UConn School of Medicine’s Chief of the Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery Dr. Kwame Amankwah volunteered for the first ever Career Day at Horizons at Westminster School.
And you can see the joy and impact his time had on the middle schoolers from Hartford.
“It was truly a rewarding experience to be part of such an amazing event. Having the opportunity to introduce these young individuals to careers they might not have known about was very meaningful,” shared Amankwah of UConn Health who taught the summer program students more about their health, how to do health screenings like taking their own pulse, and even showed vascular surgery tools he uses in the operating room.
Dr. Amankwah teaching students of Horizons at Westminster School how to take their own pulse. (Photo by Westminster School).
Horizons at Westminster provides a free academic and enrichment program each summer to close opportunity gaps for students from Hartford. Participating Hartford Public School students attend for a six-week summer program—starting in kindergarten and returning every summer through 12th grade.
Horizon students can’t stop talking about the conversations they had with the Career Day participants like vascular surgeon Amankwah from UConn. Other successful Connecticut professionals they also had the opportunity to meet and learn from included a video game engineer, TV news anchor, sports news producer, former NFL player, real estate agent, insurance expert, state legislator, forensic scientist, podcaster, police officer, lawyer, biomedical engineer, and business developer.
The experts volunteering at the first Career Day of Horizons at Westminster School including UConn vascular surgeon chief Dr. Kwame Amankwah (fourth from left). (Photo by Westminster School).
Amankwah added, “Even more inspiring was seeing the students realize that all of these career paths are within their reach—that there is nothing they cannot achieve.”
Dr. Kwame Amankwah at Horizons at Westminster School (Photo by Westminster School).
“It was very clear to us how much the students enjoyed this and how important it is, particularly as Horizons at Westminster will continue to grow and support our students throughout high school,” shared Katie McKinney, development director for Horizons at Westminster School.
“It was definitely fun and educational,” concluded Amankwah about the special Career Day.
Memphis, TN – Today, the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) captured Derrion Taylor, 18, who is charged in a shooting that resulted in the death of a 93-year-old victim and injuries to two other people. Taylor is charged with First-Degree Murder, Two Counts of Attempted First-Degree Murder, and Two Counts of Aggravated Assault.
On January 17, 2024, the Memphis Police Department (MPD) responded to a shooting call on Kendale Avenue in Memphis. Upon arrival, they discovered three female victims had been struck by gunfire. One victim, Geraldine Harris, 93, succumbed to her injuries and died on the scene. Two other victims were transported to an area hospital with critical injuries.
After an in-depth investigation, MPD Homicide Detectives determined that Derrion Taylor, who was then 17 years old, was responsible for these crimes.
On July 22, 2025, a juvenile petition was issued for his arrest. The USMS Two Rivers Violent Fugitive Task Force (TRVFTF) in Memphis was requested to assist in finding an apprehending Taylor.
Around 8 a.m., July 24, 2025, the TRVFTF tracked Taylor to a residence in the 3000 block of Colony Drive in Memphis. Deputy U.S. marshals and task force officers surrounded the residence and took Taylor into custody without incident.
The U.S. Marshals Service Two Rivers Violent Fugitive Task Force is a multi-agency task force within Western Tennessee. The TRVFTF has offices in Memphis and Jackson, and its membership is primarily composed of Deputy U.S. Marshals, Shelby, Fayette, Tipton, and Gibson County Sheriff’s Deputies, Memphis and Jackson Police Officers, Tennessee Department of Correction Special Agents and the Tennessee Highway Patrol. Since 2021, the TRVFTF has captured over 3,000 violent offenders and sexual predators.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday held a ‘Chai Pe Charcha’ with his UK counterpart Keir Starmer at Chequers, the countryside retreat of the British Prime Minister. A photo shared by PM Modi in a post on X showed the two leaders engaged in a deep conversation over tea.
In his post, PM Modi said, “‘Chai Pe Charcha’ with PM Keir Starmer at Chequers… brewing stronger India-UK ties!”
At the same venue, the two leaders also interacted with business leaders, highlighting the importance of the recently signed Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which they said has opened up new avenues for trade and investment.
“Interacted with business leaders at Chequers. The signing of the India-UK CETA has opened up new avenues for trade and investment. It marks a pivotal step in strengthening our economic partnership,” PM Modi posted on X.
The leaders also toured an exhibition showcasing flagship products and innovations from both India and the UK. In another post, PM Modi said, “At Chequers, PM Keir Starmer and I saw an exhibition which gave a glimpse of the strong economic linkages between India and the UK. With the signing of CETA, these linkages will rise manifold.”
Later, the Prime Ministers interacted with young players from the Buckinghamshire Street Cricket Hubs, where PM Modi gifted them a bat signed by the Indian cricket team that won the T20 World Cup.
Sharing moments from the interaction, PM Modi posted, “India and the UK are connected by a shared passion for cricket. At Chequers, PM Keir Starmer and I interacted with players from Buckinghamshire Street Cricket Hubs. Great to see sport fostering people-to-people ties between our nations. Also gave my young friends a bat signed by the Indian cricket team which won the T20 World Cup.”
The two leaders also posed with the Premier League trophy. Sharing the photograph on X, PM Modi said, “Football is widely admired among India’s youth and several football clubs based in the UK are very popular in India.”
Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Tom Tiffany (WI-07)
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congressman Tom Tiffany (WI-07) released the following statement after Governor Tony Evers announced his retirement.
“I thank Governor Evers for his years of service and wish him well as he announces his retirement. However, he leaves behind a legacy of decline—under the ‘education governor,’ student achievement has fallen behind Mississippi, Wisconsin faces a structural deficit, and energy costs now rank second highest in the Midwest. Wisconsinites deserve better. It’s time we change course before we end up like Minnesota and Illinois.”
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eerke Boiten, Professor of Cybersecurity, Head of School of Computer Science and Informatics, De Montfort University
As of July 25 2025, people in the UK accessing web services with pornographic content will have to prove they are over 18 years of age. This development has been in the works for a while. It was proposed in 2014 by the video-on-demand regulator, and legislated for introduction in 2019 through the British Board of Film Classification.
It is of course important to stop children from accessing inappropriate material online. But, as often with technological solutions to societal problems, all available methods of age checking come with significant downsides in terms of privacy, security and human rights.
A strict separation between sites that do or do not have pornography means the definition of pornography, (not in itself illegal in the UK, becomes crucial. Tech companies are likely to use conservative algorithms (“overblocking”) in response. Historically this has affected sex education online, making it harder for young people to find sexual health advice or explore LGBT+ identities.
The failure to implement the law in 2019 was blamed on an administrative error, but the problems with technological solutions also played a role. Technology in this area has barely progressed, but nevertheless the regulator Ofcom ghas now said that several methods are capable of being highly effective.
The methods Ofcom suggests now come into two categories, which I will describe here as direct and indirect.
With direct methods, visitors will have to prove to the website that they are over 18. The most obvious way is by sharing both photo ID, such as a passport, and then also a selfie as proof that the passport belongs to them (in cybersecurity terminology, the passport is a “credential” and the selfie serves to “bind” the credential to the user).
Most people would obviously object to submitting these to a porn site. Part of the reason for this is that this would fully identify users, and allow the site to associate their identity to their preferences in browsing.
Anonymity on the internet may have got a bad name because of online “trolls”, but it has a serious positive human rights dimension, particularly also for children. Freedom of expression and association can be exercised much more safely if online anonymity is an option.
Anonymous access to any sites relating to sex can be viewed as liberating people to exercise their right to a sex life without interference or shame. Most age verification methods undermine anonymity to some extent, even if not as obviously and completely as passports and selfies do.
Indirect methods use an intermediary organisation to verify the person’s age. There are lobby groups associated with these organisations that have been influential in policy making for UK online safety for the last decade. Another strong influence has been politicians’ belief in the economic potential of the UK “safety tech” sector.
Users prove their age once with the intermediary, leading to a credential that may be used – typically multiple times – on the website without providing personal data. This looks like a nice clean solution, requiring trust in the intermediary but not in the “porn site”, until you consider “binding” – how do you know it’s the same user?
Borrowing or stealing of such credentials may be minor risks, but a black market in them could provide ways for teenagers to circumvent age restrictions (alongside virtual private networks VPNs, an encryption method which stop a user’s internet traffic from being intercepted by third parties).
Intermediaries do all promise to delete or protect the information used for the proof of age, after varying periods. This limits the associated security and hence privacy risks, but does not eliminate them.
There are also incidental indirect methods, where an existing third party happens to know we are over 18. This includes banks (the “open banking” verification method), credit cards (not allowed under 18 in the UK), or mobile phone companies that can confirm a person has been able to get their porn filter removed, proving they must be over 18.
All indirect methods have so-called “linkability” privacy issues. The credential becomes an identifier, which allows the website, the intermediary, or both to link different visits to the same site or to other sites, and build up a picture like a browsing history that will become more individual and more intrusive over time.
Age estimation
Finally there are methods that do not actually verify your age but only estimate it. One way is via your email address and detecting how much “adult behaviour”, such as buying insurance, it has been involved with.
For most of us who do not use throw-away email addresses, it drives home the extent to which our main email address forms the key to mass online surveillance of everything we do. Maybe we would rather not be reminded. It certainly seems excessive for proving our age.
A lot of commercial effort has also gone into face-based age estimation technology. As with human age checking for alcohol in supermarkets, it is very approximate and unfair on people who do not look their age. In both cases, another verification method needs to be added as a backup.
To make the online world safer for kids, technological measures have had adverse effect on freedom that go beyond just removing porn. As a result, additional online surveillance gets put in place for many of us. Creating additional sensitive databases of information also sets up targets for cybercriminals.
Even more seriously, the “database state” offers potential for the kind of repressive mass surveillance that privacy activists have been warning of for decades. In that context, can we really afford to add to internet surveillance?
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Eerke Boiten has in the past received funding from various research funding organisations, none of it relating to the topic of this article.
We are living in an age of anxiety. People face multiple existential crises such as climate change and conflicts that could potentially escalate into nuclear war.
So how do people cope with competing threats like this? And what happens to climate anxiety when wars suddenly erupt and compete for our attention?
Climate change affects our physical and mental health, directly through extreme climate-related droughts, wildfires and intense storms. It also affects some people indirectly through so-called “climate anxiety”. This term covers a range of negative emotions and states, including not just anxiety, but worry and concern, hopelessness, anger, fear, grief and sadness.
A team of researchers led by Caroline Hickman from the University of Bath surveyed 10,000 children and young people (aged 16 to 25 years) in ten countries (Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, the UK and the US). They found that 45% of respondents said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily lives. It was worse for respondents from developing countries.
Climate anxiety can potentially serve a positive function. Anger, for example, can push people to act to help mitigate the effects of climate change.
But it can also lead to “eco-paralysis”, a feeling of being overwhelmed, inhibiting people from taking any effective action, affecting their sleep, work and study, as a result of them dwelling endlessly on the problem.
Climate anxiety is not included in the American Psychiatric Association’s authoritative guide to the diagnosis of mental disorders. In other words, it is not officially recognised as a mental disorder.
Some say this is a good thing. The author and Stanford academic Britt Wray wrote: “The last thing we want is to pathologise this moral emotion, which stems from an accurate understanding of the severity of our planetary health crisis.”
But if it is not officially recognised, will people take it seriously enough? Will they just dismiss people who suffer from it as “snowflakes” – too sensitive and too easily hurt by the hard realities of life. This is a major dilemma.
I explore how climate anxiety relates to other types of clinical anxiety in my recent book, Understanding Climate Anxiety, recognising that there are adaptive and non-adaptive forms of anxiety.
According to Steven Taylor, a clinical psychologist from the University of British Columbia, adaptive anxiety can “motivate climate activism, such as efforts to reduce one’s carbon footprint”. Maladaptive anxiety, however, may “take the form of anxious passivity”, he warned, where the person feels anxious but utterly helpless.
Identifying different types of climate anxiety, understanding their precursors and how they interact with personality is a major psychological challenge. Identifying ways of alleviating climate anxiety and making it more adaptive, and focused on possible climate mitigation, is a major societal challenge.
But there’s another important issue. Some global leaders, including Donald Trump, don’t believe in human-induced climate change, claiming it’s “one of the great scams”. He seems to view climate anxiety as an overblown reaction to propaganda pumped out by a biased media.
This can make the experience much worse for those who feel anxious but then having their feelings dismissed.
Some psychologists argue that climate anxiety can be a form of pre-traumatic stress disorder. This hypothesis arose from observations of climate scientists and their growing feelings of anger, distress, helplessness and depression as the climate situation has worsened.
In 2015, researchers devised a new clinical measure to assess pre-traumatic stress reactions using items found in the diagnostic and statistical manual for post-traumatic stress disorder, but now focused on the future rather than the past, asking about “repeated, disturbing dreams of a possible future stressful experience”, for example.
They tested Danish soldiers before their deployment in Afghanistan and found that “involuntary intrusive images and thoughts of possible future events … were experienced at the same level as post-traumatic stress reactions to past events before and during deployment”.
They also found that soldiers who experienced higher levels of pre-traumatic stress before deployment had an increased risk of post-traumatic stress disorder after their return from the war zone. Their hypervigilance primed their nervous system to react more strongly when anything untoward occurred.
This would suggest that we need to take stress reactions to future anticipated events such as climate change very seriously.
The crisis response
But how important is climate anxiety in the context of these other threats? Researchers assessed the emotional state and mental health of people aged 18 to 29 years in five countries (China, Portugal, South Africa, the US and UK) focusing on three global issues: climate change, an environmental disaster (the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan), and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
They found the strongest emotional engagement was with the ongoing wars, with climate change a close second, and the radiation leak third. The strongest emotional responses to the wars were concern, sadness, helplessness, disgust, outrage and anger. For climate change, the strongest responses were concern, sadness, helplessness, disappointment and anxiety.
All three crises made young people feel concerned, sad, and very importantly helpless, but climate change has this burning level of anxiety added into the bubbling mix.
It seems that climate anxiety still has this undiminished power regardless of all the other awful things that are currently happening in the world, and I suspect the stigma of being dismissed as “snowflakes” makes this particular fear response all the more unbearable.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?_
Geoff Beattie has received funding from the British Academy and the AHRC to investigate psychological barriers to climate change mitigation and the effects of climate change on emotional responses.
