all technologies we assessed, the overall greenhouse gas emissions are lower than the grid emissions factor. Because of New Zealand’s already low-emissions grid, the carbon payback time is around three to seven years for utility-scale generation. But for small-scale, distributed generation it can be up to 13 years. If the displacement of gas turbines is considered, the payback is halved.

    Energy return on investment is above ten for all technologies, but utility-scale generation is better than distributed solar, with values of between 30 and 75.

    To put this into perspective, the energy return on investment for hydropower, if operated for 100 years, is reported to be 110. Utility-scale wind and solar being commissioned now have an operational life of 30 years but are typically expected to be refurbished.

    This means their energy return on investment is becoming comparable to hydropower.

    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. If NZ wants to decarbonise energy, we need to know which renewables deliver the best payback – https://theconversation.com/if-nz-wants-to-decarbonise-energy-we-need-to-know-which-renewables-deliver-the-best-payback-251819

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: You can catch the ‘nocebo’ effect from family, friends – even social media. But what is it, actually?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cosette Saunders, PhD candidate, Sydney Placebo Lab, University of Sydney

    Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock

    In 1998, shortly after arriving for work, a Tennessee high-school teacher reported a “gasoline-like smell” and feeling dizzy. Soon after, many students and staff began reporting symptoms of chemical poisoning. Some 38 people had such extreme symptoms they were kept in hospital overnight.

    Yet investigators didn’t find any evidence the school had been contaminated.

    How could staff and students of this United States high school have had such extreme reactions without being exposed to a toxic agent?

    The answer is the “nocebo effect”.

    What is the nocebo effect?

    Most people have heard of the placebo effect, where a fake treatment can improve someone’s health because they believe it will help them.

    The nocebo effect is the opposite. It occurs when someone expects a negative outcome from a harmless treatment or situation, and this triggers worse health.

    The staff and students at the Tennessee high school believed they had been exposed to a toxic gas leak and expected symptoms. These negative expectations caused them to feel sick even though there was no gas leak.

    How is this relevant today?

    When a doctor prescribes you a new medicine, they need to warn about possible side effects, as part of you giving your informed consent.

    But knowing the side effects can cause you to expect them, and therefore lead you to experience more side effects.

    A large-scale review found nearly 73% of people in drug trials given a placebo and told about possible side-effects reported side effects despite taking no active treatment – an example of the nocebo effect.

    Placebo and nocebo effects can also affect the efficacy of real medical treatments.

    For example, in one study, participants who were led to expect a powerful painkiller would give them
    strong pain relief reported roughly twice as much pain relief compared to those who received the same drug without being told it was a painkiller. However, when participants were led to expect the same painkiller would worsen their pain, they had no pain relief – as if they hadn’t received the drug at all.

    Knowing the side effects can cause you to expect side effects and therefore experience more side effects.
    SpeedKingz/Shutterstock

    How do nocebo effects develop?

    We already know that simply warning people about possible side effects can make them more likely. We also know that past experiences with treatments shape what we expect and experience. If we have experienced pain from a treatment in the past, this can cause us to expect and experience more pain when we receive that treatment again.

    Now there’s growing evidence nocebo effects can also be transmitted socially between peers. In other words, we can “catch” them from other people like a cold, except the transmission happens simply by observing others.

    Negative expectations can spread from person to person, as shown in one experiment. Observing someone experience more pain in response to a treatment made the observer feel more pain in response to the same treatment when it was their turn, even though the treatment the observer experienced was fake.

    Social media amplifies this, carrying personal tales of woe much further than once possible, regardless of the accuracy.

    For example, a tweet by singer Nicki Minaj in 2021 claimed “the vaccine” (presumably the COVID vaccine) gave her cousin’s friend swollen testicles and made him “impotent”. This went out to her millions of followers, and generated more than 100,000 likes. It was debunked days later.

    One study found that negative stories about COVID vaccine side effects – especially from friends or social media – were linked to stronger expectations of having those same symptoms. These expectations, in turn, predicted the actual side effects people reported after vaccination.

    An Australian study found this effect was amplified among individuals who already worried a lot about side effects, felt anxious or stressed, or looked primarily to social media (instead of mainstream sources) for health information.

    If you hear about COVID vaccine side effects on social media, you’re more likely to expect side effects and report you have them.
    Jo Panuwat D/Shutterstock

    The effects can be serious

    For individuals, nocebo effects can lead to unnecessary suffering with genuine pain and discomfort. Unpleasant side effects can also contribute to people not continuing their treatment as prescribed or abandoning it altogether.

