We all need to learn how to place trust in others. It’s easy to be misled. Someone who doesn’t deserve trust can appear a lot like someone who does – and part of growing up in a society is developing the ability to tell the difference.
An important part of this is learning about the signals people give about themselves. These might be a smile, a style of dressing or a way of speaking. In particular, we use accents to make decisions about others – especially in the UK.
But what if people adapt or change their accents to fit into a certain social group or geographical area? Our past research has shown that native speakers are pretty good at spotting such speech. We’ve now published a follow-up study that supports and further strengthens our original results.
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We associate accents with places, classes and groups. Research shows that even infants use accents to determine whether they think someone is considered trustworthy. This can be a problem – studies have demonstrated that accents can affect someone’s odds of getting a job – and potentially the likelihood of being found guilty of a crime.
As with most topics in the social sciences, evolutionary theory has a lot to say about this process. Scientists are interested in understanding how people send and receive signals like accents, how those signals affect relationships between people and how, in turn, those relationships affect us.
But because accents can affect how we treat each other, we’d expect some people to try to change them for personal gain. A social chameleon who can pretend to be a member of any social class or group is likely to win trust within each – assuming they are not caught.
If that’s true, though, then we’d expect people to also be good at detecting when someone is “faking” it – what we call mimicry – setting up a kind of arms race between those who want to deceive us into trusting them and those who try to catch deceivers out.
Over the last few years, we’ve looked into how well people detect accent mimicry. Last year we found that generally speaking, people in the UK and Ireland are strong at this, detecting mimicked accents in the UK and Ireland better than we’d expect by chance alone.
What was more interesting, though, was that native listeners from the specific places of the imitated accent – Belfast, Glasgow and Dublin – were a lot better at this task than were non-natives or native listeners from further away in the UK, like Essex.
Beyond the UK
Our new findings went further, though. Of the roughly 2,000 people that participated, more than 1,500 were this time based in English-speaking countries outside the UK, including the US, Canada and Australia. And on average, this group did a lot worse at detecting mimicked accents from seven different regions in the UK and Ireland than did people from the UK.
In fact, people from places other than the UK barely did better than we’d expect by chance, while people who were native listeners were right between about two-thirds and three-quarters of the time.
As we argued in our original article, we believe it’s local cultural tensions — tribalism, classism or even warfare — that explain the differences. For example, as someone commented to me some time ago, people living in Belfast in the 1970s and 80s – a time of huge political tension – needed to be attuned to the accents of those around them. Hearing something off, like an out-group member’s accent, could signal an imminent threat.
This wouldn’t have put the same pressures on people living in a more peaceful regions. In fact, we found that people living in large, multicultural and largely peaceful areas, such as London, didn’t need to pay much attention to the accents of those around them and were worse at detecting mimicked accents.
The further you move out from the native accent, too, the less likely a listener is to place emphasis on or notice anything wrong with a local accent. Someone living in the US is likely to pay even less attention to an imitation Belfast accent than is someone living in London, and accordingly will be worse at detecting mimicry. Likewise, someone growing up in Australia would be better at spotting a mimicked Australian accent than a Brit.
So while accents, and our ability to detect differences in accents, probably evolved to help us place trust more effectively at a broad level, it’s the cultural environment that shapes that process at the local level.
Together, this has the unfortunate effect that we sometimes place a lot more emphasis on accents than we should. How someone speaks should be a lot less important than what is said.
Still, accents drive how people treat each other at every level of society, just as other signals, be they tattoos, smiles or clothes, that tell us something about another person’s background or heritage.
Learning how these processes work and why they evolved is critical for overcoming them – and helping us to override the biases that so often prevent us from placing trust in people who deserve it.
Jonathan R. Goodman receives funding from the Wellcome Trust (grant no. 220540/Z/20/A).
The UK has historically been held up as leading democracy with free and fair elections. However, our new report shows election quality in the UK is now ranked in the bottom half of countries in Europe.
The Global Electoral Integrity Report provides scores for election quality around the world. It defines electoral integrity as the extent to which elections empower citizens.
Iceland received the highest score for an election that took place in 2024, the “year of elections” during which 1.6 billion people went to the polls, according to Time Magazine. This was an unprecedented concentration of democratic activity in a single year. Iceland has a successful system of automatic voter registration and an electoral system that is judged to be fair to smaller parties.
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Countries that scored highly based on their most recent election include Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Finland and Lithuania. Those at the opposite end of the scale include Syria, Belarus, Egypt, and Nicaragua. The UK is ranked 24th out of 39 countries in Europe. It is below Estonia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Austria, Luxembourg and Slovakia. It is ranked 53rd out of 170 countries overall.
The US also saw a decline. The beacons for electoral democracy are therefore now found in mainland Europe (most notably Scandinavia), Australasia, South America and the southern parts of Africa – rather than the UK and US. The centre of global democratic authority has shifted away from Westminster.
There remain many areas of strength in UK elections. UK electoral officials show professionalism and independence and there is no concern about the integrity of the vote counting process. There is no evidence of widespread electoral fraud.
A major weakness is in the fairness of the electoral rules for small parties. The electoral system generated a very disproportional result in 2024. Labour took nearly two-thirds of the seats in parliament, a total of 412, with less than 10 million votes (only 34% of votes cast). Labour won a massive majority in terms of parliamentary arithmetic but the the government did not enter office with widespread support.
By contrast, Reform and the Greens received 6 million votes between them, but only nine MPs. The electoral system may have worked when Britain had a two-party system – but the two-party system no longer holds. Today’s Britain is more diverse, and political support is more distributed.
The UK also scores poorly on voter registration. It is estimated that there are around 7 million to 8 million people not correctly registered or missing from the registers entirely. This is not many less than the 9.7 million people whose votes gave the government a landslide majority. The UK does not have a system of automatic voter registration, which is present in global leaders such as Iceland, where everyone is enrolled without a hiccup.
Another problem is participation. Turnout in July 2024 was low – with only half of adults voting. Voting has been made more difficult as the Elections Act of 2022 introduced compulsory photographic identification for the first time at the general election. This was thought to have made it more difficult for many citizens to vote because the UK does not have a national identity card which all citizens hold.
Meanwhile, there are further swirling headwinds. The spread of disinformation by overseas actors in elections has become a prominent challenge around the world and there was evidence of disinformation in this campaign too. Violence during the electoral period was thought to have been removed from British elections in Victorian times. But more than half candidates experience abuse and intimidation during the electoral period.
Action needed
One year into its time in office, the government is yet to act on this issue. The word “democracy” was missing from the prime minister’s strategic defence review, despite the emphasis on protecting the UK from Russia, a country known for electoral interference and other forms of attack on democracies.
This was a sharp contrast to the former government’s 2021 review, which emphasised that a “world in which democratic societies flourish and fundamental human rights are protected is one that is more conducive to our sovereignty, security and prosperity as a nation”.
In its election manifesto, Labour promised to “address the inconsistencies in voter ID rules”, “improve voter registration” and give 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote in all elections. There needs to be firm action on electoral system change, automatic voter registration, campaign finance reform, voter identification changes and other areas.
There are a complex set of challenges facing democracy and elections. New technological challenges, change in attitudes, international hostility and new emergencies are combining to batter the door of democracy down.
International organisations are increasingly stressing that political leaders need to work together and take proactive action to protect elections against autocratic forces. This means not only supporting democracy in their messages on the world stage – but also introducing reforms to create beacons of democracy in their own countries.
Toby James has previously received funding from the AHRC, ESRC, Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, Electoral Commission, Nuffield Foundation, the McDougall Trust and Unlock Democracy. His current research is funded by the Canadian SSHRC.
Holly Ann Garnett receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Defence Academy Research Programme. She has previously received funding from: the British Academy, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the NATO Public Diplomacy Division, the American Political Science Association Centennial Centre, and the Conference of Defence Associations.
Scopolamine, more chillingly known as “devil’s breath,” is a drug with a dual identity. In medicine, it’s used to prevent motion sickness and nausea. But in the criminal underworld, particularly in parts of South America, it has gained a dark reputation as a substance that can erase memory, strip away free will and facilitate serious crimes. Now, its presence may be sparking fresh concerns in the UK.
While most reports of devil’s breath come from countries like Colombia, concerns about its use in Europe are not new. In 2015, three people were arrested in Paris for allegedly using the drug to rob victims, turning them into compliant “zombies”.
The UK’s first known murder linked to scopolamine was reported in 2019 when the Irish dancer Adrian Murphy was poisoned by thieves attempting to sell items stolen from him. In a more recent case in London, a woman reported symptoms consistent with scopolamine exposure after being targeted on public transport.
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Scopolamine, also known as hycosine, is a tropane alkaloid, a type of plant-derived compound found in the nightshade family (Solanaceae). It has a long history: indigenous communities in South America traditionally used it for spiritual rituals due to its potent psychoactive effects.
In modern medicine, scopolamine (marketed in the UK as hyoscine hydrobromide) is prescribed to prevent motion sickness, nausea, vomiting and muscle spasms. It also reduces saliva production before surgery. Brand names include Kwells (tablets) and Scopoderm (patches).
As an anticholinergic drug, scopolamine blocks the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which plays a vital role in memory, learning, and coordination. Blocking it helps reduce nausea by interrupting signals from the balance (vestibular) system to the brain. But it also comes with side effects, especially when used in high doses or outside a clinical setting.
How it affects the brain
Scopolamine disrupts the cholinergic system, which is central to memory formation and retrieval. As a result, it can cause temporary but severe memory loss: a key reason it’s been weaponised in crimes. Some studies also suggest it increases oxidative stress in the brain, compounding its effects on cognition.
The drug’s power to erase memory, sometimes described as “zombifying”, has made it a focus of forensic and criminal interest. Victims often describe confusion, hallucinations and a complete loss of control.
Recreational users are drawn to its hallucinogenic effects – but the line between tripping and toxic is razor thin.
In Colombia and other parts of South America, scopolamine, also known as burundanga, has been implicated in countless robberies and sexual assaults. Victims describe feeling dreamlike, compliant, and unable to resist or recall events. That’s what makes it so sinister – it robs people of both agency and memory.
The drug is often administered surreptitiously. In its powdered form, it’s odourless and tasteless, making it easy to slip into drinks or blow into someone’s face, as some victims have reported. Online forums detail how to make teas or infusions from plant parts, seeds, roots, flowers – heightening the risk of DIY misuse.
Once ingested, the drug works quickly and exits the body within about 12 hours, making it hard to detect in routine drug screenings. For some people, even a dose under 10mg can be fatal.
Signs of scopolamine poisoning include rapid heartbeat and palpitations, dry mouth and flushed skin, blurred vision, confusion and disorientation, hallucinations and drowsiness.
If you experience any of these, especially after an unexpected drink or interaction, seek medical attention immediately.
Dipa Kamdar 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 Martin Farr, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History, Newcastle University
Each is the main political subject in their country, and one is the main political subject in the world. Each rode the populist wave in 2016, campaigning for the other. In 2024 the tandem surfers remounted on to an even greater breaker. Yet, though nothing has happened to suggest that bromance is dead, neither Donald Trump nor Nigel Farage publicly now speak of the other.
Trump’s presidential campaign shared personnel with Leave.eu, the unofficial Brexit campaign. Farage was on the stump with Trump, and his “bad boys of Brexit” made their pilgrimage to Trump Tower after its owner’s own triumph in the US election. Each exulted in the other’s success, and what it portended.
Trump duly proposed giving the UK ambassadorship to the United States to Farage. Instead, Farage became not merely MP for Clacton, but leader of the first insurgent party to potentially reset Britain’s electoral calculus since Labour broke through in 1922.
Then, Labour’s challenge was to replace the Liberals as the alternative party of government. It took two years. Reform UK could replace the Conservatives in four.
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Trump, meanwhile, has achieved what in Britain has either been thwarted (Militant and the Labour party in the 1980s) or has at most had temporary, aberrant, success (Momentum and the Labour party in the 2010s): the takeover of a party from within. Farage has been doing so – hitherto – from without.
At one of those historic forks in a road where change is a matter of chance, after Brexit finally took place, Farage considered his own personal leave – to go and break America.
The path had been trodden by Trump-friendly high-profile provocateurs before him: Steve Hilton, from David Cameron’s Downing Street, via cable news, now standing to be governor of California; Piers Morgan, off to CNN to replace the doyen of cable news Larry King, only to crash, but then to burn on, online. Liz Truss, never knowingly understated, has found her safe space – the rightwing speaking circuit.
But Farage remained stateside. He knew his domestic platform was primed more fully to exploit the voter distrust that his nationalist crusade had done so much to provoke.
The Trump effect
Genuine peacetime transatlantic affiliations are rare, usually confined to the leaders of established parties: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. One consequence of the 2016 political shift is that the US Republicans and the British Conservatives, the latter still at least partially tethered to traditional politics, have become distanced.
During the first Trump administration, and even in the build up to the second, it was Farage who was seen as the UK’s bridge to the president. But today, at the peak of their influence, for Farage association can only be by inference, friendship with the US president is not – put mildly – of political advantage. For UK voters, Trump is the 19th most popular foreign politician, in between the King of Denmark and Benjamin Netanyahu.
There is, moreover, the “Trump effect”. Measuring this is crude – circumstances differ – but the trend is that elections may be won by openly criticising, rather than associating with, Trump. This was the case for Mark Carney in Canada, Anthony Albanese in Australia, and Nicușor Dan in Romania.
Trump’s second state visit to the UK will certainly be less awkward for Farage than it will be Starmer, the man who willed it. Farage will likely not – and has no reason to – be seen welcoming so divisive a figure.
Starmer has no choice but to, and to do so ostentatiously. It is typical of Starmer’s perfect storm of an administration that he will, in the process, do nothing to appeal to the sliver of British voters partial to Trump while further shredding his reputation with Labour voters. Farage would be well served in taking one of his tactical European sojourns for the duration. Starmer may be tempted too.
Outmanoeuvring the establishment
Reflecting the historic cultural differences of their countries, Trump’s prescription is less state, Farage’s is more. The Farage of 2025 that is. He had been robustly Thatcherite, but has lately embraced socialist interventionism, albeit through a most Thatcherite analysis: “the gap in the market was enormous”.
Reform UK now appears to stand for what Labour – in the mind of many of its voters – ought to. Eyeing the opportunity of smokestack grievances, Farage called for state control of steel production even as Trump was considering quite how high a tariff to put on it. Nationalisation and economic nationalism: associated restoratives for national malaise.
Aggressively heteronormative, Trump and Farage dabble in the natalism burgeoning in both countries – as much a cultural as an economic imperative. Each has mastered – and much more than their adversaries – social media. Each has come to recognise the demerits in publicly appeasing Putin.
And Reform’s rise in a hitherto Farage-resistant Scotland can only endear him further to a president whose Hebridean mother was thought of (in desperation) as potentially his Rosebud by British officials preparing for his first administration.
Given their rhetorical selectivity, Trump and Farage’s rolling pitches are almost unanswerable for convention-confined political opponents and reporters. These two anti-elite elitists continue to confound.
Unprecedentedly, for a former president, Trump ran against the incumbent; Farage will continue to exploit anti-incumbency, despite his party now being in office. Most elementally, the pair are bound for life by their very public near-death experiences. Theirs is, by any conceivable measure, an uncommon association.
Farage’s fleetness of foot would be apparent even without comparison with the leaden steps of the leaders of the legacy parties. His is a genius of opportunism. That’s why he knows not to remind us of his confrere across the water.
Martin Farr 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 Alan McKay, Senior Research Assistant for the Centre for Football Research in Wales, University of South Wales
With Women’s Euro 2025 underway, attention is turning not just to the players hoping for glory, but to the head coaches tasked with leading them.
These include England’s Sarina Wiegman, who guided the Netherlands to Euro victory in 2017 and repeated the feat with England in 2022; Spain’s Montse Tomé, the reigning world champions’ first female head coach; and Rhian Wilkinson, who is preparing Wales for their first ever appearance at a major tournament.
The pressure is immense, but what actually makes a good football coach? My colleagues and I recently conducted a study on behalf of the Uefa Academy to better understand this topic.
There are plenty of myths. That the best coaches eat, sleep and breathe football 24/7. That they’re “natural leaders” who inspire through sheer charisma. That success demands constant self-sacrifice. But when coaches try to live up to these ideas, it can leave them feeling burnt out – physically and emotionally exhausted, disconnected from their personal lives and questioning their ability.
In reality, effective coaching is about much more than tactics or motivation. It’s about performance, not just on the pitch, but in the way coaches manage themselves, their staff and their players. A good coach must balance their responsibilities with time for rest and recovery. They must communicate clearly, stay calm under pressure and create an environment where everyone knows their role.
Sarina Wiegman discusses the importance of creating positive environments.
Sarina Wiegman has described her approach in just these terms: “We try to turn every stone to get as best prepared as we can be before we go into the tournament… to perform under the highest pressure.”
But coaches don’t arrive at this mindset by accident. It’s developed through experience and, importantly, through structured education.
One important finding was that the most effective coaches have a strong sense of who they are – including their values, their communication style, and their strengths and limitations. These are things which affect the players and staff with whom they work.
Even top coaches need support
This type of self-awareness is often shaped through formal coach education programmes, where participants work closely with a mentor. These mentors can offer honest feedback, challenge assumptions and help coaches develop a philosophy they can share with their team.
That process is essential at every level, whether it’s grassroots football or the international stage. Coaches who understand themselves and who can use their education are better able to adapt their approach to the context they’re working in. They can build trust, foster unity and know when to step back.
Gareth Southgate, former England men’s head coach, is a fantastic example of this. He has spoken about the importance of supporting the person first and the player second. He has discussed the value of empathy and empowering players to make decisions on and off the pitch.