For the past few weeks the headlines about Gaza have focused on the hundreds of people who have been killed while queueing for food. The aid distribution system put in place in May, backed by the US and Israel and run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has proved to be chaotic and allegedly resulted in violence, with both Israel Defense Forces personnel and armed Palestinian gangs blamed for killing about 1,000 people in the two months the new system has been operating.
Now the headlines are focusing on the growing number of people dying of starvation.
Harrowing reports from the Gaza Strip report almost daily on the children dying of malnutrition in hospitals and clinics that simply don’t have the food to keep them alive. Writing in the Guardian this week, a British volunteer surgeon working in one of Gaza’s hospitals, Nick Maynard, described patients who “deteriorate and die, not from their injuries, but because they are too malnourished to survive surgery”.
The UK and 27 other countries this week has condemned the “drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians” who are trying to get food and water. And yet, writes Simon Mabon, still the world’s leaders look on: “Most are apparently content to condemn – but little action has been taken.”
Mabon, a professor of international relations at Lancaster University, quotes the latest report from the IPC, which monitors food security in conflict situations. It estimates that 500,000 people in Gaza are considered to be facing “catastrophe”, while a further 1.1 million fall into the “emergency” risk category. Both categories anticipate a steadily rising death rate among civilians in Gaza.
So how can Israel’s allies apply pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to bring an end to the violence and allow Palestinian civilians access to the food, water and medical supplies they so desperately need?
Mabon canvasses a range of options. First of all, countries that have yet to recognise the state of Palestine can do so. It’s nonsense, Madon believes, to talk of a two-state solution – as the UK government does – when you haven’t actually recognised the second state in the equation.
Then they could stop selling arms to Israel. Many countries already have. But the US still issues export licenses for some weapons that are sold to Israel.
There are a plethora of other things world leaders could do to pressure Israel. Mabon recommends having a look at what the world did to isolate South Africa during the apartheid years, measures which eventually helped bring about meaningful change there.
As for Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister is reported to be considering an early election. In previous months this looked like a move freighted with jeopardy. An election loss brought on by a disenchanted electorate, heartbroken at the hostage situation and exhausted by the conflict, would probably mean having to face the charges of corruption which have hung over him for more than five years.
But recent polls have suggested a bump in popularity following his 12-day campaign against Iran. Netanyahu is nothing if not a clever political manipulator. But Brian Brivati, a professor of contemporary history and human rights at Kingston University, believes that to have a chance of winning, the prime minister will need to fight a campaign on three narratives of his government’s success: securing the release of the hostages, defeating Hamas and delivering regional security. “It is a tall order,” Brivati concludes.
Anyone following the situation in Gaza over the past 18 months will have encountered Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur for Palestine’s occupied territories. For three years she has monitored the human rights situation in Gaza and the West Bank, delivering trenchant criticism of Israel’s conduct and those who, by their inaction – and sometimes contrivance – have enabled it.
Earlier this months, the US government imposed sanctions on Albanese, because – as US secretary of state Marco Rubio insisted – she has engaged with the International Criminal Court (also subject to US sanctions) “in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel”. Also she has written “threatening letters to dozens of entities worldwide, including major American companies”.
Alvina Hoffman, an expert in diplomatic affairs and human rights at SOAS, University of London, explains what a special rapporteur does and why their work is so valuable in the defence of human rights.
To Istanbul, where delegations from Russia and Ukraine met yesterday for their third round of face-to-face talks. All 40 minutes of them. There was another agreement of prisoner swaps and the two sides decided to set up some working groups to look into various political, military and humanitarian issues – but online rather in person.
The brevity of the talks came as no surprise to Stefan Wolff. Wolff, an expert in international security at the University of Birmingham who has provided commentary for The Conversation throughout the conflict in Ukraine, points out that both sides remain wedded to their maximalist war aims. For Russia, this is for Ukraine to accept Russia’s annexation of Crimea and four provinces of eastern Ukraine, a ban on Ukraine’s membership of Nato and a much reduced military capacity. For Ukraine, it is getting their territory back and Russian acceptance of their national sovereignty, meaning it gets to determine for itself what alliances it seeks.
Donald Trump has told Vladimir Putin that, if there’s no ceasefire in 50 days, he’ll apply harsh secondary sanctions on the countries buying Russian oil and that he plans to supply Ukraine with American weapons (via Nato’s European member states, that is). Wolff believes both sides will now play the waiting game. They will calculate their next move after September 2, when the 50 days run out, and when they know more about what the US president plans to do.
Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, faces pressure from his own people. There have been days of protest at his decision to bring two formerly independent anti-corruption organisations under the direct control of the government. He argues that this was necessary to prevent Russian infiltration, while critics are saying that the Ukrainian president has launched a power grab designed to prevent independent investigation of alleged corruption against people close to him.
Jenny Mathers says these protests, which involve people from all political shades, including people who have fought in the defence of Ukraine since 2022, some with visible injuries, represents a fracture of the “informal agreement between the government and society to show a united front to the world while the war continues”.
Ukrainians protest after Zelensky signs law clamping down on anticorruption agencies.
It’s not as if Zelensky is in clear and present danger of losing his job. His party holds a majority of seats in the Ukrainian parliament, so he governs without having to depend on coalition partners. And the country’s constitution prohibits the holding of elections in wartime – whatever Putin, who regularly insists that Zelensky is an illegitimate leader because he is governing past his term limit, might think. Plus his approval rating sits at 65%.
Zelensky has been quick to soften his stance on this. Mathers says that political corruption is a very sore point in Ukraine, where there was decades of it until the Maidan protests of 2013-14 unseated the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. As she writes here, “the ‘Revolution of Dignity’ that rejected Yanukovych’s leadership and his policies was also a resounding demonstration of the strength of Ukraine’s civil society and its determination to hold its elected officials to account. Zelensky would be rash not to heed that.
He also knows it’s important for him to present a squeaky clean image to his supporters in the west. So while the protests may not present an immediate threat to his own position, he knows that unless he acts to root out corruption in Ukraine, it’ll be a threat to the future of the country itself.
But ethicist Marcel Vondermassen from the University of Tübingen believes another recent decision by the Ukrainian government is storing up trouble for the future. Ukraine has recently announced its decision to pull out of the Ottawa convention, the treaty that forbids the use of anti-personnel landmines.
In doing so, he’s following the example of Finland, Poland, Lithuania and Estonia which have all also quite the treaty in recent months for fear of Russian aggression.
But as Vondermassen points out, landmines don’t usually switch themselves off when a conflict ends and people are still being killed an maimed in former conflict zones around the world. Often it is farmers at work or children at play who are the victims. If other ways to protect countries from aggression aren’t pursued, as he puts it, in future decades we’ll still be “counting thousands of child casualties … from the landmines laid in the 2020s”.
Thailand-Cambodia: centuries-old dispute flares again
A dispute between the two south-east Asian countries that has been simmering since May flared into life yesterday when five Thai soldiers patrolling the border region were injured after stepping on a landmine – the second such incident in the past week. Both countries have sealed their border and there have been tit-for-tat ambassadorial expulsions.
Cambodia fired rockets and artillery into Thailand, killing 12 civilians. Thailand in turn has launched airstrikes against Cambodia. Both countries are blaming the other for starting it.
Petra Alderman, an expert in south-east Asian politics from London School of Economics and Political Science, traces the origins of this row, which go back to the colonial era in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Pandora Syperek, Tutor, History of Design, V&A/Royal College of Art, and Teaching Fellow, Institute for Creative Futures, Loughborough University
There has been a conspicuous turn to the sea as inspiration for art and exhibitions since the mid-2010s. This is a trend we have charted in our ongoing collaborative research project, Curating the Sea. So prolific has this become, that there are even gallery spaces dedicated entirely to the sea in contemporary art.
The sea has, of course, been the subject of art throughout history. However, our investigation into contemporary art and exhibitions has revealed a shift from celebrations of oceanic abundance and wonder towards more political projects.
In our research, we have argued for the importance of curation as a way to confront the issues facing the oceans today. So it was only natural that we turn our hands to curating our own exhibition about the sea, based on our extensive collaborative research.
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Western art has tended to frame the ocean as an unfathomable and formidable force in the tradition of the sublime: art that produces or is inspired by the strongest emotions the mind is capable of feeling, often arising from the encounter with the natural world. Sea Inside counters this perspective. Collectively, artworks in the exhibition portray the sea not as a surreal or alien space, but as an entity that is intimately connected to humans.
Many Indigenous and diasporic communities have long been aware of the profound human connection to the sea. In our exhibition, Shuvinai Ashoona’s coloured pencil drawings illustrate the intermingling of Inuit mythology with everyday life in the Canadian Arctic. In one scene, mythical marine creatures populate a dentist’s office.
Meanwhile, Tyler Eash’s sculpture features a shell of the critically endangered abalone mollusc. They are known as “grandmother shells” among North American west coast Indigenous cultures as they are commonly passed down through families by female elders. The work speaks to ties of kinship (human and animal), their fragility and resilience.
A new sculpture we commissioned by the artist Gabriella Hirst explores tales of men being swallowed by whales alongside the industrial exploitation of whales in the 19th century. This inside-out journey from the whale’s belly to lighting up European cities (as whale blubber was used in oil lamps) aligns the perceived threat of these animals with capitalistic justifications for their slaughter. The sculpture is made from agricultural plastic, itself a product of the petrochemical industry that largely replaced whaling as a source of energy, lighting and everyday objects.
Beyond eco-realism
The perspective Sea Inside offers is found not only in the artworks’ subject matter but also their approach.
There has been a tendency towards a documentary approach within ecologically oriented exhibitions. This risks relegating art to a tool of climate communication and even replicating the sort of technological interventions into the landscape – and seascape – that the respective artworks and exhibitions call into question.
The artworks in Sea Inside examine the uses and limits of visual mediums for understanding the sea. Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photograph of a natural history diorama reframes this three-dimensional reconstruction of a seabed from hundreds of millions of years before the advent of humans, whereas Kasia Molga’s miniature aquaria entangle human tears and marine life.
Artists in the exhibition play with historical display practices and their ability to bring ocean life into human spaces while endeavouring to overcome the sense of detachment they have at times created.
In a video work by El Morgan, the artist aligns jellyfish breeding in a lab with her own experience of assisted reproduction. In doing so she momentarily suspends the distance from such radically different lifeforms and expands our understandings of gestation.
Likewise, Laure Prouvost’s speculative “cooling system” for global warming – a beautiful Murano glass shower-head that looks like an amorphous sea creature covered in nipples – reimagines models of care as both more-than-human and global.
Works such as these provide playful and humorous approaches to thinking through a topic with a serious undercurrent: our fragile ocean ecologies.
The artworks in Sea Inside offer ways of engaging with the existential threats facing our oceans that are emotive, imaginative and often very funny. They reflect on material culture, architecture and technology to acknowledge the aesthetic dimensions of an era that has been termed the Anthropocene, after the human impact on the planet, and even the Hydrocene in recognition of the centrality of water to our current epoch.
These subtler responses to the sea within offer visions of promise for the oceans’ and our own mutual survival.
Sea Inside is on show at the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, until October 26 2025.
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Sarah Wade works in the Department of Art History & World Art Studies, University of East Anglia, based at the Sainsbury Centre. Her ocean related research has received funding from University of East Anglia and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. She is a member of the Museums Association.
Pandora Syperek 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.
Technology platforms operating in the UK now have a legal duty to protect young people from some of the more dangerous forms of online content. This includes pornography, content that encourages, promotes, or provides instructions for violence, promotion of self-harm and eating disorders. Those failing to comply face hefty fines.
Until now, parents have had the unenviable role of navigating web content filters and app activity management to guard their children from harmful content. As of 25 July 2025, the Online Safety Actputs greater responsibility on platforms and content creators themselves.
In theory, this duty requires tech organisations to curb some of the features that make social media so popular. These include changing the configuration of the algorithms that analyse a user’s typical behaviour and offer content that other people like them usually engage with.
This is because the echo chambers that these algorithms create can push young people towards unwanted (and crucially, unsolicited) content, such as incel-related material.
The Online Safety Act directly acknowledges the impact of algorithms in targeting content to young people. It forms a key part of Ofcom’s proposed solutions. The act requires platforms to adjust their algorithms to filter out content likely to be harmful to young people.
It’s yet to become clear exactly how tech companies will respond. There has been pushback over negative attitudes to algorithms, though. A response from Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, to Ofcom’s 2024 consultation on protecting children from harms online counters the idea that “recommender systems are inherently harmful”.
It states: “Algorithms help to sort information and to create better experiences online and are designed to help recommend content that might be interesting, timely or entertaining. Algorithms also help to personalise a user’s experience, and help connect a user with their friends, family and interests. Most importantly, we use algorithms to help young people have age-appropriate experiences on our apps.”
Age verification
A further safety measure is the use of age checks. Here, Ofcom is enforcing platforms to make “robust age checks” and, in the case of the most serious of content creation sites, these must be “highly effective”.
Users will need to prove their age. Traditionally, age-verification checks involve the submission of government-issued documents – often accompanied by a short video to verify the accuracy of the submission. There have been technological advances which some platforms are embracing. Age-estimation services involve uploading a short video or photo selfie which is analysed by AI.
If enforced, the Online Safety Act may not only restrict access to pornography and other recognised extreme content, but it could also help stem the flow of knife sales.
Research shows exposure to knife crime news on social media is linked to symptoms similar to PTSD. Research by one of us (Charlotte Coleman) and colleagues has previously shown that negative effects of seeing knife imagery may be more severe for girls and those who already feel unsafe.
Even on strongly regulated platforms, though, some harmful material can seep through the algorithm and age checks net. Active moderation is therefore a further requirement of the act. This means platforms need to have processes in place to look at user-generated content, assess the potential harm and remove it if appropriate to ensure swift action is taken against content harmful to children.
This may be through proactive moderation (assessing content before it is published), reactive moderation based on user reports, or more likely, a combination of the two.
Even with these changes, invisible online spaces remain. A host of private, encrypted end-to-end messaging services, such as messages on Whatsapp and snaps on Snapchat, are impenetrable to Ofcom and the platform managers, and rightly so. It is a vital fundamental right that people are free to communicate with their friends and family privately without fear of monitoring or moderation.
However, that right may also be abused. Negative content, bullying and threats may also be circulated through these services. This remains a significant problem to be addressed and one that is not currently solved by the Online Safety Act.