    On a broader public health level, the nocebo effect can make it hard to evaluate the safety of new technologies and public health interventions. For example, health concerns have surfaced around the safety of electromagnetic fields from wireless signals and 5G towers, supposedly causing a range of physical symptoms like headache and insomnia.

    In the laboratory, these symptoms have been attributed to nocebo responses rather than properties of the technology itself.

    When unfounded negative information takes hold, people suffer genuine health effects, businesses face pushback, and the wider community may grow suspicious of technologies that are generally considered safe based on available evidence.

    What can we do about it?

    Individuals can reduce their likelihood of experiencing nocebo-driven symptoms by seeking reliable information from credible medical sources or reputable health organisations instead of relying on social media.

    But even the way side effect information is communicated contributes to the nocebo effect. So health professionals may be able to help by framing discussions of potential side effects in a more positive way and – when appropriate – emphasising that most patients experience no problems.

    Negative expectations can physically hurt us, and thanks to social media, they can spread widely, fast. However, by staying informed, being mindful of our own beliefs, and insisting on thoughtful communication from health professionals and public health campaigns, we can keep the nocebo effect in check.

    Ben Colagiuri receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

    Cosette Saunders 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. You can catch the ‘nocebo’ effect from family, friends – even social media. But what is it, actually? – https://theconversation.com/you-can-catch-the-nocebo-effect-from-family-friends-even-social-media-but-what-is-it-actually-249844

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: More young people are caring for a loved one with dementia. It takes a unique toll

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katya Numbers, Postdoctoral Research Fellow & Lecturer, Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing, UNSW Sydney

    Miljan Zivkovic/Shutterstock

    Dementia is a growing health problem, affecting more than 55 million people around the world.

    In Australia, an estimated 433,300 people are living with dementia. This figure is projected to rise to 812,500 by 2054.

    Dementia refers to brain disorders that are not a normal part of ageing. These disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, cause a decline in cognitive function and changes in mood, memory, thinking and behaviour. Ultimately they affect a person’s ability to carry out everyday tasks.

    In Australia, around 75% of people with dementia live at home.

    While dementia care at home has traditionally been associated with older spouses or middle-aged children, it seems an increasing number of young adults in their 20s and 30s, and even teenagers, are stepping into this role to care for grandparents, parents or other loved ones.

    In Australia, 3 million people (11.9% of the population) are carers. This includes 391,300 under 25 – a sharp rise from 235,300 in 2018.

    How many young carers are specifically caring for a loved one with dementia is unclear, and something we need more data on. Young dementia carers remain largely invisible, with minimal recognition or support.

    Unique challenges and the burden of responsibility

    Unlike older carers, who may have more financial stability and free time, young carers often must balance caregiving with university, early-career pressures, and personal development, including maintaining social relationships, pursuing hobbies, and prioritising mental welling.

    In Australia, where 51% of men and 43% of women aged 20–24 still live with their parents, many young carers will have limited experience in managing a household independently.

    They’re often thrust into complex responsibilities such as cooking, housework, managing the family budget, coordinating medical appointments and administering medications.

    Beyond that, they may need to provide physical care such as lifting or helping their loved one move around, and personal care such as dressing, washing, and helping with toileting.

    Young carers often must balance caregiving with other responsibilities.
    Iris Wang/Unsplash

    All this can leave young carers feeling unprepared, overwhelmed and isolated.

    While general support groups exist for dementia carers and young carers more broadly, few cater specifically to young adults caring for someone with dementia.

    This lack of targeted support is likely to heighten feelings of isolation, as the young person’s friends struggle to relate to the emotional and practical burdens young carers face.

    The demanding nature of caregiving, combined with the difficulty of sharing these experiences with peers, means young dementia carers can become disconnected socially.

    The psychological toll

    These challenges take a profound psychological toll on young carers.

    Research shows young carers are 35% more likely to report mental health issues than their non-caregiving peers. These can include depression, anxiety and burnout.

    Again, we don’t have data on mental health outcomes among young dementia carers specifically. But in Australia, 75% of dementia carers reported being affected physically or emotionally by their caring role. Some 41% felt weary or lacked energy, and 31% felt worried or depressed.

    Also, there are negative stereotypes about ageing – that people turn forgetful, frail, and need constant care. For young carers whose loved ones have dementia, these stereotypes can be reinforced by their experience. This could shape young carers’ perceptions of their own future health and wellbeing and increase anxiety about ageing.

    Caregiving may also affect physical health. Research suggests carers often sacrifice healthy habits such as exercise and a balanced diet. What’s more, carers report symptoms including poor sleep, fatigue, headaches and back pain due to the physical demands of caregiving.