Through this process, Southgate helped players focus on the “joy of playing for their country” rather than simply achieving results. This may have helped to relieve some of the inevitable pressure and expectations placed on the England squad by the media, fans and English Football Association to win tournaments.
After qualifying, a good coach will continue to seek out their mentor for advice on both professional and personal issues they may be experiencing in their role. Emma Hayes, head coach of the US women’s team, has credited her own mentor with helping her fine tune her leadership style and build team cohesion. Her ability to create a safe, supportive environment was central to Team USA’s gold medal win at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Hayes’ methods demonstrate that coaching is not a destination but a lifelong process. It requires constant learning, reflection and adaptation. The best coaches don’t just chase trophies. They aim to build something lasting – a culture of trust, a resilient team and a space where people can thrive.
As Euro 2025 continues, it’s worth keeping an eye, not just on the scorelines, but on the sidelines. The real mark of a good coach isn’t always found on the scoreboard. It’s found in how a team plays, how they talk about each other and whether they’re still smiling at the end.
Alan McKay received funding from the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to conduct the research mentioned in this article. Alan wishes to acknowledge Professor Brendan Cropley, who was instrumental in conducting this research.
TORONTO, July 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — LNG Energy Group Corp. (TSXV: LNGE) (TSXV: LNGE.WT) (OTCQB: LNGNF) (FWB: E26) (the “Company” or “LNG Energy Group”) announces that the Failure-to-File Cease Trade Orders in Multiple Jurisdictions (FFTCO) continues and that the Company expects to file the Company’s annual audited financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, the related management’s discussion and analysis, and the CEO and CFO certificates relating to the audited annual financial statements as required by National Instrument 52-109 – Certification of Disclosure in Issuers’ Annual and Interim Filings (collectively, the “Required Documents”) for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, within the timeframe granted by the Ontario Securities Commission (the “OSC”). Such filings will constitute the Company’s application to have the FFCTO revoked. There can be no assurance that the FFCTO will be revoked on the timeline contemplated by the Company.
As part of the strategic review process the Company announced on December 04, 2024, the Company has contemplated with its financial and legal advisors a number of alternatives including financings, corporate reorganization, strategic partnerships, acquisitions, assets spin-offs and/or farm-outs, sale, and other forms of business combination. As part of this process, the Company has decided to terminate the long-term Gas Sales Agreements in place, and it will evaluate natural gas marketing alternatives more in tune with its current sales volumes and present market conditions. Lenders under the Credit Agreement have notified the Company of an event of default under its Credit Agreement, and LNG Energy Group and the lenders are in conversations about the situation. The Company’s Colombian branch applied for admittance into the Proceso de Recuperación Empresarial (“PRES”) as regulated under the Colombia Law 2437 of 2024, for insolvency protection, which should result in operations optimization and renegotiation of obligations with suppliers and other parties.
LNG Energy Group continues with its initiatives to stabilize natural gas production, optimize costs and enhance its liquidity position. We expect to announce soon the results of this comprehensive strategic review process.
AboutLNGEnergyGroup
The Company is focused on the acquisition and development of natural gas production and exploration assets in Latin America. For more information, please visit www.lngenergygroup.com.
This news release contains certain forward-looking information that reflect the current views and/or expectations of management of LNG Energy Group with respect to performance, business and future events. Forward-looking information can often be identified by words such as “may”, “will”, “would”, “could”, “should”, “believes”, “estimates”, “projects”, “potential”, “expects”, “plans”, “intends”, “anticipates”, “targeted”, “continues”, “forecasts”, “designed”, “goal”, or the negative of those words or other similar or comparable words. Forward-looking statements are based on the then-current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the business and the industry and markets in which LNG Energy Group operates. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking information, readers should not place undue reliance on such information. The risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the anticipating timing of filing the Required Documents. Forward-looking information is current as of the date it is made and is based on reasonable estimates and assumptions made by us at the relevant time in light of our experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors that we believe are appropriate and reasonable in the circumstances. LNG Energy Group does not undertake any obligation to release publicly any revisions for updating any voluntary forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities law.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
TORONTO, July 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — LNG Energy Group Corp. (TSXV: LNGE) (TSXV: LNGE.WT) (OTCQB: LNGNF) (FWB: E26) (the “Company” or “LNG Energy Group”) announces that the Failure-to-File Cease Trade Orders in Multiple Jurisdictions (FFTCO) continues and that the Company expects to file the Company’s annual audited financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, the related management’s discussion and analysis, and the CEO and CFO certificates relating to the audited annual financial statements as required by National Instrument 52-109 – Certification of Disclosure in Issuers’ Annual and Interim Filings (collectively, the “Required Documents”) for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, within the timeframe granted by the Ontario Securities Commission (the “OSC”). Such filings will constitute the Company’s application to have the FFCTO revoked. There can be no assurance that the FFCTO will be revoked on the timeline contemplated by the Company.
As part of the strategic review process the Company announced on December 04, 2024, the Company has contemplated with its financial and legal advisors a number of alternatives including financings, corporate reorganization, strategic partnerships, acquisitions, assets spin-offs and/or farm-outs, sale, and other forms of business combination. As part of this process, the Company has decided to terminate the long-term Gas Sales Agreements in place, and it will evaluate natural gas marketing alternatives more in tune with its current sales volumes and present market conditions. Lenders under the Credit Agreement have notified the Company of an event of default under its Credit Agreement, and LNG Energy Group and the lenders are in conversations about the situation. The Company’s Colombian branch applied for admittance into the Proceso de Recuperación Empresarial (“PRES”) as regulated under the Colombia Law 2437 of 2024, for insolvency protection, which should result in operations optimization and renegotiation of obligations with suppliers and other parties.
LNG Energy Group continues with its initiatives to stabilize natural gas production, optimize costs and enhance its liquidity position. We expect to announce soon the results of this comprehensive strategic review process.
AboutLNGEnergyGroup
The Company is focused on the acquisition and development of natural gas production and exploration assets in Latin America. For more information, please visit www.lngenergygroup.com.
This news release contains certain forward-looking information that reflect the current views and/or expectations of management of LNG Energy Group with respect to performance, business and future events. Forward-looking information can often be identified by words such as “may”, “will”, “would”, “could”, “should”, “believes”, “estimates”, “projects”, “potential”, “expects”, “plans”, “intends”, “anticipates”, “targeted”, “continues”, “forecasts”, “designed”, “goal”, or the negative of those words or other similar or comparable words. Forward-looking statements are based on the then-current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the business and the industry and markets in which LNG Energy Group operates. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking information, readers should not place undue reliance on such information. The risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the anticipating timing of filing the Required Documents. Forward-looking information is current as of the date it is made and is based on reasonable estimates and assumptions made by us at the relevant time in light of our experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors that we believe are appropriate and reasonable in the circumstances. LNG Energy Group does not undertake any obligation to release publicly any revisions for updating any voluntary forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities law.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
For years, scientists have believed that inflammation inevitably increases with age, quietly fuelling diseases like heart disease, dementia and diabetes. But a new study of Indigenous populations challenges that idea and could reshape how we think about ageing itself.
For decades, scientists have identified chronic low-level inflammation – called “inflammaging” – as one of the primary drivers of age-related diseases. Think of it as your body’s immune system stuck in overdrive – constantly fighting battles that don’t exist, gradually wearing down organs and systems.
But inflammaging might not be a universal feature of ageing after all. Instead, it could be a byproduct of how we live in modern society.
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The research, published in Nature Aging, compared patterns of inflammation in four very different communities around the world. Two groups were from modern, industrialised societies – older adults living in Italy and Singapore.
The other two were Indigenous communities who live more traditional lifestyles: the Tsimane people of the Bolivian Amazon and the Orang Asli in the forests of Malaysia.
The researchers analysed blood samples from more than 2,800 people, looking at a wide range of inflammatory molecules, known as cytokines. Their goal was to find out whether a pattern seen in earlier studies – where certain signs of inflammation rise with age and are linked to disease – also appears in other parts of the world.
The answer, it turns out, is both yes and no.
Among the Italian and Singaporean participants, the researchers found a fairly consistent inflammaging pattern. As people aged, levels of inflammatory markers in the blood, such as C-reactive protein and tumour necrosis factor, rose together. Higher levels were linked to a greater risk of chronic diseases including kidney disease and heart disease.
But in the Tsimane and Orang Asli populations, the inflammaging pattern was absent. The same inflammatory molecules did not rise consistently with age, and they were not strongly linked to age-related diseases.
In fact, among the Tsimane, who face high rates of infections from parasites and other pathogens, inflammation levels were often elevated. Yet this did not lead to the same rates of chronic diseases that are common in industrialised nations.
Despite high inflammatory markers, the Tsimane experience very low rates of conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and dementia.
Inflammaging may not be universal
These results raise important questions. One possibility is that inflammaging, at least as measured through these blood signals, is not a universal biological feature of ageing. Instead, it may arise in societies marked by high-calorie diets, low physical activity and reduced exposure to infections.
In other words, chronic inflammation linked to ageing and disease might not simply result from an inevitable biological process, but rather from a mismatch between our ancient physiology and the modern environment.
The study suggests that in communities with more traditional lifestyles – where people are more active, eat differently and are exposed to more infections – the immune system may work in a different way. In these groups, higher levels of inflammation might be a normal, healthy response to their environment, rather than a sign that the body is breaking down with age.
Another possibility is that inflammaging may still occur in all humans, but it might appear in different ways that are not captured by measuring inflammatory molecules in the blood. It could be happening at a cellular or tissue level, where it remains invisible to the blood tests used in this research.
If these findings are confirmed, they could have significant consequences.
First, they challenge how we diagnose and treat chronic inflammation in ageing. Biomarkers used to define inflammaging in European or Asian populations might not apply in other settings, or even among all groups within industrialised nations.
Second, they suggest that lifestyle interventions aimed at lowering chronic inflammation, such as exercise, changes in diet, or drugs targeting specific inflammatory molecules, might have different effects in different populations. What works for people living in cities might be unnecessary, or even ineffective, in those living traditional lifestyles.
Finally, this research serves as an important reminder that much of our knowledge about human health and ageing comes from studies conducted in wealthy, industrialised nations. Findings from these groups cannot automatically be assumed to apply worldwide.
The researchers are clear: this study is just the beginning. They urge scientists to dig deeper, using new tools that can detect inflammation not just in the blood, but within tissues and cells where the real story of ageing may be unfolding. Just as important, they call for more inclusive research that spans the full range of human experience, not just the wealthy, urbanised corners of the world.
At the very least, this study offers an important lesson. What we thought was a universal truth about the biology of ageing might instead be a local story, shaped by our environment, lifestyle and the way we live.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The UK has historically been held up as leading democracy with free and fair elections. However, our new report shows election quality in the UK is now ranked in the bottom half of countries in Europe.
The Global Electoral Integrity Report provides scores for election quality around the world. It defines electoral integrity as the extent to which elections empower citizens.
Iceland received the highest score for an election that took place in 2024, the “year of elections” during which 1.6 billion people went to the polls, according to Time Magazine. This was an unprecedented concentration of democratic activity in a single year. Iceland has a successful system of automatic voter registration and an electoral system that is judged to be fair to smaller parties.
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Countries that scored highly based on their most recent election include Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Finland and Lithuania. Those at the opposite end of the scale include Syria, Belarus, Egypt, and Nicaragua. The UK is ranked 24th out of 39 countries in Europe. It is below Estonia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Austria, Luxembourg and Slovakia. It is ranked 53rd out of 170 countries overall.
The US also saw a decline. The beacons for electoral democracy are therefore now found in mainland Europe (most notably Scandinavia), Australasia, South America and the southern parts of Africa – rather than the UK and US. The centre of global democratic authority has shifted away from Westminster.
There remain many areas of strength in UK elections. UK electoral officials show professionalism and independence and there is no concern about the integrity of the vote counting process. There is no evidence of widespread electoral fraud.
A major weakness is in the fairness of the electoral rules for small parties. The electoral system generated a very disproportional result in 2024. Labour took nearly two-thirds of the seats in parliament, a total of 412, with less than 10 million votes (only 34% of votes cast). Labour won a massive majority in terms of parliamentary arithmetic but the the government did not enter office with widespread support.
By contrast, Reform and the Greens received 6 million votes between them, but only nine MPs. The electoral system may have worked when Britain had a two-party system – but the two-party system no longer holds. Today’s Britain is more diverse, and political support is more distributed.
The UK also scores poorly on voter registration. It is estimated that there are around 7 million to 8 million people not correctly registered or missing from the registers entirely. This is not many less than the 9.7 million people whose votes gave the government a landslide majority. The UK does not have a system of automatic voter registration, which is present in global leaders such as Iceland, where everyone is enrolled without a hiccup.
Another problem is participation. Turnout in July 2024 was low – with only half of adults voting. Voting has been made more difficult as the Elections Act of 2022 introduced compulsory photographic identification for the first time at the general election. This was thought to have made it more difficult for many citizens to vote because the UK does not have a national identity card which all citizens hold.
Meanwhile, there are further swirling headwinds. The spread of disinformation by overseas actors in elections has become a prominent challenge around the world and there was evidence of disinformation in this campaign too. Violence during the electoral period was thought to have been removed from British elections in Victorian times. But more than half candidates experience abuse and intimidation during the electoral period.
Action needed
One year into its time in office, the government is yet to act on this issue. The word “democracy” was missing from the prime minister’s strategic defence review, despite the emphasis on protecting the UK from Russia, a country known for electoral interference and other forms of attack on democracies.
This was a sharp contrast to the former government’s 2021 review, which emphasised that a “world in which democratic societies flourish and fundamental human rights are protected is one that is more conducive to our sovereignty, security and prosperity as a nation”.
In its election manifesto, Labour promised to “address the inconsistencies in voter ID rules”, “improve voter registration” and give 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote in all elections. There needs to be firm action on electoral system change, automatic voter registration, campaign finance reform, voter identification changes and other areas.
There are a complex set of challenges facing democracy and elections. New technological challenges, change in attitudes, international hostility and new emergencies are combining to batter the door of democracy down.
International organisations are increasingly stressing that political leaders need to work together and take proactive action to protect elections against autocratic forces. This means not only supporting democracy in their messages on the world stage – but also introducing reforms to create beacons of democracy in their own countries.
Toby James has previously received funding from the AHRC, ESRC, Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, Electoral Commission, Nuffield Foundation, the McDougall Trust and Unlock Democracy. His current research is funded by the Canadian SSHRC.
Holly Ann Garnett receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Defence Academy Research Programme. She has previously received funding from: the British Academy, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the NATO Public Diplomacy Division, the American Political Science Association Centennial Centre, and the Conference of Defence Associations.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Martin Farr, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History, Newcastle University
Each is the main political subject in their country, and one is the main political subject in the world. Each rode the populist wave in 2016, campaigning for the other. In 2024 the tandem surfers remounted on to an even greater breaker. Yet, though nothing has happened to suggest that bromance is dead, neither Donald Trump nor Nigel Farage publicly now speak of the other.
Trump’s presidential campaign shared personnel with Leave.eu, the unofficial Brexit campaign. Farage was on the stump with Trump, and his “bad boys of Brexit” made their pilgrimage to Trump Tower after its owner’s own triumph in the US election. Each exulted in the other’s success, and what it portended.
Trump duly proposed giving the UK ambassadorship to the United States to Farage. Instead, Farage became not merely MP for Clacton, but leader of the first insurgent party to potentially reset Britain’s electoral calculus since Labour broke through in 1922.
Then, Labour’s challenge was to replace the Liberals as the alternative party of government. It took two years. Reform UK could replace the Conservatives in four.
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Trump, meanwhile, has achieved what in Britain has either been thwarted (Militant and the Labour party in the 1980s) or has at most had temporary, aberrant, success (Momentum and the Labour party in the 2010s): the takeover of a party from within. Farage has been doing so – hitherto – from without.
At one of those historic forks in a road where change is a matter of chance, after Brexit finally took place, Farage considered his own personal leave – to go and break America.
The path had been trodden by Trump-friendly high-profile provocateurs before him: Steve Hilton, from David Cameron’s Downing Street, via cable news, now standing to be governor of California; Piers Morgan, off to CNN to replace the doyen of cable news Larry King, only to crash, but then to burn on, online. Liz Truss, never knowingly understated, has found her safe space – the rightwing speaking circuit.
But Farage remained stateside. He knew his domestic platform was primed more fully to exploit the voter distrust that his nationalist crusade had done so much to provoke.
The Trump effect
Genuine peacetime transatlantic affiliations are rare, usually confined to the leaders of established parties: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. One consequence of the 2016 political shift is that the US Republicans and the British Conservatives, the latter still at least partially tethered to traditional politics, have become distanced.
During the first Trump administration, and even in the build up to the second, it was Farage who was seen as the UK’s bridge to the president. But today, at the peak of their influence, for Farage association can only be by inference, friendship with the US president is not – put mildly – of political advantage. For UK voters, Trump is the 19th most popular foreign politician, in between the King of Denmark and Benjamin Netanyahu.
There is, moreover, the “Trump effect”. Measuring this is crude – circumstances differ – but the trend is that elections may be won by openly criticising, rather than associating with, Trump. This was the case for Mark Carney in Canada, Anthony Albanese in Australia, and Nicușor Dan in Romania.
Trump’s second state visit to the UK will certainly be less awkward for Farage than it will be Starmer, the man who willed it. Farage will likely not – and has no reason to – be seen welcoming so divisive a figure.