These invisible online spaces may be an area that, for now, will remain in the hands of parents and carers to monitor and protect. It is clear that there are still many challenges ahead.
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Charlotte Coleman has previously received funding from UKRI to understand the negative online experiences of UK police staff.
Jess Scott-Lewis 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marc Fullman, Docotoral Researcher in Organisational Behaviour, University of Sussex Business School, University of Sussex
If your first task of the day is triaging a bulging inbox at 6am, you are not alone. A recent Microsoft report headlined “Breaking down the infinite workday” found that 40% of Microsoft 365 users online at this hour are already scanning their emails – and that an average worker will receive 117 emails before the clock rolls around to midnight.
But that’s not all. By 8am, Microsoft Teams notifications outstrip email for most workers, and the typical employee is hit with 153 chat messages during the day.
The report states that, while meetings swallow the prime 9am–11am focus window, interruptions arrive every two minutes throughout the day. This perpetual work overload means a third of professionals reopen their inbox to answer more emails at 10pm.
In short, Microsoft’s telemetry of this “triple-peak” day (first thing, mid-morning and late at night) paints a vivid picture of a work rhythm that never stops.
From an occupational psychology perspective, these statistics are more than curious trivia. They signal a cluster of psychosocial hazards.
Boundary Theory holds that recovery depends on clear and solid boundaries – both psychologically and in terms of time – between work and the rest of life. Microsoft’s findings show those limits dissolving. This includes 29% of users checking email after 10pm.
Similarly, a four-day diary study of Dutch professionals found that heavier after-hours smartphone use predicted poorer psychological detachment and exhaustion the next day.
This can have wider consequences. When people are busy, rushed or harried, one of the first things to suffer is their regulation of online behaviour. Large-scale survey research shows that ambiguous or curt digital messages occur when we are depleted. These can obviously sap wellbeing in recipients.
In a 2024 study of workers in the UK and Italy, incivility in emails between colleagues predicted work-life conflict and exhaustion via “techno-invasion”, as workers reported being exposed to an ongoing torrent of unpleasant messaging.
So-called ‘techno-invasion’ could lead to work-life conflict and emotional exhaustion. fizkes/Shutterstock
My ongoing doctoral research examines how workers respond to messages they receive, and exposes the nuance on different communication platforms. Among the 300 UK workers involved, identical messages were rated as more uncivil on email than on Teams, particularly when they were informal. Frustration on the part of a recipient (in terms of how they interpret a message) accounted for nearly 50% of perceived incivility on email, but only 30% on Teams.
These findings suggest that choice of platform significantly influences how messages are received and interpreted. Using these insights, organisations can make informed decisions about communication channels, and potentially reduce workplace stress and improve employee wellbeing in the process.
Microsoft suggests that AI “agent bosses” will rescue workers. These tools could summarise inboxes, draft replies and free up humans for higher-order work.
The data, however, exposes a cultural contradiction. Managers tell staff to switch off, yet their appraisal spreadsheets tell a different story. In one set of experiments, the same bosses who praised weekend digital detoxing also ranked the detoxers as less promotable than colleagues who were glued to their inboxes.
Little wonder Microsoft’s own data shows the same late-night peak, despite widespread wellbeing guidance to switch off after hours. Without changing how commitment is signalled and rewarded, faster tools risk accelerating the treadmill rather than dismantling it.
What organisations can do
1. Individual level – let people feel they have control
Encourage “quiet hours” and teach employees to disable non-urgent notifications. Boundary-control research shows that when workers feel they have control over connectivity, it creates a buffer against fatigue caused by after-hours email.
2. Team level – communication charters
Teams should agree explicit norms for communication. This could include capping the numbers invited to meetings and insisting on agendas. Simple charters along these lines restore predictability for workers and cut “decision fatigue”.
3. Organisational level – redesign metrics
Organisations could shift from visibility (green dots and instant replies) to outcome-based metrics for productivity. This removes the incentive for workers to stay online and aligns with evidence that autonomy is a key resource.
4. Technological level – AI for elimination, not acceleration
Workplaces should deploy AI assistants to remove low-value tasks (for example, sorting email or drafting minutes), not just speed them up. Then they should conduct workload audits to ensure the time saved is reinvested in deep work, not simply swallowed up by extra meetings.
The Microsoft dataset is enormous, but there are two important points to note. First, European jurisdictions with “right to disconnect” laws may be missing from the figures. Second, some metrics (for example, interruptions) are calculated on the most active fifth of users, potentially overstating a typical experience.
But if the numbers in Microsoft’s report feel familiar, that is precisely the point. The technology designed to liberate workers is now scripting their day minute-by-minute. Occupational psychology researchers warn that without deliberate boundary setting, rising digital job demands will continue to tax wellbeing and dull performance.
AI can be a circuit breaker, but only if it is accompanied by cultural and structural change that gives employees permission to disconnect.
The infinite workday is not a law of nature, it is a design flaw. Fixing it will take more than faster software – it will demand a collective decision to prize focus, recovery and civility as fiercely as workers currently prize availability.
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Marc Fullman 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Travis Van Isacker, Senior Research Associate, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol
On a cold, wet November evening, Issa Mohamed Omar and more than 30 other men, women and children set off from their informal camp near the northern French port city of Dunkirk. They walked through the darkness in near-silence for around two hours, until they reached the beach from where they hoped to start a new and better life.
As they arrived, five men were busy pumping up an inflatable dinghy and attaching an outboard engine. These people smugglers had charged each of their customers more than a thousand euros for a trip that costs someone with the right passport less than a hundred.
The travellers were given life-vests, arranged into rows and counted. “There are 33 of you,” one of the smugglers said. For many on board, this was not their first attempt at reaching England.
Most came from Iraqi Kurdistan, including Kazhal Ahmed Khidir Al-Jammoor from Erbil, who was travelling with her three children: Hadiya, Mubin and Hasti Rizghar Hussein, respectively aged 22, 16 and seven.
A father and son from Egypt were shown how the engine worked and provided a GPS device and directions to Dover, around 35 miles (60km) to the west across the Channel. Mohamed Omar would later recall:
The Egyptian man was put in charge of steering the boat by the smugglers. He was travelling with his son, who looked like he was in his late teens or maybe early 20s. I do not know how they came to be the driver and navigator.
There were also at least three Ethiopian nationals – one of whom, father-of-two Fikiru Shiferaw from Addis Ababa, sent his wife Emebet at home in Ethiopia a final WhatsApp voice message:
We have already boarded the boat. We are on the way. I will turn off my phone now. Goodnight, I will call you tomorrow morning.
These were the last words she would ever receive from her husband.
What happened to Fikiru Shiferaw and the other passengers on the night of November 23-24 2021 has been the subject of the UK’s Cranston Inquiry which, during March 2025, heard from 22 witnesses to the disaster, including officers involved in the UK’s search-and-rescue (SAR) response. Chaired by former High Court judge Sir Ross Cranston, the independent inquiry also heard from Mohamed Omar from Somalia – one of only two survivors – as well as family members of many of the dead and missing.
These hearings not only shed light on the actions of UK Border Force and His Majesty’s Coastguard officers during the failed rescue operation – designated Incident Charlie – in the early hours of November 24, but the agencies’ approach to “small boat crossings” in general dating back to 2017.
According to the testimonies, officers had been operating under extreme pressure in the months leading up to the disaster. Kevin Toy, master of the Border Force ship Valiant which was sent out to search for the missing dinghy that night, explained that in the run-up to the incident, “night after night” he could see his crew were “utterly exhausted” by the end of their shifts.
The evidence shows the British government was aware of the growing risk that Border Force and HM Coastguard could be overwhelmed by the rising number of small boat crossings – and that people might die as a result. In May 2020, a document produced by the Department for Transport acknowledged that “SAR resources can be overwhelmed if current incident numbers persist”. At least three senior HM Coastguard officers identified the same risk in August 2021.
Multiple communication failures have also been exposed by the inquiry – among British officers, with their opposite numbers in France, and between both countries’ emergency services and the increasingly desperate people aboard the sinking dinghy.
Despite numerous distress calls and GPS coordinates being shared via WhatsApp, a rescue boat failed to reach the travellers in time. Amid the confusion, when their calls stopped, the coastguard assumed Charlie’s passengers had been picked up and were safe. In fact, they were perishing in the cold waters of the Channel over more than ten hours.
The Insights section is committed to high-quality longform journalism. Our editors work with academics from many different backgrounds who are tackling a wide range of societal and scientific challenges.
As part of my research into the digital transformation of the UK-France border, I attended the inquiry and have studied the many statements, call transcripts, operational logs, emails and meeting minutes it has made public. Initially, I wanted to understand how the November 2021 disaster became a watershed moment in the UK government’s response to people trying to cross the Channel by small boat or dinghy, catalysing the transformation of the UK’s maritime border into the hyper-surveilled space it is today.
But, after speaking to representatives for Mohamed Omar and the bereaved families as well as migrant rights organisations, larger questions have emerged. In particular, given the inquiry’s singular focus on this one catastrophic event in November 2021, those I spoke to are concerned that its recommendations will be unable to prevent further deaths from occurring in the Channel, which have risen dramatically over the last 18 months.
How ‘small boat crossings’ began
Since the UK and France began operating “juxtaposed” border controls in the early 1990s (meaning border checks occur before departure), asylum seekers trying to reach England have had to make irregular journeys across the Channel. Until 2018, these were typically aboard trains and ferries – after sneaking on to a lorry or through a French port’s perimeter security.
At the time of the “Jungle” camp near Calais in 2015-16, media coverage of collective attempts by its residents to enter French ports spiked UK government investment in the border. Between 2014 and 2018, it gave its French counterpart at least £123 million to “strengthen the border and maintain juxtaposed controls”. These funds paid for French police to patrol the ports and border cities, regularly evict migrants’ living sites, and finance detention and relocation centres.
As admitted by then-home secretary Sajid Javid in 2019, this increased security led people to find other ways across the Channel. Beginning in the winter of 2018, smugglers organised journeys in small, seaworthy vessels they had stolen from marinas along the French coast. These “small boats” continue to lend their name to this migration phenomenon – yet the unseaworthy inflatable dinghies used today, with no keel or rigid hull, are not worthy of the name.
Even in the context of the usual sensationalism surrounding irregular migration to the UK, small boat journeys were met with an especially intense response, both politically and in the media.
When 101 people crossed between Christmas and New Year in 2018, Javid declared it a major incident. Ever since, “stopping the boats” has been one of the UK government’s highest priorities. Despite small boat arrivals making up only 29% of UK asylum claimants in 2018-24, billions of pounds have been spent to try and control the route.
Frosty relations and the ‘pushback’ plan
As Channel crossings rose sharply over 2020-21, worsening relations between France and the UK due to Brexit complicated how the two governments worked together to respond. In his testimony, former clandestine Channel threat commander Dan O’Mahoney – appointed by Javid’s successor, Priti Patel, to “make small boat crossings unviable” – described relations between the two countries as already “very frosty” when he began in August 2020.
After France’s then-interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, axed a plan for UK vessels to take rescued migrants back to Dunkirk, O’Mahoney was tasked by senior ministers to come up with an alternative. The resulting “pushback” plan, called Operation Sommen, involved Border Force officers on jet skis driving into migrant dinghies to turn them back as they crossed the border line into UK waters. When France learned of the plan, O’Mahoney recalled:
They thought it went counter to their and our obligations around safety of life at sea … They objected to it very strongly, and it affected our already quite strained relationship with them further.
Operation Sommen was abandoned in April 2022 before having ever been used in anger. However, preparations were said to have taken up “a very considerable amount of time and resource” at both the Home Office and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency – and had “a detrimental effect” on the UK’s overall SAR response to small boat crossings.
At a meeting of senior officials in June 2021 to discuss Operation Sommen, ministers had made clear that the “numbers of people crossing [was] a political problem” – and that improving SAR capabilities did not “fit with [the] narrative of taking back control of borders”.
Although senior HM Coastguard officers recognised “it is extremely difficult to locate small boats or communicate with those onboard”, the inquiry heard that officers did not recall receiving “any small boat training before November 2021”, other than in the procedure to allow Border Force to push them back to French waters.
The head of Border Force’s Maritime Command, Stephen Whitton, told the inquiry he was under “a huge amount of pressure” to prevent small boat crossings, while also “providing the bulk of the support to search and rescue”. Despite carrying out 90% of all small boat rescues in the Channel and “regularly being overwhelmed”, Border Force Maritime Command received “no additional assets to manage the search and rescue response” before November 2021.
‘The pressure we were under’
When the decision was taken for Border Force – a law enforcement rather than search-and-rescue organisation – to be the primary responders to small boat crossings in 2018, only around 100 people were crossing each month. Yet by the time of the disaster three years later, according to an internal Home Office document, the total for 2021 was “already more than 25,000”.
At the inquiry, O’Mahoney stated: “As 2021 went on, it became much clearer that … frankly, we just needed more [rescue] boats.” Whitton admitted that before the disaster, Border Force, HM Coastguard, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and other support organisations were all “on our knees in terms of the pressure we were under, and it was getting hugely challenging”.
The evidence shows this pressure was acutely felt inside Dover’s Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, which sits atop the port’s famous white cliffs offering a commanding view of the Channel. Inside, Coastguard officers coordinate SAR operations and control vessel traffic in the Dover Strait – one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
On the night of November 23-24, three coastguard officers were on search-and-rescue duty: team leader Neal Gibson, maritime operations officer Stuart Downs, and a trainee – unnamed by the inquiry – who was officially only present as an observer.
HM Coastguard’s Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre at Dover overlooking the Channel. Travis Van Isacker, CC BY-NC-SA
Staffing appears to have been a longstanding issue at the Dover coastguard station where, according to divisional commander Mike Bill, there was “poor retention of staff” and “experience and competence weren’t the best”. Only the day before the disaster, during a migrant red days meeting – convened when, due to good weather, the probability of Channel crossers is considered “highly likely” – chief coastguard Peter Mizen had warned that only having two qualified officers at Dover on nights “isn’t enough”.
Over recent months, as the station had become busier responding to small boat crossings and in the wake of an unsuccessful recruitment drive, staff were having to work flat-out throughout their shifts, and were being asked to come in on scheduled days off.