    Caring for a parent – a role reversal

    This emotional burden is particularly acute for those caring for a parent. These young carers are likely to experience the progressive loss of parental support, while simultaneously assuming the demanding role of caregiver.

    A significant portion of young dementia carers support parents with young-onset dementia, a form of dementia diagnosed before age 65. These young carers face the shock of a diagnosis that defies typical expectations of ageing.

    The burden may be compounded by fears of genetic inheritance. Young onset dementia often has a hereditary component.

    This means young carers may have a higher risk of developing the condition themselves – a concern spousal carers don’t have. This fear can fuel health anxiety, alter life planning, and create a pervasive sense of vulnerability.

    A significant portion of young dementia carers support parents with young-onset dementia.
    VisualProduction/Shutterstock

    How we can better support young dementia carers

    Despite their growing numbers, young dementia carers remain largely overlooked in research, policy and support services. This is partly due to the challenges in engaging this demographic in research, as these young people juggle busy lives balancing caregiving with education and work.

    Many young carers also don’t self-identify as carers, hindering their access to support and resources. This could be because of the stigmatising label, or a feeling they’re not doing enough to qualify as a carer. It could even be because of cultural norms which can frame caregiving as a family obligation, rather than a distinct role.

    Nonetheless, young dementia carers require targeted support beyond generic caregiving resources.

    This support might include specialised peer networks, educational programs, and practical skills training. Tailored programs and resources should ideally be co-designed with young dementia carers to ensure they meet their unique needs and preferences.

    With dementia cases in Australia and elsewhere projected to increase, the demand for informal carers – including young adults – will continue to grow.

    Without intervention, these young carers risk burnout, social isolation, and long-term health consequences. We must ensure flexible, age-appropriate support for this often invisible group. Investing in young dementia carers is not just a moral imperative – it’s a crucial step toward a sustainable, compassionate care system for the future.

    Dementia Australia offers a national helpline, information sessions, and a peer-to-peer connection platform for carers.

    The Young Carers Network, run by Carers Australia, offers mental health resources, financial guidance, and respite care information, plus bursaries young carers can apply for to reduce financial pressure.

    Katya is a co-founder of Y-Care of Dementia, a support network for Australians in their 20s and 30s who are caring for someone living with dementia.

    Serena Sabatini 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. More young people are caring for a loved one with dementia. It takes a unique toll – https://theconversation.com/more-young-people-are-caring-for-a-loved-one-with-dementia-it-takes-a-unique-toll-249361

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Trump is ignoring the power of nationalism at his own peril

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Smith, Associate Professor in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

    US President Donald Trump has exploited American nationalism as effectively as anyone in living memory. What sets him apart is his use of national humiliation as a political emotion. Any presidential candidate can talk their country up, but Trump knows how to talk his country down.

    Trump’s consistent message has been that American problems – trade deficits, job losses, illegal immigration, crime and even drug addiction – are the result of deliberate acts by other countries. The really humiliating part is that American politicians let it happen.

    Many Americans have welcomed Trump’s message that their country’s problems can be solved by reestablishing international dominance. They see this nationalist approach as an overdue corrective to the “globalist” foreign policies of the post-second world war era.

    But people in other countries also have feelings of national pride and aspire to be free from foreign domination. This should be obvious, but so far Trump is ignoring the power of nationalism in other countries even as he harnesses it in his own. This makes his foreign policy job a lot harder.

    How Canadians have rallied against Trump

    Take the example of Canada.

    When Trump was elected to his second term in November 2024, it seemed certain there would soon be a Canadian prime minister who was more aligned with him than Justin Trudeau. Trudeau’s unpopularity had dragged the Liberal Party down, and the populist Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre looked set to win the this year’s election.

    As he prepared for a trade war with Canada, Trump could have concentrated his fire on his enemies in the doomed Liberal government. Instead, he spent months insulting Canada’s national identity. He repeatedly said Canada should be the “51st state of the US”, calling Trudeau “governor”.

    Trump says ‘Canada was meant to be our 51st state’ in a Fox News interview.

    Americans can dismiss Trump’s talk of annexing Canada as a joke, but Canadians can’t. Regardless of whether Trump would ever follow through with attempting an annexation, his language is an attack on Canadian sovereignty. No one with any sense of national pride would tolerate it.

    An Angus Reid poll found the number of people saying they had a “deep emotional attachment” to Canada rose from 49% to 59% from December 2024 to February 2025. That emotional attachment is visible in everything from “buy Canadian” campaigns to Canadians booing the US national anthem at hockey games.