Starmer has no choice but to, and to do so ostentatiously. It is typical of Starmer’s perfect storm of an administration that he will, in the process, do nothing to appeal to the sliver of British voters partial to Trump while further shredding his reputation with Labour voters. Farage would be well served in taking one of his tactical European sojourns for the duration. Starmer may be tempted too.
Outmanoeuvring the establishment
Reflecting the historic cultural differences of their countries, Trump’s prescription is less state, Farage’s is more. The Farage of 2025 that is. He had been robustly Thatcherite, but has lately embraced socialist interventionism, albeit through a most Thatcherite analysis: “the gap in the market was enormous”.
Reform UK now appears to stand for what Labour – in the mind of many of its voters – ought to. Eyeing the opportunity of smokestack grievances, Farage called for state control of steel production even as Trump was considering quite how high a tariff to put on it. Nationalisation and economic nationalism: associated restoratives for national malaise.
Aggressively heteronormative, Trump and Farage dabble in the natalism burgeoning in both countries – as much a cultural as an economic imperative. Each has mastered – and much more than their adversaries – social media. Each has come to recognise the demerits in publicly appeasing Putin.
And Reform’s rise in a hitherto Farage-resistant Scotland can only endear him further to a president whose Hebridean mother was thought of (in desperation) as potentially his Rosebud by British officials preparing for his first administration.
Given their rhetorical selectivity, Trump and Farage’s rolling pitches are almost unanswerable for convention-confined political opponents and reporters. These two anti-elite elitists continue to confound.
Unprecedentedly, for a former president, Trump ran against the incumbent; Farage will continue to exploit anti-incumbency, despite his party now being in office. Most elementally, the pair are bound for life by their very public near-death experiences. Theirs is, by any conceivable measure, an uncommon association.
Farage’s fleetness of foot would be apparent even without comparison with the leaden steps of the leaders of the legacy parties. His is a genius of opportunism. That’s why he knows not to remind us of his confrere across the water.
Martin Farr 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 Alan McKay, Senior Research Assistant for the Centre for Football Research in Wales, University of South Wales
With Women’s Euro 2025 underway, attention is turning not just to the players hoping for glory, but to the head coaches tasked with leading them.
These include England’s Sarina Wiegman, who guided the Netherlands to Euro victory in 2017 and repeated the feat with England in 2022; Spain’s Montse Tomé, the reigning world champions’ first female head coach; and Rhian Wilkinson, who is preparing Wales for their first ever appearance at a major tournament.
The pressure is immense, but what actually makes a good football coach? My colleagues and I recently conducted a study on behalf of the Uefa Academy to better understand this topic.
There are plenty of myths. That the best coaches eat, sleep and breathe football 24/7. That they’re “natural leaders” who inspire through sheer charisma. That success demands constant self-sacrifice. But when coaches try to live up to these ideas, it can leave them feeling burnt out – physically and emotionally exhausted, disconnected from their personal lives and questioning their ability.
In reality, effective coaching is about much more than tactics or motivation. It’s about performance, not just on the pitch, but in the way coaches manage themselves, their staff and their players. A good coach must balance their responsibilities with time for rest and recovery. They must communicate clearly, stay calm under pressure and create an environment where everyone knows their role.
Sarina Wiegman discusses the importance of creating positive environments.
Sarina Wiegman has described her approach in just these terms: “We try to turn every stone to get as best prepared as we can be before we go into the tournament… to perform under the highest pressure.”
But coaches don’t arrive at this mindset by accident. It’s developed through experience and, importantly, through structured education.
One important finding was that the most effective coaches have a strong sense of who they are – including their values, their communication style, and their strengths and limitations. These are things which affect the players and staff with whom they work.
Even top coaches need support
This type of self-awareness is often shaped through formal coach education programmes, where participants work closely with a mentor. These mentors can offer honest feedback, challenge assumptions and help coaches develop a philosophy they can share with their team.
That process is essential at every level, whether it’s grassroots football or the international stage. Coaches who understand themselves and who can use their education are better able to adapt their approach to the context they’re working in. They can build trust, foster unity and know when to step back.
Gareth Southgate, former England men’s head coach, is a fantastic example of this. He has spoken about the importance of supporting the person first and the player second. He has discussed the value of empathy and empowering players to make decisions on and off the pitch.
Through this process, Southgate helped players focus on the “joy of playing for their country” rather than simply achieving results. This may have helped to relieve some of the inevitable pressure and expectations placed on the England squad by the media, fans and English Football Association to win tournaments.
After qualifying, a good coach will continue to seek out their mentor for advice on both professional and personal issues they may be experiencing in their role. Emma Hayes, head coach of the US women’s team, has credited her own mentor with helping her fine tune her leadership style and build team cohesion. Her ability to create a safe, supportive environment was central to Team USA’s gold medal win at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Hayes’ methods demonstrate that coaching is not a destination but a lifelong process. It requires constant learning, reflection and adaptation. The best coaches don’t just chase trophies. They aim to build something lasting – a culture of trust, a resilient team and a space where people can thrive.
As Euro 2025 continues, it’s worth keeping an eye, not just on the scorelines, but on the sidelines. The real mark of a good coach isn’t always found on the scoreboard. It’s found in how a team plays, how they talk about each other and whether they’re still smiling at the end.
Alan McKay received funding from the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to conduct the research mentioned in this article. Alan wishes to acknowledge Professor Brendan Cropley, who was instrumental in conducting this research.
Ebenezer Scrooge tried to wave away the ghost of Jacob Marley by blaming the apparition on “an undigested bit of beef … a crumb of cheese”. Charles Dickens might have been writing fiction, but the idea that late-night dairy can warp dreams has now gained scientific support.
Researchers in Canada surveyed 1,082 university students about their eating habits, sleep patterns and dreams. Remarkably, 40% reported that certain foods affected their sleep. Of that group, 20% blamed dairy – suggesting that Scrooge’s midnight cheese might have had more of an impact than he realised.
Just 5.5% believed food changed their dreams, but among those respondents dairy again loomed large, second only to sugary desserts as a perceived trigger for bizarre or disturbing dreams.
The researchers asked about everything from nightmare frequency to food allergies and intolerances. A clear pattern emerged: participants who reported lactose intolerance were significantly more likely to have frequent nightmares. And the link was strongest in people who also experienced bloating or cramps.
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Statistical modelling suggested the stomach distress partly explains the bad dreams. In other words, food that keeps the gut churning can also set the imagination spinning.
That gut–brain route makes physiological sense. Abdominal discomfort can jolt sleepers into lighter stages of sleep where vivid or negative dreams are most common. Inflammation and spikes in cortisol (a stress hormone) triggered by digestive upset may further shape the emotional tone of dreams, especially by amplifying anxiety or negativity.
Earlier work backs the idea. A 2015 survey of Canadian undergraduates found that nearly 18% linked what they ate to their dreams, with dairy the top suspect, while a 2022 online study of 436 dream enthusiasts reported that people who ate more sugary snacks remembered more nightmares.
The new study from Canada echoes a wider literature on diet and sleep. Diets rich in fibre, fruit and vegetables are associated with deeper, more refreshing sleep, whereas meals high in saturated fat and sugar predict lighter, more fragmented rest.
If future work confirms the cheese–nightmare connection, the implications could be practical. Nightmares affect about 4% of adults worldwide and are particularly common in post-traumatic stress disorder.
Drug treatments exist but carry side-effects. Adjusting the timing or composition of evening meals, or choosing low-lactose dairy options, would be a far cheaper, lower-risk intervention.
Gut-friendly diets such as the Mediterranean diet are already being explored for mood disorders; nightmares may be another frontier for nutritional psychiatry.
What the research can’t prove
That said, the new findings come with caveats. The sample was young, mostly healthy psychology students filling out online questionnaires. Food intake, lactose intolerance and nightmare frequency were all self-reported, so “recall biases” (inaccurate memory) or the power of suggestion could inflate the associations.
Only 59 participants believed food influenced their dreams, so small-number effects (unreliable results from too few data) are possible. And a survey can only reveal associations – it can’t prove that cheese causes bad dream.
Cheese keeps cropping up in nightmare stories, and people who struggle to digest dairy report the worst of it. Scientists still have to match meal diaries, gut clues and lab-monitored dreams to prove the link. In the meantime, try eating earlier or choosing low-lactose options. Your stomach – and your dreams – may calm down.
Timothy Hearn 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.
Good afternoon NEA! And an extra-special hello to my folks right up front here. Aaron, Jeff, Rachael, and all of the PSEA delegation. I’m so happy to be here with you. You will tire of my voice long before I tire of your support!
President Pringle and the entire NEA leadership team, thank you for this invitation. It is an incredible honor to be here, among these people, in this moment.
I know what’s at stake today. We all do. And I know how this speech is supposed to end. But before we get going, I think we ought to take a pause. It is July, another school year has come to a close, and we deserve to acknowledge that achievement.
The work we do—in classrooms and libraries and nurses’ offices and school buses—is extraordinary. It’s complicated and demanding and ever-changing, but it is also joyful, unexpected, deeply human—and incredibly collaborative.
We are the cultivators of learning and belonging. We are the ones who unlock potential, who nurture talent, who stay after the bell and show up before the sun. At every level and in every facet of American education, we challenge, we question, we adapt, we create—and we do so together.
I am a first generation college graduate, my education is my most valuable possession. But I didn’t earn it alone. I owe my success to my teachers who demanded my very best, to my counselors who guided my path, to my grandmother who was a school secretary, my grandfather who was a custodian, my great grandmother who was a cafeteria worker. I stand here as living proof of our collective influence and our fundamental belief:public education is a public good.
This union works tirelessly on so. many. issues. The list of areas in need is never-ending. But let us celebrate where we all began, where we will always belong. We are educators. We are mentors. We are stewards. We guide. We lead. We serve.
That’s what binds us here today—not just strategy or slogans, but an unwavering love for our kids and our communities. Education is a noble calling and an incredible life of service. Please, let us take a moment to give this affirmation the round of applause you all deserve.
Okay…let’s begin.
What’s good for educators is what’s good for students.
That’s the gospel according to Adam Weber, one of our UniServ reps in Pennsylvania. Two years ago, he repeated it again and again to our Bargaining School at PSEA’s summer leadership conference until every one of us could recite it like a nursery rhyme.
Since then, it has become a mantra I will not whisper.What is good for educators is what is good for students.
But I wasn’t always so certain. For my first decade or so in teaching, like so many of us, I believed the best way to serve my students was to neglect myself. I wore exhaustion like a badge of honor. I poured every ounce of energy into my classroom, convincing myself that if their cup was full, then surely mine was too.
But there’s a difference between being altruistic and being self-sacrificing. And through the work of my union—through the solidarity and support of educators like you—I came to understand something transformative:the best way to advocate for our students truly is to advocate for ourselves.
All of us have a union “origin story.” It’s the moment in our careers when our place shifts from passive dues-payer to active participant. For my mentor, hers was instantaneous—it was the day she signed her teaching contract, because as a child, she watched her parents stand on the picket line. But for me, it took longer. I joined the union because she told me I had to, not because I understood the power it held.
The pandemic washed away my naivety. As I sat at home in nearly-empty Zoom rooms, suddenly, the job I had given so much of myself to was unrecognizable; the public had become increasingly critical, and the future had never been so uncertain. I started to confront a brutal question:Who am I if I’m not teaching?What happens if I walk away?
But then, something shifted.
Because while the world was spinning, my local was centering. They fought for COVID sick banks, 1:1 laptops, robust contact tracing, and the grace we deserved as we navigated the unknown.
For our members, they became the leaders we needed. But forme—they became my solid ground.
And that solid ground became a launching pad. Once I started paying attention—once I realized how deeply political our profession had always been—I knew I could no longer simply stay on the sidelines.
So I stepped up. I got involved. I found my people. And my people helped me to find my voice.
A lot has changed since that ah-ha moment I had two years ago.
My first state-wide union event was our political institute in January 2024 followed a few months later by our PA House of Delegates. I remember in those spaces, in those moments, there was such a collective enthusiasm and optimism. In PA, Senator Bob Casey was still our ally on the hill, and President Pringle was telling us we deserved to win all the things.
But this past March, at our National Leadership Summit in Detroit, I encountered a different NEA. I could still feel the energy, but looming overtop of it was a sense of urgency, a tenacity, a burden of what the future may hold.
It is difficult to feel any sense of assurance when the best path forward has become an ever-moving target. But amidst the unknown, I am confident we can find comfortand resiliencein what we do know.
And what we know is this:Respect doesn’t begin with a soundbite or a promise—it begins with us.
In how we show up.
In how we raise our voices.
In how we refuse to accept anything less than what our students and our colleagues deserve.
We stand here, resolved, not just for ourselves, but for our communities, our schools, and our students.
I stand here for CJ and Tucker, because the internet company refused to provide service to their rural address.
I stand here for Jayden, Gavin, and Luz who needed a support system more than they needed the student handbook.
I stand here for my sister, Sydney. Born in Vietnam and raised in central PA. In her 16 years of education, she never had a teacher who looked like her.
I stand here for the 70 teachers furloughed from my district during the great recession, and for my friend, Marissa, who resigned from her dream job to save herself.
We are the guardians—not just of our curricula and our classrooms—but of the conditions that allow our schools to thrive. I say this with full conviction, every day, but especially today:
Protecting education is how we protect our democracy.
America’s schools are one of the greatest democratic institutions we all share.
They are where kids learn to think critically, collaborate respectfully, and dream boundlessly.
They are where voices are heard, where differences are explored, and where possibility begins.
I teach in a rural, well-established community. My best friend’s house is older than our country. You can drive 40 minutes in either direction from our football field and you will still be in our school district. Out of pure curiosity, I did some Googling: there are three times as many cows in Mifflin County as there are kids. Chickens outnumber humans almost 3 to 1.
It can be easy for kids to feel confined to the expectations of their hometowns, especially where I come from. But school is where every kid learns—their upbringing is not a limitation, it’s a foundation. And that transformational shift comes from the opportunities we so carefully design. It comes from the efforts of educators.
Two weeks ago, one of our athletes ran a national championship-winning, 4-minute mile. For the past two years, our Technology Student Association has taken top honors at their national competition. Last month, 20 of our kids joined a growing group of alumni who have stamped their first passports on their school trip to Europe. And last week, those students and their families overflowed our board room in defense of their music program.
In my small town, I have celebrated with graduates as they earned their acceptance to military academies, Ivy-league schools, and community colleges. As they’ve received full ride scholarships and their family’s first-ever high school diplomas.
These stories, these moments of courage, accomplishment, and pride—they are why education is so important. In our classrooms, a child’s possibility transforms into potential and blossoms into prosperity.
We know what’s at stake. If our schools falter—if education is disrupted by disinvestment or division—then we don’t just lose a school system. We lose our future.
But we don’t have to ask, “What do we do now?” We know this lesson plan. We’ve passed this test before. We. Have. All. The. Answers.
We recite, we repeat, we embody the undeniable, inalienable truth: What’s good for educators is what’s good for students.
NEA is what’s good for educators; union solidarity is what’s good for educators; dignity in our contracts and respect in our expertise and regard for our humanity is what’s good for educators. Equity in our classrooms is what’s good for educators. Investments in teacher retention and recruitment is what’s good for educators. Safe schools are what’s good for educators.
And when educators have what is good and necessary to do their jobs, America’s children become the real benefactors. That support is what enables us to recognize, to validate, to empower, to celebrate our students.
In this moment of challenge and consequence, I keep coming back to a poster that has hung in my classroom since my first day of teaching, Margaret Mead’s words of truth: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
We are that group. In every classroom, on every playground, at every board meeting.
We are thoughtful. We are committed. And we are powerful.
A union of educators is a union of advocacy, of camaraderie, of empathy. And it is one more opportunity for us to lead by example for the students we serve.
Now, more than ever, we are tasked with building a better future. With the strength of our union, a resilience that dares to endure, and a heart that has no bounds, I know we can find common ground. I know we can build forward progress. I know we can meet this moment. For our kids, for our colleagues, for our country.
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July 4, 2025
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“I am deeply saddened by the loss of one of New York State’s bravest, who passed away while responding to a residential fire in the Town of Conklin early this morning. Fire Chief James Sitek of the West Colesville Fire Company was a dedicated volunteer firefighter for 35 years, serving as Chief for the past three, and courageously dedicated his life to protecting his community.
“On behalf of the State of New York, I extend my deepest condolences to Jim’s family, the entire West Colesville Fire Company, and all who knew and served alongside him. Broome County is a safer place because of Jim’s selfless service — and we are eternally grateful for his decades-long commitment to the people of New York State.”
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Source: The Conversation – USA – By Valerie L. Myers, Organizational Psychologist and Lecturer in Management and Organizations, University of Michigan
Ask someone what a calling is, and they’ll probably say something like “doing work you love.” But as a management professor who has spent two decades researching the history and impact of calling, I’ve found it’s much more than personal fulfillment.
The concept of calling has deep roots. In the 1500s, theologian Martin Luther asserted that any legitimate work – not just work in ministry – could have sacred significance and social value, and could therefore be considered a calling. In this early form, calling wasn’t merely a vocation or passion; it was a way of living and working that built character, competence and social trust.
That’s because calling is an ethical system – a set of thoughts and actions aimed at producing “good work” that is both morally grounded and quality-focused. As such, it’s not just a feel-good idea.
Today, we know that calling can strengthen social trust by reinforcing its key elements: confidence in product quality, stable institutions, adherence to rules and laws, and relationships.
Social trust is crucial for capitalism and vibrant democracies. And when those systems weaken, as they are now, it’s calling – not cunning or charisma – that can help repair them.
Although calling’s original meaning has faded, I contend that it’s worth reviving. That robust spirit of work still has practical value today, especially since social trust has been declining for decades.
History’s warning lights are flashing
We’ve been here before – in the late 19th century, when the U.S. entered its first Gilded Age. Innovation surged, but so did corruption and inequality as lax regulations enabled tycoons to accumulate extraordinary wealth. Rapid social change sparked conflict. Meanwhile, rising authoritarianism, shifting national alliances and economic jolts unsettled the world. Sound familiar?
Today, in the U.S., trust in institutions has reached an all-time low, while measures of corruption and inequality are up. Meanwhile, American workers are increasingly disengaged at work, a problem that costs US$438 billion annually. America’s fractured and flawed democracy ranks 28th globally, having fallen 11 slots in less than 15 years.
These aren’t just economic or political failures – they’re signs of a moral breakdown.
Over a century ago, sociologist Max Weber warned that if capitalism lost its moral footing, it would cannibalize itself. He predicted the rise of “specialists without spirit,” people who are technically brilliant but ethically empty. The result: resurgence of a cruel, callous form of capitalism called moral menace.
Moral menaces and moral muses
Some leaders act as moral menaces, which law professor James Q. Whitman describes as an efficient but exploitative form of capitalism. Moral menaces extract value and treat people callously, which erodes trust that sustains markets and society. In contrast, others are what I call “moral muses” – leaders who are examples of a calling in action. They’re not saints or celebrities, but people who combine skill, care and moral courage to build trust and transform systems from within. President Franklin Roosevelt and Yvonne Chouinard are two examples.
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, amid the Great Depression, an aide told Roosevelt if he was successful, he’d become America’s greatest president. Roosevelt replied, “If I fail, I shall be the last one.” He succeeded by restoring trust. Through New Deal policies, Roosevelt enhanced institutional trust, which stabilized democracy and helped rescue capitalism from its excesses. Today, the U.S. remains highly innovative, competitive and wealthy, in part because of moral muses like Roosevelt.
Or take Yvon Chouinard, the founder of clothing label Patagonia, who built a billion-dollar company while building trust around a moral mission. He urged customers not to buy more gear, but instead to repair their old products to curb consumer waste. Chouinard filed over 70 lawsuits to protect public land, and he gave away his company to climate-change nonprofits in 2022, declaring, “Earth is now our only shareholder.” Relatedly, Patagonia’s employee turnover is far lower than the industry standard, reporting shows. Why? Because people trust leaders who live their values.
History shows that such leaders aren’t born; they are trained.
MBAs and the calling to leadership
For 15 years, I’ve taught an MBA module named “The Calling to Leadership.” Students study moral muses like Roosevelt and Chouinard – not for their fame, but for how they live their callings to cultivate talent and trust, and transform systems.
Students learn to identify moral injuries that lead to disengagement, identify trust gaps, reflect on their own moral core, and practice ethical decision-making. They also engage in reflective practices that sharpen their ethical judgment, which is essential to creating moral markets.
As Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the founder of the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, put it: “At its best, the basis of capitalism is a dual moral and market imperative.”
Democracy and capitalism won’t be strengthened by charisma, cunning or exploitative ambition, but by people who answer a deeper calling to do “good work”: work that builds trust and strengthens the social fabric. History shows that real progress has often been guided by the slumbering ideals of calling. In this age of disengagement and distrust, those ideals aren’t just worth reviving – they’re essential.
In my view, calling isn’t a luxury; it’s a leadership imperative. To fulfill yours, don’t ask, “Is this my dream job?” Ask, “Will my actions build trust?” If not, change course. If yes, keep going. That’s how to heal institutions and improve systems, and how ordinary people can become the quiet force behind meaningful, lasting transformation.
Valerie L. Myers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Lawmakers and school boards across the country have established policies that limit what schools can teach about gender, sexuality and reproductive health.Alexmia/iStock via Getty Images
Behind the loud debate lies a quiet contradiction. Many parents who say sex education should be taught only at home don’t actually provide it there, either.
Comprehensive sex education delays sexual activity, increases contraceptive use and reduces teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates. It has a complex history, but has long received bipartisan support.
In June 2025, the Trump administration ordered California to remove gender-identity materials from sex education lessons or risk losing over US$12 million in federal funding.
In 2023, Florida expanded its Parental Rights in Education, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, to extend limits on discussing sexual orientation and gender identity to all K–12 grades. The law states that sex can be defined only as strictly binary, limits discussions of gender and sexuality, imposes rules on pronoun use and increases school board authority over curricula.
Local school boards in states such as Florida, Idaho, Tennessee and Utah have removed textbooks, cut health courses and banned books with LGBTQ+ themes. Conservative, local school boards are reshaping sex education nationwide even though the vast majority of Americans oppose efforts to restrict books in public schools and are confident in public schools’ selection of books.
Who’s having the talk?
A national survey on parental attitudes and beliefs about school-based sex education revealed that some families do not practice what they preach. diane39/iStock via Getty Images
As laws limit teaching about sex, gender and identity, I wanted to explore whether parents are stepping in to fill the gaps.
About 10% of the surveyed parents said sex education should happen only at home. Those parents were also most likely to say they “almost never” or “never” discussed sex, sexuality and romance with their children.
By contrast, parents who supported comprehensive, school-based sex ed were significantly more likely to discuss subjects including consent, contraception, identity and healthy relationships at home.
The survey also found that parents who opposed comprehensive sex education were more likely to believe commonly circulated misinformation, such as the idea that talking about sex encourages early sexual activity and that condoms are not effective.
These preliminary findings align with a robust body of peer-reviewed literature suggesting that parents who are more resistant to school-based sex ed are also less likely and less equipped to have open, informed conversations at home.
These findings point to a gap between expert recommendations and what parents do.
Teenagers learn about sex online, and pornography is among the top sources of information. redhumv?E+ via Getty Images
A 2022 report from Common Sense Media found that nearly half of teens report learning about sex online, with pornography among the top sources.
Research indicates that even when schools and families avoid topics related to sexuality, young people still encounter sexual content. Yet, advocacy groups such as Moms for Liberty support the removal of what it considers “age-inappropriate” or “sexually explicit” materials from classrooms and school libraries.
The absence of structured, accurate education likely has implications for public health. According to the CDC, individuals ages 15 to 24 account for nearly half of all new sexually transmitted infections in the U.S.
LGBTQ+ youth are especially vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections and related health challenges. This vulnerability is compounded in regions with limited access to inclusive education.
A 2023 CDC report found that students who receive inclusive sex education feel more connected to school and experience lower rates of depression and bullying. These benefits are especially critical for LGBTQ+ youth.
As debates over sex education continue, I believe it’s important for policymakers, school boards and communities to weigh parental input and public health data.
I am the author of the book, “A Modern Approach to the Birds and the Bees” which I mentioned in the article and do benefit from its sale.
Now imagine living that kind of isolation all the time.
For millions of Americans with serious mental health conditions, being unable to engage in meaningful activities is not just a temporary crisis – it’s daily life.
Community inclusion refers to everyone’s right to participate in meaningful social roles. This includes working, going to school, practicing one’s faith or simply connecting with others in shared activities.
Yet, for the estimated 15.4 million U.S. adults living with significant mental health conditions – about 6% of the adult population – community inclusion is far from guaranteed. Compared with the general population, they are far less likely to be involved in social activities that bring purpose and connection, as well as health benefits.
I am a psychologist who has worked in inpatient and outpatient psychiatric settings, and I directed a federally funded research and training center at Temple University in Philadelphia for more than 20 years that focuses on independent living and participation of people with serious mental illnesses.
My colleagues and I have conducted research which demonstrates that people with such conditions want to participate in their community just like everyone else. We also found that they can do so – with proper supports like medications, therapy, rehabilitation services and communities making reasonable accommodations for them. And furthermore, they should: Community inclusion is good for their health.
Benefits of community life
Community involvement gets people with mental illness out of bed and out of the house. It encourages movement and activity, which enhances physical health.
Some people may assume that people with severe mental illnesses are restricted from active participation in their communities solely due to the mental health symptoms themselves.
For example, they might think that cognitive issues related to schizophrenia make it too difficult for people to work or go to school; or that mania, anxiety and depression prevent them from having good relationships with others.
But environment also plays a major role.
The social model of disability suggests that people are not disabled by their diagnosis. Instead, they experience a disability through limitations in their communities because of physical, structural and social barriers.
For example, someone with anxiety or depression may be penalized in a college class that deducts points for students who do not speak up.
A person with a disability that causes fluctuating moods or low energy might not succeed in a rigid nine-to-five job without accommodations.
And a churchgoer who talks to themselves or has to walk around during services because their medications make them jittery – a condition called akathisia – or who is known to have been diagnosed with schizophrenia might be asked to leave because their presence makes others uncomfortable.
The result is that people are unable to participate not simply because of an impairment, but because of an environment that does not accommodate or appreciate their unique attributes.
Helping people with mental illness rejoin community life
Some programs here in Pennsylvania are working to change that.
Education Plus helps Philadelphia residents with mental health conditions complete college and financial aid application forms, obtain school accommodations for their disability, and develop good study habits or learn to ask for help from their instructors.
Pathways to Housing PA offers transitional job opportunities to people who have been homeless, and organizes picnics, trips to Phillies baseball games and other fun activities that create a sense of community belonging.
A voter access initiative at an inpatient psychiatric facility in Pennsylvania helps patients check their voter registration status, register to vote and apply for mail-in ballots.
The nonprofit Compeer in suburban Philadelphia connects community volunteers to people with mental illnesses to engage in mutual leisure or educational interests. This oftentimes leads to long-term friendships.
And a current study I am conducting is examining ways to support faith communities in Montgomery County to be more welcoming and embracing of individuals with mental illnesses.
Family members, friends and mental health professionals can simply ask people with mental illnesses about their interests – whether it’s employment, going to school, dating or making new friends – and then encourage and support them in pursuing those interests.
Creating inclusive communities means not just offering services to people with serious mental illness, but also changing negative beliefs and behaviors toward them. This includes embracing people who might express emotions differently, require flexibility or simply behave in ways we’re not used to.
For example, say you’re in a coffee shop and encounter a person who is muttering to themselves and may not have bathed in a few days. Maybe you make eye contact, smile and say hello. Certainly reconsider complaining.
It takes empathy, open-mindedness and patience to create a community that welcomes people with mental illness and increases the likelihood that they can participate in society like everyone else.
Mark Salzer receives funding from the National Institute on Disabilities, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. He previously served on the Board of Directors for Pathways to Housing PA and works closely with Horizon House, including in the development of the Education Plus program mentioned in the article.
Speedballing – the practice of combining a stimulant like cocaine or methamphetamine with an opioid such as heroin or fentanyl – has evolved from a niche subculture to a widespread public health crisis. The practice stems from the early 1900s when World War I soldiers were often treated with a combination of cocaine and morphine.
As these dangerous combinations of drugs increasingly flood the market, I see an urgent need and opportunity for a new approach to prevention and treatment.
Why speedballing?
Dating back to the 1970s, the term speedballing originally referred to the combination of heroin and cocaine. Combining stimulants and opioids – the former’s “rush” with the latter’s calming effect – creates a dangerous physiological conflict.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, stimulant-involved overdose fatalities increased markedly from more than 12,000 annually in 2015 to greater than 57,000 in 2022, a 375% increase. Notably, approximately 70% of stimulant-related overdose deaths in 2022 also involved fentanyl or other synthetic opioids, reflecting the rising prevalence of polysubstance involvement in overdose mortality.
The rise in speedballing is part of a broader trend of polysubstance use in the U.S. Since 2010, overdoses involving both stimulants and fentanyl have increased 50-fold, now accounting for approximately 35,000 deaths annually.
The conflicting effects of stimulants and opioids can also exacerbate mental health issues. Users may experience heightened anxiety, depression and paranoia. The combination can also impair cognitive functions, leading to confusion and poor decision-making.
Speedballing can also lead to severe cardiovascular problems, including hypertension, heart attack and stroke. The strain on the heart and blood vessels from the stimulant, combined with the depressant effects of the opioid, increases the risk of these life-threatening conditions.
Addressing the crisis
Increasing awareness about the dangers of speedballing is crucial. I believe that educational campaigns can inform the public about the risks of combining stimulants and opioids and the potential for unintentional fentanyl exposure.
Implementing harm reduction strategies by public health officials, community organizations and health care providers, such as providing fentanyl test strips and naloxone – a medication that reverses opioid overdoses – can save lives.
These measures allow individuals to test their drugs for the presence of fentanyl and have immediate access to overdose-reversing medication. Implementing these strategies widely is crucial to reducing overdose deaths and improving community health outcomes.
Andrew Yockey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 7.8 million Americans across the U.S. would lose their coverage through Medicaid – the public program that provides health insurance to low-income families and individuals – under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act making its way through Congress.
They wouldn’t be able to get coverage in the Affordable Care Act Marketplaces after losing Medicaid. Premiums and out-of-pocket costs are likely to be too high for those making less than 100% to 138% of the federal poverty level who do not qualify for health insurance marketplace subsidies. Funding for this program is also under threat.
And despite being employed, they also wouldn’t be able to get health insurance through their employers because it is either too expensive or not offered to them. Researchers estimate that coverage losses would lead to thousands of medically preventable deaths across the country because people would be unable to access health care without insurance.
A few years ago, Michigan was slated to institute Medicaid work requirements, but the courts blocked the implementation of that policy in 2020. It would have cost upward of US$70 million due to software upgrades, staff training, and outreach to Michigan residents enrolled in the Medicaid program, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
Had it gone into effect, 100,000 state residents were expected to lose coverage within the first year.
Over 80% of managers and professionals have employer-sponsored health coverage, but only 50% to 70% of blue-collar workers in service jobs, farming, construction, manufacturing and transportation can say the same.
There are some legal requirements mandating employers to provide health insurance to their employees, but the reality of low-wage work means many do not fall under these legal protections.
For example, employers are allowed to incorporate a waiting period of up to 90 days before health coverage begins. The legal requirement also applies only to full-time workers. Health coverage can thus remain out of reach for seasonal and temporary workers, part-time employees and gig workers.
To make matters worse, layoffs are more common for low-wage workers, leaving them with limited options for health insurance during job transitions. And many employers have increasingly shed low-wage staff, such as drivers and cleaning staff, from their employment rolls and contracted that work out. Known as the fissuring of the workplace, it allows employers of predominately high-income employees to continue offering generous benefits while leaving no such commitment to low-wage workers employed as contractors.
Medicaid fills in gaps
Low-income workers without access to employer-sponsored insurance had virtually no options for health insurance in the years before key parts of the Affordable Care Act went into effect in 2014.
Premiums and cost sharing in Medicaid are minimal compared with employer-sponsored insurance, making it a more realistic and accessible option for low-income workers. And because Medicaid is not tied directly to employment, it can promote job mobility, allowing workers to maintain coverage within or between jobs without having to go through the bureaucratic complexity of certifying work.
Of course, Medicaid has its own shortcomings. Payment rates to providers are low relative to other insurers, access to doctors can be limited, and the program varies significantly by state. But these weaknesses stem largely from underfunding and political hostility – not from any intrinsic flaw in the model. If anything, Medicaid’s success in covering low-income workers and containing per-enrollee costs points to its potential as a broader foundation for health coverage.
Sumit Agarwal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Conservatives have won two important battles in their decades-long campaign against Planned Parenthood, a network of affiliated clinics that are the largest provider of reproductive health services in the U.S.
One of these victories was a U.S. Supreme Court ruling handed down on June 26, 2025. The other is a provision in the multitrilion-dollar tax-and-spending package President Donald Trump has made his top legislative priority. Both follow the same strategy: depriving Planned Parenthood – and all other providers of abortion care – from getting reimbursed by Medicaid, the government health insurance program that mainly covers low-income adults and children, as well as people with disabilities.
I see in both the legislation and the court’s ruling a culmination of a strategy to defund Planned Parenthood that was in full swing by 2007, toward the end of the George W. Bush administration. This campaign hinges on a strategy of insisting that federal and state dollars are supporting abortion care when they do not.
One of the bill’s provisions will make it impossible for patients with Medicaid coverage to get any health care services at clinics like Planned Parenthood.
The provision will last only for a year.
The House approved the same version of the package that the Senate had passed a week after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states cannot be sued by patients if they make it impossible for Planned Parenthood clinics to be reimbursed by Medicaid.
The case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, arose when a South Carolina woman wanted to get gynecological care at her local Planned Parenthood clinic. The rationale South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster gave for the state’s policy was that Planned Parenthood is an abortion provider.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster stands outside the Supreme Court building in Washington in April 2025 and speaks about his state’s legal dispute regarding Medicaid funding for health care at Planned Parenthood clinics. Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
Medicaid and abortion
To be clear, neither the legal dispute nor the provision in the legislative package had anything to do with the use of federal or state dollars to fund abortion.
Although Planned Parenthood offers abortion where and when it is legal, this provision and the court’s decision concern Medicaid reimbursement for all other services. Abortion care is not covered by Medicaid under federal law except in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the pregnant patient’s life.
Medicaid patients instead have relied on their plan at Planned Parenthood clinics when they get annual exams, prenatal care, mental health support, birth control, treatment for sexually transmitted infections, cervical cancer screenings and fertility referrals.
None of those services will be covered by Medicaid for a year. Patients will have to find another health care provider – as long as one is available.
While that provision is in effect, Medicaid won’t be allowed to reimburse Planned Parenthood for any services, mirroring what states just won the right to do in the Supreme Court ruling – but at the national level.
Although the bill blocks Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood for only 12 months, the ruling lets states exclude any provider from its Medicaid program because they also provide abortions.
In other words, people who rely on Medicaid funding will lose access to all of those essential services not just at Planned Parenthood but potentially at any other providers that also offer abortion care.
Abortion-rights demonstrators holds a sign in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington as the Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic case is heard on April 2, 2025. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
U.S. Rep. Mike Pence introduced the first federal legislation aimed at “defunding” Planned Parenthood in 2007. It failed to muster enough support in Congress to become law. States such as Texas then started down that path.
The first national legislative success came in 2015. Both houses of Congress passed a budget reconciliation measure with a provision to defund Planned Parenthood that year, but President Barack Obama vetoed it. Republicans had threatened to shut down the government over those demands. A year later, the GOP included a call to defund Planned Parenthood in its presidential campaign platform.
Before Obama left office, his administration passed a rule in December 2016 protecting federal funds for family planning for health care facilities that also provided abortion. The Trump administration rolled back that rule in 2017.
The Trump administration relied on an argument that any support for a health care provider that offers patients abortion services, no matter how segregated the sources of funding, is tantamount to subsidizing abortion.
What to expect next
Nationally, 16 million women of reproductive age rely on Medicaid, and 1 in 5 women will visit a Planned Parenthood clinic for health care at least once in their lives. Those clinics depend on Medicaid reimbursement to offer an array of reproductive health care services, such as prenatal care, that are not tied to abortion.
If Planned Parenthood clinics can’t bill Medicaid for those services, many will close. Planned Parenthood estimates that it could see almost 200 closures – 90% of them in states where abortion is legal. That means over 1 million low-income people risk losing access to their health care provider.
And once clinics close, they may never reopen, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, recently predicted.
Should the number of Planned Parenthood clinics plummet, it will threaten access to contraceptives, which are all the more important in preventing unwanted pregnancies for people living in states that have banned abortion. Researchers have repeatedly found that unwanted pregnancies, when people are denied access to abortion services, are correlated with increased debt, missed educational and employment opportunities, mental health problems, and diminished care for a family’s older children.
In addition, pregnant patients and new parents may have more limited options for prenatal and postnatal care. That could cause the country’s already-high rates of maternal and infant mortality to increase.
Rachel Rebouché does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
When asked what MAGA means to him, Trump, in a 2017 interview with The Washington Post said, “To me, it meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much.”
But Democratic leaders have a different interpretation of the slogan.
Former President Bill Clinton in 2016 said of MAGA: “That message where ‘I’ll give you America great again’ is if you’re a white Southerner, you know exactly what it means, don’t you? What it means is ‘I’ll give you an economy you had 50 years ago, and I’ll move you back up on the social totem pole and other people down.”
While MAGA is ubiquitous, little is known about what it means to the American public. Ten years on, what do Americans think when they hear or read this phrase?
Based on the analysis of Americans’ explanations of what “Make America Great Again” means to them, we found evidence suggesting that the public’s views of MAGA mirror the perspectives offered by both Trump and Clinton.
Republicans interpret this phrase as a call for the renewal of the U.S. economy and military might, as well as a return to “traditional” values, especially those relating to gender roles and gender identities. Democrats, we found, view MAGA as a call for a return to white supremacy and growing authoritarianism.
Donald Trump rides an escalator to a press event to announce his candidacy for the U.S. presidency at Trump Tower on June 16, 2015, in New York City. Christopher Gregory/Getty Images
The survey question was open-ended, allowing respondents to define this phrase in any way they saw fit. We used AI-based thematic analysis and qualitative reading of the responses to better understand how Democrats and Republicans define the slogan.
For our AI-based thematic analysis, we instructed ChatGPT to provide three overarching themes most touched upon by Democratic and Republican respondents. This approach follows recent research demonstrating that, when properly instructed, ChatGPT reliably identifies broad themes in collections of texts.
Republican interpretation of MAGA
Our analysis shows that Republicans view the slogan as representing the “American dream.” In part, MAGA is about restoring the nation’s pride and economic strength. Reflecting these themes, one Republican respondent wrote that MAGA means “encouraging manufacturers to hire Americans and strengthen the economy. Making the USA self-sufficient as it once was.”
MAGA is also closely related among Republicans with an “America First” policy. This is partly about having a strong military – a common theme among Republican respondents – and “making America the superpower” again, one respondent wrote.
Republicans also wrote that putting America first means emphasizing strict enforcement of immigration laws against “illegals” and cutting off foreign aid. For example, one Republican respondent said that MAGA meant “stopping illegals at the border, ending freebies for illegals, adding more police and building a strong military.”
Finally, Republicans see the slogan as calling for a return to “traditional” values. They expressed a strong desire to reverse cultural shifts that Republican respondents perceive as a threat.
As one Republican put it, MAGA “means going back to where men would join the military, women were home raising healthy minded children and it was easy to be successful, the crime rate was extremely low and it used to be safe for kids to hang out on the streets with other kids and even walk themselves places.”
Another Republican made the connection between MAGA and traditional gender roles even more explicit, highlighting the link between MAGA and opposition to transgender rights: “MAGA people know there are only 2 sexes and a man can never be a woman. If you believe otherwise you are destroying AMERICA.”
A banner showing a picture of President Donald Trump is displayed outside of the U.S. Department of Agriculture building on June 3, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Kevin Carter/Getty Images
Democratic MAGA views
Democrats have a very different understanding of the MAGA slogan. Many Democrats view MAGA as a white supremacist movement designed to protect the status of white people and undermine the civil rights of marginalized groups.
One Democrat argued that “‘Make America Great Again’ is a standard borne by people who’ve seen a decrease in the potency of their privilege (see: cisgendered white men) and wish to see their privilege restored or strengthened. In essence, it’s a chant for all racist, fascist and otherwise bigoted actors to unite under.”
Another Democrat wrote that MAGA was a call to “take us backwards as a society in regards to women’s, minority’s, and LGBTQ people’s rights … It would take us to a time when only White men ruled.”
Democrats also view MAGA as a form of nostalgia for a heavily mythologized past. Many Democratic respondents described the past longed for by Republicans as a “myth” or “fairytale.” Others argued that this mythologized past, though appealing on the surface, was repressive for many Americans.
One Democrat said that MAGA meant “returning America to a fantasy version of the past with the goal of advancing the success of white, straight, wealthy men by any means necessary and almost always to the detriment of other segments of the population.”
A person holds a ‘Trump won’t erase us’ sign while walking in the WorldPride Parade on June 7, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Kevin Carter/Getty Images
Finally, many Democrats interpret the slogan as reflecting an authoritarian cult of personality. In this vein, a Democratic respondent said of MAGA, “It’s a call to arms for MAGA cult members, who believe that Trump and the Republicans party will somehow improve their lives by targeting people and policies they don’t like, even when it is against their best interests and any rational thought process.”
While some Republicans expressed racist, xenophobic or anti-trans sentiments in their understanding of MAGA, some Democrats revealed outright condescension toward MAGA believers.
“The MAGA’s are brainwashed, idiotic members of society who know nothing more than to follow the lead of an idiotic president who has the vocabulary of a 3rd grader,” one Democrat wrote. “It is nonsense idiots parrot,” another respondent said.
In all, in the 10 years since Donald Trump burst onto the political scene, much has been written about the conflicting visions of past, present and future at the heart of America’s partisan divisions.
With the Trump administration’s proclaimed commitment to return the U.S. to its “golden age” and a strong resistance to his efforts, only time will tell which vision of America will prevail.
Jesse Rhodes has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and Demos. He is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Douglas Rice has received funding from the National Science Foundation.
Adam Eichen, Gregory Wall, and Tatishe Nteta do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The U.S. Capitol is seen shortly after the Senate passed its version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 1, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
As the U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic tax and spending package, many critics are wondering how the president retained the loyalty of so many congressional Republicans, with so few defections.
Just three Republican senators – the maximum allowed for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to still pass – voted against the Senate version of the bill on July 1, 2025. In the House, only two Republicans voted against the bill, which passed the chamber on July 3.
Trump is not the first president to bend Congress to his will to get legislation approved.
Presidential supremacy over the legislative process has been on the rise for decades. But contrary to popular belief, lawmakers are not always simply voting based on blind partisanship.
Increasingly, politicians in the same political party as a president are voting in line with the president because their political futures are as tied up with the president’s reputation as they have ever been.
Even when national polling indicates a policy is unpopular – as is the case with Trump’s budget reconciliation bill, which an estimated 55% of American voters said in June they oppose, according to Quinnipiac University polling – lawmakers in the president’s party have serious motivation to follow the president’s lead.
Or else they risk losing reelection.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaks to reporters at the Capitol building on July 3, 2025. Alex Wong/Getty Images
Lawmakers increasingly partisan on presidential policy
Over the past 50 years, lawmakers in the president’s party have increasingly supported the president’s position on legislation that passes Congress. Opposition lawmakers, meanwhile, are increasingly united against the president’s position.
These patterns are unheard of in the modern Congress. In 2022, for example – a year of significant legislative achievement for the Biden administration – the Democratic majority in Congress voted the same way as the Democratic president 99% of the time. Republicans, meanwhile, voted with Biden just 19% of the time.
Elections can tell us why
Over the past half-century, the two major parties have changed dramatically, both in the absolutist nature of their beliefs and in relation to one another.
Both parties used to be more mixed in their ideological outlooks, for example, with conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans playing key roles in policymaking. This made it easier to form cross-party coalitions, either with or against the president.
A few decades ago, Democrats and Republicans were also less geographically polarized from each other. Democrats were regularly elected to congressional seats in the South, for example, even if those districts supported Republican presidents such as Nixon or Ronald Reagan.
These changes have ushered in a larger phenomenon called political nationalization, in which local political considerations, issues and candidate qualifications have taken a back seat to national politics.
Ticket splitting
From the 1960s through most of the 1980s, between one-quarter and one-half of all congressional districts routinely split tickets – meaning they sent a politician of one party to Congress while supporting a different party for president.
These are the same few districts in Nebraska and New York, for example, that supported former Vice President Kamala Harris for president in 2024 but which also elected a Republican candidate to the House that same year.
Since the Reagan years, however, these types of districts that could simultaneously support a Democratic presidential nominee and Republicans for Congress have gone nearly extinct. Today, only a handful of districts split their tickets, and all other districts select the same party for both offices.
The past two presidential elections, in 2020 and 2024, set the same record low for ticket splitting. Just 16 out of 435 House districts voted for different parties for the House of Representatives and president.
Members of Congress follow their voters
The political success of members of Congress has become increasingly tied up with the success or failure of the president. Because nearly all Republicans hail from districts and states that are very supportive of Trump and his agenda, following the will of their voters increasingly means being supportive of the president’s agenda.
Not doing so risks blowback from their Trump-supporting constituents. A June 2025 Quinnipiac University poll found that 67% of Republicans support the bill, while 87% of Democrats oppose it.
These electoral considerations also help explain the unanimous opposition to Trump’s legislation by the Democrats, nearly all of whom represent districts and states that did not support Trump in 2024.
Thanks to party polarization in ideologies, geography and in the electorate, few Democrats could survive politically while strongly supporting Trump. And few Republicans could do so while opposing him.
But as the importance to voters of mere presidential support increases, the importance of members’ skill in fighting for issues unique to their districts has decreased. This can leave important local concerns about, for example, unique local environmental issues or declining economic sectors unspoken for. At the very least, members have less incentive to speak for them.
Charlie Hunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Many modern devices – from cellphones and computers to electric vehicles and wind turbines – rely on strong magnets made from a type of minerals called rare earths. As the systems and infrastructure used in daily life have turned digital and the United States has moved toward renewable energy, accessing these minerals has become critical – and the markets for these elements have grown rapidly.
Modern society now uses rare earth magnets in everything from national defense, where magnet-based systems are integral to missile guidance and aircraft, to the clean energy transition, which depends on wind turbines and electric vehicles.
The rapid growth of the rare earth metal trade and its effects on society isn’t the only case study of its kind. Throughout history, materials have quietly shaped the trajectory of human civilization. They form the tools people use, the buildings they inhabit, the devices that mediate their relationships and the systems that structure economies. Newly discovered materials can set off ripple effects that shape industries, shift geopolitical balances and transform people’s daily habits.
Materials science is the study of the atomic structure, properties, processing and performance of materials. In many ways, materials science is a discipline of immense social consequence.
As a materials scientist, I’m interested in what can happen when new materials become available. Glass, steel and rare earth magnets are all examples of how innovation in materials science has driven technological change and, as a result, shaped global economies, politics and the environment.
How innovation shapes society: Pressures from societal and political interests (orange arrows) drive the creation of new materials and the technologies that such materials enable (center). The ripple effects resulting from people using these technologies change the entire fabric of society (blue arrows). Peter Mullner
Glass lenses and the scientific revolution
In the early 13th century, after the sacking of Constantinople, some excellent Byzantine glassmakers left their homes to settle in Venice – at the time a powerful economic and political center. The local nobility welcomed the glassmakers’ beautiful wares. However, to prevent the glass furnaces from causing fires, the nobles exiled the glassmakers – under penalty of death – to the island of Murano.
Murano became a center for glass craftsmanship. In the 15th century, the glassmaker Angelo Barovier experimented with adding the ash from burned plants, which contained a chemical substance called potash, to the glass.
The potash reduced the melting temperature and made liquid glass more fluid. It also eliminated bubbles in the glass and improved optical clarity. This transparent glass was later used in magnifying lenses and spectacles.
Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press, completed in 1455, made reading more accessible to people across Europe. With it came a need for reading glasses, which grew popular among scholars, merchants and clergy – enough that spectacle-making became an established profession.
In the late 18th and 19th centuries, the Industrial Revolution created demand for stronger, more reliable materials for machines, railroads, ships and infrastructure. The material that emerged was steel, which is strong, durable and cheap. Steel is a mixture of mostly iron, with small amounts of carbon and other elements added.
Countries with large-scale steel manufacturing once had outsized economic and political power and influence over geopolitical decisions. For example, the British Parliament intended to prevent the colonies from exporting finished steel with the iron act of 1750. They wanted the colonies’ raw iron as supply for their steel industry in England.
Benjamin Huntsman invented a smelting process using 3-foot tall ceramic vessels, called crucibles, in 18th-century Sheffield. Huntsman’s crucible process produced higher-quality steel for tools and weapons.
One hundred years later, Henry Bessemer developed the oxygen-blowing steelmaking process, which drastically increased production speed and lowered costs. In the United States, figures such as Andrew Carnegie created a vast industry based on Bessemer’s process.
The widespread availability of steel transformed how societies built, traveled and defended themselves. Skyscrapers and transit systems made of steel allowed cities to grow, steel-built battleships and tanks empowered militaries, and cars containing steel became staples in consumer life.
Control over steel resources and infrastructure made steel a foundation of national power. China’s 21st-century rise to steel dominance is a continuation of this pattern. From 1995 to 2015, China’s contribution to the world steel production increased from about 10% to more than 50%. The White House responded in 2018 with massive tariffs on Chinese steel.
Rare earth metals and global trade
Early in the 21st century, the advance of digital technologies and the transition to an economy based on renewable energies created a demand for rare earth elements.
Rare earth elements are 17 chemically very similar elements, including neodymium, dysprosium, samarium and others. They occur in nature in bundles and are the ingredients that make magnets super strong and useful. They are necessary for highly efficient electric motors, wind turbines and electronic devices.
The rare earth metals case illustrates how a single category of materials can shape trade policy, industrial planning and even diplomatic alliances.
Mining rare earth elements has allowed for the widespread adoption of many modern technologies. Peggy Greb, USDA
Technological transformation begins with societal pressure. New materials create opportunities for scientific and engineering breakthroughs. Once a material proves useful, it quickly becomes woven into the fabric of daily life and broader systems. With each innovation, the material world subtly reorganizes the social world — redefining what is possible, desirable and normal.
Understanding how societies respond to new innovations in materials science can help today’s engineers and scientists solve crises in sustainability and security. Every technical decision is, in some ways, a cultural one, and every material has a story that extends far beyond its molecular structure.
The National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, NASA, and other national and regional agencies have funded former research of Peter Mullner.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Elizabeth Carlen, Living Earth Collaborative Postdoctoral Fellow, Washington University in St. Louis
A Buddhist monk in Hong Kong releases fish and chants prayers during a ceremony to free the spirits of tsunami victims.Samantha Sin/AFP via Getty Images
People often consider evolution to be a process that occurs in nature in the background of human society. But evolution is not separate from human beings. In fact, human cultural practices can influence evolution in wildlife. This influence is highly pronounced in cities, where people drastically alter landscapes to meet their own needs.
Human actions can affect wildlife evolution in a number of ways. If people fragment habitat, separated wildlife populations can evolve to be more and more different from each other. If people change certain local conditions, it can pressure organisms in new ways that mean different genes are favored by natural selection and passed on to offspring – another form of evolution that can be driven by what people do.
In a recent review, evolutionary biologists Marta Szulkin, Colin Garrowayand I, in collaboration with scientists spread across five continents, explored how cultural processes – including religion, politics and war – shape urban evolution. We reviewed dozens of empirical studies about urban wildlife around the globe. Our work highlights which human cultural practices have and continue to shape the evolutionary trajectory of wild animals and plants.
Religious practices
If you’ve traveled internationally, you may have noticed the menu at any one McDonald’s restaurant is shaped by the local culture of its location. In the United Arab Emirates, McDonald’s serves an entirely halal menu. Vegetarian items are common and no beef is served in Indian McDonald’s. And in the United States, McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish is especially popular during Lent when observant Catholics don’t consume meat on Fridays.
Similarly, ecosystems of cities are shaped by local cultural practices. Because all wildlife are connected to the environment, cultural practices that alter the landscape shape the evolution of urban organisms.