On the night of November 23-24, owing to staff shortages, team leader Gibson told the inquiry he had to cover traffic control duties for three hours from 10.30pm. This meant he was away from the SAR desk at 00.41am, when a message arrived from the national rescue coordination centre along the coast in Fareham, stating that the Coastguard’s scheduled surveillance aeroplanes would not be flying over the Channel that night due to fog.
The officers were told they would be “effectively blind” – and should not allow themselves “to be drawn into relaxing and expecting a normal migrant crossing night”. The message warned: “This has the potential to be very dangerous.”
‘Their boat – there’s nothing left’
According to Mohamed Omar, the sea was calm when he and the other passengers departed the French beach around 9pm UK time. Giving his evidence to the Cranston Inquiry from Paris – he still cannot travel to the UK – a ship approached them around an hour into their voyage:
They came up to us to see what we were doing, and shone a light on us. I remember seeing a French flag on the boat. It was a big boat and I am certain it was the French coastguard. I had heard from people I met in the camp in Dunkirk that this happened sometimes, and that the French boat would follow until you reached English waters.
In fact, Mohamed Omar said, the French ship left the travellers again after about an hour. Shortly after this, the problems began.
A French warship patrols the shore of Mardyck in northern France, close to where Charlie is thought to have departed. Travis Van Isacker, CC BY-NC-SA
Around 1am, seawater began entering the dinghy. By now, it was in the vicinity of the Sandettie lightvessel, around 20 miles north-east of Dover. At first, passengers managed to bail out the 13°C water – but soon the flooding became uncontrollable. The dinghy’s inflatable tube began losing pressure, and a couple of the Kurdish men used air pumps to try to keep it inflated. Others tried to prevent panic spreading among the passengers.
Many onboard began to make frantic calls for rescue. What were reported to be leaked transcripts of some of these calls were published by French newspaper Le Monde a year after the sinking. They showed the first distress call from the dinghy was received by the French coastguard at 12.48am. Speaking in English, the caller said there were 33 people on board a “broken” boat.
According to Le Monde, three minutes later, another call was transferred to the French maritime rescue coordination centre at Cap Gris-Nez by an emergency operator who reported: “Apparently their boat – there’s nothing left.” Following procedure, the French coastguard officer asked the caller to send a GPS position by WhatsApp so she could “send a rescue boat as soon as possible”. At 1.05am UK time, the GPS position arrived.
Rather than send a French boat, Le Monde reported that the officer phoned her counterparts in Dover to warn them a dinghy 0.6 nautical miles from the border line would soon be crossing into UK waters. On the other end of the line was the trainee officer, who was handling routine calls that night despite officially only being an observer.
After the call finished, according to Downs’s evidence to the inquiry, the trainee mistakenly told him the dinghy was thought to be “in good condition” – information he recorded in the log for Incident Charlie. This miscommunication may have affected the urgency of the UK’s SAR response, preventing HM Coastguard and Border Force from appreciating the severe distress the “broken” dinghy was in.
Just before 1am, the French coastguard had sent its migrant tracker spreadsheet, containing information on all small boat crossings that night, to HM Coastguard for the first time. It showed four migrant dinghies at sea – which Gris-Nez had been aware of “for many hours”, according to Gibson.
The issue of the French coastguard appearing to withhold information about active small boat crossings had been raised by HM Coastguard’s clandestine operations liaison officer during a July 2021 review. And earlier that very evening, Gibson told one of his colleagues:
Sometimes they just seem to keep it quiet. Like we’ll not get anything – then we’ll get a tracker at three in the morning with 15 incidents, and they go: ‘Mostly these are in your search-and-rescue region.’ Wonderful.
At 1.20am, Downs phoned Border Force Maritime Command in Portsmouth to request a Border Force vessel search for the dinghy Charlie. He provided the GPS position received from his French counterpart and the number of people onboard – but also the incorrect information that “they think it’s in good condition”.
Ten minutes later, the Valiant, Border Force’s 42-metre patrol ship stationed at Dover, was tasked to proceed towards the Sandettie lightvessel. At the same time, the first direct call to the Dover rescue coordination centre came in from Charlie. The distressed caller said they were “in the water” and that “everything [was] finished”.
Around 15 minutes later, at 1.48am, Gibson took a call from 16-year-old Mubin Rizghar Hussein, who spoke good English. Despite the noise and commotion, he managed to provide Gibson with a WhatsApp number – in order to share their GPS position. The transcript of this call records voices shouting in the background: “It’s finished. Finished. Brother, it’s finished.”
A ‘grave and imminent threat to life’
Gibson told the inquiry that after his call with Rizghar Hussein, he had a “gut feeling that this doesn’t feel quite as usual”. By “usual” he meant what was, according to maritime operations officer Downs, a commonly held belief at the Dover coastguard station that with “nine out of ten”“ callers from small boats: “It would generally be overstated that the boat … was sinking, people were drowning … Whatever was going on would be overstated.”
Acting on his gut feeling, at 2.27am Gibson took the unprecedented decision to broadcast a Mayday Relay – denoting a “grave and imminent threat to life”. By maritime law, this alert required other vessels to offer their assistance.
Gibson told the inquiry he did this to get the French warship Flamant to respond. He could see on his radar screen that Flamant was closest to Charlie’s position and was the best vessel to rescue the people if the dinghy really was sinking.
Why the Flamant did not respond is at the centre of an ongoing criminal investigation in France into two of the warship’s officers and five coastguards from Gris-Nez, for “non-assistance of persons in distress”. This investigation’s strict confidentiality obligation means the inquiry was unable to access any information from the French side about their operations that night.
At 2.01 and again at 2.14am, HM Coastguard had received new GPS positions via WhatsApp showing the dinghy to be more than a mile inside UK waters.
Valiant, having been tasked at 1.30am, only exited the port of Dover at 2.22am and would need at least another hour to reach the Sandettie. Despite this, no other vessel was sent to join the search. At 3.11am, when asked during a call by Border Force Maritime Command whether Charlie was “still a Mayday situation”, Gibson replied: “Well, they’ve told me it’s full of water.”
With a total of four small boats being shown in the Channel that night by the French tracker spreadsheet, Gibson suggested there could be as many as 110 people on board these dinghies – beyond Valiant’s capacity for taking on survivors. Nevertheless, Border Force and HM Coastguard opted to “wait and see what the numbers are, and whether Valiant can deal with that … We don’t want to call any other assets out just yet.”
In a call with Christopher Trubshaw, captain of the Coastguard rescue helicopter stationed at Lydd on the Kent coast, aviation tactical commander Dominic Golden explained that Border Force was “not prepared to bring in their crews who are pretty knackered” unless “we can convince them there are people in real danger”. He then asked Trubshaw to search the Channel for the small boats shown in the French tracker, as the surveillance aeroplanes had been unable to take off.
In her closing submission to the inquiry, Sonali Naik, a legal representative of the survivors and bereaved families, highlighted Golden’s “dismissive attitude” towards Charlie’s distress when he gave Trubshaw the reason for the request, which included the following:
As usual, the catalogue of phone calls is beginning to trickle in … You know, the classic ‘I am lost, I am sinking, my mother’s wheelchair is falling over the side’ etc. ‘Sharks with lasers surrounding boat’ and ‘we are all dying’ type of thing.
Nevertheless, Golden asked the helicopter crew to pack a liferaft. “I can’t imagine we’re going to need it but … potentially you get to play with one of your new toys.”
While Golden described his words as “unwise” or “flippant”, Naik said they were “more than that” – suggesting they revealed rescuers’ general perceptions of the occupants of small boats and the widely held scepticism towards their distress calls.
‘We are dying. Where is the boat?’
With the water inside rising fast and their dinghy collapsing, Charlie’s increasingly desperate passengers kept trying to get rescuers to appreciate how dire their situation was.
At 2.31am in the Dover rescue coordination centre, Gibson received a second call from Mubin Rizghar Hussein, who pleaded: “We are dying, where is the boat?”
Gibson replied: “The boat is on its way but it has to get …” only to be interrupted by Rizghar Hussein saying: “We all die. We all die.”
“I get that,” Gibson told the terrified teenager, “but unfortunately, you’re going to be patient and all stay together, because I can’t make the boat come any quicker.” He ended the call saying:
You need to stop making calls because every time you make a call, we think there’s another boat out there – and we don’t want to accidentally go chasing for another boat when it’s actually your boat we’re looking for.
Gibson broke down briefly when recounting this second call during his evidence to the inquiry, explaining:
If you don’t understand what’s fully going on and you’re getting ‘we’re all going to die’, it’s quite a distressing situation to find yourself in, sitting at the end of a phone – effectively helpless. You know where they are, you want to get a boat to them, and you can’t.
Call records also show that coastguards on both sides of the Channel passed responsibility for rescuing the sinking dinghy off to one another. According to Le Monde, during one call a passenger told the French coastguard officer he was “in the water” – to which she replied: “Yes, but you are in English waters.”
The transcript of the last call before Charlie capsized, made at 3.12am, reveals that Downs asked “where are you?” 17 times – despite the caller being unable to answer anything beyond “English waters”. The maritime operations officer finished by instructing the caller to hang up and dial 999: “If it won’t connect on 999, then you’re probably still in French waters.”
In her closing submission, Naik pointed to “discriminatory stereotypes and attitudes towards migrants on small boats which fatally affected the SAR response” for Charlie – as rescuers, in her words, “jumped to premature conclusions”. According to survivor Mohamed Omar:
Because we have been seen as refugees … that’s the reason why I believe the rescue, they did not come at all. We feel like we were … treated like animals.
Fatal assumptions
At 3.27am, Border Force’s ship Valiant arrived at Charlie’s last recorded GPS position (from 2.14am) – but found nothing. Its master, Kevin Toy, decided to head north-easterly towards the Sandettie lightvessel, the way the tide was flowing.
En route, Valiant spotted two other dinghies in the darkness using its night vision – one still making its way towards the English coast, the other stopped in the water. The stationary dinghy was in greater danger from the Channel’s shipping traffic, so Valiant went to it and began rescuing those onboard – radioing back that it had “engaged unlit migrant crafts stopped in the water” with approximately 40 people onboard.
In the Dover rescue coordination centre, Gibson assumed this dinghy could be Charlie and gave Mubin Rizghar Hussein’s name and telephone number so Valiant’s crew could verify whether he was on board. At 4.16am, Gibson himself tried calling the WhatsApp number that Rizghar Hussein had shared, but the call failed.
At 4.20am, Valiant completed its first rescue of the morning. Two more followed after the Coastguard helicopter spotted two other dinghies in the Sandettie area – but nobody in the water. A near-capacity Valiant then returned to Dover just after 8am with 98 survivors on board.
None of the three rescued dinghies matched the description of Charlie. All were in good condition, differently coloured, and with disparate numbers of people onboard – yet the misplaced assumption Charlie had been rescued persisted amid the night’s murky information environment. Gibson stated that, while he had soon received additional information matching Valiant’s first rescue to a different dinghy, he was still “fairly certain Charlie had been picked up”.
“Once Valiant had picked up these [three] boats,” he explained, “we no longer received calls from Charlie, and a call to a known phone number on Charlie failed.” As a result, neither Valiant nor the Coastguard helicopter were sent back out to continue searching for the stricken dinghy.
In fact, Gibson’s call to Rizghar Hussein’s WhatsApp number did not fail because Charlie’s passengers had been rescued – nor because they had thrown their phones into the sea when Border Force arrived. Rather, it was because the dinghy had capsized and everyone had fallen into the Channel’s freezing waters.
‘No one came to our rescue’
In harrowing evidence to the inquiry, Mohamed Omar explained how, as one side of the dinghy deflated, the passengers – “hysterical and crying” – panicked and moved to the opposite side. This shift in weight caused the dinghy to capsize:
The screaming when the boat tipped and people fell in the water was deafening. I have never heard anything as desperate as this. I was not thinking about whether we were going to be rescued any more; it was all about how to stay alive.
As the passengers were thrown into the water, the dinghy flipped on top of them. Mohamed Omar described having to swim out from underneath to catch a breath: “It was dark and I could not really see. It was extremely cold and the sea was rough.”
As he surfaced, he saw Halima Mohammed Shikh, a mother of three also from Somalia and travelling alone, struggling as she couldn’t swim. She screamed his name for help, and he tried to get her back to what was left of the dinghy – but couldn’t. “I think she was one of the first people to drown,” he told the inquiry.
Others managed to cling to the broken inflatable, hoping rescue was on its way – but “no one came to our rescue”. Pushed and pulled by the waves, some lost their grip and drifted away before dawn. Mohamed Omar recalled:
All night, I was holding on to what remained of the boat. In the morning, I could hear the people were screaming and everything. It’s something I cannot forget in my mind.
By the time the sun finally rose at 7.26am, he estimated that no more than 15 people were left clinging to the broken dinghy – adrift on the tide in a busy shipping lane:
I do not recall speaking with anyone in the water. Those who were alive were half-dead. There was nothing we could do any more. I could see bodies floating all around us in the water. I presume most people were either already dead or were unconscious.
Shortly afterwards, Mohamed Omar said he let go of the dinghy and began to swim, thinking to himself: “I am going to die [but] I don’t want to die here. At least if I die whilst swimming, I won’t feel it.”
He swam towards a boat he could see in the distance and, as he got closer, began to wave his life jacket for attention. A French woman, out fishing with her family, saw him and jumped in the water to save him.
As he finished telling his story, Mohamed Omar told the inquiry: “I’m a voice for those people who passed away.”
Bodies are found
Around 1pm on the afternoon of November 24, 12 hours after the first distress calls from Charlie, a French commercial fishing vessel began finding bodies in the sea nine miles north-west of Calais. But as the news came in, no one at HM Coastguard or Border Force appears to have made the connection with Incident Charlie.
Days later, when the accounts of Mohamed Omar’s fellow survivor, Mohammed Shekha Ahmad from Iraqi Kurdistan, and a relative of two of the deceased emerged, the Home Office refuted their claims that the dinghy had sunk in UK waters as “completely untrue”.
However, five days after the disaster, Gibson contacted the small boats tactical commander to share his concerns that the reported deaths could be from Charlie. He had read a news article in which “the survivor states a male called Mubin called the emergency services, which could possibly be the ‘Moomin’ [sic] I spoke to”.