    The Liberals, under new leader Mark Carney, are also experiencing a remarkable bounce-back in the polls.

    Another Angus Reid poll shows that voting intention for the Liberals has surged from 16% in December to 42% now. They are now leading the Conservatives, who have 37% support. Some are now anticipating a snap election could be called in days.

    Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has sometimes been likened to Trump, has also led a ferocious pro-Canadian resistance to American tariffs, getting his own re-election boost.

    Trump’s defenders often claim his chaotic bluster is simply a negotiating tactic, a way of spooking others into accepting terms more favourable to him. If so, this tactic is backfiring in Canada.

    Trade wars require sacrifices. Citizens must pay more for the sake of protecting their countries’ industries. Canadians seem a lot more willing to make that sacrifice than Americans, who are mostly confused that their friendly neighbour has suddenly been recast as an enemy.

    The importance of national identity

    Other countries have shown they will not cave easily, either, as Trump puts their national identity at stake.

    Demanding to buy another country’s territory, as Trump keeps doing with Greenland, a self-governing territory under Danish control, may be even more insulting than threatening to take it, as he keeps doing with Panama. Each time Greenlanders, Danes and Panamanians refuse Trump, his credibility erodes further.

    Trump talks about the territory of other countries in terms of “real estate”, even suggesting the United States should “redevelop” Gaza after evicting the Palestinians.

    But sovereign land is not real estate. In a world of nation-states defined by territory, even sparsely inhabited territory has “sacred value”. This is particularly true for peoples seeking statehood on their land.

    “Sacred values” are things people see as non-negotiable because they are linked to their sense of identity and moral order in the world. Researchers warn that offering money in exchange for sacred values is deeply offensive, and likely to harm, rather than help, negotiations.

    There is a reason why governments hardly ever sell their territory to other countries anymore. Empires may have done in this in the past, but not nations. They view their lands, and the people who live on them, as inalienable from the nation.

    Trump clearly doesn’t understand this concept. He has shown no empathy for Ukraine, a country whose territory actually has been invaded. He accused Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy of wanting to prolong the war so he could “keep the gravy train going”, as if harvesting US aid dollars was the real reason Ukrainians were fighting for their country’s existence.

    Trump’s contempt for Ukraine, Canada, Greenland, Gaza, Denmark and Panama has reverberations far beyond these places. It signals that his brand of American nationalism has no place for anyone else’s national aspirations or sovereignty.

    This will not promote the deal-making Trump wants because no one trusts an unstable, imperial power to stick to its agreements. It would be painful for many countries to reduce their dependence on the United States, but it would be more painful to give away their national dignity.

    David Smith 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. Trump is ignoring the power of nationalism at his own peril – https://theconversation.com/trump-is-ignoring-the-power-of-nationalism-at-his-own-peril-252299

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why sharing meals can make people happier – what evidence from 142 countries shows

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alberto Prati, Assistant Professor in Economics, UCL

    Sharing meals can contribute to feelings of happiness, a new report suggests. Ground picture/Shutterstock

    The importance of sharing meals is recognised across cultures, from the Jewish Shabbat meal to the fast-breaking Iftar meals during Ramadan. The known link between food and social relationships is ancient. The English word companion, the French copain (friend) and the Italian compagno (partner) come from the Latin cum and pānis – literally “with-bread”. The Chinese term for companion/partner (伙伴) stems from a similar term (火伴) which literally translates to “fire mate”, a reference to sharing meals over a campfire.

    But how important is eating together to our happiness? This is the question that I and my co-authors answer in the World Happiness Report 2025. In our new data and analysis we looked at the link between how often people share meals and whether they feel good about their lives and experience positive emotions. We also documented that there was a massive difference between countries and regions when it came to how often people shared meals.

    Comparing the statistics from the 2022-23 Gallup World Poll about sharing meals with standard measures of wellbeing, we found a significant, positive relationship in almost all regions. Not only do countries where meal sharing is more common tend to report higher levels of wellbeing, but this is true even when comparing people who live in the same country.

    The Gallup poll asked more than 150,000 people from 142 countries and territories how many lunches and dinners they shared with someone they know during the past week. The scores varied widely between regions.

    Latin Americans share approximately two-third of their meals, with residents of Paraguay, Ecuador and Colombia reporting an average of more than ten shared meals per week. At the bottom of the scale, there are relatively low levels of meal sharing in south and east Asian countries – in particular India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Japan and South Korea, where people share less than one meal out of three, on average.