Populations of fire salamanders have different genes depending on which side of city walls in Oviedo, Spain, they live on. Patrice Skrzynski via Getty Images
For example, in Oviedo, Spain, people constructed walls around religious buildings between the 12th and 16th centuries. This division of the city led to different populations of fire salamanders inside and outside the walls. Because salamanders can’t scale these walls, those on opposite sides became isolated from each other and unable to pass genes back and forth. In a process that scientists call genetic drift, over time salamanders on the two sides became genetically distinct − evidence of the two populations evolving independently.
Imagine dumping out a handful of M&Ms. Just by chance, some colors might be overrepresented and others might be missing. In the same way, genes that are overrepresented on one side of the wall can be in low numbers or missing on the other side. That’s genetic drift.
Introducing non-native wildlife is another way people can alter urban ecosystems and evolutionary processes. For example, prayer animal release is a practice that started in the fifth or sixth century in some sects of Buddhism. Practitioners who strive to cause no harm to any living creature release captive animals, which benefits the animal and is meant to improve the karma of the person who released it.
However, these animals are often captured from the wild or come from the pet trade, thereby introducing non-native wildlife into the urban ecosystem. Non-natives may compete with local species and contribute to the local extinction of native wildlife. Capturing animals nearby has downsides, too. It can diminish local populations, since many die traveling to the release ceremony. The genetic diversity of these local populations in turn decreases, reducing the population’s ability to survive.
Politically motivated campaigns have shaped wildlife in various ways.
Starting in 1958, for instance, the Chinese Communist Party led a movement to eliminate four species that were considered pests: rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows. While the first three are commonly considered pests around the world, sparrows made the list because they were “public animals of capitalism” due to their fondness for grain. The extermination campaign ended up decimating the sparrow population and damaging the entire ecosystem. With sparrows no longer hunting and eating insects, crop pests such as locusts thrived, leading to crop destruction and famine.
In the United States, racial politics may be shaping evolutionary processes in wildlife.
For instance, American highways traverse cities according to political agendas and have often dismantled poor neighborhoods of color to make way for multilane thoroughfares. These highways can change how animals are able to disperse and commingle. For example, they prevent bobcats and coyotes from traveling throughout Los Angeles, leading to similar patterns of population differentiation as seen in fire salamanders in Spain.
Wildlife during and after war
Human religious and political agendas often lead to armed conflict. Wars are known to dramatically alter the environment, as seen in current conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.
While documenting evolutionary changes to urban wildlife is secondary to keeping people safe during wartime, a handful of studies on wildlife have come out of active war zones. For example, the current Russia-Ukraine war affected the migration of greater spotted eagles. They made large diversions around the active war zone, arriving later than usual at their breeding grounds. The longer route increased the energy the eagles used during migration and likely influenced their fitness during breeding.
Wars limit access to resources for people living in active war zones. The lack of energy to heat homes in Ukraine during the winter has led urban residents to harvest wood from nearby forests. This harvesting will have long-term consequences on forest dynamics, likely altering future evolutionary potential.
A similar example is famine that occurred during the Democratic Republic of Congo’s civil wars (1996-1997, 1998-2003) and led to an increase in bushmeat consumption. This wildlife hunting is known to reduce primate population sizes, making them more susceptible to local extinction.
Even after war, landscapes experience consequences.
For example, the demilitarized zone between North Korea and South Korea is a 160-mile (250-kilometer) barrier, established in 1953, separating the two countries. Heavily fortified with razor wire and landmines, the demilitarized zone has become a de facto nature sanctuary supporting thousands of species, including dozens of endangered species.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War led to the establishment of the European Green Belt, which runs along the same path as the Iron Curtain. This protected ecological network is over 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) long, allowing wildlife to move freely across 24 countries in Europe. Like the Korean DMZ, the European Green Belt allows for wildlife to move, breed and exchange genes, despite political boundaries. Politics has removed human influence from these spaces, allowing them to be a safe haven for wildlife.
While researchers have documented a number of examples of wildlife evolving in response to human history and cultural practices, there’s plenty more to uncover. Cultures differ around the world, meaning each city has its own set of variables that shape the evolutionary processes of wildlife. Understanding how these human cultural practices shape evolutionary patterns will allow people to better design cities that support both humans and the wildlife that call these places home.
Ideas for this article were developed as part of a NSF funded Research Coordination Network (DEB 1840663). Elizabeth Carlen was funded by the Living Earth Collaborative.
The Haleakala Observatory, left, houses one telescope for the ATLAS system. That system first spotted the object 3I/ATLAS, which isn’t visible in this image. AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson
Astronomers manning an asteroid warning system caught a glimpse of a large, bright object zipping through the solar system late on July 1, 2025. The object’s potentially interstellar origins excited scientists across the globe, and the next morning, the European Space Agency confirmed that this object, first named A11pl3Z and then designated 3I/ATLAS, is the third ever found from outside our solar system.
Current measurements estimate that 3I/ATLAS is about 12 miles (20 kilometers) wide, and while its path won’t take it close to Earth, it could hold clues about the nature of a previous interstellar object and about planet formation in solar systems beyond ours.
On July 2 at 3 p.m. EDT, Mary Magnuson, an associate science editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke to Darryl Z. Seligman, an astrophysicist at Michigan State University who has been studying 3I/ATLAS since its discovery.
What makes 3I/ATLAS different from its predecessors?
We have discovered two interstellar objects so far, ’Oumuamua and Comet 2I/Borisov. ’Oumuamua had no dust tail and a significant nongravitational acceleration, which led to a wide variety of hypotheses regarding its origin. 2I/Borisov was very clearly a comet, though it has a somewhat unique composition compared to comets in our solar system.
All of our preparation for the next interstellar object was preparing for something that looked like a ’Oumuamua, or something that looked like Borisov. And this thing doesn’t look like either of them, which is crazy and exciting.
This object is shockingly bright, and it’s very far away from the Earth. It is significantly bigger than both of the interstellar objects we’ve seen – it is orders of magnitude larger than ’Oumuamua.
For some context, ’Oumuamua was discovered when it was very close to the Earth, but this new object is so large and bright that our telescopes can see it, even though it is still much farther away. This means observatories and telescopes will be able to observe it for much longer than we could for the two previous objects.
It’s huge and it’s much farther away, but it is also much faster.
When I went to bed last night, I saw an alert about this object, but nobody knew what was going on yet. I have a few collaborators who figure out the orbits of things in the solar system, and I expected to wake up to them saying something like “yeah, this isn’t actually interstellar.” Because a lot of times you think you may have found something interesting, but as more data comes in, it becomes less interesting.
Then, when I woke up at 1 a.m., my colleagues who are experts on orbits were saying things like “no, this is definitely interstellar. This is for real.”
How can astronomers tell if something is an interstellar object?
The eccentricity of the object’s orbit is how you know that it’s interstellar. The eccentricity refers to how noncircular an orbit is. So an eccentricity of zero is a pure circle, and as the eccentricity increases, it becomes what’s known as an ellipse – a stretched out circle.
A hyperbolic orbit isn’t a closed loop, as this rendering of ‘Oumuamua’s trajectory shows. All the planets have oval-shaped elliptical orbits, which close in a loop. The interstellar object instead passes through but doesn’t come back around. Tomruen/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
And then once you get past an eccentricity of one, you go from an ellipse to a hyperbolic orbit, and that is unbound. So while an elliptical orbit is stretched out, it still orbits and comes back around. An object with a hyperbolic orbit comes through and it leaves, but it never comes back. That type of orbit tells you that it didn’t come from this solar system.
When researchers are collecting data, they’re getting points of light on the sky, and they don’t know how far away they are. It’s not like they see them and can just tell, “oh, that’s eccentric.” What they’re seeing is how far away the object is compared with other stars in the background, what its position is and how fast it’s moving. And then from that data, they try to fit the orbit.
This object is moving fast for how far away it is, and that’s what’s telling us that it could be hyperbolic. If something is moving fast enough, it’ll escape from the solar system. So a hyperbolic, unbound object inherently has to be moving faster.
This is a real-time process. My collaborators have preexisting software, which will, every night, get new observations of all the small bodies and objects in the solar system. It will figure out and update what the orbits are in real time. We’re getting data points, and with more data we can refine which orbit fits the points best.
What can scientists learn from an interstellar object?
Objects like this are pristine, primordial remnants from the planet formation process in other planetary systems. The small bodies in our solar system have taught us quite a lot about how the planets in the solar system formed and evolved. This could be a new window into understanding planet formation throughout the galaxy.
As we’re looking through the incoming data, we’re trying to figure out whether it’s a comet. In the next couple of weeks, there will likely be way more information available to say if it has a cometary tail like Borisov, or if it has an acceleration that’s not due to a gravitational pull, like ’Oumuamua.
If it is a comet, researchers really want to figure out whether it’s icy. If it contains ices, that tells you a ton about it. The chemistry of these small bodies is the most important aspect when it comes to understanding planet formation, because the chemical composition tells you about the conditions the object’s solar system was in when the object formed.
For example, if the object has a lot of ices in it, you would know that wherever it came from, it didn’t spend much time near a star, because those ices would have melted. If it has a lot of ice in it, that could tell you that it formed really far away from a star and then got ejected by something massive, such as a planet the size of Jupiter or Neptune.
Fundamentally, this object could tell astronomers more about a population of objects that we don’t fully understand, or about the conditions in another solar system.
We’ve had a couple of hours to get some preliminary observations. I suspect that practically every telescope is going to be looking at this object for the next couple of nights, so we’ll get much more information about it very soon.
Darryl Z. Seligman is supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-2303553. This research award is partially funded by a generous gift of Charles Simonyi to the NSF Division of Astronomical Sciences. The award is made in recognition of significant contributions to Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time.
Headline: FortisBC announces upcoming call for power
CanREA applauds FortisBC for a new call for power that will expand market opportunities for the renewable energy industry in British Columbia.
Vancouver, July 4, 2025—The Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA) welcomes a new call for power in British Columbia, to be launched later this year, as announced by FortisBC on July 3.
“This is the third call for power announced in BC in the past two years,” said Vittoria Bellissimo, CanREA’s President and CEO. “This growing momentum demonstrates BC’s commitment to developing renewable energy and energy storage to contribute to the province’s energy security, clean economy and reconciliation goals.”
This is the next step after the Request for Expression of Interest (RFEOI) issued in 2024, which targeted up to 1,100 gigawatt hours (GWh) of energy supply.
This call for power will be offered by invitation only to the successful RFEOI participants. Projects must have a minimum of 25% equity participation by First Nations and directly connect to the Fortis Electricity system in the Southern Interior. The focus will be on wind projects that can provide energy in the winter.
“We are encouraged to see FortisBC prioritize the development of projects with significant Indigenous equity participation,” said Patricia Lightburn, CanREA’s BC Director. “New wind energy projects will quickly deliver economic development opportunities to First Nations and other local communities, while helping to meet BC’s growing demand for clean electricity.”
BC recently passed legislation to streamline regulatory approvals that will help get these projects online sooner, without compromising on environmental protection and community engagement.
Going forward, CanREA will engage with FortisBC to inform the call for power.
Quotes
“This is the third call for power announced in BC in the past two years. This growing momentum demonstrates BC’s commitment to developing renewable energy and energy storage to contribute to the province’s energy security, clean economy and reconciliation goals.”
—Vittoria Bellissimo, President and CEO, Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA)
“We are encouraged to see FortisBC prioritize the development of projects with significant Indigenous equity participation. New wind energy projects will quickly deliver economic development opportunities to First Nations and other local communities, while helping to meet BC’s growing demand for clean electricity.”
—Patricia Lightburn, BC Director, Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA)
For media inquiries or interview opportunities, please contact:
Communications Canadian Renewable Energy Association communications@renewablesassociation.ca
About CanREA
The Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA) is the voice for wind energy, solar energy and energy storage solutions that will power Canada’s energy future. We work to create the conditions for a modern energy system through stakeholder advocacy and public engagement. Our diverse members are uniquely positioned to deliver clean, low-cost, reliable, flexible and scalable solutions for Canada’s energy needs. For more information on how Canada can use wind energy, solar energy and energy storage to help achieve its net-zero commitments, consult “Powering Canada’s Journey to Net-Zero: CanREA’s 2050 Vision.” Follow us on Bluesky and LinkedIn here. Learn more at renewablesassociation.ca.
The post FortisBC announces upcoming call for power appeared first on Canadian Renewable Energy Association.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
News story
Nationwide clampdown on delivery riders working illegally
Ramp-up of arrests and visits set to take place across the UK targeting migrants working illegally in the gig economy
Immigration enforcement van
Enforcement teams are gearing up to launch a nationwide blitz targeting illegal working hotspots, with a focus on the gig economy and migrants working as delivery riders.
Under the Government’s Plan for Change to restore order to the immigration system and tougher enforcement of the rules, Home Office Immigration Enforcement teams will launch a major operation to disrupt this type of criminality.
Strategic, intel-driven activity will bring together officers across the UK and place an increased focus on migrants suspected of working illegally whilst in taxpayer funded accommodation or receiving financial support.
The law is clear that asylum seekers are only entitled to this support if they would otherwise be destitute. That is why anyone caught flagrantly abusing the system in this way, as a result of the operation, will face having support discontinued, whether that’s entitlement to accommodation or payments.
Operational teams will target certain hotspots across the country over a period of intensification, as well as going after organisations who wilfully employ those working illegally, through civil penalty referrals. Any business found to be illegally employing someone could face a fine of up to £60,000 per worker, director disqualifications and potential prison sentences of up to five years.
The Government has been surging action against illegal working since coming into power one year ago, with 10,031 illegal working visits leading to 7,130 arrests, marking a 48% and 51% rise respectively, compared to the year before (5 July 2023 to 28 June 2024). This marks the first time in a 12-month period where more than 10,000 visits have taken place.
748 illegal working civil penalty notices were also handed to businesses caught violating immigration rules in the first quarter (January to March) of the year, marking the highest level since 2016 – an 81% increase compared to the same time last year.
And the Government is tightening the law by making it a legal requirement for all companies, including the gig economy, to check anyone working for them has the legal right to do so. This will end the abuse of flexible working arrangements. The new measures will be introduced through the landmark Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, said:
Illegal working undermines honest business and undercuts local wages – the British public will not stand for it and neither will this government.
Often those travelling to the UK illegally are sold a lie by the people smuggling gangs that they will be able to live and work freely in this country, when in reality they end up facing squalid living conditions, minimal pay and inhumane working hours.
We are surging enforcement action against this pull factor, on top of returning 30,000 people with no right to be here and tightening the law through our Plan for Change.
But there is no single solution to the problem of illegal migration. That’s why we’ve signed landmark agreements with international partners to dismantle gangs and made significant arrests of notorious people smugglers.
Director of Enforcement, Compliance and Crime, Eddy Montgomery, said:
Our dedicated Immigration Enforcement officers have been ramping up action to disable illegal working across the board.
This next step of co-ordinated activity will target those who seek to work illegally in the gig economy and exploit their status in the UK.
That means if you are found to be working with no legal right to do so, we will bring the full force of powers available to us to disrupt and stop this abuse. There will no place to hide.
This targeted action is on top of ongoing work across the country to disrupt people flouting the rules across different sectors.
Earlier this week, during a joint operation with the Metropolitan Police to go after people suspected of working illegally as cash in hand builders, officers targeted anti-social behaviour and illegally modified scooters and e-bikes. 20 Indian nationals were arrested as part of the operation. This included 16 overstayers, one illegal entrant, one port absconder and two small boat arrivals.
On 18 June, West Midlands teams conducted an operation on Smethwick High Street after receiving intelligence on a major collection point for people suspected of going to work illegally, primarily on construction sites. The team encountered 73 individuals, arresting 26 suspected immigration offenders (24 Indian nationals, one Nepalese national and one Italian national). This led to the detention of 11 Indian nationals.
And on 12 June, East of England teams conducted a multi-agency operation with police in Lynn Road, Wisbech, focusing on cash in hand builders using illegally modified e-bikes. They carried out 21 immigration checks which resulted the arrest of three men, including one Syrian, one Chinese and one Brazilian national. The police went on to seize six mopeds and one car for offences including driving with no insurance, no driving licence and disqualification.
The crackdown also sits alongside key join up with the delivery industry on tackling illicit account sharing. On Monday, 30 June , the Home Office and Department for Business and Trade met with major delivery firms and pledged to strengthen security checks to tackle illegal working. Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat have committed to increasing the number of daily facial recognition checks riders are required to take to verify their identity.
Illegal working is linked to exploitation, with teams often encountering squalid living conditions, people receiving little to no pay and inhumane working hours. In the worst instances, these individuals may be victims of modern slavery.
Immigration Enforcement take a number of steps to spot the signs of individuals who are potentially being exploited and, where appropriate, will refer people to the National Referral Mechanism so they can access support. They also work closely with crucial partners like the Gangmasters Labour Abuse Authority, to share insights and strengthen the approach to tackling labour exploitation.
And this new operation is just one part of the government’s action to strengthen UK border security and disable the people smuggling gangs fuelling illegal migration.
Over the past year, the Prime Minister has been resetting relationships and forging partnerships across Europe and beyond, to ensure a targeted international response in breaking the model behind this vile trade.
Furthermore, nearly 30,000 people with no right to be in UK have been returned, landmark agreements have been signed with Iraq to dismantle gangs and Italy to take down illicit finance networks and a world-first people smuggling sanctions regime has been launched to ban travel and freeze assets.
View of the United Nations logo at a 2022 conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
While the U.S. military’s strikes on Iran on June 21, 2025, are believed to have damaged the country’s critical nuclear infrastructure, no evidence has yet emerged showing the program to have been completely destroyed. In fact, an early U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessment surmised that the attack merely delayed Iran’s possible path to a nuclear weapon by less than six months. Further, Rafael Mariano Grossi, director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, stated that Iran may have moved its supply of enriched uranium ahead of the strikes, and assessed that Tehran could resume uranium enrichment “in a matter of months.”
As a scholar of nuclear nonproliferation, my research indicates that military strikes, such as the U.S. one against Iran, tend not to work. Diplomacy — involving broad and resolute international efforts — offers a more strategically effective way to preempt a country from obtaining a nuclear arsenal.
Yet neither military operation reliably or completely terminated the targeted program. Many experts of nuclear strategy believe that while the Israeli strike destroyed the Osirak complex, it likely accelerated Iraq’s fledgling nuclear program, increasing Saddam Hussein’s commitment to pursue a nuclear weapon.
In a similar vein, while Israeli airstrikes destroyed Syria’s nascent nuclear facility, evidence soon emerged that the country, under its former leader, Bashar Assad, may have continued its nuclear activities elsewhere.
Based on my appraisal of similar cases, the record shows that diplomacy has been a more consistently reliable strategy than military force for getting a targeted country to denuclearize.
The tactics involved in nuclear diplomacy include bilateral and multilateral engagement efforts and economic tools ranging from comprehensive sanctions to transformative aid and trade incentives. Travel and cultural sanctions – including bans on participating in international sporting and other events – can also contribute to the effectiveness of denuclearization diplomacy.
The high point of denuclearization diplomacy came in 1970, when the majority of the world signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The treaty obliged nonnuclear weapons states to refrain from pursuing them, and existing nuclear powers to share civilian nuclear power technology and work toward eventual nuclear weapons disarmament.
I’ve found that in a majority of cases since then – notably in Argentina, Brazil, Libya, South Africa, South Korea and Taiwan – diplomacy played a pivotal role in convincing nuclear-seeking nations to entirely and permanently relinquish their pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Case studies of nuclear diplomacy
In the cases of U.S. allies Argentina, Brazil, South Korea and Taiwan, the military option was off the table for Washington, which instead successfully used diplomatic pressure to compel these countries to discontinue their nuclear programs. This involved the imposition of significant economic and technological sanctions on Argentina and Brazil in the late-1970s, which substantially contributed to the denuclearization of South America. In the South Korea and Taiwan cases, the threat of economic sanctions was effectively coupled with the risk of losing U.S. military aid and security guarantees.
In the case of Iraq, the Hussein regime eventually did denuclearize in the 1990s, but not through a deal negotiated directly with the U.S. or the international community. Rather, Hussein’s decision was motivated by the damaging economic and technological costs of the U.N. sanctions and his desire to see them lifted after the first Gulf War.
In the 11 countries in which diplomacy was used to reverse nuclear proliferation, only in the cases of India and Pakistan did it fail to induce any nuclear reversal.
Consistent with the historical track record for diplomacy concerning other nuclear powers, Iran offers compelling evidence of what diplomacy can achieve in lieu of military force.
Diplomatic negotiations between the U.S, Iran and five leading powers yielded the landmark Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015. The so-called Iran deal involved multilateral diplomacy and a set of economic sanctions and incentives, and persuaded Iran to place stringent limits on its nuclear program for at least 10 years and ship tons of enriched uranium out of the country. A report from the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2016 confirmed that Iran had abided by the terms of the agreement. Consequently, the U.S., European Union and U.N. responded by lifting sanctions.
Representatives of the nations involved in signing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal pose for a group photo following talks in July 2015. AP Photo/Ronald Zak
Trump signaled quickly after the recent attack on Iran a willingness to engage in direct talks with Tehran. However, Iran may rebuff any agreement that effectively contains its nuclear program, opting instead for the intensified underground approach Iraq took after the 1981 Osirak attack.
Indeed, my research shows that combining military threats with diplomacy reduces the prospects of successfully reaching a disarmament agreement. Nations will be more reluctant to disarm when their negotiating counterpart adopts a threatening and combative posture, as it heightens their fear that disarmament will make it more vulnerable to future aggression from the opposing country.
A return to an Iran nuclear deal?
Successful denuclearization diplomacy with Iran will not be a panacea for Middle East stability; the U.S. will continue to harbor concerns about Iran’s military-related actions and relationships in the region.
It is, after all, unlikely that any U.S. administration could strike a deal with Tehran on nuclear policy that would simultaneously settle all outstanding issues and resolve decades of mutual acrimony.
But by signing and abiding to the terms of the JCPOA, Iran has demonstrated a willingness to cooperate on the nuclear issue in the past. Under the agreement, Iran accepted a highly limited and low-proliferation-risk nuclear program subject to intrusive inspections by the international community.
That arrangement was beneficial for regional stability and for buttressing the global norm against nuclear proliferation. A return to a JCPOA-type agreement would reinforce a diplomatic approach to relations with Iran and create an opening for progress with the country on other areas of concern.
Stephen Collins does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In 1962, poet and Auschwitz survivor Yehiel Dinur took the stand in Jerusalem in the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. Dinur was a much-anticipated witness, bearing the audience’s hope this man, a poet, would be able to explain – to capture and to transmit – the experience of Auschwitz, and of the Holocaust; that he could speak the unspeakable. Prosecutor Gideon Hausner hoped such a witness might “do justice to the six million personal tragedies”.
Dinur used the name Katzetnik 135633 in his writings, also translated as “Prisoner 135663”. On the stand, he said: “I believe wholeheartedly that I have to continue to bear this name until the world awakens.”
Awakening, understanding, empathy and change are the sentiments many survivors hope for, or ask for, during and after periods of trauma. The 20th century saw many of those pleas. The 21st century has done no better at honouring the promise, captured in the title of the 1984 Argentinian commission report on forced disappearances, Nunca Mas: never again. No matter how many such pleas appear before the courts, before the aggressors, before those in solidarity, the horrors of war, torture, starvation and genocide seem to happen again – and again.
Three recent books from the region where war was been raging since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 2023, and the ensuing war on Gaza, are part of these pleas.
Review: Eyes on Gaza – Plestia Alaqad (Macmillan), Letters from Gaza – edited by Mohammed Al-Zaqzooq & Mahmoud Alshaer (Penguin), Gates of Gaza – Amir Tibon (Scribe)
Eyes on Gaza is an on-the-ground account of the death and destruction of the first 45 days of the war by now 23-year-old Palestinian journalist Plestia Alaqad, who moved to Melbourne with her family in November 2023. Letters from Gaza is a collection of 50 stories, poems and fragments from Palestinian writers enduring the past 20 months. And Gates of Gaza is the story of Israeli journalist Amir Tibon, a resident of Nahal Oz, one of the border kibbutz attacked by Hamas on October 7.
Plestia Alaqad. Plestia
These are all first-person testimonies of experiences of being under attack, though those attacks differ. We might say they fit into the genre adopted in truth commissions, such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa: a response to the nation’s years of living under the apartheid laws, discarded when Nelson Mandela took power in 1994.
The commission was one effort to heal from this past. But, like the Eichmann trial, it needed stories to explain the histories of violence, and it needed the pain to be voiced to explain its impacts on communities, families and relationships.
The use of people’s narratives to “bear witness” to the complex layers of legally sanctioned and militarily executed pain, loss and the traumas they can produce, is sometimes effective in helping audiences understand them. The Bringing Them Home Report in 1997 used this form to explain the incidence and impacts of the forced removal of Indigenous children by the Australian state. It was effective as one form of creating a shared reality for all in Australia, who then understood the term “stolen generations” and the pain, loss and genocidal intent to which this phrase refers.
More recently, the Yoorrook Justice Commission in Victoria, Australia’s first formal truth-telling inquiry into historic and ongoing systemic injustices perpetrated against First Nations Peoples by colonisation, has also brought histories of loss, dispossession and abuse to light, using stories. Stories can make sense of the impact incurred through the intertwined web of policies, statistics, discrimination and quotidian violence at the hands of the state.
The work of testimony
The narratives in these books written since October 7 2023 are part of this genre of testimony or storytelling. But at least two of these books are not attempting to explain the past. They might be described better as pleas to stop what the International Court of Justice has called “a plausible genocide” happening in the present.
They are, in one reading, wishes for the world to understand the experience of pain, rage, loss, fear, distress and defeat that accompanies destruction and unbearable loss. A wish for the world to hear, or perhaps feel, the words on the page – and make the pain stop.
They wish the world would “awaken” to what is happening right now.
The dynamic of awakening is the stock in trade of truth commissions. One party testifies or speaks to an experience, and the audience wakes up to what has been happening. As a result, they either change or facilitate change. The truth, captured as testimony, is supposed to set people free. Not just the speaker, but the community of speakers weighed down by history – or by the struggles of the past or the present.
In legal forms the reason to speak is clear. The reason to speak in literature, biographies and works of nonfiction is less clear. What does the author want from us, the readers? But perhaps more importantly, what can we offer?
She wants the genocide to stop. She wants a free Palestine. She wants her home and her life back. The stories in this book show readers outside Gaza some of the life and death of those first six and a half weeks.
Her last entry before she leaves Gaza for Egypt – and then Australia – is dated Day 45. During those 45 days, she puts on a press helmet and jacket, which both give her protection and weigh her down. And then she speaks: to cameras, to followers, to anyone who will listen. Her social media feeds documenting the war gained worldwide attention, her Instagram following rising from around 3,700 to 4.1 million today.
There are too many deaths to be witnessed – by her and the reader. She describes genocide as an understatement for what is occurring in Gaza: “we lose more people than our hearts can handle”. She has seen so much death, heard so many screams. By day 30,
all you can hear is a voice crying for help from under the rubble. You turn your back and walk away, because there’s nothing you can do to help.
But Plestia’s project is more than documenting death. She is careful to show many aspects of life in Gaza. She shows how Palestinians retain relationships, family and pets. How a young boy just needs his “pot plant” from his destroyed house, under skies filled with drones and bombs. This is a plea for the genocide to stop, but it is also a celebration of being Palestinian. It is an homage to life in Gaza.
It is also a plea to see Palestinians as more than numbers – and more than how they are depicted by Israel.
“The world,” she says, “sometimes treats us like terrorists, trying to justify its complacency in allowing us to be massacred. And we know the perception, we read the propaganda just like everyone else. But the reality is that we’re the opposite.”
She describes gentle moments of love and care between her fellow journalists and the people they interview. The children they bring sweets for, the “bird lady” who renames her tortoise “Plestia” after her. Both Plestia the tortoise and the “bird lady” are now living in a tent. She speaks of the doctors who work tirelessly.
In the midst of brutal amputations and unimaginable burns, she recounts the care of a doctor giving cream for a skin rash that has tormented her, diagnosed as a product of her anxiety. Anxiety seems a gentle diagnosis for symptoms produced by witnessing and documenting such brutality.
Anxiety over her helplessness, perhaps, over the lack of sleep, of nourishing food: dwindling even in those first 45 days. Anxiety seems like a Western preoccupation, from this writing distance. What Plestia experiences seems more like layers of embodied distress. Her empathy allows her to feel, perhaps too much. Empathy can be an enemy.
Around page 100, she begins to deteriorate. “It’s funny how genocide changes a person,” she writes, describing herself as “Genocide Plestia”. She’s devastated, exhausted. She has lost hope. The journal entries are shorter, more repetitive.
They recite her helplessness with what Jacqueline Rose, co-director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, has called the “repetitive thud of referentiality”.
You feel Plestia’s effort to try to speak with some life in the pages, to use writing as a therapeutic tool. You wish it for her, but she has trouble summoning the energy, the life, any hope. As she poignantly quips: “Fake it till you make it doesn’t work during a Genocide”. What is there to say in such relentless days of loss?
You want Plestia to get up, you want a happy ending, for a conclusion to the painful story, but the problem is time. The reader’s time, the reality of time since she wrote her book.
Day 45, her last day in Gaza, is Monday November 20 2023. I read this book in June 2025, 646 days later – and it hasn’t stopped. When Plestia leaves Gaza and finally arrives here in Melbourne, the conditions she describes have been ongoing for more than 20 months. A recently released survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research estimates almost 84,000 people died in Gaza between October 2023 and early January 2025, as a result of the war. And that was six months ago.
50 letters from Gaza
The numbers are a way of reducing the experience of grief, devastation, loss (and the viewer’s guilt) to simple digits. Digits have no face and no sound. This is helpful to viewers, but it does not do justice to the 84,000, as Gideon Hausner knew well. No one awakens by hearing the numbers. But they matter.
In Letters from Gaza, psychologist Ahmed Mortaja fears becoming a news story, “a dull number … I don’t want my name and my family name to be reduced to mere numbers, whether odd or even”.
This book, a fragmented collection of 50 poems, stories and accounts, is devoted to giving life to those numbers. To animating the loss, so readers can apply their own imaginations, so we can understand the incomprehensible. It is a collection of fragments of lives since October 7 2023, squeezed into expressive pages. There is no “letter” more than six pages long. They are backed up against each other, permeating one another.
Each letter tells a different story and the same story. Each finds a detail that has no language: flowers in a girl’s hair, dreams of careers that will perhaps never be, the sounds of explosions. They are stories of the impossible search for bread, the longing for a bed and a pillow. And, as in Plestia’s account, they evoke the relentless buzz of the drones in the sky in Gaza: everywhere, all day, every day since October 7 2023. Like tinnitus, like torture.
The book begins with an effort to give names to numbers. On the first page, in the publisher’s note, we read that two of the authors, Sara al-Assar and Basma al-Hor, cannot be contacted. Because of communication lines and constant displacements, the details “may not reflect their current location or circumstances”. Authors may have died or been further displaced. Communication towers are destroyed. Tents are moved as people are moved on. Tents are destroyed.
In Plestia’s accounts, there are displacements to safe zones that then become unsafe, so they move again and again – until the only choice is tents, often without food or blankets. She describes seeing 33,000 people in a displacement shelter, this number increasing daily. Just as numbers are not people, tents are not homes. In Letters from Gaza, the displaced tents are character, metaphor and reality.
The stories are different, as are the deaths and losses within them, but these painful accounts help explain each other. The personal stories help animate words like displacement, refugee camp, genocide, so they do not fall into the pile of legal terms disconnected from names.
But after the United Nations declarations in the opening pages, we hear no more of law – and little of justice. As Palestinian human rights lawyer and founder of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Raji Sourani said: Gaza is in danger of becoming “the graveyard of international law”. What is left are stories. The short stories, poems and brief accounts are packaged so they do not ask too much of the reader – just enough to provoke tears, and perhaps donations. Many readers will feel some of the helplessness in these pages.
There are stories of hunger; the loss of grandmothers and children. I cried many times reading this book, but the next story would quickly arrive and sometimes bring relief. There is something sad, but ordinary, about details like a cat who finds a tent too hot. Unlike Plestia’s clear analysis and summation of the genocide in Gaza, the politics of this book are comparably quiet. Not absent, but quiet. The word genocide is mentioned four times, “Holocaust” only once. (I counted.)
In Letters from Gaza, no one says Israel, only “the occupiers”. Husam Maarouf writes, “we no longer want anything from you […] Only to die in safety.” His entry is dated March 1 2024; he may well be dead. Batool Abu Akleen makes simple requests of the reader (or perhaps of God): “I want a grave, I don’t want my corpse to rot in the open road.” But the book seems to intentionally not accuse. We are told:
this is not a book about war. It is a book about human souls that strive to avoid being hunted down by war. It is about how innocents are forced to learn how to survive when everything around them is about killing, destruction and death.
But the accusation is there. How could it not be? Against Israel as occupier and aggressor – and the reader as bystander.
Accusation sometimes comes embedded in questions. “Is one person’s pain greater than another’s?” asks Gaza poet and teacher Doha Kahlout. This question resonates with one inscribed on the Holocaust Memorial Tree in Hungary: “Whose agony is greater than mine?”
When comparing agony, only one can live
Jewish author, philosopher and psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin, writing on Palestine and Israeli peace struggles, cautions against pitting stories from Israel and Palestine against each other, such that “only one can live”. Only one story, one narrative, one version of pain and loss.
Holding multiple stories of suffering in mind is very difficult: for the survivor, for the listener and even for the psychoanalyst. Many survivors suffer symptoms of trauma that reduce the world to interpretation through their experience of its painful histories.
In Eyes of Gaza, writing from Melbourne, Plestia shows a moment of this:
On the train home, I see a lady with a suitcase, and the first thing that I think of is displacement, imagining how everyone in Gaza carries their whole life in their bag […] Then the announcement: Next Stop […] And I’m snapped back into reality.
In this moment, the suitcase is only read through the lens of the past. It’s what is described colloquially as living in the past – a type of banal flashback, often a symptom of trauma. But when pain colonises bodies and narratives, recognising the pain of others is difficult to see. It may be impossible to see the experiences of the other’s world through any other lens than one’s own pain. Whose agony is greater than mine? is a competitive statement, not a question.
In the war of greater pain, an Israeli child in fear may be read against a Palestinian child enduring the loss of their limbs and their whole family. Only one (story) can live.
To hold two competing stories of pain, loss and agony in mind requires a feat of mental health endurance few are capable of: the Nelson Mandelas of this world. Working in the field of transitional justice, I have met a few.
Most have experienced great loss and know there is no comparison at the level of agony. They resist “the repetitive thud of referentiality” because it drowns out conversation, annihilating curiosity and empathy alike. They know all stories must have their time.
In October 2023, “liberal” London Jewish journalist and filmmaker Michael Segalov, once a “staunch defender of Israel”, tried to hold competing stories. He wrote about seeing Israel–Palestine through the lens of “fear and trauma – of the Shoah, of the Nakba, of generations now born into perpetual fear”.
Early Jewish settlers were not “imperial soldiers”, but “a persecuted population failed by global governments pre and post Holocaust”, he points out. But by 1948, the year after the UN resolution that called for Palestine to be divided into Arab and Jewish states, “more than 750,000 Palestinians were made refugees, 15,000 killed”.
“While these lands might well feel a Jewish ancestral home,” he wrote, “within living memory, it was shared with another people: the majority.” In 1922, in the first census carried out under the British Mandate, the population of Palestine was 763,550: 89% were Arabs and 11% Jewish.
As Palestinian psychiatrist Eyad El Sarraj stressed while talking with Jessica Benjamin during peace negotiations, we must “stand simultaneously for the recognition of all injuries, while at the same time being clear that one side was coming from the position of Occupied and less powerful, the other Occupying and dominating”. Stories matter, politics matters.
And some stories take more time than others – some stories are given more time than others. This is a matter of politics and practicality.
Surviving the October 7 attacks
Israeli journalist Amir Tibon and his family survived the October 7 attack on Kibbutz Nahal Oz, on the Gaza border; they are now internal refugees in northern Israel. He and his partner settled in Nahal Oz and raised a family. On the morning of October 7, they heard the sounds of the attack and raced to their safe room, spending the next five hours in there trying to keep their children – Galia, 3 years old and Carmel, aged 19 months – quiet.
Amir Tibon and his family survived the Oct 7 attack on Kibbutz Nahal Oz, on the Gaza border. Scribe
In discussing Tibon’s book, Gates of Gaza: a story of betrayal, survival and hope in Israel’s borderlands, I risk comparison and competition. Sometimes stories speak to each other, even when they speak to the silences. I resisted this one’s proximity to the above stories. But that is also to resist reality. It is to resist the importance of difference. All experience is valuable, but sometimes comparison reveals inequality.
Plestia knows this well. The survivor guilt of which she writes is part of the hierarchy experienced by all survivors of mass violence. That she and her family survived, that she migrated, is to feel guilt for escaping the fate of those who have been starved, tortured, obliterated.
Yehiel Dinur spoke from this position of guilt on the stand in 1962, saying he was speaking for those who died in Auschwitz. In the face of others’ death, all survivors struggle with justification. Competition is one form of this: Whose agony is greater than mine?
Tibon was a resident of Nahal Oz, having moved there with his partner because of its beauty, nine years before October 7. He describes it as having “a strong, left-wing, liberal political leaning”, and says residents of the border areas are “some of the strongest advocates of Israeli–Palestinian peace”. He writes that the kibbutz movement has, “for decades”, been in favour of “a compromise that would allow Jews and Arabs to share this land, with agreed-upon borders – borders that, of course, would have to be protected”.
In the 300-plus pages, Tibon describes the morning of October 7 in detail. The fear of his children and his partner as they stayed quiet in a safe room for some five hours. The sounds of shootings and desperation as he read pleas and accounts from other residents on the community’s WhatsApp group as the attacks unfolded.
The narrative of that morning is interspersed with accounts from people who survived in his community: his parents, some of those who attended the Nova music festival, and Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers. The narrative moves between that morning and a history of the kibbutz, framed in a history of Israel’s political lurching between right and left – and back again – over the 87 years since its recognition as a nation state by the UN.
In one reading, this is a history book of 87 years – not just an account of five hours. It is a particular history.
The narrative of those five hours is intense, peppered with stories of his parents racing from Tel Aviv to the kibbutz. Tibon’s father is a crucial figure in this narrative. A retired IDF general with “more than three decades” in the military, including combat experience, he seemingly has the capacity to assess situations and navigate a war zone with skill. It is his father who finally knocks on the “safe room” door in the afternoon (about halfway through the book). Tibon reports hearing “a strong bang and a familiar voice” from inside.
The father, we could say, is the embodiment of Tibon’s feelings for – and belief in – a strong, kind Israel. An army general, protective husband and grandfather (in Hebrew, Saba), he is longed for by Tibon’s young children, who “loved their grandparents”, particularly his father, “who pampered and spoiled them at every opportunity”. This grandfather’s presence at the safe-room door allows the family to re-enter the safety of Israel.
If the father is Israel, the sleeping children are its citizens. Carmel and Galia slept through much of the conflict, barely awakened by gunshots. They were rushed to the safe room the moment the shots were heard.
Once you know the stories from Letters of Gaza, it is hard not to compare this to the waking of Mohammed Al Zaqzooq’s three boys – Baraa, Jawad and Basil – to the sound of “Huge missiles in large numbers making terrifying sounds” and the need to flee. Not least, because Amir’s children were barely awakened by shots outside. Their safe room kept the noise muffled and the danger at bay. This is not to say their fear won’t impact on their actions later. Transgenerational trauma has a way of influencing the future.
Mohammed’s children moved quickly, within half an hour, to a refugee camp. At the time of writing, they remain there. His story is five pages long. Amir’s is 300-plus. Amir, an author and award-winning diplomatic correspondent for Haaretz, Israel’s liberal paper of record, has access to a computer, electricity and the security required to think, research and write.
But why does he write this book? In the acknowledgements, he describes himself as needing to be encouraged, unsure of the worth of telling the story of his five hours in the safe room. But he describes much more than five hours.
His book is a story of Israel – and particularly, of its informal settlements. In the early 1950s, he writes, 20 young soldiers – ten men and ten women – were taken by bus to this site to settle it. Nahal Oz is so close to Gaza, it has “agricultural lands which literally touch the border fence”. The kibbutzim functioned as a kind of human border, with increased populations: the 20 broke into couples, then families. Within a few years, they had a small farming community, with a person devoted to security.
Empty land?
This is not a story of military invasion and colonisation, however. It is a story of settlement on land represented as empty. We know this story well in Australia. In this context, it can be a plea for a recognition of innocence.
As Amir tells it, there were no Palestinians in the place before: no one was removed or relocated. Only in passing does he mention the Bedouin who passed through the area before.
In Australia, Irene Watson and Aileen Moreton-Robinson have, in different ways, explained lands do not need to be sites of permanent agriculture to be crucial to the survival of some groups or nations. Borders and settlements can disturb land, law and life regardless of whether houses are demolished or not.
The beauty of Nahal Oz, Amir writes, was due to its access to water and its site on fertile land, where trees provided shelter and probably food. Its loss was likely no small thing to people who required sustenance and shelter as they moved through. After the settlement, they no longer could.
After Israel set up its border there, only Israelis could pass through without being subject to the checkpoints that are well documented sites of humiliation and arbitrary punishment for Palestinians.
By 1997, the walls went up near Nahal Oz. But the walls to shield Nahal Oz from Gaza – and particularly from its people – were not enough. Amir describes the elaborate and extensive tunnels used by Palestinian soldiers to enter Israel (he calls them “terrorists” and “suicide bombers”).
The tunnels became the problem of Palestinian attacks on Israeli settlers. To deal with this problem, the concrete walls were built, reaching 160 metres underground, preventing any permeation. Then, on October 7, the walls could not provide security. Then, there was only the safe room.
The safe room is an obvious metaphor in this book. It is Israel under attack. One of these rooms has been built into every house in the kibbutz, so families can be safe from the mortar attacks from Gaza – a regular occurrence since the 1987 Intifada.
Plestia tells us that the materials for a safe room are not allowed to be brought into Gaza. There are no safe rooms there. Tibon doesn’t mention this; maybe he doesn’t even know this fact, which is its own symptom of the political and social environment in Israel.
He does describe “the unimaginable destruction that Israel has unleashed on Gaza in the aftermath” of the October 7 attacks. He is critical of this “destruction”, though he does not use the term genocide. (There are those who wait for the International Court of Justice to decide if it was more than “plausible” – and there are those who cannot wait.)
Tibon is critical of Israel’s right wing, which cultivates war. He wants peace. But peace here is its own violence.
Like the rhetoric of reconciliation in South Africa, calls for peace can do violence to historical experiences of injustice. There, reconciliation discourse has been criticised, along with its apolitical leanings. Reconciliation in South Africa has largely meant people subject to historical injustices must reconcile themselves to their losses and their reality.
A story attributed to Father Mxolisi Mapanbani, of Tom and Bernard and the bicycle, has been used many times to critique “reconciliation” rhetoric in South Africa. It is helpful here.
Tom and Bernard are friends and live opposite each other. One day, Tom stole Bernard’s bicycle. Every day, Bernard saw Tom cycling to school on it. After some time, Tom went up to Bernard and said, “Let us reconcile and put the past behind us.” Bernard said, “Okay, let’s reconcile – what about the bicycle?” “Oh no,” said Tom, “I’m not talking about the bicycle, I’m talking about reconciliation.”
In the Australian context, after Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generations in 2008, human rights and social justice campaigner Tom Calma described this form of reconciliation as the “unfinished business of justice”.
The apology might have offered some form of acknowledgement, and gone some way toward creating a shared reality on the injustices of the past, but while justice remains unfinished, many are not at peace.
Amir wants peace. He doesn’t want to live in a safe house – but he wants his house and his family to live securely in Nahal Oz. He wants Palestinians to be at peace with this reality.
The word “peace”, like “reconciliation”, does a lot of work to present Tibon on the side of “the good”. Just like, in Letters From Gaza, the relative lack of the word “genocide” keeps the accusation at bay and politics in the background – and it keeps its calls for recognition of suffering at the fore. In this book about “human souls”, the editors call for a recognition of shared humanity.
Tibon is careful not to group “terrorists” under that name – though he uses a Hebrew word that means exactly that. (Mehablim, he calls the people who attacked Nahal Oz.) Why? Though he writes in English and undoubtably spoke Hebrew throughout the siege, why does he speak of the Palestinian attackers as Mehablim?
The answer might be found in the fact no Palestinian name, beyond former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, appears in these pages. He has interviewed many people, but none of them are Palestinian. Their narrative remains outside his text.
We must find the humanity of the Palestinians in other stories.
If the safe room is a metaphor for Israel, the tent – as described in so many of the stories in Letters from Gaza, and in Plestia’s account of those 45 days – is a metaphor for the lives of Palestinians in Israel, and perhaps the world’s eyes.
A tent is permeable, fragile, disposable. Bodies within it are subject to displacement, starvation, genocide. Every house in Tibon’s kibbutz has a safe room. There have been at least seven bombings of tent camps in Gaza. How can you not do the maths?
Stories, awakening and halting the bombs
Stories demand people are not reduced to mathematics. They place the reader in the scene and plead for identification and understanding. Writing on the Eichmann trial, Holocaust historian and legal scholar Lawrence Douglas describes “the words of the survivors that built a bridge from the accused to the world of ashes”.
Afrikaaner journalist and poet Antje Krog writes, on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, “In all the stories a landscape is created.”
But this landscape, if it is to have any effect, must be mapped across previous perceptions. For that, it must do damage to the secure world – the pre-existing imaginative landscape – of the reader or of the listener.
Moral philosopher Rai Gaita describes remorse as “a dying to the world”: a little death is required of the listener or reader who is implicated as a bystander, encountering the suffering of others. A death of complacency. A small disintegration that may mean our own peaceful worlds are no longer tenable.
This is why stories, particularly, are mobilised in truth commissions. They animate the impossible numbers – the dry policies and repetitive loss – with scenes of humanity. Testimony – personal stories – link the words (genocide, massacre, terror) to an imagination of a scene, a person, a child or a parent. To people we can identify or empathise with.
Like the two worlds connected in Ahmed Mortaja’s poem, Hubb and Harb, In Letters from Gaza:
tonight I will fall asleep telling myself that the noise outside is fireworks, a celebration and nothing more.
That the frightened screams of children are the gleeful terror of suspense before something long-awaited, like Eid.
Tonight, I will fall asleep scrolling through the photos on my phone, telling myself that my evening with friends wasn’t that great – really, I was bored – so now I’m skimming through memories to pass the time.
If empathy were all it took to halt the counting of the 646 days in Gaza, then Letters from Gaza and Eyes on Gaza would achieve their aim. But empathy rarely produces political change.
Stories – the 50 voices in Letters from Gaza, accounts like Plestia’s – make us cry, perhaps make us donate, but they do not halt the bombs. This, and more, might be what Yehiel Dinur meant when he asked for the world to “awaken”, that it change, that it stop what Tibon calls “the unimaginable destruction”.
Until then, Dinur pledged to remain Katzetnik 135633. Until then, we will likely only know “Genocide Plestia”: “it’s funny how genocide changes a person”.
Juliet Rogers 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.
Ruth First, born 100 years ago, was a South African freedom fighter, journalist and scholar who worked against the racist system of apartheid during white minority rule. She was assassinated by apartheid forces in her office at the Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique in 1982.
Her ideas, work and legacy live on. Sociologists Saleem Badat and Vasu Reddy have edited a new book called Research and Activism: Ruth First & Activist Research. We asked them about her and their project.
Who was Ruth First?
Heloise Ruth First was born on 4 May 1925 in Johannesburg to Jewish parents who had migrated from eastern Europe to South Africa in the early 1900s. Her parents were founder members of the South African Communist Party.
She joined the Young Communist League and the Federation of Progressive Students and graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1946 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
At 21, First joined the left-wing South African newspaper The Guardian. When it was banned, the New Age took its place until it too was banned in 1962. She served as the newspaper’s Johannesburg editor for 17 years.
In 1963, First was arrested at the University of the Witwatersrand library and held in solitary confinement for 117 days, during which time she was ruthlessly interrogated. The following year she and her three children left South Africa for England on an exit permit, where they joined her partner, the activist and politician Joe Slovo. She would not set foot again in South Africa. Continuing with her activist research in England, she taught at Durham University and then joined Eduardo Mondlane University until hear death.
The mid-1940s to early 1960s were tumultuous years in South Africa. With the rise of formal apartheid in 1948, racial segregation was intensified.
First’s intrepid and penetrating journalistic research exposed her to the brutality of labour exploitation and control on the mines and the farms. It reinforced her understanding of South Africa in Marxist terms.
The will to fight is born out of the desire for freedom.
She was confident that:
The power of the people is greater than the power of any government.
First believed that ignorance is “the enemy of progress and justice” and that knowledge and education are “key to empowering individuals and challenging oppressive systems”. These words ring true in today’s global events driven by right-wing authoritarianism, US imperialism and acts of genocide.
On learning of her death, former South African President Nelson Mandela recalled:
I was in prison when Ruth First was assassinated, felt almost alone. Lost a sister in arms … It is no consolation to know that she lives beyond her grave.
What is activist research and how is it applied in the book?
As authors, we revisit Ruth First’s life, work and ideas and its relevance for the current context. We focus especially on the nature of her scholarship and how she navigated the tensions between her activism and her research – whether journalistic or for her books on South West Africa (today’s Namibia), Libya or western investment in apartheid. Other of her acclaimed books included The Barrel of a Gun: Political Power in Africa and the Coup d’etat and, during her Mozambican sojourn, Black Gold: The Mozambican Miner, Proletarian and Peasant.
In the process we invite renewed critical reflection about her life and work. Inspired by First’s contributions, the book considers how universities and scholars engage with institutions and social movements beyond the university.
For example, in the book a research group from Durham University in the UK considers how to balance objectivity (showing no bias) with more politically participatory research methods and how objectivity can be enhanced despite the difficulties faced by activist research.
Other scholars reflect on the work of the assassinated South African anti-apartheid activist scholar and lecturer Rick Turner; on climate change; and on the complexities of undertaking activist research in Marikana with a women’s organisation, Sikhala Sonke. Marikana was the site where South African police opened fire on and killed 34 striking mineworkers in 2012.
There is examination of a research partnership between University of Cape Town activist scholars and some Khoi-San communities, reflection on the challenges of legal practice and education, and critical analysis of the decolonisation challenges of the KwaZulu-Natal Society of the Arts.
How do you frame activist research in your book?
The book shows that there is a difference between engaged research, critical research and activist research.
Engaged research tries to connect knowledge produced by academics with institutions, movements and experts outside the university to collaboratively address issues and promote cooperation.
Critical research uses radical critical theory to critique oppression and injustice, to show the gap between what exists today and more just ways of living. However, it does not necessarily connect with political and social movements.
First’s research was not only engaged, but also critical in orientation and activist in nature. As activist research it challenged oppression and inequality.
It both critiqued the status quo in South Africa and elsewhere and tried to change it. It was linked with movements and connected to political activism that was anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and committed to socialism.
First’s activist research did not confine itself to the academic arena but engaged with larger, wider and more diverse publics. It used this experience to critique dominant and often limited thinking at universities and promoted other ways of producing knowledge. The expertise developed was used to improve scholarship in various ways.
What do you want readers to take away?
There is much talk about the “engaged university” and engaged research. However, only certain connections and engagements seem to be valued.
Prior to democracy in 1994, South African researchers connected with social movements for change. Now this is seldom the case. Universities and scholars largely engage with those with money – the state, business, elites and donors.
This raises questions about the roles of researchers in South Africa, whose interests are prioritised and the place of critical and activist research in the engaged university.
How should Ruth First be remembered?
We must honour her for her intellectual and practical activism. What matters is not just her knowledge archive, but also her example as both an outstanding interpreter of the world and an activist scholar committed to changing society in the interests of the downtrodden, marginalised and voiceless.
First was a critical and independent thinker who refused to accept anything as settled and beyond questioning. But that intellect was committed to loyalty to the national liberation movement of which she was an invaluable cadre.
The views expressed in this piece do not reflect or represent the position of the university to which Badat and Reddy are affiliated.
Saleem Badat receives funding from the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. He is a board member of the International Consortium for Critical Theory Programs and Alameda.
Vasu Reddy currently receives no external funding. He serves on the board of the Human Sciences Research Council Press
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