On December 1, clandestine Channel threat commander O’Mahoney responded to a question from the UK’s Joint Committee on Human Rights, as to whether the migrants whose bodies had been found in French waters had made distress calls to the UK authorities. O’Mahoney told the committee:
We are looking into that. To manage your expectation, though, it may never be possible to say with absolute accuracy whether that boat was in UK waters [and] I cannot tell you with any certainty that the people on that particular boat called the UK authorities.
Thanks largely to their grieving families tireless pursuit of the truth, however, it is now possible to say definitively that Charlie had been in UK waters – and that a number of its passengers spoke to HM Coastguard officers.
It was only after these families raised concerns that the disaster had involved the UK authorities that the Department for Transport commissioned a safety investigation into the incident in January 2022. A lawyer for the bereaved families suggested to me that without the threat of legal action, the Department for Transport “would likely not have done anything” – despite this being Britain’s worst maritime disaster for decades. Meanwhile, according to inquiry evidence, the Home Office is understood not to have conducted an internal review or investigation into its role in the disaster.
After a frustrating two years of waiting for the survivors and bereaved families, the Marine Accidents Investigations Branch published its report – which both confirmed most of their accounts and substantiated their criticisms of the SAR response.
Soon afterwards, the Cranston Inquiry was announced. Despite no bodies having been recovered in UK waters, it has been run almost like an inquest. In his final report – to be published by the end of 2025 – Sir Ross Cranston has promised to “consider what lessons can be learned and, if appropriate, make recommendations to reduce the risk of a similar event occurring”.
A ‘crucial and unique opportunity’
HM Coastguard and Border Force officers have repeatedly told the inquiry how the UK’s approach to small boat search-and-rescue has changed since the November 2021 disaster. More officers have been hired, Border Force has contracted additional boats to conduct rescues, information sharing has improved, and cooperation with French colleagues is better. Today, there are significantly more rescue ships on both sides of the Channel which can intervene faster when dinghies come to be in distress, and have undoubtedly saved many lives.
There has also been massive investment in drones, aeroplanes and powerful shore-based cameras to reduce the risk that HM Coastguard loses “maritime domain awareness” again if some of its surveillance aircraft are unable to fly. New technology automatically translates coastguard officers’ messages into different languages and extracts live GPS locations and images from travellers’ mobile devices.
Such investments make it unlikely that another dinghy could be lost in the middle of the Channel after its passengers call for help, in the way Charlie so catastrophically was.
Nevertheless, people continue dying while attempting to cross the Channel – with 2024 having been by far the deadliest year yet. At least 69 people lost their lives, according to the Refugee Council. So far in 2025, 24 people are documented as dead or missing at the UK-France border by Calais Migrant Solidarity, amid a record number of attempted crossings for the first half of the year.
Some migrants’ rights NGOs have suggested the UK’s “stop the boats” policies, and European efforts to disrupt the supply chain of dinghies and other equipment used in crossings, has driven such deadly overcrowding.
But it is also unlikely that the circumstances surrounding more recent deaths in the Channel will ever be investigated as thoroughly as Incident Charlie, if at all. Lawyers for the bereaved families have therefore been keen to highlight the Cranston Inquiry’s “crucial and unique opportunity” not only to look back and offer answers about one of Britain’s worst maritime disasters in recent decades – but to look forwards and “prevent the further loss of life at sea”.
The survivors, families and migrants’ rights organisations who contributed their evidence thus hope the inquiry’s recommendations go beyond purely operational and administrative improvements to search-and-rescue, to address the fundamental role that UK, France and European border policies play in why more people are dying in the Channel, despite the improvements to search-and-rescue strategies and resources.
Above all, they ask why only some people are able to travel to the UK in comfort and safety while others must make the journey in precarious, overcrowded inflatable dinghies – and thus entrust their lives to the search-and-rescue services whose success can never be guaranteed. As Halima Mohammed Shikh’s cousin, Ali Areef, told the inquiry:
It makes me feel sick to think about crossing the Channel in a ferry where others including a member of my family lost their lives because there was no other way to cross. I will never take a ferry across the Channel again.
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Travis Van Isacker gratefully acknowledges the support of the Economic and Social Research Council
(UK) (Grant Ref: ES/W002639/1).
Maritime folklore has long been shuffled to the margins of nautical history, presented as the quaint, colourful oddities of a former age. Yet this body of beliefs, practices and stories can offer important insights into how seafarers of the 19th century viewed and understood their working environment.
Beneath the dominant histories of European exploration, heroic naval battles and imperial claims to mastery of the seas, there was the daily reality of working, living and, not uncommonly, dying in a dangerous marine environment.
This folklore – which was exchanged between multinational crews of mariners and carried across the oceans – provides a way into appreciating their everyday fears, longings and hopes. It reveals a rich emotional and psychological engagement with the ocean, a history of sea fearing that does not sit easily with the stereotypical macho image of mariners.
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Much of maritime folklore spoke to anxieties about the temperamental ocean and storms, which boiled down to a fear of disaster and drowning.
To protect themselves from such a fate, 18th- and 19th-century sailors went to sea armoured with magical charms. A popular one was a caul. It was believed owning a caul – the membrane that protects a baby in the womb – would protect a seafarer from drowning.
Such items were openly sold in newspaper advertisements in the 19th century. Three advertised in the Liverpool Mercury in 1873 were priced from 30 shillings to four guineas, no small amount for a common mariner to pay for an idle “superstition”.
Nineteenth-century sailors and fishermen also developed a rich system of omens and predictions. They were attentive to their behaviour and even words (“pig” and “rabbit” being among the worst) that might provoke the ocean or attract bad luck.
Life in the Ocean Representing the Usual Occupations of the Young Officers in the Steerage of a British Frigate at Sea by Augustus Earle (1836). National Maritime Museum
One such example was whistling aboard ships, which was believed to stir winds or gales. The idea that the temperamental winds could be provoked by the smallest actions of the tiny human beings who passed over the ocean’s surface spoke to both mariners’ vulnerability at sea, but also a sense of personal responsibility for the good or bad fortune of their voyage.
That concerns about death haunted seafarers is also seen in a superstitious reluctance to have coffins, dead bodies or clergymen (associated with funerals) aboard ship. As the author and critic William Jones wrote in Credulities Past and Present (1880), the sailor who was fearless in battle or in the face of physical danger, often “shrinks with indescribable apprehension … at the sight of a coffin”.
This was reinforced by maritime ghost stories. Numerous tales of ghost ships, most famously The Flying Dutchman, served as a reminder of the haunting prospect of death at sea.
In telling stories of those who had been lost, seafarers could also express concerns about their present circumstances and future travails. Aboard ships, such tales could also serve as reminders of health and safety concerns. Stories about ghostly crew members who had fallen from the rigging or been washed overboard served as cautionary tales.
The decline and return of maritime folklore
Nineteenth-century critics of mariners’ “superstitions” attempted to debunk their ideas. They pushed the idea that this body of folklore was fading out with the transition from sail to steam power.
No longer reliant on the winds, the steamship symbolised a more rational, mechanical world that had no time for the supernatural whimsy of the age of sail. Yet, indicating its ongoing importance as a way of addressing seafarers fears and concerns, such ideas did not simply disappear. Rather they adapted to the modern world.
The Shipwreck by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1805). Tate
While the price of cauls had dropped in the late 19th century, suggesting declining belief in their protective power, there was a sudden revival in their trade when submarine warfare became a feature of the first world war. Accounts of ghost ships were updated to include steam and later diesel vessels in the 20th century.
Maritime folklore history reminds us that our proclaimed “mastery of the waves” has always been built on rhetoric as much as reality.
In an age of mounting concern about our relationship with the oceans, in which we are having to radically reassess our control over and influence on the natural world, it is perhaps time for this history to resurface.
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Karl Bell 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.
The House of Lords this week approved government legislation that will allow foreign states to hold up to a 15% stake in British newspaper publishers.
This vote clears the way for the American investment company Redbird to take control of the troubled Telegraph newspaper group following two years of uncertainty. An integral element of that bid is a 15% stake by the sovereign investment fund IMI which is owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the vice-president of the United Arab Emirates.
The heated Lords debate raised fundamental questions about who should own newspapers, and the link between ownership and editorial content. On one side were those who argued that Britain’s newspapers faced an “existential threat” without outside investment. On the other were those who warned against the potential influence of a foreign power on one of the UK’s longest standing publishers.
Media mergers and acquisitions are often contentious. But given the parlous state of the newspaper industry, they are likely to become more frequent.
A very different kind of newspaper deal was completed last December, when news website Tortoise Media bought The Observer. Tortoise, which was founded in 2018 by former Times editor and BBC director of news James Harding, startled analysts and journalists alike by taking over a newspaper first published in 1791.
The deal prompted strong opposition from some Observer and Guardian journalists. But from a business perspective, the deal suited both sides.
The Scott Trust, owners of the Observer since 1993, never seemed wholly committed to the Observer. (There was, for example, no dedicated Observer website). Tortoise, meanwhile, was keen to exploit the brand values of an established print product. It saw the Observer as a suitable vehicle for its approach of news analysis and explanation rather than breaking stories.
The media world has also been fixated on the succession story of the Murdoch family and its implications for his UK newspapers. The Sun, News of the World (until its closure in 2011), the Times and Sunday Times have been the bedrock of Rupert Murdoch’s economic and political power in the UK for decades.
In December, he lost the battle to give his eldest son Lachlan exclusive control of his media empire.
Speculation has grown as to whether any of Rupert’s progeny will want to continue the family’s print tradition after his death. His empire has suffered repeated financial and reputational hits since the phone hacking scandal. It is perfectly feasible that, once he goes, all the Murdoch press interests will be up for sale.
These various battles beg the question: why does it matter who owns a newspaper? In short, it matters because ownership, to a large extent, determines content.
Who owns the news?
From the very beginning of printed news, proprietors have exercised control over their title’s political direction and journalistic values. Prewar Britain saw Lord Beaverbrook famously exploiting his Express newspapers to campaign for free trade within the British empire.
Meanwhile, fellow newspaper baron Lord Rothermere turned his Mail newspapers into propaganda sheets for Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts, and cheerleaders for Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini during the 1930s.
The Rothermere family’s continued ownership of the Mail has guaranteed a consistent anti-immigration, anti-Europe rightwing worldview to the present day. How this consistent framing has been transmitted through the Mail’s editors has been well documented by journalist Adrian Addison.
Murdoch’s UK newspaper empire has also pursued his personal free market, anti-EU political vision. He has used his papers to attack the publicly funded BBC and the regulator Ofcom. Murdoch has, however, been slightly more flexible in adjusting his papers’ party political allegiance (guaranteeing a succession of prime ministerial genuflections from Margaret Thatcher through to Keir Starmer).
At the other end of the political spectrum, the Scott Trust – owners of the Guardian – was conceived by the son of C.P. Scott as a vehicle for sustaining his father’s liberal mission for the paper. It has a policy of no editorial interference, apart from continuing the paper’s editorial policy on “the same lines and in the same spirit as heretofore”. Editors are therefore enjoined to focus on the kind of progressive news agenda championed by Scott.
The trust model allows a level of freedom from traditional commercial oversight. Editors can pursue the Guardian’s well-established liberal tradition without worrying about shareholders driven by short-term profit maximisation, or an individual owner with a specific ideological agenda. This partly explains the hostility of Observer journalists to the Tortoise takeover.
Why it matters
The Lords debate focused on the risks of foreign state investment in British newspapers. But all commercial ownership models – and all owners – have their problems. Whether it be greedy shareholders, a power-hungry narcissist, an ideologically-driven family or a foreign state seeking influence in the UK, commercial models all involve editorial compromises.
One approach to the problems raised by commercial ownership is an insistence, through legislation, on a plurality of owners. But this is increasingly difficult in an industry whose traditional advertising-funded business model is under severe pressure. This context is precisely why the Telegraph’s new owner was desperate to access IMI funds.
Upmarket publications such as the Financial Times and the Times can monetise subscriptions, but paywalls discourage easy access and diminish journalistic reach. Subscriptions are also a much less attractive proposition for tabloids whose readers are less willing to pay.
Another approach is to diversify ownership models. Non-profit and charitable publishers, such as OpenDemocracy or the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, can leverage donations and are less vulnerable to the whims of corporate owners or powerful individuals. But this model is much less developed in the UK than the US.
I and colleagues have argued elsewhere that there are strong arguments for making charitable journalism easier. These models can enhance journalistic freedom, but they also come with potential downsides that need to be acknowledged.
All these options presuppose, of course, that newspapers and their online sites still have sufficient relevance and reach for us to continue to worry about ownership at all – a topic for another article.
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Steven Barnett is on the management and editorial boards of the British Journalism Review. He is a member of the British Broadcasting Challenge which campaigns for Public Service Broadcasting. He is on the Advisory Board of the Charitable Journalism Project which campaigns for public interest journalism and on the board of Hacked Off which campaigns for a free and accountable press.
The programme has been announced for Manchester’s role as Guest City at this year’s iconic La Mercè festival in Barcelona – which each year attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors into the city for a 6-day cultural festival that sets the very highest of bars for festivals everywhere, showcasing the very best of traditional Catalan culture, outdoor arts, and music.
Manchester was chosen last year by its Catalan counterparts to be the first-ever English guest city at this year’s event which takes place from 23 – 28 September.
A Memorandum of Understanding signed between Manchester and Barcelona last year, noted that the two cities share both a very similar industrial past with histories that are linked to workers’ movements, as well as a present and future with great cultural wealth linked to the creative industries.
The Memorandum kicked off a cultural collaboration between the two cities, providing a working framework for artists, organisations, and other partners, focusing initially on music and street arts events for this year’s La Mercè festival.
Since then the two cities have been working closely to put together a spectacular programme of Mancunian grown talent in outdoor arts and music for audiences in Barcelona to enjoy.
Councillor Garry Bridges, Deputy Leader, Manchester City Council, said: “Guest City status for Manchester at this year’s La Mercè festival is a huge honour for us and we’re enormously grateful to our partners, colleagues and friends in Barcelona for the opportunity to collaborate and play a part in their iconic festival.
“Culture and diversity are big deals for us in Manchester and play a vital part in helping strengthen and shape our communities, pride and prosperity. Thanks to our wonderfully diverse artists, venues, festivals, and creative workforce, culture has had a transformative effect on our city.
“The Manchester programme for La Mercè showcases the very best of our fantastically diverse cultural scene and our hugely talented artists and creators.
“We hope it gives a flavour of the vibrant and thriving cultural scene we have here in Manchester and look forward to further strengthening our ties with the great city of Barcelona and welcoming new visitors and audiences to our city off the back of this.”
The resulting programme is a celebration of fantastic outdoor work created by Manchester artists and organisations.
Highlights in the special cultural exchange include two unique new commissions from Manchester-based creators working with Barcelona-based performers, alongside new work created to celebrate Manchester and its people at La Mercè.
The programme for Manchester as Guest City has been led by XTRAX and Without Walls. It showcases the diverse cultural communities of Manchester and the rich diversity of the UK outdoor arts scene – including parades, dance, music, poetry, fire and installations.
Maggie Clarke, Director at XTRAX, said: “I’m delighted that Manchester will be Guest City at La Mercè 2025, which is the result of many years of collaboration between XTRAX and colleagues in Barcelona City Council and the Catalan arts scene. La Mercè is recognised as one of the greatest festivals of outdoor arts in the world, and it is an honour to present some of the fantastic work from Manchester at this prestigious event.
“XTRAX firmly believes in the importance of outdoor festivals, and their valuable role in bringing people and communities together. Our programme at La Mercè celebrates the diversity and quality of work from our region and we hope will inspire other global cities to seek collaborations with Manchester and the great artists from our city.
“I’m thrilled to have secured a great opportunity for UK artists in Barcelona and we look forward to continuing this exchange by hosting Barcelona artists in Manchester in 2026, and ongoing collaboration in years to come.”
Manchester at La Mercè has been produced by XTRAX, and co-curated by Without Walls.
Ralph Kennedy, Chief Executive at Without Walls, said: “We’re honoured to have collaborated with XTRAX as a strategic partner for Mercè Arts de Carrer (MAC), the La Mercè outdoor programme. Without Walls has been proudly based in Manchester since its founding, and we’re absolutely thrilled to be part of this exciting city to city partnership.
“Manchester is a vibrant hub for some of the best outdoor art being created in the UK today. The programme of shows curated by XTRAX and Without Walls for Barcelona, in partnership with the artistic director of MAC, stands as a testament to the city’s incredible creative energy.”
The Manchester at La Mercè programme features several major collaboration projects between Manchester and Barcelona artists, as well as new work created especially for this unique event.
Here are some of the highlights:
Bee for Barcelona
Carnival arts specialists Global Grooves (Manchester) team up with renowned Catalan artists Pau Reig and Dolors Sans (Barcelona) to create Bee for Barcelona– a striking new collaboration to create two Giant Bees, celebrating shared industrial heritage, cultural pride, and artistic exchange. These Giants will perform in front of thousands of people as part of La Mercè world famous Parades of Giants and Beasts.
Queen Bee Gigante, wears a costume reflecting Greater Manchester’s communities and cotton legacy. She transforms into a maypole, surrounded by 30 community dancers and musicians in a fusion of Morris and Classical Indian dance—re-imagining May Day and Carnival traditions.
Alongside her,Worker Bee, a 4-metre kinetic sculpture, shimmers with hand-painted silks encased in fibreglass, evoking stained glass. Copper legs and cog motifs nod to the textile mills and industrial histories of Manchester and Barcelona and the birth of the Industrial Revolution.
Blending Mancunian, Catalan, Pan-African, and South Asian influences, the project features 30 diverse performers from groups including Saddleworth Women’s Morris and Clog, and The Indian Association Oldham’s Dancing Diyas.
Leon Patel, CEO, Carnival arts organisation Global Grooves, said: “Queen Bee and Worker Bee tell a powerful story of how they earned their stripes.
“Queen Bee represents the evolution of that labour into opportunity, progress, culture, and celebration. She is not born of royal blood, but is Queen for a day, like the Cotton Queens of Greater Manchester’s mill towns, the Carnival Queens of the Afro-Brazilian tradition, and the flower-crowned May Queen. Work Bee honours the sweat and toil of workers wo build Manchester’s global industrial might.
“Both bees will be animated in parades and performances at La Mercè accompanied by an original musical score blending Mancunian, Catalan, Pan-African, and South Asian sounds.”
Both bees will be brought to life in parades and performances with an original multicultural musical score.
Global Grooves producers visited Barcelona in March 2025, with Pau Reig and Dolors Sans joining a Manchester residency from 21–27 July 2025.
Bee for Barcelonais commissioned by XTRAX for MCRxLaMerce2025. Supported by Manchester City Council, Arts Council England and XTRAX. Funded by Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), GM Arts, Oldham Council, and Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council.
Following its premiere at La Mercè 2025, Queen Bee Gigante and Worker Bee will return for Manchester Day in July 2026.
The Ultimate Player’s Handbook
Manchester’s leading contemporary dance companyCompany Chameleon has been commissioned to create a new dance performance, The Ultimate Player’s Handbook, for La Mercè with Barcelona dance duo Clémentine & Lisard
In the heart of a town’s square, a living handbook unfolds — one written not on paper, but in movement, strategy, and play.
The Ultimate Player’s Handbook is a vibrant street performance that explores the games we play every day – where rules are made and broken, roles shift between winner and loser, and cooperation is as vital as competition.
Co-directed by Company Chameleon (UK) and Clémentine & Lisard (CAT), the piece transforms public space into a playground where teams form, alliances shift, and every move asks us to reflect on the parts we play.
With music, dance, and celebration, this handbook in motion invites us to question: how do we navigate rules – and how do we bring a sense of playfulness in our everyday lives?
Barcelona-based Clémentine & Lisard have spent the last two weeks in Manchester (14-25 July) to create this new choreographed performance with two of Company Chameleon’s dancers and Artistic Director Kevin Turner, MBE, at Company Chameleon’s studios in Gorton.
Kevin Turner, MBE, Artistic Director of Company Chameleon said: “International collaboration has always been at the heart of Chameleon’s work, and we’re delighted to be working with Clémentine & Lisard. The commission allows us to work with a really exciting and innovative Barcelona based dance company and create something new and interesting. The collaboration gives us the chance to learn from each other, explore commonalities in our practice, and share and benefit from each other’s touring networks.”
Blending the athletic and emotionally rich movement styles of both groups, the work will debut at La Mercè in Barcelona on 24, 27, and 28 September 2025 and return for Manchester Day 2026.
The Ultimate Players’ Handbook is commissioned by XTRAX and the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona and funded by Arts Council England and Manchester City Council.
Barcelona Bee Hive
Another World Premiere, Barcelona Bee Hive will also be created especially for Manchester at La Mercè.
Artizani is a UK-based arts company specialising in spectacular theatre performed in unconventional spaces. One of Europe’s most stylish and striking street theatre acts, their work is accessible and thought-provoking, featuring high production values and a surreal twist.
The bee is the symbol of Manchester – historically representing its hard-working, unified community, and more recently serving as a powerful emblem of unity and resilience.
Audiences are invited to wander among the honey-perfumed colony, tended by ethereal beekeepers, and peer into surreal miniature worlds of ‘working’ wonder. In a specially commissioned new bee hive, created to celebrate Manchester at La Mercè, visitors can see Mancunian bees enjoying scenes from traditional Catalan festivities.
Barcelona Bee Hive is commissioned by XTRAX and funded by Arts Council England and Manchester City Council.
OUR CITY SPEAKS – poetry films from Manchester
Another unique project developed especially for Manchester’s programme at La Mercè that celebrates Manchester’s wealth of poets and spoken word artists working in a wide range of diverse styles and languages.
A captivating curated selection of short films featuring some of the city’s current leading poetry performers will take viewers on a journey through poetry that talks about identity, unity, resistance, and resilience.
Jo Flynn, Director of External Affairs, Manchester City of Literature said: “Barcelona and Manchester already share cultural ties as sister UNESCO Cities of Literature, and in many ways their dynamic cultural identity and literary boldness align too. We’re thrilled at Manchester City of Literature to be part of La Mercè programme celebrating this partnership with Manchester poetry films on stage for the festival in September. We can’t wait to see where the partnership between the cities will take us next, across all artforms.”
Manchester UNESCO City of Literature has curated this collection to share with Catalan audiences in Manchester’s sister UNESCO City of Literature during La Mercè.
The project builds on Manchester City of Literature’s strong relationship with Barcelona City of Literature which has seen a number of artistic exchanges. The partnership between the two UNESCO Cities of Literature has seen Manchester novelists, poets and performers featured at Barcelona Literary festivals throughout 2025, in celebration of La Mercè. Barcelona poets will be commissioned to help translate the work of the Manchester poets into Catalan, so the works can be understood by local audiences and a number of Catalan poets will be invited to share work about Barcelona in Manchester in 2026.
The project has been commissioned by XTRAX, funded by Manchester City Council and Arts Council England, and is delivered in partnership with Manchester City of Literature and Barcelona City of Literature.
Fire Garden by Walk The Plank
Walk the Plank, one of the UK’s leading outdoor arts specialists, will bring their acclaimed Fire Garden installation to Trinitat Park for La Mercè 2025. Known for creating ambitious public celebrations and immersive outdoor spectacles for over thirty years, the company will transform the park into a glowing landscape of metal, fire and music created by local musicians in Barcelona.
Liz Pugh, Creative Producer for the Fire Garden, said: “We’re delighted to be bringing some Mancunian magic to La Mercè, and particularly excited to see how our installation of kinetic fire sculptures animate Parc de la Trinitat in a new and different way. To be invited to bring UK work to the heart of the Catalan cultural festival is an honour indeed.”
Walk the Plank will be working with students recruited from local colleges, offering the opportunity for young people from Barcelona and elsewhere to work alongside the company’s professional fire technicians.
Liz added: “Investing in the talent of the next generation is important to us, and we seek to provide opportunities for young people to gain experience. The chance to work alongside international artists is valuable for young people: they can gain new skills and expand their ideas of what is possible through culture. We look forward to welcoming some of the Catalan artists, the musicians and the students to Manchester next year too – let’s find a way to repay the warm invitation which the city of Barcelona and MAC festival are offering to us.”
The Manchester Guest City music programme at La Mercè is presented by Manchester Music City, led by Brighter Sound.
Kate Lowes, Director, Brighter Sound (sector lead Manchester Music City) said: “We’re thrilled to announce such an exciting group of artists representing Manchester at La Mercè 2025 – Children of Zeus, Chloe Slater, Clara la San, Porij, Ríoghnach Connolly and Honeyfeet, and Space Afrika – a powerful showcase of the city’s rich and genre-defying music scene. We’re also proud to be supporting a brand-new musical collaboration between Manchester’s Werkha and Catalan artist Queralt Lahoz, which will premiere at the festival. As a member of the Music Cities Network, Manchester is proudly international in its musical outlook. This is a fantastic opportunity to deepen creative exchange between Manchester and Barcelona, and to celebrate our shared love of music on an international stage.”
International SpeakersPanel Discussions and Professional Networking Events
Alongside the outdoor performance programme at La Mercè there will also be a number of panel discussions and networking events exploring the importance of outdoor festivals in giving visibility to cultural communities and bringing people together.
These discussions will include international speakers and policy makers and will be attended by festival organisers, local authorities, artists and producers from across Europe. These events are a prelude to Mondiacult, the world’s biggest cultural policy conference for the member states of UNESCO taking place in Barcelona from 29 September – 1 October 2025.
This programme has been organised by XTRAX, Without Walls, La Mercè, ICEC Catalan Arts and Unlimited, with support from British Council and the British Embassy in Spain.
The Manchester guest city programme at La Mercè is being supported by Arts Council England through a grant to producers XTRAX.
Jen Cleary, Director North West, Arts Council England said: “We’re proud to be supporting Manchester’s Guest City programme at La Mercè in Barcelona this September. Not only will it create opportunities for talented Mancunian artists to showcase their work on an international stage, but it is a shining example of how arts and culture can support greater connections and dialogue between cities and communities across the world. La Mercè is a major event in the European outdoor arts calendar and we can’t wait to see Manchester take pride of place as the Festival’s Guest City.”
At the end of the conference, Member States adopted a Ministerial Declaration by a vote of 154-2-2, with the United States and Israel voting against the document and Paraguay and Iran abstaining.
“We strongly reaffirm our commitment to effectively implement the 2030 Agenda [which]… remains our overarching roadmap for achieving sustainable development and overcoming the multiple crises we face,” the declaration said.
15 years of HLPF
The HLPF has happened on an annual basis since 2010 and is convened by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to discuss the progress, or lack thereof, on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which were adopted in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda and aspire to create a more equitable and inclusive world.
Negotiations regarding the ministerial document were led by representatives from Czechia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, who highlighted the significance of the proceedings.
“This year’s deliberations have held particular significance. Ten years after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, a range of interlinked and persistent challenges continues to jeopardise the full realisation of the SDGs,” said Jakub Kulhánek, permanent representative of Czechia and one of the two lead facilitators of the declaration.
The clock is ticking
In the ministerial declaration, Member States said that time is running out to achieve the SDGs, which remain severely off track.
According to the Secretary-General’s report on the Goals, which was released on the first day of the HLPF, only 18 per cent of the SDGs are on track to be achieved by 2030, with over half making progress that is too slow.
While the ministerial declaration addressed each of the five SDGs in the spotlight at the forum, Member States particularly emphasised the role of poverty in impeding sustainable development and the worsening climate crisis that is threatening all aspects of the development agenda.
The declaration called both of these issues some of the “greatest global challenges” that the world faces.
In keeping with SDG 16, which underlines the role that institutions like governments must play in promoting peace, Member States also affirmed that strong governance and partnership is essential to realising peace as a prerequisite for development.
“We recognise that sustainable development cannot be realised without peace and security, and peace and security will be at risk without sustainable development,” it stated.
Plan of Action
In the midst of challenges to multilateralism, Member States said that the declaration was an affirmation of the UN’s commitment to multilateralism, which is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year.
“At a time when serious doubts about the future of multilateralism persist, your steadfast commitment has been both reassuring and inspiring,” said Mr. Kulhánek.
Member States, in the declaration, affirmed a commitment to urgently working towards the SDGs in order to achieve a better world.
“We will act with urgency to realise its vision as a plan of action for people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership, leaving no one behind.”
Briefing the Security Council on Thursday, Khaled Khiari, Assistant Secretary-General for the Middle East, said the OIC remains an “indispensable” partner in efforts to promote peace, uphold international law and deliver durable political solutions in a range of crisis contexts.
Headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the OIC has 57 member states and five observers, representing significant political, economic cultural and religious constituency.
“Its voice carries considerable weight in some of the world’s conflict-affected situations,” Mr. Khiari said.
“The UN values this partnership, not only as a matter of institutional cooperation, but as an essential component of our efforts to promote durable peace, inclusive governance and respect for international and human rights law.”
He emphasized that the cooperation aligns with Chapter VIII of the UN Charter, which encourages partnerships with regional organizations in maintaining peace and security, and with the Pact for the Future – adopted by Member States last September to revitalize multilateralism and tackle global challenges through collective action.
Helping resolve crises
Mr. Khiari outlined joint UN-OIC work in Gaza, including the recent endorsement by the bloc and the League of Arab States of a recovery and reconstruction plan, as well as collaboration on the question of Jerusalem through an annual conference held in Dakar, Senegal.
In Sudan, where over two years of war have brought devastating humanitarian consequences, he welcomed the OIC’s backing for international mediation, including support for the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy, Ramtane Lamamra.
Turning to Afghanistan, Mr. Khiari praised the OIC’s role in the UN-led “Doha Process,” noting its continued engagement with the Taliban de facto authorities and advocacy for the rights of Afghan women and girls – an area where the OIC’s moral and religious standing carries particular influence.
On Myanmar, the OIC remains an essential voice in global efforts to ensure a safe, dignified and voluntary return of the Rohingya to Rakhine state. He noted sustained coordination between the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy and the OIC in pushing for accountability and citizenship rights.
UN Photo/Manuel Elías
A wideview of the Security Council as ASG Khaled Khiari briefs members about cooperation between the UN and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
Cooperation on global issues
Assistant Secretary-General Khiari also highlighted the growing collaboration between the two organizations on elections, including training on observation and women’s political participation. A new staff exchange programme is also helping to strengthen institutional ties.
He acknowledged the OIC’s leadership in countering Islamophobia and all forms of religious intolerance, an area where the UN has stepped up efforts, including through the appointment of a Special Envoy.
Counter-terrorism cooperation has also advanced, following a March 2024 memorandum of understanding. Joint initiatives include technical support, parliamentary engagement, and rights-based prevention strategies.
“As we move forward with the implementation of the Pact for the Future,” Mr. Khiari concluded, “the UN-OIC partnership will remain critical to defusing tensions, advancing sustainable peace, and reinforcing multilateral norms and principles.”
Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) said that is what one of its workers told him on Thursday morning.
This sobering comment comes amidst increasingly severe malnutrition for children and adults throughout the Gaza Strip.
“When child malnutrition surges, coping mechanisms fail, access to food and care disappears, famine silently begins to unfold,” Mr. Lazzarini said in a tweet.
Bombs are not the only thing that kills
Gaza has faced relentless bombardment for almost three years, but Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) said at a briefing on Wednesday that it is not just the bombs which are killing Palestinians.
Starvation is “another killer.”
Reportedly, at least 100 people have died from hunger, and WHO has documented at least 21 cases of children under the age of five dying from malnutrition.
Additionally, Mr. Lazzarini said one in five children in Gaza City are malnourished, a number that is increasing every day that unhindered humanitarian aid is denied. He said that these children urgently need treatment, but supplies remain low.
Between early March and mid-May — 80 consecutive days — no aid was allowed into the Gaza Strip, pushing the population to the brink of famine. While minimal aid has since entered, Tedros emphasised that it is not enough.
“Food deliveries have resumed intermittently but remain far below what is needed for the survival of the population,” he said.
A boy in Gaza waits for food.
Safe havens are no longer safe
Tedros reported that between 27 May and 21 July, over 1,000 people in Gaza have been killed while trying to access food.
Many of these have died in or around sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an American-run and Israeli-backed aid distribution organization which the UN has repeatedly said violates well-established principles of international humanitarian law.
“Parents tell us their children cry themselves to sleep from hunger. Food distribution sites have become places of violence,” Tedros said.
In addition to risking their lives when seeking out desperately needed humanitarian assistance, hospitals — which have been systematically targeted according to UNFPA — are no longer safe havens.
“Hospitals, which are supposed to be safe havens, have regularly been attacked, and many are no longer functioning,” Tedros said.
He recalled that on Monday, a WHO staff residence, a humanitarian site, was attacked with male personnel being stripped and interrogated, women and children forced to flee on foot in the midst of violence, and one WHO staff member detained.
“Despite this, WHO and other UN agencies are staying in Gaza. Our commitment is firm. UN agencies must be protected while operating in conflict zones,” Tedros said.
An UNRWA school turned shelter in Al Bureij, Gaza, lies in ruins following a missile attack in May 2025.
Frontline workers face hunger
In addition to the Palestinians in Gaza who are “emaciated, weak and at high risk of dying,” aid workers are also feeling the effects of sustained lack of supplies.
Most UNRWA workers are surviving on a meagre bowl of lentils each day, Mr. Lazzarini said, leading many of them to faint from hunger at work.
“When caretakers cannot find enough to eat, the entire humanitarian system is collapsing,” he said.
Some parents are too hungry to care for their children, and even those who do reach clinics for treatment are often too tired to follow the advice provided.
Mr. Lazzarini noted that UNRWA alone has 6,000 trucks of desperately needed food and medical supplies in Jordan and Egypt. He called for this, and other aid, to be immediately let through.
“Families are no longer coping, they are breaking down, unable to survive. Their existence is threatened,” he said. “Allow humanitarian partners to bring unrestricted and uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to Gaza.”
Minister Loewen will attend the Duck Hunters Expo in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma from July 25 to 27, where he will accept a Waterfowling Legacy Award from Delta Waterfowl on behalf of Alberta’s government. The award recognizes Alberta’s leadership in enhancing conservation efforts, promoting responsible wildlife management and expanding sustainable waterfowl hunting.
Minister Loewen will also engage with outdoor enthusiasts and waterfowl organizations from around the world to showcase Alberta’s leadership in wildlife stewardship and promote the province as a premier destination for hunting, angling and other outdoor recreation opportunities.
“Alberta’s government works hard to conserve wildlife populations, enhance accessibility and preserve hunting as an important part of our cultural heritage, and it is an honour to have this work recognized by Delta Waterfowl. This award proves that Alberta continues to be a world leader in wildlife conservation.”
The Minister will be joined by one ministerial staff member. Mission expenses will be posted on the travel and expense disclosure page.
Quick facts
Alberta offers game bird hunting opportunities – including duck, snow goose and wild turkey – managed to support conservation and sustainable wildlife populations.
Alberta permits youth game bird hunting beginning at age 10, ensuring young hunters and their families can maintain this important cultural activity.
The Province Ranks Second for Retail Trade Growth in May 2025
Today, Statistics Canada shows Saskatchewan’s retail trade remains strong with a 6.4 per cent increase year-over-year in May 2025 over May 2024 (seasonally adjusted). This places the province above the national average of 4.9 per cent and tied for second amongst the provinces.
“The continued growth in our retail sector reflects our province’s strong economy and is leading to more jobs and opportunities for Saskatchewan people,” Trade and Export Development Minister Warren Kaeding said. “When the province’s economy is strong, our residents get better access to the programs and services they need.”
The total value of Saskatchewan’s retail trade reached $2.3 billion in May 2025.
The Monthly Retail Trade Survey compiles data on sales, including e-commerce sales, and the amount of retail locations by province, territory and selected census metropolitan areas from a sample of retailers.
Retail sales is a measure of total receipts at stores, or establishments, that sell goods and services to final consumers.
Statistics Canada’s latest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) numbers indicate that Saskatchewan’s real GDP at basic prices reached an all-time high of $80.5 billion in 2024, increasing by $2.6 billion, or 3.4 per cent. This places Saskatchewan second in the nation for real GDP growth and above the national average of 1.6 per cent.
Private capital investment in Saskatchewan increased last year by 17.3 per cent to $14.7 billion, ranking first among provinces. Private capital investment is projected to reach $16.2 billion in 2025, an increase of 10.1 per cent over 2024. This is the second highest anticipated percentage increase among the provinces.
Last year, the Government of Saskatchewan unveiled its new Securing the Next Decade of Growth – Saskatchewan’s Investment Attraction Strategy. This strategy, combined with Saskatchewan’s trade and investment website, InvestSK.ca, contains helpful information for investors and outlines why Saskatchewan continues to be the best place to do business in Canada.
Headline: Patio Furniture Company Grosfillex Inc. to Pay $4.9 Million to Resolve Allegations it Evaded Duties on Extruded Aluminum from the PRC
The Justice Department announced today that Grosfillex Inc. (Grosfillex), a patio furniture company located in Pennsylvania, has agreed to pay $4.9 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act and other statutes by evading antidumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) on items made of extruded aluminum originating from the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Headline: Patio Furniture Company Grosfillex Inc. to Pay $4.9 Million to Resolve Allegations it Evaded Duties on Extruded Aluminum from the PRC
The Justice Department announced today that Grosfillex Inc. (Grosfillex), a patio furniture company located in Pennsylvania, has agreed to pay $4.9 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act and other statutes by evading antidumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) on items made of extruded aluminum originating from the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
egistration is now open for the 2025 Oregon Women Veterans Conference, the state’s largest gathering dedicated to honoring and supporting women who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces. The biennial event, hosted by the Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs, will bring together women veterans from across Oregon for a weekend of connection, resources and recognition.
The event is free and open to all women veterans, but registration is required. The 2025 Oregon Women Veterans Conference is being held on Saturday, September 27, 2025, at the Riverhouse Lodge in Bend, which was the planned location of the 2020 event that was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This year’s theme, ‘Stronger Together: Community and Connection,’ reflects the heart of what this conference is all about,” said Dr. Nakeia Council Daniels, director of the Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs. “Women veterans have long served with distinction, strength and resilience — often in the face of tremendous challenges and barriers.
“This conference is an opportunity to honor our service, share our stories, and ensure every woman who has worn the uniform feels seen, valued and supported. We are stronger when we stand together, and united, we will continue to drive the ODVA mission forward.”
The Oregon Women Veterans Conference began nearly 30 years ago as a grassroots effort by a small group of women veterans seeking connection, support, and resources. Since the first event in 1998, the conference has grown into a unique statewide gathering that brings together women veterans from across Oregon to access benefits, build meaningful connections, and amplify their voices.
The 2025 conference will continue that legacy with inspiring keynote speakers, engaging workshops, fantastic networking opportunities and assistance for women veterans connecting to the full range of benefits and resources they have earned. It is a supportive space where women who have served can connect, grow, and thrive beyond their military service.
This year’s keynote speaker is Erin McMahon, director of the Oregon Department of Emergency Management and a retired U.S. Army brigadier general, attorney and combat veteran. During her 24-year career in the U.S. Army, McMahon served as the principal deputy general counsel for the National Guard Bureau, advising senior leaders through a wide variety of domestic disaster responses and serving as the first female Army National Guard general officer in the Office of the General Counsel.
Registration is free and may be completed online at www.eventbrite.com/e/odva-women-veterans-conference-tickets-1407725487829. Generous support from Oregon Lottery and other sponsors help ensure this conference is open to all women veterans free of charge.
Registration for the Women Veterans Conference covers the event only; attendees are expected to make their own lodging and travel arrangements. More information about the Women Veterans Conference, including local lodging, donations and sponsorship opportunities, can be found online at wvc.oregondva.com.
On Monday, July 28, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) will reduce traffic to one lane on the bridge that carries Eddy Street over I-95. An alternating traffic pattern both north and southbound will be in place indefinitely as work on this bridge begins and continues. The Eddy Street Bridge is rated as structurally deficient.
This change is part of the I-95 15 Bridges project which will remove 15 bridges from the state’s backlog of poor and fair-to-poor condition bridges along I-95 and Route 10 between Providence and Warwick. Nine of these bridges are structurally deficient. Three are rated among the top five most-traveled, structurally deficient bridges in Rhode Island.
All construction projects are subject to changes in schedule and scope depending on needs, circumstances, findings and weather.
This project is made possible by RhodeWorks. Learn more at www.ridot.net/RhodeWorks.
The Justice Department announced today that Grosfillex Inc. (Grosfillex), a patio furniture company located in Pennsylvania, has agreed to pay $4.9 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claims Act and other statutes by evading antidumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) on items made of extruded aluminum originating from the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
The Department of Commerce assesses, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) collects, antidumping and countervailing duties (AD/CVD) to level the playing field for domestic producers. Antidumping duties protect against foreign companies “dumping” products on U.S. markets at prices below cost, while countervailing duties offset foreign government subsidies. The settlement announced today resolves allegations that Grosfillex knowingly submitted, and caused to be submitted, false customs forms to CBP claiming that certain furniture parts made of extruded aluminum were not subject to AD/CVD. For a subset of such parts, the United States alleged that Grosfillex attempted to camouflage the aluminum extrusions by packaging the parts as sham furniture “kits.” In addition, for a different subset of such parts, Grosfillex knowingly failed to correct customs forms it had submitted previously, even after learning that the forms falsely stated to CBP that certain extruded aluminum parts were not subject to AD/CVD.
“Antidumping and countervailing duties protect American companies from unfair subsidies and trade practices that harm domestic industries,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “Today’s settlement demonstrates that the Justice Department will continue to actively pursue those who knowingly fail to pay customs duties.”
“This settlement should serve as a warning that the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania will use every tool available to combat fraud in international trade,” said U.S. Attorney David Metcalf for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. “We will pursue those who seek an unfair advantage in U.S. markets by attempting to evade paying the customs, duties, or tariffs on foreign imports meant to level the playing field for U.S. manufacturers.”
“The investigation into Grosfillex Inc. highlights our relentless dedication to enforcing our nation’s trade laws and protecting the integrity of our economy. By uncovering and dismantling intricate schemes to defraud the government, we ensure that all businesses operate on a fair and level playing field,” said Special Agent in Charge Edward V. Owens of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) at the Philadelphia office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “The successful settlement of this case is a testament to the outstanding collaboration between HSI, CBP and the U.S. Department of Justice. We remain vigilant in our efforts to identify and hold accountable those who attempt to exploit our trade system for their benefit.”
The allegations resolved by this settlement arose from a whistleblower lawsuit filed under the False Claims Act by Edward Wisner, a former employee of Grosfillex. Under the False Claims Act, private citizens can sue on behalf of the government and share in any recovery. Wisner will receive a $962,662.74 share of today’s settlement.