    While there is an association between sharing meals and wellbeing pretty much everywhere, this association is stronger in some regions than others. For instance, for a person who always dines alone in North America, Australia and New Zealand, the wellbeing benefit of starting to share most of their meals (eight or more times a week) in the life evaluation scale is big (the life evaluation scale is how people judge their life, with zero being the worst possible life and 10 being the best). This boost is equivalent to the effect of doubling their income.

    However, in Latin America, the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa, this effect is half as great and is essentially nil in south-east Asia. The reasons for this difference is as yet unclear.

    For social scientists, the frequency of sharing meals offers an indicator for social connectedness (the ways that people interact with and relate to one another). Unlike measures that capture people’s subjective feelings about social wellbeing, the number of shared meals gives us a concrete measure on which to base our analysis.

    While interpretations of friendship or perceptions of closeness may change over time or between countries, the number of meals shared with others does not.

    Meal sharing by region and age:

    Of course, those who share more meals can differ in many other aspects, but even when we take into account characteristics such as gender, age, income, living alone and people’s ability to meet basic needs for food, the relationship between sharing meals and wellbeing still holds strong.

    While the global data we used was only introduced in 2022, some countries have collected information on meal sharing for longer. In the United States, where the American Time Use Survey has been running for more than 20 years, we find clear evidence that with every passing year, Americans are dining alone more often, particularly young adults.

    Today, 18 to 24-year-olds in the US are 90% more likely to eat every meal alone on a given day than they were in 2003. We also find that Americans who eat at least one meal with others report higher levels of happiness and lower levels of stress, pain and sadness on that day.

    How meals sharing is linked to emotions in the US:

    From our data, we can’t tell how much of a wellbeing boost sharing an extra meal
    creates, and to what extent people share more meals because they are already happy, but it is reasonable to assume that it is not just the latter. This would reflect previous research which has shown the importance of social capital (networks of social connections which are conducive to a well-functioning society) and the positive benefits of in-person interactions.

    In a world where loneliness is increasingly recognised as a public health issue, rethinking how we gather around the table, and how often, could provide practical solutions to reduce social isolation and raise wellbeing.

    Institutions where people routinely eat their meals together can play a critical role on this front. The other side of the coin is the surge in working from home, which could raise levels of solitude.

    So, if you don’t have plans for lunch tomorrow, maybe this is the good moment to message someone you would like to spend more time with.

    Alberto Prati is affiliated with the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford and the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.

    – ref. Why sharing meals can make people happier – what evidence from 142 countries shows – https://theconversation.com/why-sharing-meals-can-make-people-happier-what-evidence-from-142-countries-shows-252352

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Rain gave Australia’s environment a fourth year of reprieve in 2024 – but this masks deepening problems: report

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University

    Lauren Henderson/Shutterstock

    For the fourth year running, the condition of Australia’s environment has been relatively good overall. Our national environment scorecard released today gives 2024 a mark of 7.7 out of 10.

    You might wonder how this can be. After all, climate change is intensifying and threatened species are still in decline.

    The main reason: good rainfall partly offset the impact of global warming. In many parts of Australia, rainfall, soil water and river flows were well above average, there were fewer large bushfires, and vegetation continued to grow. Overall, conditions were above average in the wetter north and east of Australia, although parts of the south and west were very dry.

    But this is no cause for complacency. Australia’s environment remains under intense pressure. Favourable conditions have simply offered a welcome but temporary reprieve. As a nation we must grasp the opportunity now to implement lasting solutions before the next cycle of drought and fire comes around.

    This snapshot shows the environmental score for a range of indicators in Australia.
    Australia’s Environment Report 2024, CC BY-NC-ND

    Preparing the national scorecard

    For the tenth year running, we have trawled through a huge amount of data from satellites, weather and water measuring stations, and ecological surveys.

    We gathered information about climate change, oceans, people, weather, water, soils, plants, fire and biodiversity.

    Then we analysed the data and summarised it all in a report that includes an overall score for the environment. This score (between zero and ten) gives a relative measure of how favourable conditions were for nature, agriculture and our way of life over the past year in comparison to all years since 2000. This is the period we have reliable records for.

    While it is a national report, conditions vary enormously between regions and so we also prepare regional scorecards. You can download the scorecard for your region at our website.

    Different jurisdictions had quite different environmental scores in 2024.
    Australia’s Environment Report 2024, CC BY-NC-ND

    Welcome news, but alarming trends continue

    Globally, 2024 was the world’s hottest year on record. It was Australia’s second hottest year, with the record warmest sea surface temperatures. As a result, the Great Barrier Reef experienced its fifth mass bleaching event since 2016, while Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia also experienced bleaching.

    Yet bushfire activity was low despite high temperatures, thanks to regular rainfall.

    National rainfall was 18% above average, improving soil condition and increasing tree canopy cover.

    States such as New South Wales saw notable improvements in environmental conditions, while conditions also improved somewhat in Western Australia. Others experienced declines, particularly South Australia, Victoria, and Tasmania. These regional contrasts were largely driven by rainfall – good rains can hide some underlying environmental degradation trends.

    Favourable weather conditions bumped up the nation’s score this year, rather than sustained environmental improvements.

    Mapping the environmental condition score to local government areas reveals poor (red) conditions in the west and the south, with good scores (blue) in the east and north. White is neutral.
    Australia’s Environment Explorer, CC BY-NC-ND

    A temporary respite?

    The past four years show Australia’s environment is capable of bouncing back from drought and fire when conditions are right.

    But the global climate crisis continues to escalate, and Australia remains highly vulnerable. Rising sea levels, more extreme weather and fire events continue to threaten our environment and livelihoods. The consequences of extreme events can persist for many years, like we have seen for the Black Summer of 2019–20.

    To play our part in limiting global warming, Australia needs to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Progress is stalling: last year, national emissions fell slightly (0.6%) below 2023 levels but were still higher than in 2022. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions per person remain among the highest in the world.

    Biodiversity loss remains an urgent issue. The national threatened species list grew by 41 species in 2024. While this figure is much lower than the record of 130 species added in 2023, it remains well above the long-term average of 25 species added per year.

    More than half of the newly listed or uplisted species were directly affected by the Black Summer fires. Meanwhile, habitat destruction and invasive species continue to put pressure on native ecosystems and species.

    The Threatened Species Index captures data from long-term threatened species monitoring. The index is updated annually but with a three-year lag due largely to delays in data processing and sharing. This means the 2024 index includes data up to 2021.

    The index revealed the abundance of threatened birds, mammals, plants, and frogs has fallen an average of 58% since 2000.

    But there may be some good news. Between 2020 and 2021, the overall index increased slightly (2%) suggesting the decline has stabilised and some recovery is evident across species groups. We’ll need further monitoring to confirm whether this represents a lasting turnaround or a temporary pause in declines.

    This graph shows the relative abundance of different categories of species listed as threatened under the EPBC Act since 2000, as collated by the Threatened Species Index.
    Australia’s Environment Report 2024, CC BY-NC-ND

    What needs to happen?

    The 2024 Australia’s Environment Report offers a cautiously optimistic picture of the present. Without intervention, the future will look a lot worse.

    Australia must act decisively to secure our nation’s environmental future. This includes reducing greenhouse gas emissions, introducing stronger land management policies and increasing conservation efforts to maintain and restore our ecosystems.

    Without redoubling our efforts, the apparent environmental improvements will not be more than a temporary pause in a long-term downward trend.

    Australia’s Environment Report is produced by the ANU Fenner School for Environment & Society and the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), which is enabled by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy.

    Albert Van Dijk receives or has previously received funding from several government-funded agencies, grant schemes and programs.

    Shoshana Rapley is a Research Assistant and PhD candidate at the Australian National University and has received funding from the Ecological Society of Australia and BirdLife Australia.

    Tayla Lawrie is a current employee of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), funded by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy.

    – ref. Rain gave Australia’s environment a fourth year of reprieve in 2024 – but this masks deepening problems: report – https://theconversation.com/rain-gave-australias-environment-a-fourth-year-of-reprieve-in-2024-but-this-masks-deepening-problems-report-252183

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Southern elephant seals are adaptable – but they struggle when faced with both rapid climate change and human impacts

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nic Rawlence, Associate Professor in Ancient DNA, University of Otago

    Wikimedia Commons/Antoine Lamielle, CC BY-SA

    Southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) are an iconic species of the Southern Ocean. But with rapid environmental changes in their ocean home, the seals’ population range has been shifting.

    Once spread across vast areas of the southern hemisphere, these apex predators are facing challenges from both climate shifts and human activities.

    Our new research examines ancient and modern DNA, archaeological records and ecological data.

    It reveals how these large marine mammals have adapted – and sometimes failed to adapt – to such pressures since the height of the last Ice Age thousands of years ago.

    A dynamic evolutionary history

    Today, the largest southern elephant seal populations are found on subantarctic islands, including South Georgia, Macquarie Island and the Falkland Islands. These colonies act as global strongholds for the species.

    Yet in the past, until just a few hundred years ago, many smaller populations existed on the Victoria Land Coast in Antarctica and closer to temperate zones, on mainland Australia and New Zealand.