The settlement was the result of a coordinated effort between the Civil Division’s Commercial Litigation Branch, Fraud Section, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, with assistance from CBP.
Trial Attorney Nelson Wagner in the Civil Division’s Commercial Litigation Branch, Fraud Section, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Sherer for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania handled the matter.
The pursuit of this matter illustrates the government’s emphasis on combating fraud, waste, and abuse. One of the most powerful tools in this effort is the False Claims Act. Tips and complaints from all sources about potential customs fraud can be reported to CBP at www.help.cbp.gov/s/tip.
The claims resolved by the settlement are allegations only and there has been no determination of liability.
Affluenz Magazine (www.TheAffluenz.com) has announced the appointment of Anna Ochigbo as its new Creative Director, marking a significant step in the evolution of the globally recognized publication as it deepens its editorial presence and expands its influence across luxury, leadership, and culture.
Ochigbo, who also serves as Executive Director at Dotmount Communications, the Washington DC based parent company of Affluenz, brings to the role a distinguished background in media strategy, creative leadership, and brand development. Her appointment follows the successful release of the magazine’s July and August 2025 issue, which pays tribute to the legacy of the founding father of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, while profiling some of Africa’s most influential cultural and business leaders.
In her new role, Ochigbo will direct the magazine’s overall visual and editorial identity. Her responsibilities include curating covers, guiding cross platform storytelling, and ensuring each edition reflects Affluenz’s core mission of showcasing global excellence, innovation, and influence.
Adedotun Olaoluwa, Founder and Executive Publisher of Affluenz Magazine, described her appointment as both timely and transformative.
Anna possesses a rare creative intuition and an unmatched ability to craft visual narratives that resonate globally. Her leadership comes at a crucial moment as we reimagine Affluenz for a more interconnected, sophisticated, and culturally dynamic audience, Olaoluwa said.
Beyond her achievements in luxury publishing, Ochigbo played a central role in coordinating Dotmount Communications’ flagship event, the Middle East Investors Expo held in 2024, which convened investors, policymakers, and innovators from across the Middle East and Africa. Under her leadership, the event received global media attention and positioned Dotmount as a trusted platform for strategic investment communications.
Ochigbo is also deeply committed to humanitarian work. She plays a leading role in supporting the Hoplites African Aid Foundation (HAAF), a vibrant nonprofit organization dedicated to uplifting communities across Africa through a multifaceted approach that goes beyond traditional health interventions. Originally established in April 2021 as the Hoplites Sickle Cell Foundation, HAAF has since evolved into a broader movement championing sustainable healthcare access, inclusive education, and community development for underserved populations.
Her portfolio extends to international campaigns in culture, philanthropy, and executive branding, where she has earned recognition for fusing luxury aesthetics with meaningful, high impact content.
In a statement following her appointment, Ochigbo shared her excitement about shaping the creative future of the magazine.
Affluenz is more than a magazine. It is a celebration of legacy, innovation, and global identity. I am honored to lead its creative direction at a time when storytelling must be both beautiful and bold. We will not just reflect excellence, we will help define it, she said.
Her first issue as Creative Director is now on sale, featuring a curated selection of in depth profiles, essays, and visual stories that highlight global influence across business, diplomacy, culture, and philanthropy.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of The Affluenz (formerly Pleasures Magazine).
Sonatel’s Board of Directors today announced the appointment of Mr. Brelotte BA as Chief Executive Officer of the Sonatel Group.
Mr. Brelotte BA will succeed Mr. Sékou DRAME whose mandate ends on July 31, 2025.
The Board of Directors of Sonatel thanked Mr. Sékou DRAME for his commitment, his appreciable contributions to the development of the company since his appointment in 2018 as Chief Executive Officer.
Mr. Brelotte BA, who will take up his position on August 1st, 2025, has 24 years of professional experience in the telecommunications sector. He was, since 2022, Deputy Managing Director of Orange Middle East Africa. He has spent most of his professional career within the Sonatel Group where he held important positions, notably:
Management Controller of the Sonatel group (2003 – 2007)
Director of Commercial Marketing and Communications for Orange Guinea (2007-2008),
General Manager of Orange Bissau (2008-2011),
Director of Operators and International Relations at Sonatel (2011-2012),
General Manager of Orange Guinea (2017-2018),
General Manager of Orange Mali (2018-2022).
Mr. Brelotte BA also held the position of Managing Director of Orange Niger (2012-2017).
Mr. Brelotte BA is a graduate engineer from the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris, and the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées.
The Board of Directors congratulates Mr. Brelotte BA on his appointment and wishes him every success in his new tasks.
He will be able to count on the support of the Board of Directors for Sonatel to maintain its leadership and remain a key player in the development of the digital economy and digital transformation in Africa.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Orange Middle East and Africa.
This morning, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) questioned Sean Plankey—President Donald Trump’s nominee to be Director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—and secured his pledge to refocus the agency on protecting America’s critical infrastructure instead of propping up Biden-era government censorship.
“Let me just read some of the euphemisms that your predecessor used to talk about CISA’s mission in the censorship effort: ‘narrative control,’ ‘perception management’—’information integrity’ is my favorite,” Senator Hawley said. “You’re telling me that you’re going to get CISA out of the business of policing ‘narrative control?’” the Senator asked, to which Plankey affirmed.
[embedded content]
Watch the full exchange here.
Senator Hawley reminded Plankey and his Senate colleagues of the gross First Amendment abuses Americans faced online under the direction of the Biden Administration’s CISA. The agency’s wide-ranging censorship shut down posts about “COVID-19, vaccines, elections, school-board meetings.”
Breaking with his Biden-era predecessors, Plankey assured the Senator that “it is not CISA’s job, and nor is it in its authorities, to censor or determine the truths, whether it be on social media or at any level of media.” If confirmed for the role, Plankey said he would, “like to focus CISA on what it’s mandated to do and that’s protect the federal civilian executive branch, as well as protect the critical infrastructure of the United States.”
Source: United States Senator for Wyoming Cynthia Lummis
Washington, D.C. – Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), along with Representative Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), today introduced the STUDENT Act, legislation that would impose necessary limitations and conditions on the National Education Association’s (NEA) federal charter to bring it in line with other federally chartered organizations and redirect it toward its original purpose of supporting teachers in America.
The NEA, which received its federal charter through an act of Congress, has strayed far from its original educational mission. Despite claiming to be “non-partisan,” the nation’s largest union has repeatedly supported divisive political causes through endorsements and financial contributions that harm students’ education and undermine parental rights. Earlier this month, the NEA members voted to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) over its support for Israel.
“The NEA has exploited its federal charter to advance a radical political agenda that puts ideology before education,” said Sen. Lummis. “Wyoming parents and teachers deserve better than a union that prioritizes woke politics over student achievement. The resolution passed at the NEA Representative Assembly to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League because of its support for Israel is abhorrent and does nothing to stem the rising tide of antisemitic incidents we’ve witnessed nationwide. Federal charters should be reserved for organizations that serve patriotic, charitable, historical, or educational purposes – not for unions that push divisive and antisemitic ideologies.”
“The NEA long ago transformed from an educational association into a political machine, pushing a progressive agenda that puts activists ahead of students’ needs,” said Congressman Scott Fitzgerald. “The STUDENT Act reins in NEA’s federal charter, restores accountability, and demands a return to its original purpose: educating, not indoctrinating, American children.”
“The National Education Association has failed to respect its duties as a federally chartered organization or as a steward of children’s education,” said Sen. Ricketts. “Rather than promote educational outcomes, they promote a radical agenda that supports illegal immigration and teaches harmful gender ideology. It is time for Congress to restore oversight of the entity it created and make sure young Americans receive the education they deserve.”
“Rep. Fitzgerald and Sen. Lummis should be commended for their leadership in introducing the STUDENT Act, which would address some of the NEA’s most concerning conduct and make it more accountable to the public and even its own members,” said Freedom Foundation CEO Aaron Withe. “The Freedom Foundation is proud to stand with these courageous lawmakers in the fight to restore sanity to public education.”
“The Endowment for Middle East Truth, EMET, is proud to endorse the STUDENT Act,” said Sarah Stern, President of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET). “We solidly stand behind the ADL’s fight against the rising tide of antisemitism, which has skyrocketed in our country since October 7, 2023, as well as their position on Israel. We are appalled by the National Education Association’s blatant refusal to entertain the ADL’s professional, fair and balanced point of view, and that they have chosen to take a position that effectively condones Hamas’ atrocities against the Jewish people. It’s unfortunate that the NEA no longer works to fulfil its core mission of advancing an American bias-free education and has instead dedicated itself to political indoctrination and prejudice.”
In addition to Senators Lummis and Ricketts, U.S. Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), Jim Risch (R-ID), and Tim Sheehy (R-MT) are original cosponsors.
Background:
A 2023 Freedom Foundation report revealed that the NEA’s federal charter is unusually brief compared to other Title 36 federally-chartered organizations, allowing the union to operate with minimal oversight while enjoying taxpayer-funded benefits.
Key Provisions of the STUDENT Act:
Bans promotion of antisemitic beliefs, including harmful stereotypes about Jewish people, Holocaust denial or minimization, and hatred based on Jewish identity or connection to Israel
Prohibits the union from promoting or requiring adherence to critical race theory concepts.
Prohibits the NEA from engaging in electoral politics and lobbying, a restriction included in 60 percent of federal charters;
Eliminates the NEA’s exemption from Washington, D.C. property taxes
Requires explicit member consent for all dues and fees
Mandates comprehensive record-keeping and document accountability
Directs all assets to the Department of Treasury if the NEA dissolves
Prohibits discrimination and hiring quotas
Prevents the NEA and its affiliates from calling strikes or work stoppages
Requires all NEA officers to be U.S. citizens
Establishes transparent governance standards
So far, the STUDENT Act has been endorsed by the following state and national organizations:
Source: United States Senator for South Carolina Lindsey Graham
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and John Cornyn (R-Texas), both senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today called on U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to appoint a special counsel to investigate the Obama Administration’s involvement in the Russia collusion hoax.
“For the good of the country, we urge Attorney General Bondi to appoint a special counsel to investigate the extent to which former President Obama, his staff and administration officials manipulated the U.S. national security apparatus for a political outcome.
“As we have supported in the past, appointing an independent special counsel would do the country a tremendous service in this case.
“With every piece of information that gets released, it becomes more evident that the entire Russia collusion hoax was created by the Obama Administration to subvert the will of the American people.
“Democrats and the liberal media have been out to get President Trump since 2016. There must be an immediate investigation of what we believe to be an unprecedented and clear abuse of power by a U.S. presidential administration.”
Background:
Last week, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard released evidence demonstrating that former President Barack Obama and his national security staff manipulated information from the intelligence community in order to insinuate that Russia was attempting to help then-candidate Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election, including:
In the months leading up to the November 2016 election, the Intelligence Community (IC) assessed that Russia is “probably not trying … to influence the election by using cyber means.”
On December 7, 2016, after the election, talking points were prepared for DNI James Clapper stating, “Foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the US Presidential election outcome.”
A declassified copy of the Presidential Daily Brief, which was prepared using intelligence from the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, FBI, National Security Agency, Department of Homeland Security, State Department, and open sources, for Obama on December 8, 2016, assessed that “Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.”
That Presidential Daily Brief was scheduled to be published on December 9, 2016, but communications revealed that DNI Clapper’s office stopped its publication “based on some new guidance”.
On December 9, 2016, Obama gathered top National Security Council Principals for a meeting in the Situation Room that included James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe and others, to discuss Russia.
After the meeting, DNI Clapper’s Executive Assistant sent an email to IC leaders tasking them with creating a new IC assessment “per the President’s request”that details the “tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election.” It went on to say, “ODNI will lead this effort with participation from CIA, FBI, NSA, and DHS.”
Obama officials leaked false statements to media outlets, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, claiming, “Russia has attempted through cyber means to interfere in, if not actively influence, the outcome of an election.”
On January 6, 2017, a new Intelligence Community Assessment was released.
Source: United States Senator for Nebraska Deb Fischer
Advances additional provision to enhance roadway safety
Today, U.S. Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, announced she advanced over $60 million in funding to support critical infrastructure projects and firefighting capabilities across Nebraska.
The funding was included in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development (THUD) Appropriations Act, which now awaits consideration on the Senate Floor.“From roads and bridges to railways and airports — our infrastructure keeps Nebraska’s communities connected. It allows our farmers and ranchers to bring their goods to market and enables us to travel to work or school. By investing in infrastructure, we are investing in our future. I’m proud to advance these critical investments which will improve our state’s infrastructure for Nebraska’s families and make our Good Life even better,” Fischer said.Fischer advanced funding to support critical investments in Nebraska’s infrastructure:
$6 million to the Alliance Airport for electrical improvements
$6 million to add safety enhancements to the Heartland Expressway
$5.2 million to replace the Lisco Bridge in Garden County
$5 million to extend the runway and parallel taxiway at the Blair Airport
$4.7 million to pave a 4-mile stretch of Hickory Road in Gage County
$4 million to road improvements for Fairbury Highway 36
$4 million to improve the lighting system at the Hastings Airport
$3.5 million to improve walkability and safety of downtown Omaha
$3.4 million to complete the parallel taxiway and improve the lighting system at the Nebraska City Airport
$3.4 million to make improvements to roads in Sheridan and Garden County
$3.2 million to make roadway improvements on Cedar River Road in Garfield County
$2.2 million to reconstruct the 9th street roadway in Stromsburg
$897,000 to replace or repair multiple bridges in Brown County
$880,000 to pave the Adams Bypass
$700,000 to pave the roadway and improve access to the local grain elevator in Exeter
$600,000 to relocate the Midfield Connector Taxiway at Brenner Field Airport in Falls City
Fischer advanced funding to support Nebraska’s firefighting capabilities:
$2.5 million to replace South Sioux City’s aerial ladder fire truck
$1.8 million to replace Plattsmouth’s aerial ladder fire truck
$1.3 million to upgrade Friend’s fire hall facilities
$1.3 million to upgrade Clatonia’s fire hall facilities
Fischer advanced key provision to enhance roadway safety:
Advanced language from Fischer’s She DRIVES Act by directing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to adopt the most advanced crash test dummies.