    Our study focused on the Australasian lineage of southern elephant seals, drawing on samples from these ancient colonies. By analysing their genetic makeup, we pieced together a timeline of their biological heritage, including population expansions and contractions.

    This has crucial implications for understanding the resilience of elephant seals in the face of climate change.

    Subantarctic islands such as the Kerguelen islands remain strongholds for southern elephant seals.
    Antoine Lamielle, CC BY-SA

    From genetic clues in subfossil and archaeological remains, some thousands of years old, we found evidence of repeated population cycles. Expanding sea ice during cold glacial periods forced the seals northward, only for them to recolonise the Southern Ocean as sea ice retreated during warm interglacials.

    This history was particularly dynamic after the height of the last Ice Age 21,000 years ago. The planet started warming then, which led to dramatic ecological shifts.

    A mummified southern elephant seal found on the Victoria Land Coast in Antarctica.
    Brenda Hall, CC BY-SA

    Elephant seals likely expanded from ice-free refuges in temperate regions such as Tasmania and New Zealand into newly available subantarctic and Antarctic coastlines.

    However, this range expansion wasn’t permanent. As the current warm interglacial (the Holocene) progressed, new challenges arose: Indigenous hunting and, later, extensive European industrial sealing.

    For Indigenous communities in New Zealand and Australia, elephant seals were a part of their diet.

    We know this from seal remains in middens (rubbish dumps) and material culture, including necklaces made from elephant seal teeth which have been found in early Māori archaeological sites.

    Archaeological remains from coastal sites in New Zealand and Tasmania indicate significant hunting and reliance on seals by Indigenous populations. Along with human-driven environmental changes, this led to local extinctions.

    Impacts of humans and climate change

    Genetically, the seals from these ancient Australasian and Antarctic colonies were distinct but related. They formed a unique lineage in the Pacific that included Macquarie Island. This genetic diversity likely resulted from periods of isolation in separate refuges at the height of the last Ice Age.

    However, with modern climate shifts and human exploitation, much of this genetic diversity has been lost. The colonies that once thrived on the Victoria Land Coast in Antarctica are now extinct.

    Meanwhile, Macquarie Island is home to a significant breeding colony facing its own challenges. Changes in Antarctic sea ice are increasing the distance between breeding grounds on the island and feeding grounds at sea. This has affected the colony’s stability in recent decades.

    One of the most striking outcomes of our research is how quickly these large, long-lived animals can respond to environmental pressures. Seals adapted to a shifting climate by expanding their range in response to new habitats and retracting when conditions became unsuitable.

    This ability to move and adapt, however, was limited when confronted by the dual pressures of rapid climate change and human exploitation, which reduced their numbers and genetic diversity drastically over a short period.

    This schematic shows living (solid circles) and extinct (opaque circles) southern elephant seal populations and the extent of sea ice around Antarctica (opaque blue-grey) at the height of the last Ice Age.
    Berg et al (2025), CC BY-SA

    Can the Southern Ocean ecosystem adapt?

    As human-driven climate change continues, the Southern Ocean is expected to continue warming. This will cause further habitat loss for species that depend on sea ice and are affected by shifts in the availability of prey.

    The elephant seals’ history offers a window into how marine mammals may respond to these changes. But it also serves as a warning: human impacts, coupled with environmental pressures, can lead to swift, sometimes irreversible declines.

    Our research underscores the importance of conserving the genetic diversity and habitats of southern elephant seals. These seals are not just a testament to adaptability in a changing world; they are reminders of the vulnerability of even the most resilient species.

    Protecting their remaining strongholds and minimising human impacts on their food sources and breeding grounds will be crucial if we hope to avoid further contractions in their population.

    The story of the southern elephant seal is one of survival, adaptation and loss. As we face our own climate challenges, we must consider the lessons embedded in their genetic and ecological history.

    It’s a reminder that while nature often adapts to change and can weather some ecosystem threats, human-driven impacts can push even the most adaptable species beyond the point of recovery.

    Nic Rawlence receives funding from the Marsden Fund.

    Mark de Bruyn received funding from a Griffith University New Investigator grant.

    Michael Knapp 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. Southern elephant seals are adaptable – but they struggle when faced with both rapid climate change and human impacts – https://theconversation.com/southern-elephant-seals-are-adaptable-but-they-struggle-when-faced-with-both-rapid-climate-change-and-human-impacts-251820

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Figs, meat – and not too much sex. A good diet in ancient times was more than what you ate

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Konstantine Panegyres, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of Western Australia

    The Feast of Acheloüs by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, ca. 1615 The Metropolitan Museum of Art

    In the modern world, we know good nutrition is essential for our health.

    Doctors in ancient Greece and Rome knew this too – in fact diet advice was a mainstay of medical practice and health routines. There were extensive and intricate discussions of how to regulate food and drink to stay healthy.

    Some of their ideas – such as eating fish and vegetables as a healthy way to lose weight – make sense today. But others may raise eyebrows, such a fig-only diet for Olympic athletes.

    So, what did diet and nutrition look like in ancient times? And is there anything we can learn today?

    An expansive diet

    In modern times, diet refers to food and drink. In ancient times, however, the idea of diet was more expansive.

    Our word “diet” comes from the ancient Greek word diaita. This could refer to what we eat and drink, but it could also refer to our lifestyle as a whole – including exercise, sleep, sex and other activities.

    When prescribing a diaita, ancient doctors did not just tell patients what to eat and drink. They also advised them on what sorts of other activities they should be doing, like exercising or even going to the theatre.

    For instance, in the sixth book of the Epidemics, a medical text written in the late fifth century BC, the author calls for moderation not just in what we eat and drink, but also in exercise, sleep and sex.

    Ancient doctors believed balance was important for health.

    Extreme dieting

    However, not all ancient texts advocate moderation. There are some extreme cases of dieting. For example, the historian Hegesander of Delphi (2nd century BC) wrote:

    Anchimolus and Moschus, who were sophistic teachers in Elis, drank nothing but water all their lives and ate nothing but figs, but were no less physically vigorous than anyone else. Their sweat, however, smelled so bad that everyone tried to avoid them in the baths.

    Some ancient athletes swore by a fig-only diet.
    Wikimedia Commons

    In the seventh century BC, athletic trainers also focused on diet as a way to improve their athletes’ physical condition. Trainers such as Iccus of Tarentum introduced strict diets for their athletes to try and gain a competitive edge.

    However, their methods were often questionable, according to today’s standards and our knowledge about nutrition.

    For example, the Olympic runner Chionis of Laconia apparently also had a strict diet of figs when he was training for his competitions. He won in his event at the Olympics in 668, 664, 660, and 656BC, a remarkable record. Other athletes, such as Eurymenes of Samos (sixth century BC), opted for a diet entirely comprised of meat.

    However, there is no evidence to show these restricted diets would have improved athletic performance – and would not be recommended today.

    The physician Galen.
    Pierre-Roch Vigneron/Wikimedia Commons

    An ancient doctor’s perspective

    Greek and Roman doctors could not conduct controlled trials as scientists do today.

    Nevertheless, they were keen observers of the effects of certain foods on their patients – and saw with their own eyes that a bad diet is not good for us.

    For example, the physician Galen of Pergamum (129-216AD) in his work Hygiene attributes his patients’ ill health to poor diet.

    He observed

    some who are continuously diseased, not due to the intrinsic constitution of the body, but through a bad regimen, or living an idle life, or working too hard, or being in error regarding the qualities, quantities or times of foods, or practicing some exercise that is harmful, or erring in regard to the amount of sleep, or excessive indulgence in sex, or needlessly tormenting themselves with grief and anxiety. Every year I see very many who are sick through such a cause.

    Galen thought hard about how certain foods and drinks affect our health and wrote various books on the subject, such as On the Powers of Foods.

    This work contains many anecdotes. For instance, one young man drank the juice of the scammony plant, “to cleanse his system” (presumably as a laxative). However

    five hours after the dose no evacuation had taken place, and he complained that his stomach felt compressed, his belly was heavy and swollen, consequently he was pale and anxious.

    Galen also recognised different diets affect people in different ways:

    some people are harmed and some are benefited by the same things and similarly with opposites. […] I know of some who immediately become sick, if they remain three days without exercise, and others who continue indefinitely without exercise and yet are healthy.

    Nutrition and balance

    Galen’s advice for overweight or obese patients may sound familiar: a “thinning” diet and a lot of fast running. So, exercise, combined with foods that fill you up but don’t make you gain weight.

    According to Galen this meant eating vegetables and fish and avoiding wheat, red meat, fruit and wine.

    A lot has changed in the world of diet and nutrition. We now have professional dietiticians and empirical methods to measure the nutritional values of foods.

    However in their broader definition of “diet”, ancient doctors identified something that remains as true today: the importance of eating well as part of a healthy lifestyle, one that takes care of body and mind and includes exercise, sleep and pleasure.

    Konstantine Panegyres 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. Figs, meat – and not too much sex. A good diet in ancient times was more than what you ate – https://theconversation.com/figs-meat-and-not-too-much-sex-a-good-diet-in-ancient-times-was-more-than-what-you-ate-249571

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –