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Category: Analysis

  • MIL-OSI Global: How we discovered specific brain cells that enable intelligent behaviour

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mohamady El-Gaby, Postdoctoral Neuroscientist, University of Oxford

    Just Life/Shutterstock

    For decades, neuroscientists have developed mathematical frameworks to explain how brain activity drives behaviour in predictable, repetitive scenarios, such as while playing a game. These algorithms have not only described brain cell activity with remarkable precision but also helped develop artificial intelligence with superhuman achievements in specific tasks, such as playing Atari or Go.

    Yet these frameworks fall short of capturing the essence of human and animal behaviour: our extraordinary ability to generalise, infer and adapt. Our study, published in Nature late last year, provides insights into how brain cells in mice enable this more complex, intelligent behaviour.

    Unlike machines, humans and animals can flexibly navigate new challenges. Every day, we solve new problems by generalising from our knowledge or drawing from our experiences. We cook new recipes, meet new people, take a new path – and we can imagine the aftermath of entirely novel choices.

    It was in the mid-20th century that psychologist Edward Tolman described the concept of “cognitive maps”. These are internal, mental representations of the world that organise our experiences and allow us to predict what we’ll see next.

    Starting in the 1970s, researchers identified a beautiful system of specialised cells in the hippocampus (the brain’s memory centre) and entorhinal cortex (an area that deals with memory, navigation, and time perception) in rodents that form a literal map of our environments.

    These include “place cells”, which fire at specific locations, and “grid cells” that create a spatial framework. Together, these and a host of other neurons encode distances, goals and locations, forming a precise mental map of the physical world and where we are within it.

    Section of mouse hippocampus.
    Alexandros A Lavdas/Shutterstock

    And now our attention has turned to other areas of cognition beyond finding our way around generalisation, inference, imagination, social cognition and memory. The same areas of the brain that help us navigate in space are also involved in these functions.

    Cells for generalising?

    We wanted to know if there are cells that organise the knowledge of our behaviour, rather than the outside world, and how they work. Specifically, what are the algorithms that underlie the activity of brain cells as we generalise from past experience? How do we rustle up that new pasta dish?

    And we did find such cells. There are neurons that tell us “where we are” in a sequence of behaviour (we haven’t named the cells).

    To uncover the brain cells, networks and algorithms that perform these roles, we studied mice, training the animals to complete a task. The task had a sequence of actions with a repeating structure. Mice moved through four locations, or “goals”, containing a water reward (A, B, C and D) in loops.

    When we moved the location of the goals, the mice were able to infer what came next in the sequence – even when they had never experienced that exact scenario before.

    When mice reached goal D in a new location for the first time, they immediately knew to return to goal A. This wasn’t memory, because they’d never encountered it. Instead, it shows that the mice understood the general structure of the task and tracked their position within it.

    The mice had electrodes implanted into the brain, which allowed us to capture neural activity during the task. We found that specific cells in the cortex (the outermost layer of the brain) collectively mapped the animal’s goal progress. For example, one cell could fire when the animal was 70% of the way to its goal, regardless of where the goal was or how far away.

    Some cells tracked progress towards immediate subgoals – like chopping vegetables in our cooking analogy – while others mapped progress towards the overall goal, such as finishing the meal.

    Together, these goal progress cells created a system that gave our location in behavioural space rather than a physical space. Crucially, the system is flexible and can be updated if the task changes. This encoding allows the brain to predict the upcoming sequence of actions without relying on simple associative memories.

    Common experiences

    Why should the brain bother to learn general structural representations of tasks? Why not create a new representation for each one? For generalisation to be worthwhile, the tasks we complete must contain regularities that can be exploited — and they do.

    The behaviour we compose to reach our goals is replete with repetition. Generalisation allows knowledge to extend beyond individual instances. Throughout life, we encounter a highly structured distribution of tasks. And each day we solve new problems by generalising from past experiences.

    A previous encounter with making bolognese can inform a new ragu recipe, because the same general steps apply to both (such as starting with frying onions and adding fresh herbs at the end). We propose that the goal-progress cells in the cortex serve as the building blocks – internal frameworks that organise abstract relationships between events, actions and outcomes. While we’ve only shown this in mice, it is plausible that the same thing happens in the human brain.

    By documenting these cellular networks and the algorithms that underlie them, we are building new bridges between human and animal neuroscience, and between biological and artificial intelligence. And pasta.

    Special thanks to Alison Cranage for her support in writing this article.

    Mohamady El-Gaby receives funding from the Wellcome Trust.

    – ref. How we discovered specific brain cells that enable intelligent behaviour – https://theconversation.com/how-we-discovered-specific-brain-cells-that-enable-intelligent-behaviour-254233

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Cracked heels can be a painful health risk – here’s how to keep your feet smooth this summer

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Craig Gwynne, Senior Lecturer in Podiatry, Cardiff Metropolitan University

    Smileus/Shutterstock

    As temperatures rise and sandals make their seasonal debut, our feet step into the spotlight. But summer presents challenges that make foot care especially important. Heat, sun exposure and the temptation to go barefoot can lead to dry, cracked heels – leaving feet feeling uncomfortable.

    The good news? A few simple habits can keep your feet healthy, smooth and ready for sandal season.

    Cracked heels – also known as heel fissures – develop due to dry skin and reduced elasticity. Because feet lack sebaceous glands, they don’t produce natural oils, which makes them more prone to dryness. In response to friction and pressure, the skin thickens, but this added thickness can split under the stress of walking or standing.

    Summer tends to exacerbate the issue. Open-back shoes like flip-flops allow the heel’s fat pad to expand, increasing stress on the surrounding skin. Research shows that repeated exposure to hot and dry environments significantly reduces skin hydration, increasing the risk of fissures developing. So, long hours standing at events or walking on hot surfaces – like pavement or poolside tiles – further weaken the skin’s barrier.

    Other contributing factors include obesity, which places greater pressure on the heels. Conditions like eczema and psoriasis, especially when they cause broken skin, significantly compromise the skin barrier. These conditions can lead to inflammation, dryness and reduced moisture retention, weakening the skin’s ability to act as a protective barrier. Excess moisture from sweating or prolonged soaking may soften the skin too much and reduce its resilience, making it prone to fissures.

    Cracked heels aren’t just a cosmetic problem – they can become painful and even dangerous. Without treatment, fissures can deepen and bleed, making walking uncomfortable and increasing the risk of infection.

    For those with health conditions like diabetes, hypothyroidism or vascular disease, even small cracks can escalate into serious complications, including cellulitis or ulcers. Poor circulation and reduced healing ability mean these issues can quickly become severe.

    Prevention

    Prevention is simple and effective when made part of your daily routine.

    Moisturise daily – use creams with 10% urea or lactic acid to retain moisture and soften thickened skin.

    Wear supportive footwear – while sandals are summer staples, many lack proper support. Choose shoes with cushioning and heel support when possible. If you wear open-back styles, alternate with more structured footwear to minimise heel stress.

    Avoid going barefoot – walking on rough or hot surfaces dries out the skin and causes micro-traumas that increase the risk of cracking.

    Stay hydrated – drinking enough water helps maintain skin elasticity from the inside out.

    Exfoliate weekly – briefly soak your feet (for up to five minutes), then gently remove dead skin with a pumice stone or file. This prevents the buildup of thickened skin.

    Treatment

    If cracks have already formed, timely treatment can help heal and restore your skin’s health.

    Apply a heel balm – use a formula containing 10–25% urea and up to 6% salicylic acid. Urea deeply hydrates and softens thick skin, while salicylic acid aids in exfoliation. Avoid using these products during the day if you’re wearing open shoes, as they can make your feet slippery, increasing the risk of falls and injuries.

    Nighttime occlusion – apply balm before bed and cover your feet with cotton socks to lock in moisture. Studies show this improves hydration and speeds up healing.

    See a professional if needed – if your heels are severely cracked, infected, or not responding to at-home care, consult a podiatrist. They may use medical adhesives or prescribe stronger treatments to support healing.

    Take extra care if you’re in a high-risk category – if you have diabetes, circulatory issues or inflammatory skin conditions, regular foot checks and prompt treatment of minor cracks are crucial. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines recommend professional care and properly fitted footwear to help avoid serious complications.

    Caution: foot peel socks

    Exfoliating foot peels – often sold as “foot peel socks” – contain exfoliants like glycolic, lactic or salicylic acid, usually in concentrations of 5–17%. These acids help shed layers of dead skin and can be effective for general roughness. However, they are not recommended for cracked heels or heel fissures.

    When used on broken or fragile skin, these peels can cause irritation, delay healing and increase the risk of infection. Those with underlying health issues that affect skin integrity – such as diabetes, poor circulation or chronic skin conditions – should be particularly cautious. In these cases, experts advise against chemical exfoliants due to the higher risk of skin damage and slower healing.

    Instead, targeted treatments like heel balms containing 10–25% urea offer a safer, more suitable option. These help soften and hydrate dry, thickened skin without compromising the protective barrier.

    Your feet support you every day; this summer, return the favour. With a bit of daily care, smart footwear choices and early intervention when problems arise, you can keep your feet looking and feeling great.

    Cracked heels don’t have to be part of your summer story.

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

    – ref. Cracked heels can be a painful health risk – here’s how to keep your feet smooth this summer – https://theconversation.com/cracked-heels-can-be-a-painful-health-risk-heres-how-to-keep-your-feet-smooth-this-summer-255027

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Some ‘Star Wars’ stories have already become reality

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Daniel B. Oerther, Professor of Environmental Health Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology

    Tatooine’s moisture farming equipment stands in the desert of Tunisia, where parts of the ‘Star Wars’ movie series were filmed. Véronique Debord-Lazaro via Flickr, CC BY-SA

    Just 48 short years ago, movie director George Lucas used the phrase “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” as the opening to the first “Star Wars” movie, later labeled “Episode IV: A New Hope.” But at least four important aspects of the “Star Wars” saga are much closer – both in time and space – than Lucas was letting on.

    One, the ability to add blue food coloring to milk, was possible even at the time the first film came out. But in 2024, “Star Wars”-themed blue milk became periodically available in grocery stores.

    And we, an environmental health engineer and a civil engineer, know there are at least three more elements of these ancient, distant Lucas stories that might seem like science fiction but are, in fact, science reality.

    Moisture farming

    In that first movie, “Episode IV,” Luke Skywalker’s Uncle Owen was a farmer on the planet of Tatooine. He farmed water from air in the middle of a desert.

    It might sound impossible, but it’s exactly what experts discussed at the second International Atmospheric Water Harvesting Summit hosted by Arizona State University in March 2025.

    Each day, a human needs to consume about the equivalent of 0.8 gallons of water (3 liters). With more than 8 billion people living on the planet, that means engineers need to produce nearly 2.6 trillion gallons (10 trillion liters) of clean drinking water every year. Taken globally, rainfall would be enough, but it’s distributed very unevenly – including landing in the oceans, where it immediately becomes too salty to drink safely.

    Deserts, which cover about one-fifth of the Earth’s land area, are home to about 1 billion people.

    Researchers at places such as Berkeley have developed solar-powered systems that can produce clean drinking water from thin air. In general, they use a material that traps water molecules from the air within its structure and then use sunlight to condense that water out of the material and into drinkable liquid. But there is still a ways to go before they are ready for commercial distribution and available to help large numbers of people.

    Researchers can harvest water from air in the desert, in a process powered only by the Sun.

    Space debris

    When the second Death Star was destroyed in “Return of the Jedi,” it made a huge mess, as you would expect when blowing to smithereens an object at least 87 miles across (140 kilometers). But the movie’s mythology helpfully explains a hyperspace wormhole briefly opened, scattering much of the falling debris across the galaxy.

    As best as anyone can tell, a hyperspace wormhole has never appeared near Earth. And even if such a thing existed or happened, humans might not have the technology to chuck all our trash in there anyway. So we’re left with a whole lot of stuff all around us, including in space.

    According to the website Orbiting Now, in late April 2025 there were just over 12,000 active satellites orbiting the planet. All in all, the United States and other space-faring nations are trying to keep track of nearly 50,000 objects orbiting Earth. And there are millions of fragments of space debris too small to be observed or tracked.

    Just as on Earth’s roads, space vehicles crash into each other if traffic gets too congested. But unlike the debris that falls to the road after an Earth crash, all the bits and pieces that break off in a space crash fly away at speeds of several thousand miles per hour (10,000 to 30,000 kph) and can then hit other satellites or spacecraft that cross their paths.

    This accumulation of space debris is creating an increasing problem. With more satellites and spacecraft heading to orbit, and more stuff up there moving around that might hit them, space travel is becoming more like flying the Millennium Falcon through an asteroid field every day.

    Engineers at NASA, the European Space Agency and other space programs are exploring a variety of technologies – including a net, a harpoon and a laser – to remove the more dangerous pieces of space junk and clean up the space environment.

    Dodging obstacles in space is no picnic.

    The Force itself

    To most Earth audiences, the Force was a mysterious energy field created by life that binds the galaxy together. That is until 1999, when “Episode I: The Phantom Menace” revealed that the Force came from midi-chlorians, a microscopic, sentient life form that lives within every living cell.

    To biologists, midi-chlorians sound suspiciously similar to mitochondria, the powerhouse of our cells.
    The current working hypothesis is that mitochondria emerged from bacteria that lived within cells of other living things. And mitochondria can communicate with other life forms, including bacteria.

    There are many different kinds of mitochondria, and medical professionals are learning how to transplant mitochondria from one cell to another just like they transplant organs from one person’s body to another. Maybe one day a transplant procedure could help people find the light side of the Force and turn away from the dark side.

    May the Fourth – and the Force – be with you.

    Daniel B. Oerther is affiliated with the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists.

    William Schonberg occasionally receives funding from NASA.

    – ref. Some ‘Star Wars’ stories have already become reality – https://theconversation.com/some-star-wars-stories-have-already-become-reality-255563

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Virginia Giuffre’s treatment in the media highlights the great consequences of accusing high profile men of abuse

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lindsey Blumell, Lecturer in Journalism, City St George’s, University of London

    Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent accusers of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has died at age 41. Her family said she died by suicide at her farm in Australia.

    Giuffre had long accused Prince Andrew of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager. She brought a civil sexual assault case against him, which Andrew ultimately settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. He has denied all claims against him. But the accusations and his friendship with Epstein ultimately led to Andrew’s partial withdrawal from public life.

    Giuffre’s story is a poignant reminder of the great consequences to anyone who speaks out about their abuse, especially someone who speaks out against the powerful.

    Giuffre was not just a victim of Epstein’s crimes, she was also the focus of brutal tabloid media coverage in the UK and around the world. That’s not to say there weren’t moments of great reporting. But those were often overshadowed by sensationalising and stereotyping that regularly accompany reporting on those who come forward with allegations of sexual abuse.

    A search for Virginia Giuffre on news database Factiva yields over 25,000 results. It’s hard to imagine carrying the weight of so much attention, positive or negative.

    News coverage was a mix of support and scrutiny, starting almost 15 years ago and then intensifying in the last six years, when Epstein was arrested. He died while in jail, awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges.

    The first wave of news coverage on Giuffre dates back to early 2011. The tabloids and broadsheets often referred to Giuffre (known as Virginia Roberts then) as a “masseuse” or more explicit terms, while also reporting that she was a minor when she was first allegedly sexually exploited and abused by Epstein and only 17 when she first met Prince Andrew. Coverage largely included one-word quotes from Giuffre, but nothing that humanised her to readers.

    The Times and other publications reported on Andrew’s friendly connection to Epstein – though there was no direct accusation against him at that time.

    There was a breezy tone to coverage that focused on catchy wordplay headlines between the prince and the “pervert” Epstein. Epstein was already a registered sex offender in 2008, but there was little reflection on his horrendous actions that led him to that title.

    More glaringly, there was little to no concern for Giuffre or other survivors. They were salacious fodder. There was little empathy for what they experienced and the risks they took speaking publicly. The main focus was on the apparent embarrassment of Andrew’s friendship with Epstein, which eventually led to the prince stepping down from his trade envoy role.

    The important men and their roles were the news angles. Giuffre was only a supporting character.

    The second wave of news coverage on Giuffre happened in 2019, when Epstein was arrested for accusations of child sex trafficking. She was named in court documents and noted as a victim of Epstein in media, but was again overshadowed by Epstein’s connections to other powerful men such as Donald Trump or Bill Clinton (both deny knowing of Epstein’s crimes).

    None of this is to imply that those linked to Epstein shouldn’t be named and investigated. But, as my research shows, when powerful men are accused, the coverage largely revolves around those powerful men and the monetary or career consequences to them. The survivors and the abuse and trauma they experience are a footnote.

    Research shows that how journalists evaluate the newsworthiness of a story often values power structures, men’s perspectives and celebrity status. Therefore, when someone like Giuffre does come forward, her story and voice come secondary to the more powerful accused.

    Changing headlines

    A shift in the tone of coverage came in 2020, when Giuffre and others were the focus of a Netflix docuseries on Epstein’s crimes. Watching the detailed accounts from so many humanised Giuffre and others, while showing the tremendous weight put on survivors when they come forward. Their stories elicited empathetic responses from viewers.

    News coverage has made some progress in the last decade due to the ##MeToo movement and survivors speaking out. However, this has since been tempered by a backlash to #MeToo – and problematic attitudes persist within news and entertainment industries. Threats of legal action from those accused can leave journalists hesitant to report on sexual abuse.

    In February 2022, Andrew settled a civil sexual assault case with Giuffre for an undisclosed amount. The coverage was more sensitive to Giuffre than a decade prior – the mislabelling and scandalising were mostly left out – but still lacked survivors’ perspectives. Andrew was stripped of his royal and military titles at the time but appears to remain in standing with the royal family unofficially.

    There has also been compassion in the coverage of Giuffre’s death, particularly in interviews with her family and friends. There are calls for accountability from Andrew, as well as the usual, terrible tabloid coverage exploiting the situation.

    One limitation of reporting on sexual abuse cases is that often survivors don’t want to speak publicly to news media because of the tremendous risks and consequences they face. Survivors face backlash when telling friends and family in their private circles because they are blamed, or are not believed. These consequences are intensified when survivors go public.

    Several organisations have provided guidelines to news organisations on how to report more fairly and accurately on sexual abuse.

    Many people who experience sexual abuse never come forward. Giuffre did, and repeatedly spoke to media for over a decade. While some news organisations learned how to be more sensitive, the focus has never been enough on her story, her life and her determination.

    If any of the content in this piece affects you or someone you know, resources are available.

    In the UK: Samaritans are available by phone, for free, at 116 123, or by email at jo@samaritans.org. Further resources can also be found here.

    Contact Rape Crisis England & Wales online or by phone at 0808 500 2222.

    If you are in crisis in the US, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

    Lindsey Blumell receives funding from City St George’s, University of London

    – ref. Virginia Giuffre’s treatment in the media highlights the great consequences of accusing high profile men of abuse – https://theconversation.com/virginia-giuffres-treatment-in-the-media-highlights-the-great-consequences-of-accusing-high-profile-men-of-abuse-255443

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ukraine minerals deal: the idea that natural resource extraction can build peace has been around for decades

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Bridget Storrie, Teaching Fellow, Institute for Global Prosperity, UCL

    Ukraine has finally signed its minerals agreement with the US. The deal states that Washington will eventually receive a share of the profits from the sale of Ukrainian natural resources, providing an economic incentive to continue investing in Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction.

    The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessant, says the deal demonstrates the Donald Trump administration’s commitment to peace in Ukraine.

    On the surface, there is nothing surprising about the deal. The idea that natural resource extraction can play a role in building peace has been around for a decade or two, and has been promoted by the World Bank, the UN and the mining industry itself.

    But what is surprising is how the conversation about mining and peace has changed. It used to be about increasing prosperity in war-torn countries, rather than the “who gets what” that has been associated with this deal.



    Read more:
    US-Ukraine minerals deal looks better for Kyiv than expected – but Trump is an unpredictable partner

    The idea that mining can contribute to peace emerged somewhat paradoxically from the demonstrated capacity of natural resources to drive conflict in places like Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sierra Leone. The theory is that mining can also lead to development – and therefore peace – if it is managed properly.

    If local communities are consulted, revenues are shared fairly, harms are minimised, and if there is transparency and accountability, a mine can play a role in lifting countries out of the economic, environmental and social mess war brings.

    In reality, things are more complicated. The idea that mining can bring about positive change suffers from the same top-down and externally led approach to building peace as the wider peacebuilding model in which it sits. It doesn’t necessarily take local realities and aspirations into account.

    But over the past two decades, natural resources in conflict-affected areas have attracted an enormous amount of attention from UN agencies. The United Nations Environmental Programme (Unep), for example, established an initiative in 2008 aimed at understanding the risks and opportunities presented by high-value natural resources.

    It developed policies and practices related to mining intended to be part of the UN’s peace and security architecture. These included guidance for UN staff working in post-conflict countries that are rich in resources.

    In Sierra Leone, Unep identified the inability of the Environmental Protection Agency to monitor environmental performance and force compliance as a significant risk to the sustainable development of the mining industry. The agency had become overwhelmed by the number of environmental impact assessments submitted for review as the sector expanded after the end of the civil war in 2002.

    A dedicated project to build capacity in Sierra Leone was set up by the UN to remedy this. The project team report that the environmental impact assessment process itself provided an opportunity for dialogue and trust-building between those involved.

    Around the same time, a raft of initiatives were was developed for the extractive sector itself to encourage responsible mining. These included the Kimberley Process, a UN-mandated certification scheme designed to eliminate the trade in conflict diamonds. Sierra Leone has been a member since it was launched in 2003.

    The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), an Oslo-based organisation of government, industry and civil society representatives was also established in 2003. Its aim is to promote the good governance of oil, gas and mineral extraction through the reporting of revenues and payments.

    The concept of good governance has been expanded to include promoting the participation of women, as well as the disclosure of information relating to the environmental impact of a mine. Over 50 countries now implement the EITI Standard.

    All these initiatives and processes can be criticised. But the point is that natural resources in conflict zones have, to a degree at least, been understood as sites for negotiation and dialogue for some time.

    Lowering the bar

    The natural resources beneath Ukraine have become sites for something else – a conflict-riven back-and-forth over their control. And it’s not just in Ukraine. The US is reportedly considering a minerals-for-security deal in the DRC, where Rwandan-backed rebels are currently seizing resource-rich territory in the east.

    The bar appears to have dropped substantially where mining and peacebuilding is concerned. In the heyday of the liberal peacebuilding project, metal and mineral deposits in war-torn countries, like the copper beneath Afghanistan, promised a more positive future, albeit with caution. That optimism now seems misplaced.

    In Afghanistan, this is because the country has fallen back under the control of the Taliban. Mines are quickly being developed to take advantage of the country’s mineral wealth. But the technical, financial and environmental checks associated with mining are reportedly being bypassed. There are concerns that any revenues won’t benefit the population in the way they should.

    In Ukraine, it’s something different. The mineral deposits there are being used to prop up geopolitical ambitions that reflect the dangerous, transactional and increasingly extractive world we now seem to live in. Specifically, the Ukrainian mineral deposits are bringing an authoritarian, Trumpian version of peace to life.

    It is a peace that comes through the geopolitical expression of power by the operation of mines, the acquisition of territory, the expulsion of citizens from certain places, and the top-down transformation of other people’s space.

    This has already expressed itself in Trump’s vision for the US to take over the Gaza Strip, which prompted the UN’s secretary-general, António Guterres, to warn against ethnic cleansing.

    An opencast manganese ore mine in Ukraine.
    Romeo Rum / Shutterstock

    I have written about the problem of natural resource-related peacebuilding before. Whether liberal or illiberal, this problem is the same: geological resources are non-renewable.

    There is a profound paradox here. Whatever we want these resources to do for us, they can’t do it indefinitely. And we are heading for even more trouble if we think they can.

    Expecting a voracious Trump administration or a beleagured Ukrainian one to think about this is expecting too much. But therein lies the tragedy of current peacebuilding endeavours.

    They are fixated on the here-and-now, in the hope that the social, environmental, ecological and geological future will take care of itself. Unfortunately, it won’t.

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

    – ref. Ukraine minerals deal: the idea that natural resource extraction can build peace has been around for decades – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-minerals-deal-the-idea-that-natural-resource-extraction-can-build-peace-has-been-around-for-decades-252090

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Laudato Si’: A look back on Pope Francis’s environmental legacy

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Donald Wright, Professor of Political Science, University of New Brunswick

    The Vatican’s College of Cardinals will soon gather in Rome to elect a new head of the Catholic Church following the death of Pope Francis.

    As the church prepares for the papal conclave, the world is assessing Francis’s legacy and his stance on the role of women in the church, LGBTQ+ rights and the needs of migrants and refugees.

    However, every assessment should include a discussion of Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, his 2015 encyclical on climate change.

    In many ways, it’s a remarkable document. At once rational and urgent, it calls on all of us — “every person living on this planet” — to think about what we are doing to the only planet we have.



    Read more:
    Three ways Pope Francis influenced the global climate movement

    Our common home, Francis wrote, “is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us.” And yet, we “have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will.”

    The end result? Runaway climate change in the form of higher temperatures, extreme weather events and biodiversity loss. In this sense, reading Laudato Si’ — “Praise be to you” in Italian — is like reading an assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

    Unlike the IPCC report, however, Francis didn’t pull his punches. “The Earth, our home,” he wrote, “is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.”

    Francis didn’t hold back

    A few months after the publication of Laudato Si’, the world gathered in Paris to draft a new climate treaty. It too is a remarkable document. However, if the authors of the Paris Agreement couldn’t mention the economic roots of the climate crisis – they couldn’t even use the term fossil fuels — the pope could and did.

    Francis relentlessly called out our “models of growth which have proved incapable of ensuring respect for the environment,” our “irrational confidence in progress and human abilities” and our “blind confidence in technical solutions.”

    He was critical of “current models of production and consumption” and our faith in “the invisible forces of the market,” as well as our “misguided anthropocentrism” and our “throwaway culture.”

    Francis pointed a finger at obstructionism and denial. He worried about the rise of social media, which has led to disconnection from each other and from nature. And he was critical of “the idea of infinite or unlimited growth.”

    Although terribly “attractive to economists, financiers, and experts in technology,” it’s a fantasy based on the lie “that there is an infinite supply of the Earth’s goods.” There isn’t, and the planet is “being squeezed dry beyond every limit.”

    Using ironic quotation marks, he even criticized “green” rhetoric, so fashionable in eco-capitalist circles.

    It wasn’t the first time Francis talked about a global economy that doesn’t work. A few years earlier, in 2012, he caused a minor fit in some circles with the publication of Evangelli Gaudium. Wealth moves up, not down, he argued, while the poor are excluded and grow in number.

    The late American pundit Rush Limbaugh called it “pure Marxism.” Undeterred, Francis went further in Laudato Si’ when he linked the climate crisis to an economy premised on constant consumption.

    Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a Catholic convert and at the time a presidential aspirant, told him to stick to his knitting: “I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinal or my pope.”

    Laudato Si’ and abortion

    Of course, Francis had stuck to his knitting in one important way: on at least four separate occasions in Laudato Si’, he singled out abortion — or, in his words, “eliminating children” — as part of the climate problem. He wrote:

    “Thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation.”

    No, it doesn’t. Moreover, empowering women through access to birth control and abortion care is part of the solution to poverty in both the Global South and the Global North, something Francis cared deeply about, like his namesake St. Francis of Assisi.



    Read more:
    Francis − a pope who cared deeply for the poor and opened up the Catholic Church

    In 2023, Francis published Laudate Deum, a short followup to Laudato Si’. At the same time as he urged the world to act, he condemned those who blame climate change on the poor for having so many children and who “attempt to resolve the problem by mutilating women in less developed countries.”

    According to one Catholic news and information site, this was an apparent reference “to campaigns in favour of contraception and abortion regularly conducted by the West.”

    Centuries of pro-life absolutism in the Catholic Church meant that Francis couldn’t make the connection between women’s lack of bodily autonomy and poverty, and between reproductive justice and climate justice, and, in part, the idea that climate change disproportionately impacts women.

    Still, Laudato Si’ invites all of us to connect the dots between growth, consumption, poverty and climate breakdown. One doesn’t need to be Catholic, or even religious, to read Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change for what it is: a powerful and deeply moral reminder that the climate is not something separate from us.

    To quote Francis, it’s a “common good” that belongs to all of us.

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

    – ref. Laudato Si’: A look back on Pope Francis’s environmental legacy – https://theconversation.com/laudato-si-a-look-back-on-pope-franciss-environmental-legacy-255604

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Is a faith-based charter school a threat to religious freedom, or a necessity to uphold it? The weighty decision lies with the Supreme Court

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Charles J. Russo, Joseph Panzer Chair in Education and Research Professor of Law, University of Dayton

    Supporters of charter schools rally outside the Supreme Court building on April 30, 2025, during oral arguments over a proposed Catholic charter school. AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

    As demonstrators gathered outside, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on April 30, 2025, about whether Oklahoma can operate the nation’s first faith-based charter school. St. Isidore of Seville would be a virtual, K-12 school run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa.

    Charters are typically public schools of choice, funded by taxpayer dollars. Unlike regular public schools, they are free from most state regulations on curriculum and teacher qualifications. Until now, however, charters, like other public schools, have been secular.

    The litigation over St. Isidore reveals a built-in tension in the First Amendment religion clauses, under which “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” While the free exercise clause guarantees people the right to believe as they wish, controversy remains over what constitutes an “establishment” of religion.

    Here, the specific question is the extent to which, if any, states can spend public funds to allow parents to enroll their children in a faith-based charter school. Supporters are appealing a 2024 ruling from the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, which held that a religious charter school violated state law, as well as the Oklahoma and federal constitutions.

    The Oklahoma Supreme Court bench in the state Capitol building in Oklahoma City.
    AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki

    Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican supporter of St. Isidore, has said the case “stands to be one of the most significant religious and education freedom decisions in our lifetime.”

    On the other hand, the attorney for St. Isidore’s challengers – led by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who blocked the school’s opening – said that a victory for St. Isidore “would result in the astounding rule that states not only may but must fund and create public religious schools, an astounding reversal from this court’s time-honored precedents.”

    It remains to be seen whether a ruling in favor of St. Isidore’s would prove to be a win for religious freedom, as Stitt claimed, or a threat. Even so, as a professor focused on education law, I believe an order to continue expanding taxpayer aid to faith-based institutions looks more likely after Wednesday’s arguments, where five of the eight participating justices seemed sympathetic to St. Isidore.

    The issues

    The Supreme Court faces two key questions.

    First, do the teachings of “a privately owned and run school constitute state action simply because it contracts with the state to offer a free educational option for interested students?” In other words, is a charter school a state actor?

    Second, the justices will weigh how the First Amendment religion clauses apply to a faith-based charter school. According to the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The question is whether Oklahoma violates the free exercise clause by excluding schools from the charter program “solely because the schools are religious.” If so, is the exclusion justified by concerns about the government “establishing” religion?

    The dispute over St. Isidore comes at a time when the Supreme Court has been steadily expanding the limits of aid to faith-based schools. Starting in 2016, a trio of cases have held that states cannot deny institutions and believers generally available, taxpayer-funded aid based solely on their religions. These cases covered aid to enhance playground safety at a Missouri preschool, the right to participate in Montana’s educational tax credit program, and providing tuition assistance to Maine parents in districts lacking public secondary schools.

    The other issue – the “state actor” question – essentially asks whether a state-funded school teaching Catholicism would constitute the government promoting a religion, in violation of the First Amendment’s prohibition against doing so.

    The Supreme Court building on April 30, 2025, the day of oral arguments in St. Isidore’s case.
    AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

    Drummond, Oklahoma’s attorney general, is also a Republican. However, he reversed his predecessor’s action allowing St. Isidore’s creation, arguing that the school “misuses the concept of religious liberty by employing it as a means to justify state-funded religion.”

    In a 2024 brief to the Supreme Court, Drummond noted that Oklahoma’s “charter schools bear all of the hallmarks of a public school,” such as being entirely state-funded. During April arguments, his attorney emphasized that charters are “required to be public schools by the Congress of the United States and the legislatures of 47 states.”

    If this argument prevails, it means St. Isidore is a government actor, and therefore it cannot promote any one religion over another.

    The state action claim may be difficult for St. Isidore’s supporters to overcome. However, the ace in the hole is the Supreme Court’s recent trend of expanding the boundaries of government aid to faith-based schools and their students.

    In fact, Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion in all three of those cases. Excluding a religious preschool “from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand,” he wrote in the 2016 decision.

    Justice Amy Barrett, a supporter of increased aid to faith-based schools, recused herself from participating in the oral arguments, without explanation. This leaves five justices who support expanding public aid for faith-based schools: Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Roberts.

    Oral arguments

    During questioning, Roberts commented that St. Isidore’s creation seems like “much more comprehensive [state] involvement” with a religious organization, compared with the previous cases that expanded taxpayer aid to religious schools – leaving the door open to speculation over how he might vote. Nevertheless, he and the other four proponents of aid appeared open to St. Isidore’s argument that to exclude faith-based schools from charter programs is unconstitutional discrimination on the basis of religion.

    “All the religious school is saying is don’t exclude us on account of our religion,” Kavanaugh commented. He added, “You can’t treat religious people and religious institutions and religious speech as second class in the United States.”

    The remaining justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – appeared skeptical of expanding state aid to faith-based schools.

    Illustrating the tensions within the First Amendment, Sotomayor remarked to the attorney representing St. Isidore, “what you’re saying is the free exercise clause trumps the essence of the establishment clause.”

    Jackson said to the same attorney that St. Isidore is “not being denied a benefit that everyone else gets. It’s being denied a benefit that no one else gets, which is the ability to establish a religious public school.”

    If Roberts agrees with these three justices, resulting in a 4-4 tie, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma would remain undisturbed.

    In the words of the baseball sage Yogi Berra, “it ain’t over ‘till it’s over.” The court is expected to rule near the end of its term, likely in late June.

    This article includes material from an article originally published on Jan. 31, 2025.

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

    – ref. Is a faith-based charter school a threat to religious freedom, or a necessity to uphold it? The weighty decision lies with the Supreme Court – https://theconversation.com/is-a-faith-based-charter-school-a-threat-to-religious-freedom-or-a-necessity-to-uphold-it-the-weighty-decision-lies-with-the-supreme-court-253536

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: As heated tobacco products reenter the US market, evidence on their safety remains sparse – new study

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, Assistant Professor of Health Promotion and Policy, UMass Amherst

    Most studies on the safety of heated tobacco products are funded by tobacco companies. YaroslavKryuchka/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    Heated tobacco products are often marketed by tobacco companies as less harmful than cigarettes, but they can pose health risks to users, according to a new review I co-authored in the journal Tobacco Control. Evidence on their health risks in people who smoke is limited, sometimes contradictory, and hard to make sense of.

    Heated tobacco products are electronic devices that heat tobacco so users can inhale nicotine. Common brands include IQOS, available in the U.S., and Ploom and Glo, sold in other countries.

    Heated tobacco products are different from e-cigarettes, though they may look similar. E-cigarettes, which are also called vapes, heat a liquid containing nicotine but not tobacco, whereas heated tobacco products heat actual tobacco leaf. Heated tobacco products are also different from traditional cigarettes, which burn tobacco rather than heating it. These distinctions matter because it’s the burning of tobacco leaf – not the nicotine – that directly causes the disease and death associated with smoking.

    There is limited long-term data about the health harms of heated tobacco products. My colleagues and I analyzed the available data, drawn from 40 clinical trials, that followed participants who used these products for a year or less. We looked at molecular changes in the blood, breath and urine, called biomarkers, to explore the potential risks of heated tobacco products.

    The studies we reviewed reported changes in 143 different biomarkers, including measures linked to heart disease and cancer. But drawing clear conclusions from the data was hard because of issues with the available evidence. Of the 40 studies, 29 were funded by the tobacco industry. Furthermore, 31 of the 40 studies were conducted in confined settings, meaning that participants’ activities and their use of the assigned product were controlled. This may not reflect heated tobacco products’ real-world use.

    If heated tobacco products are less harmful than cigarettes, we would expect to see largely beneficial effects in smokers who switched to them. However, the evidence we reviewed was inconclusive. Though most studies suggested that heated tobacco products might reduce risks of disease compared with smoking, other studies found no difference, or even the potential of increased risk. Compared with quitting smoking completely, use of heated tobacco products had more consistently harmful effects.

    Tobacco companies claim that heated tobacco products pose less of a health risk than cigarettes.

    Few studies have directly compared the effects of heated tobacco products with e-cigarettes. However, many independently funded, longer-term studies have examined e-cigarettes and have shown they can help people stop smoking and reduce health risks in people who switch completely from smoking to vaping.

    Why it matters

    Heated tobacco products may be coming to a town near you – or already be there. They are already widely used in Japan. IQOS was removed from the U.S. market in 2021 after a court ruled that the product had infringed on an existing patent. However, following a flurry of promotional activities, IQOS relaunched in March 2025 in Austin, Texas. Like most heated tobacco product brands, IQOS is owned by one of the largest cigarette companies in the world, Philip Morris International.

    The company claims it wants to bring IQOS to the U.S. market to provide smoking adults a “better alternative” to cigarettes. But the science we’ve reviewed on whether heated tobacco products are truly healthier is inconclusive. Our review found inconsistencies in data on health effects, and other research suggests these products may not help smokers quit.

    What still isn’t known

    We do not know the long-term health effects of heated tobacco products, nor whether they can actually reduce the risk of disease and death in people who switch from smoking to using heated tobacco products. It is also unclear how heated tobacco products fit into the wider tobacco and nicotine market, especially in light of other available products and interventions already proved to help smokers quit.

    While our findings do not rule out the possibility that these products have fewer health risks than cigarettes, they provide little support for such claims.

    Jamie Hartmann-Boyce receives research funding for tobacco related research from the US NIH-FDA and Cancer Research UK. She has provided research consultancy for the Truth Initiative. Her involvement in this work was not funded and the views expressed here are those of the researchers and do not necessarily represent those of her funders. Other authors of this work are funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies as part of the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco use. This funder had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

    – ref. As heated tobacco products reenter the US market, evidence on their safety remains sparse – new study – https://theconversation.com/as-heated-tobacco-products-reenter-the-us-market-evidence-on-their-safety-remains-sparse-new-study-254278

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What causes RFK Jr.’s strained and shaky voice? A neurologist explains this little-known disorder

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Indu Subramanian, Clinical Professor of Neurology, University of California, Los Angeles

    U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at an April 16, 2025, news conference in Washington, D.C. Alex Wong via Getty Images

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has attracted a lot of attention for his raspy voice, which results from a neurological voice disorder called spasmodic dysphonia.

    Kennedy, 71, says that in his 40s he developed a neurological disease that “robbed him of his strong speaking voice.” Kennedy first publicly spoke of the quiver he had noticed in his voice in a 2004 interview with journalist Diane Rehm, who also had spasmodic dysphonia.

    In 2005, Kennedy was receiving shots of botulinum toxin, the neurotoxin that is now used in Botox as well as to treat migraines and other conditions, every four months. This first-line treatment for dysphonia helps to weaken the vocal folds that contract abnormally with this condition. He used botulinum toxin injections for 10 years and then stopped using them, saying they were “not a good fit” for him.

    Kennedy initially developed symptoms while in the public eye teaching at Pace University in New York. Some viewers wrote to him suggesting that he had the condition spasmadic dysphonia and that he should contact a well-known expert on the disease, Dr. Andrew Blitzer. He followed this advice and had the diagnosis confirmed.

    I am a movement disorders neurologist and have long been passionate about the psychological and social toll that conditions such as dysphonias have on my patients.

    Kennedy says his condition began in 1996, when he was 42.

    Types of dysphonias

    In North America, an estimated 50,000 people have spasmodic dysphonia. The condition involves the involuntary pulling of the muscles that open and close the vocal folds, causing the voice to sound strained and strangled, at times with a breathy quality. About 30% to 60% of people with the condition also experience vocal tremor, which can alter the sound of the voice.

    Typically, a neurologist may suspect the disorder by identifying characteristic voice breaks when the patients is speaking. The diagnosis is confirmed with the help of an ear, nose and throat specialist who can insert a small scope into the larynx, examine the vocal folds and rule out any other abnormalities.

    Because the disorder is not well known to the public, many patients experience a delay in diagnosis and may be misdiagnosed with gastric reflux or allergies.

    The most common type of spasmodic dysphonia is called adductor dysphonia, which accounts for 80% of cases. It is characterized by a strained or strangled voice quality with abrupt breaks on vowels due to the vocal folds being hyperadducted, or abnormally closed.

    In contrast, a form of the condition called abductor dysphonia causes a breathy voice with breaks on consonants due to uncontrolled abduction – meaning coming apart of the vocal folds.

    Potential treatments

    Spasmodic dysphonia is not usually treatable with oral medications and sometimes can get better with botulinum toxin injections into the muscles that control the vocal cords. It is a lifelong disorder currently without a cure. Voice therapy through working with a speech pathologist alongside botulinum toxin administration may also be beneficial.

    Surgical treatments can be an option for patients who fail botulinum toxin treatment, though surgeries come with risks and can be variably effective. Surgical techniques are being refined and require wider evaluation and long-term follow-up data before being considered as a standard treatment for spasmodic dysphonia.

    The sudden, uncontrollable movements caused by irregular folding of the vocal folds are referred to as spasms, which gave rise to the name spasmodic dysphonia.

    Dysphonias fall into a broader category of movement disorders

    Spasmodic dysphonia is classified as a focal dystonia, a dystonia that affects one body part – the vocal folds, in the case of spasmodic dysphonia. Dystonia is an umbrella term for movement disorders characterized by sustained or repetitive muscle contractions that cause abnormal postures or movements.

    The most common dystonia is cervical dystonia, which affects the neck and can cause pulling of the head to one side.

    Another type, called blepharospasm, involves involuntary muscle contractions and spasms of the eyelid muscles that can cause forced eye closure that can even affect vision in some cases. There can be other dystonias such as writer’s cramp, which can make the hand cramp when writing. Musicians can develop dystonias from overusing certain body parts such as violinists who develop dystonia in their hands or trumpet players who develop dystonia in their lips.

    Stigmas and psychological distress

    Dystonias can cause tremendous psychological distress.

    Many dystonias and movement disorders in general, including Parkinson’s disease and other conditions that result in tremors, face tremendous amounts of stigma. In Africa, for instance, there is a misconception that the affected person has been cursed by witchcraft or that the movement disorder is contagious. People with the condition may be hidden from society or isolated from others due to fear of catching the disease.

    In the case of spasmodic dysphonia, the affected person may feel that they appear nervous or ill-prepared while speaking publicly. They may be embarrassed or ashamed and isolate themselves from speaking to others.

    My patients have been very frustrated by the unpredictable nature of the symptoms and by having to avoid certain sounds that could trigger the dysphonia. They may then have to restructure their word choices and vocabulary so as not to trigger the dysphonia, which can be very mentally taxing.

    Some patients with dysphonia feel that their abnormal voice issues affect their relationships and their ability to perform their job or take on leadership or public-facing roles. Kennedy said in an interview that he finds the sound of his own voice to be unbearable to listen to and apologizes to others for having to listen to it.

    A 2005 study exploring the biopsychosocial consequences of spasmodic dysphonia through interviews with patients gives some insight into the experience of people living with the disorder.

    A patient in that study said that their voice sounded “like some kind of wild chicken screeching out words,” and another patient said that it “feels like you’re having to grab onto a word and push it out from your throat.” Another felt like “there’s a rubber band around my neck. Someone was constricting it.” And another said, “It feels like you have a sore throat all the time … like a raw feeling in your throat.”

    Patients in the study described feeling hopeless and disheartened, less confident and less competent. The emotional toll can be huge. One patient said, “I used to be very outgoing and now I find myself avoiding those situations.” Another said, “People become condescending like you’re not capable anymore because you don’t speak well.”

    As conditions such as spasmodic dysphonia become better recognized, I am hopeful that not only will treatments improve, but that stigmas around such conditions will diminish.

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

    – ref. What causes RFK Jr.’s strained and shaky voice? A neurologist explains this little-known disorder – https://theconversation.com/what-causes-rfk-jr-s-strained-and-shaky-voice-a-neurologist-explains-this-little-known-disorder-250769

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Fleeting fireflies illuminate Colorado summer nights − and researchers are watching

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Orit Peleg, Associate Professor of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder

    Fireflies in Boulder, Colo., during the summer of 2023. Radim Schreiber/Firefly Experience, CC BY

    The Colorado June air was thick with summer heat. Mosquitoes rose in clouds around us, testing our resolve while we gathered our cameras and sensors. We walked into the wetland, down the unmarked path until the cattails rose shoulder-high. The sounds of frogs and crickets filled the air as we set up our cameras and waited. Then we spotted them: tiny lights lifting from the grasses, blinking in slow rhythms.

    Bioluminescent lampyrid beetles, commonly known as fireflies or lightning bugs, are widespread throughout the Eastern United States but far more scarce west of Kansas.

    Even though many are stargazers and hikers, most Colorado residents don’t know that fireflies share their state.

    We are an associate professor of computer science and a Ph.D. candidate who are working to shed light on Colorado’s hidden fireflies.

    In the past few years, we have observed and filmed elusive bioluminescent fireflies all over Colorado, racing each summer against their brief and unpredictable flashing season.

    The authors − Orit, left, and Owen − in the field, taking notes and observing specimens.
    Nolan R. Bonnie and Mac Stone

    Last year in early June it was too early, we thought, for fireflies in Colorado. For weeks we had been checking weather forecasts, comparing them to previous years, waiting for warmer nights and rising temperatures − the signs that would tell us it’s firefly time.

    Then we got a tip. A friend mentioned seeing one or two flashes near their property. The next morning we packed our gear, rearranged our schedules and contacted our volunteer network. The field season began in a literal flash.

    As adults, fireflies live and flash for only about two weeks a year − and even then, just for a few hours each night. It’s easy to blink and miss the entire season. The next generation overwinters underground as larvae, emerging as adults the following year, though development may take up to two years in arid climates. Making the most of that narrow window is one of the many reasons we rely on volunteers who help us spot the first flashes and record observations across Colorado.

    Western fireflies face unique environmental challenges

    Our work joins a growing chorus of scientific observation focused on western fireflies, which pop up across the arid landscape near temporary wetlands, marshes, drainages, desert rivers and other water sources. Because of the dry landscape, these populations tend to be fragmented, isolated to where the water is and nowhere in between.

    This strong tie to small, unstable habitat spells vulnerability for the fireflies. If the water runs out, or their habitats are damaged by water or light pollution, the flashing populations could vanish. Pesticides in water are toxic to firefly larvae and their prey, and artificial light inhibits the flash courtship between males and females, preventing successful reproduction. Many populations and species of fireflies are threatened with extinction in the United States due to these factors.

    Organizations such as our lab at the University of Colorado and the Xerces Society for Inverteberate Conservation are studying the distribution of and direct threats to western firefly populations. Many of the species are either endangered or not yet described.

    The fireflies of the Photuris genus along the Front Range, for example, still do not have a species name and appear to be genetically distinct from other Photuris around the country. Preliminary genetic results suggest at least one new species might be found here. The genetic data also suggests at least five different bioluminescent species of fireflies are present in Colorado.

    How flash patterns help fireflies (and us) tell species apart

    During their short mating season, fireflies use their flash patterns as mating calls.

    Males produce a series of flash-on, flash-off events, each with specific durations and pauses. These Morse code-like signals communicate what type and how fit the fireflies are to potential mates in the darkness.

    When females detect a suitable male, they respond with their own unique flash pattern.

    Our work piggybacks on this evolutionary adaptation. We first recorded populations from around the U.S. using two video cameras, which allowed us to accurately track individual fireflies in three dimensions and separate their flash patterns.

    We used the data on the flash behavior from different species to train a neural network that can classify the firefly’s flash pattern with a high degree of accuracy. Our algorithm learns the unique flash patterns from our data and can identify the species of firefly that is present in a video.

    This is a powerful tool for firefly conservation efforts. The camera footage can cover more time and ground than field surveys conducted by humans, and our algorithm can more quickly identify species that might be threatened.

    Fostering community engagement with citizen science

    Based on our success with community science data collection across other states, including Tennessee, South Carolina and Massachusetts, we wanted to apply the same principles to Colorado’s firefly populations. This is a big undertaking: There are dozens of fragmented sites where fireflies are active across Colorado, and more are reported by volunteers every season. Our team of two cannot visit and survey every site during the short firefly season.

    In 2023 we put out our first call for volunteers in Colorado. Since that time, 18 community members in Boulder, Fort Collins, Divide and Loveland joined the filming effort. We provide cameras for the volunteers, who bring them to their nearby wetlands and set them up in the fading light.

    Last summer we partnered with local land management agencies in Boulder, Fort Collins and Loveland to host informative community events, where we spoke about firefly biology and conservation to audiences of all ages. On many of those nights, as the flashes began, we heard the excitement build: quiet gasps, hushed enthusiasm and a whisper such as, “Look at that beautiful streak of light!”

    Fireflies have an important story to tell, and here in Colorado that story is just beginning. Their brief flashes each summer help us learn about communication, ecology and how these delicate insects respond to an ever-changing world.

    If you’d like to help us find and study fireflies in Colorado, you can sign up to join our community science project.

    Orit Peleg receives funding from the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks, CU Boulder’s Timmerhaus Fund Ambassadors, National Geographic Society, and Research Cooperation for Science Advancement.

    Owen Martin receives funding from Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP).

    – ref. Fleeting fireflies illuminate Colorado summer nights − and researchers are watching – https://theconversation.com/fleeting-fireflies-illuminate-colorado-summer-nights-and-researchers-are-watching-253593

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What makes people flourish? A new survey of more than 200,000 people across 22 countries looks for global patterns and local differences

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Victor Counted, Associate Professor of Psychology, Regent University

    Flourishing is about your whole life being good, including the people and places around you. Westend61 via Getty Images

    What does it mean to live a good life? For centuries, philosophers, scientists and people of different cultures have tried to answer this question. Each tradition has a different take, but all agree: The good life is more than just feeling good − it’s about becoming whole.

    More recently, researchers have focused on the idea of flourishing, not simply as happiness or success, but as a multidimensional state of well-being that involves positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment − an idea that traces back to Aristotle’s concept of “eudaimonia” but has been redefined within the well-being science literature.

    Flourishing is not just well-being and how you feel on the inside. It’s about your whole life being good, including the people around you and where you live. Things such as your home, your neighborhood, your school or workplace, and your friends all matter.

    We are a group of psychological scientists, social scientists and epidemiologists who are all contributors to an international collaboration called the Global Flourishing Study. The goal of the project is simple: to find patterns of human flourishing across cultures.

    Do people in some countries thrive more than others? What makes the biggest difference in a person’s well-being? Are there things people can do to improve their own lives? Understanding these trends over time can help shape policies and programs that improve global human flourishing.

    What does the flourishing study focus on?

    The Global Flourishing Study is a five-year annual survey of over 200,000 participants from 22 countries, using nationally representative sampling to understand health and well-being. Our team includes more than 40 researchers across different disciplines, cultures and institutions.

    With help from Gallup Inc., we asked people about their lives, their happiness, their health, their childhood experiences, and how they feel about their financial situation.

    The study looks at six dimensions of a flourishing life:

    1. Happiness and life satisfaction: how content and fulfilled people feel with their lives.

    2. Physical and mental health: how healthy people feel, in both body and mind.

    3. Meaning and purpose: whether people feel their lives are significant and moving in a clear direction.

    4. Character and virtue: how people act to promote good, even in tough situations.

    5. Close social relationships: how satisfied people are with their friendships and family ties.

    6. Financial and material stability: whether people feel secure about their basic needs, including food, housing and money.

    We tried to quantify how participants are doing on each of these dimensions using a scale from 0 to 10. In addition to using the Secure Flourish measure from Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program, we included additional questions to probe other factors that influence how much someone is flourishing.

    For example, we assessed well-being through questions about optimism, peace and balance in life. We measured health by asking about pain, depression and exercise. We measured relationships through questions about trust, loneliness and support.

    Who is flourishing and why?

    Our first wave of results reveals that some countries and groups of people are doing better than others.

    We were surprised that in many countries young people are not doing as well as older adults. Earlier studies had suggested well-being follows a U-shape over the course of a lifespan, with the lowest point in middle age. Our new results imply that younger adults today face growing mental health challenges, financial insecurity and a loss of meaning that are disrupting the traditional U-shaped curve of well-being.

    Married people usually reported more support, better relationships and more meaning in life.

    People who were working – either for themselves or someone else – also tended to feel more secure and happy than people who were seeking jobs.

    People who go to religious services once a week or more typically reported higher scores in all areas of flourishing – particularly happiness, meaning and relationships. This finding was true in almost every country, even very secular ones such as Sweden.

    It seems that religious communities offer what psychologists of religion call the four B’s: belonging, in the form of social support; bonding, in the form of spiritual connection; behaving, in the cultivation of character and virtue through the practices and norms taught within religious communities; and believing, in the form of embracing hope, forgiveness and shared spiritual convictions.

    But some people who attend religious services also report more pain or suffering. This correlation may be because religious communities often provide support during hard times, and frequent attendees may be more attentive to or more likely to experience pain, grief or illness.

    Your early years shape how you do later in life. But even if life started off as challenging, it doesn’t have to stay that way. Some people who had difficult childhoods, having experienced abuse or poverty, still found meaning and purpose later as adults. In some countries, including the U.S. and Argentina, hardship in childhood seemed to build resilience and purpose in adulthood.

    Globally, men and women report similar levels of flourishing. But in some countries there are big differences. For example, women in Japan report higher scores than men, while in Brazil, men report doing better than women.

    Where are people flourishing most?

    Some countries are doing better than others when it comes to flourishing.

    Indonesia is thriving. People there scored high in many areas, including meaning, purpose, relationships and character. Indonesia is one of the highest-scoring countries in most of the indicators in the whole study.

    Mexico and the Philippines also show strong results. Even though these countries have less money than some others, people report strong family ties, spiritual lives and community support.

    Japan and Turkey report lower scores. Japan has a strong economy, but people there report lower happiness and weaker social connections. Long work hours and stress may be part of the reason. In Turkey, political and financial challenges may be hurting people’s sense of trust and security.

    One surprising result is that richer countries, including the United States and Sweden, are not flourishing as well as some others. They do well on financial stability but score lower in meaning and relationships. Having more money doesn’t always mean people are doing better in life.

    In fact, countries with higher income often report lower levels of meaning and purpose. Meanwhile, countries with higher fertility rates often report more meaning in life. These findings show that there can be a trade-off. Economic progress might improve some things but weaken others.

    One of the authors reflects on what the survey data reveals about what helps people truly flourish across the world.

    The big picture

    The Global Flourishing Study is helping us see that people all over the world want many of the same basic things: to be happy, healthy, connected and safe. But different countries reach those goals in different ways. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to flourishing. What it means to flourish can look different from place to place and from one person to another.

    One challenge with the Global Flourishing Study is that it uses the same set of questions in all 22 countries. This method, known as an etic approach, helps us compare results across cultures. But it can miss the nuance and local meanings of flourishing. What brings happiness or purpose in one country or context might not mean the same thing in another.

    We consider this study to be a starting point. It opens the door for more emic studies – research that uses questions and ideas that fit the values, language and everyday life of specific cultures and societies. Researchers can build on this study’s findings to expand how we understand and measure flourishing around the world.

    Tyler J. VanderWeele reports consulting fees from Gloo Inc., along with shared revenue received by Harvard University in its license agreement with Gloo according to the University IP policy.

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

    – ref. What makes people flourish? A new survey of more than 200,000 people across 22 countries looks for global patterns and local differences – https://theconversation.com/what-makes-people-flourish-a-new-survey-of-more-than-200-000-people-across-22-countries-looks-for-global-patterns-and-local-differences-243671

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why do people continue to support politicians who attack their democracies? Expert Q&A

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Scott Williamson, Associate Professor, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford

    Ahead of a public event in London on May 8 on what the latest research can tell us about the state of democracy, The Conversation asked Scott Williamson, Associate Professor in Comparative Political Economy at the University of Oxford, to help us understand why people don’t always immediately push back when politicians attack their democracies.

    Your findings show that people around the world have relatively similar ideas about what democracy means and are relatively committed to this idea of democratic governance. So why are so many people polarised about whether today’s crop of politicians are attacking our democracies and what to do about it?

    Most people in most countries say it is important to them that they live in a democracy. Research by my colleagues and me also suggests that people tend to agree that competitive elections and protections for civil liberties are central elements of democratic governance.

    Yet, many people who claim to care about democracy also support political leaders and movements that have attacked democratic institutions and values.

    We have to recognise that even when people agree about the fundamental definition of democracy, there is still plenty of room to disagree over the specifics of how democracy is implemented in practice.

    Democracy in decline? The risk and rise of authoritarianism

    Democracy is under pressure around the world in 2025. But is this part of a larger historical cycle or does it signal a deeper, more fundamental shift? Join us for a free event in central London on May 8 to discuss these important questions. Come for a panel discussion and stay for food, drinks and conversation.

    Get tickets here

    Anti-democratic political leaders can take advantage of these disagreements to argue that their actions defend rather than disrupt democracy. Their supporters will often be motivated to believe these claims, especially where politics and the media are highly polarised.

    In the US, Donald Trump and the Republican party have long argued they are protecting American democracy from the deep state and the Democratic party. A prominent example is the claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election, and that subsequent charges against Trump were an attempt at political persecution.

    This message is consistently amplified by rightwing media. Such claims are false, but they create a framework for justifying Trump’s actions in democratic terms.

    A second potential problem is that people who understand democracy similarly and view democracy favourably may still decide that opposing anti-democratic leaders is less important than securing other political objectives. Several recent studies suggest that people in many countries, including the United States, are reluctant to make such trade-offs. Commitment to democracy is relatively strong.

    However, this research also highlights certain conditions under which people may begin to give up this commitment. Some people will care less about democracy if they can secure significantly better economic outcomes. In ongoing research with my co-authors, we also show that perceived threats to safety are especially likely to induce democratic trade-offs.

    One important finding from these studies is that people are strongly committed to maintaining competitive elections in their countries, but they are more willing to give up civil liberties and constraints on executive power in exchange for preferred economic and security outcomes. Some people are openly sympathetic to a majoritarian vision of democracy that empowers elected leaders to ignore institutional constraints if it means giving the people what they want.

    The relatively weaker commitment to these aspects of democracy means that anti-democratic leaders who first focus on undermining political freedoms and expanding their own power, rather than undercutting elections, are less likely to face a backlash.

    This well-used playbook may explain why Trump has faced relatively inconsistent pushback from the public, despite brazenly seizing legislative powers and violating civil liberties.

    Because Trump won the 2024 election, and because many Americans likely believe that subsequent elections will still meet democratic standards, they may tolerate attacks on civil liberties and checks and balances – especially if it gives them policy outcomes they prefer.

    Yet, it is important for Americans who care about democracy to recognise that several of Trump’s actions directly threaten the ability of the United States to hold free and fair elections in the future. The president and his allies have deployed lawsuits and withheld legally obligated funding in an effort to silence critical voices in the media, universities, NGOs, businesses, the legal community, and the Democratic party. Such actions are already muting criticisms of Trump and will make it harder for opposition to compete fairly in upcoming elections.

    Vice president J.D. Vance recently accused European leaders of “running in fear” from voters over immigration. What did you make of his intervention?

    These comments are a good example of how political leaders who attack democracy often claim to be defending democracy instead. A common strategy is to claim that they are the true representatives of the people and their preferences. As a result, their actions must be democratic, and those who oppose them are blocking the will of the people.

    Such claims about immigration should be viewed as a rhetorical cudgel used by the extreme right to beat back accusations of their own anti-democratic stances. Even if their immigration policies are more preferred by the public, this stronger alignment on a single issue should constitute only a small piece of the pie in terms of evaluating their democratic credentials.

    And their claims to represent public opinion on immigration stand on shaky ground at best. Attitudes toward immigration are complicated and multifaceted. Though negative views on the issue are clearly prevalent, attitudes have become more favourable over time in several European countries.

    Negative voices are often louder but do not necessarily represent the majority. Public opinion also fluctuates. In the United States, Trump was perceived more favourably than Kamala Harris on immigration during the 2024 election. But already by late April, a majority of Americans expressed opposition to Trump’s extreme approach.

    How can defenders of democracy meet these challenges?

    In countries where anti-democratic parties are on the rise, political leaders and the public should resist normalising them. The more they are treated as just any other party, the more people may begin to perceive their anti-democratic politics as acceptable.

    When anti-democratic parties come to power, it is important for their opponents to push back as forcefully as possible before the party can consolidate an authoritarian regime. As the political system becomes more repressive, people will increasingly hide their views, and it will be harder to mobilise opposition moving forward.

    For these efforts to succeed, it is important for the opposition to remain as unified as possible. If the ruling party can use its power to make elections less fair, state institutions more biased, and protests more dangerous, then the opposition will need to make use of every advantage they can to oust the government. A divided opposition will be much more likely to fail.

    Scott Williamson receives funding from the UKRI/EPSRC Frontier Research Guarantee Scheme (EP/Y036832/1) for the project Democratic Values and Authoritarian Legitimacy (DEVAL).

    – ref. Why do people continue to support politicians who attack their democracies? Expert Q&A – https://theconversation.com/why-do-people-continue-to-support-politicians-who-attack-their-democracies-expert-qanda-255565

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why older adults shouldn’t worry about having sore muscles after a workout – new research

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lawrence Hayes, Lecturer in Physiology, Lancaster University

    Kostiantyn Voitenko/ Shutterstock

    Only 2% of people over the age of 70 strength train at least twice a week. This is worrying, as age-related muscle loss can increase risk of social isolation, falls, loss of independence and even early death.

    There are many reasons why older people may avoid strength training, such as a lack of knowledge about exercise, lack of access to a gym and stigma. Another major reason is the fear that exercise might make their muscles and joints even more sore than they already are.

    But the good news is that older adults are no more likely to experience muscle soreness after a workout than young adults are. In fact, our recent study found older adults actually experienced less muscle soreness following exercise than young adults did. This research overturns the widespread belief that ageing muscles are less resilient.

    We pooled data from 36 studies which looked at a total of 389 younger adults and 390 older adults with the aim of comparing their experiences of exercise-induced muscle damage. We analysed three different types of studies in our research, including those where participants self-reported on their muscle soreness, studies which looked at markers of muscle damage in the blood, and studies which analysed muscle function the day after a workout.

    We found that older adults do not experience greater muscle function loss after exercise compared with younger people. Maybe most importantly, muscle soreness was consistently lower in older adults after a workout. Older adults experienced only two-thirds of the soreness younger people did at 48 hours, and only one-third of the muscle soreness at 72 hours compared with younger people.

    Because we looked at 36 different studies, not all of them compared the same age groups. But they generally compared younger adults (people in their 20s) to older adults (people aged between 30 and 60).

    We also found that biological sex appeared to play a role in muscle function recovery, with males showing slightly greater losses in muscle function after exercise than females. This effect was true for both upper body and lower body exercises, as well as body strength and aerobic workouts.

    These findings challenge the widespread belief that ageing muscles recover more slowly or are more prone to exercise-induced damage. This misconception often discourages older adults from engaging in regular physical activity due to fears of prolonged soreness or weakness. The findings also show us that older adults may not need longer recovery periods between workouts – potentially allowing for more frequent or intense training sessions, leading to better long-term health outcomes.

    How to get started

    Although our study shows that older adults are no more likely to experience muscle damage compared to younger adults, this doesn’t mean older people won’t experience some soreness when they start working out.

    There are two important factors that can increase muscle damage (including soreness) after exercise.

    Women were less likely to experience losses in muscle function.
    nastya_ph/ Shutterstock

    The first is novelty. If you haven’t done a particular exercise before (or even for a long time) then it’s more likely you’ll feel sore for a couple of days afterwards if you overdo it. This happens because a new movement or type of exercise challenges our muscles. This causes the body to trigger a cascade of processes that build new muscle. While this temporarily makes us sore, it ultimately makes it easier for us to cope when we do that exercise again.

    The second are “eccentric” muscle contractions. What we mean by eccentric contractions is when you’re attempting to slow down a weight (imagine the downwards phase of a bicep curl – your bicep is working to slow the bar from dropping to the floor). Another example of an eccentric muscle movement is downhill running.

    Eccentric muscle contractions cause more damage than other movements mainly because they subject the muscle fibers to exceptionally high force loads, which is often distributed unevenly. This can overstretch and disrupt the integrity of our muscles, causing stress and damage. But while this leads to soreness in the short-term, these changes ultimately make us stronger.

    To overcome the problem of being new to exercise, you should ease yourself into a new exercise programme. The couch to 5K programme is a great example of this. This programme guides people to build their aerobic fitness gradually.

    So for instance, you might start by going for a 5-minute walk on Monday. If you feel okay on Wednesday, you might try a 10-minute walk instead. This means that every walk is only five additional minutes of novel exercise, allowing your body to gradually build fitness without too much risk of soreness.

    The same principle applies to the eccentric exercises we might do while strength training. Start easy. For an older beginner, just standing up from a chair and returning to seated can be a starting point. This is a very useful movement as it uses our main leg muscles. Being able to raise from a chair is also a huge predictor of independence in later life. Another benefit of this exercise is that you can always return to the seat if you lose balance – so it is quite safe.

    If you can do five of these in a row on Tuesday, see you if you can do two lots (we call these sets) of five on Thursday. Much like aerobic fitness, you’ll soon improve your muscle strength. For the upper body, raising light weights above your head and back down to your lap can be a start. You could also use tins of unopened beans if you don’t have any equipment at home. Try to do these strength-based activities at least two days per week.

    The findings of our study and many others suggest exercise has no age limit. Move more to live longer and healthier. Aim for 150 minutes of activity each week, add strength training twice per week – and most importantly, find a workout you love. When you enjoy it, you’re more likely to stick with it.

    Lawrence Hayes has received funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the Chief Scientist Office (CSO), the RS Macdonald Charitable Trust, and the Physiological Society.

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

    – ref. Why older adults shouldn’t worry about having sore muscles after a workout – new research – https://theconversation.com/why-older-adults-shouldnt-worry-about-having-sore-muscles-after-a-workout-new-research-254262

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Robert Macfarlane’s new book is a plea to feel the pulse of our rivers

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Julian Dobson, Senior Research Fellow, Sheffield Hallam University

    beerlogoff/Shutterstock

    Suggesting that a river could be alive has the potential to change everything. Robert Macfarlane, one of Britain’s best-read writers on the natural environment, has done just this in his latest book.

    At one level, Is A River Alive? is a travelogue of adventuring in extreme environments: a lucid, lyrical addition to a genre Macfarlane has made his own. His odyssey through the cloudforests of Ecuador, the stricken rivers of Chennai in India and the tumultuous rapids of the Mutehekau Shipu in north-east Canada has it all: larger-than-life companions, astonishing revelations about the natural world and inadvisable levels of personal risk (including some particularly scary whitewater kayaking).

    Like all good odysseys, it’s a journey of psychological and spiritual self-discovery with a profound sense of nostos, an ancient Greek word meaning the journey home. But it’s much more than that.

    This is a quest with an agenda and an urgency and one that puts its cards on the table from the outset. If a river is alive, our perceptions, laws and politics must change course to recognise that, Macfarlane argues.

    That recognition must be rapid, because we’re already seeing the consequences of treating rivers – and the natural world – as “limitless source and limitless sump”, as he puts it. As an illustration, think of Lake Ontario in the 1990s, which he suggests was so chemically polluted that you could develop photographic film in its water.



    Read more:
    Some rivers have ‘legal personhood’. Now they need a lawyer

    This is new territory for Macfarlane, who shows a sharper critical edge than in his earlier work but also engages more personally and emotionally with his material. Wrecked or restored relationships between humans and the natural world prompt the writer, like a contemporary William Blake, to throw down a moral gauntlet to those who hold economic and political power.

    While lacking the anticolonial anger of Indian author Amitav Ghosh’s polemic The Nutmeg’s Curse, Macfarlane comes to comparable conclusions. Ghosh declares in his book that “if non-human voices are to be restored to their proper place, then it must be, in the first instance, through the medium of stories”. Is A River Alive? seeks to do that.



    Read more:
    Rivers are increasingly being given legal rights. Now they need people who will defend these rights in court

    Interrogating a mystery

    Macfarlane engages seriously with knotty complexities. A river may be alive, but not in any way that can be readily incorporated into human systems. “If you interrogate a mystery, don’t expect answers in a language you can understand,” he muses. He also insists on the necessity of opening our perceptions to the life of and in a river: “to imagine that a river is alive causes water to glitter differently.”

    Macfarlane adopts an animist outlook, declaring non-human entities to have voices and worth in and of themselves. His stance is part of a wave of thinking and writing that is transporting such beliefs from the margins of western spirituality and scholarship into mainstream literature.

    This is vital work, but the challenge shouldn’t be overestimated. If you address these questions from a government perspective, you quickly get quagmired in legal systems and questions of ownership. The result, critics say, is ecological injustice, silencing the voices of nonhumans and of the humans who speak up for them. Yet action to give legal rights to rivers is increasing, from the Rio los Cedros in Ecuador to the Whanganui in Aotearoa New Zealand.

    Logics of inaction

    These are important victories, and work to foreground the rights of nature is gathering pace in the UK. In my own city of Sheffield, my colleagues and I are part of a growing network of academics and community organisations working with the River Dôn project, exploring how the river that runs through our city centre could be given a voice, legal status and, we hope, stronger protection from environmental damage.

    This work joins an increasing flow of thinking in universities, cities and communities that challenges extractive mindsets. But such voices remain sidelined even as the evidence of the damage wrought by the rapacious exploitation of Earth becomes starker.

    My own research has shown how “logics of inaction” persist – even when policymakers know they need to invest in and protect the natural world (in cities, urban parks and wild places), they find reasons to avoid doing so. More often than not, it comes down to money – finances are too tight, or the benefits aren’t obviously quantifiable.

    Even when the benefits of natural spaces are compiled and described in terms that pose no philosophical challenge – they support human health and wellbeing, relationships, participation in society – these benefits are deemed insufficient to stop the cycle of neglect. Indeed, as UK chancellor Rachel Reeves recently declared, developers should “stop worrying about bats and newts” and “focus on getting things built”.

    Is a River Alive? may not stem the tide of environmental destruction. But for those frustrated by the logics of inaction of short-term decision-making, it provides timely and necessary inspiration.

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

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

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

    – ref. Robert Macfarlane’s new book is a plea to feel the pulse of our rivers – https://theconversation.com/robert-macfarlanes-new-book-is-a-plea-to-feel-the-pulse-of-our-rivers-247580

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why Donald Trump’s trade tariffs are a threat to global food security

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lotanna Emediegwu, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Manchester Metropolitan University

    Billion Photos/Shutterstock

    Donald Trump’s tariffs will make many things more expensive for his fellow US citizens. The price of imported cars, building materials and some tech will go up – and so will the cost of the food on American dining tables.

    The US currently imports around 16% of its food supply, with a large proportion of its fruit and vegetables coming from countries now hit by tariffs.

    Mexico stands out. It supplies over half the fresh fruit and nearly 70% of the fresh vegetables consumed in the US.

    And even when it comes to home grown produce, the US still depends on imported fertiliser for its crops, with Canada providing up to 85% of its neighbour’s supply.

    So grocery bills for American families, especially for fresh produce (and processed foods dependent on foreign ingredients) will get higher. But there will also be a noticeable effect on food prices outside the US.

    The consequences could be particularly serious for developing economies that rely on stable international prices to secure affordable food imports. The prices of many global staples including maize, wheat and soybeans are benchmarked against US markets so when disruptions occur, they reverberate globally.

    Research I conducted with a colleague found that when international prices are disturbed, local food prices, especially in developing countries, go up.

    Take global maize prices, which this year rose by 7% between April 2 (Trump’s “liberation day”) and April 11. Our study suggests this will immediately lead to a similar increase in local maize prices in places like sub-Saharan Africa.

    This is where many of the world’s poorest people live, with hundreds of millions in households earning below the World Bank’s poverty line of US$2.15 (£1.61) per day. When much of that income is spent on food, a 7% increase in the price of maize could be devastating.

    Growth market

    According to another study, tariffs on agricultural products such as fertiliser will increase global production costs, potentially lowering crop yields and worsening food insecurity.

    While the US has reduced tariffs on Canadian potash from 25% to 10%, other fertiliser producers face steeper levels (up to 28% for another major exporter, Tunisia, before Trump’s reciprocal tariffs were paused).

    This is especially worrying for agriculture in countries like Brazil, India and Nigeria, which are still reeling from fertiliser shortages caused by the war between Russia and Ukraine. As with food costs, US tariffs are likely to drive up prices in the global fertiliser market, making it more expensive for everyone, everywhere.

    And when the cost of farming rises, crop production can suffer. This could significantly weaken food production in developing countries that are already battling climate change and volatile markets.

    Another study I conducted found that countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia – already struggling with food insecurity – are among the most vulnerable to local food price shocks. These economies depend heavily on food imports and face high exposure to currency fluctuations and transport costs.

    A banana field in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
    giulio napolitano/Shutterstock

    If the trade war escalates, farmers in these regions may be forced to abandon staple crops for cash commodities such as cocoa or coffee, deepening their reliance on volatile global markets and reducing their food self-sufficiency. Global inequality will worsen unless things change.

    One option would be to protect essential agricultural imports, especially fertilizers and staple foods, from punitive tariffs. This would stabilise prices and protect vulnerable economies. The recently announced 90-day pause for negotiations offers a glimmer of hope, but it must be used wisely to build a more equitable trading system.

    In the long term, developing countries need to bolster the resilience of their food systems. My research recommends investing heavily in mechanised agriculture which is resilient to climate change, incentivising farmers with government support, and strengthening regional trade.

    The global food system is heavily interconnected. Decisions made in Washington can quickly affect food prices in Lagos, Cairo and New Delhi. And if tariffs go unchecked, they may unleash a silent and subtle crisis – one measured not in GDP, but in millions of empty stomachs.

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

    – ref. Why Donald Trump’s trade tariffs are a threat to global food security – https://theconversation.com/why-donald-trumps-trade-tariffs-are-a-threat-to-global-food-security-255064

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo at the Royal Academy is dark and brilliant

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Martin Lang, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Fine Art , University of Lincoln

    The Royal Academy’s latest exhibition, Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo offers a rare glimpse into the dark and moody world of the renowned writer best known for his novels The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Misérables.

    The exhibition is set in exceptionally low lighting, a necessary measure to preserve the fragile drawings, which are usually only accessible under archival conditions. This dim ambience enhances the foreboding atmosphere of Hugo’s works, which are often landscapes featuring cathedrals that appear to be in ruin or emerging from mist or dust clouds.

    These drawings are reminiscent of Dennis Creffield’s gestural, energetic and dark, cathedral sketches. Hugo’s are similar, but much smaller and with a more post-apocalyptic and surreal twist.

    Titles like The Dead City attest to this, while Breakwater on Jersey, with its obscure imagery that recalls looking up a steep incline towards some towers, evokes a sense of Gothic horror, reminiscent of Dracula.

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

    Other drawings in the exhibition are more surreal. One features a giant mushroom with a face looming over a desolate landscape, eerily evoking nuclear war (something that Hugo could not have possibly fathomed in 1850). Windmill on the Roof of a Farmhouse depicts a windmill improbably emerging from another building, adding to the surreal quality of Hugo’s work. And, one of the first drawings visitors encounter is of a poisonous tree with a skull emerging from its shadow, setting the tone for the exhibition.

    The Serpent resembles a Chinese dragon twisting through the sky over the sea with a mountain obscured in mist below its fire-breathing jaws. The light specs illuminating the water add to the mystery, as the light source itself remains unclear. Is the light emanating from the dragon’s mouth or from behind the mountain? This ambiguity adds to the surreal quality of the work.

    The Bowels of Leviathan is one of the largest and most abstract pieces in the exhibition. Loose brushwork, possibly created with a large brush or feather (as suggested by the wall text) fills the surface. Vertical lines appear like prison bars in a dark arch (one of many allusions to Les Misérables in the exhibition), while the title actually refers to the Parisian sewers – a recurring theme in Hugo’s novel.

    Several drawings in the exhibition can be interpreted as metaphors for political turmoil. Lighthouse at Casquets, Guernsey features a heavily tilting ship, while Boat without Sails depicts what appears to be a single piece of wood from a ship wreck, or perhaps a raft afloat.

    Ship in a Storm further emphasises the theme of stormy waters, reflecting the turbulent political landscape of Hugo’s time. His father was a general in the Napoleonic empire, which crumbled when Victor was 12. He saw the Bourbon monarchy restored, then the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. Not only a witness, Hugo was deeply involved in politics, resulting in his exile to the Chanel Islands, where he made most of the drawings on display, during the reign of Napoleon III.

    The Durande Ship After Sinking and The Wreck are positioned on either side of Octopus, a fantastical depiction of what lies beneath the stormy seas. Or perhaps life after the storm, strange and other worldly. There are two versions of Octopus on display, both of which would not look out of place as illustrations for a H.P. Lovecraft novel. These pieces suggest a strange and otherworldly life after turmoil and the sense of uncertainty feels oddly present today.

    Hugo’s use of lace imprints and collage, such as postage stamps, was avant-garde for his time. He combined charcoal, pen, brown ink and wash, gouache, graphite, and more, showcasing his experimental approach to art. Compositionally, these works are sophisticated and live up to Van Gogh’s description of them as “astonishing things”.

    Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo at the Royal Academy is a captivating exhibition that offers a rare opportunity to experience the dark and surreal world of one of history’s most celebrated writers and artists. The exhibition is a must-see for art lovers and fans of Victor Hugo alike.

    Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo is on at the Royal Academy, London until June 29 2025.

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

    – ref. Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo at the Royal Academy is dark and brilliant – https://theconversation.com/astonishing-things-the-drawings-of-victor-hugo-at-the-royal-academy-is-dark-and-brilliant-255262

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Current legal frameworks can’t protect the oceans from deep-sea mining and the negative impacts on humankind

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Susan Reid, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of British Columbia

    A soil boring boat used to collect geological information from the seafloor. (Shutterstock)

    The international legal order is floundering. The geopolitical and resource policy priorities of the United States are shifting.

    These changes now implicate the international framework for governing the seabed: on April 24, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that moves toward allowing deep-sea mining by the Americans.

    Driven by a critical minerals expansionary agenda, the U.S. is considering measures to fast-track approvals for corporations to mine the international seabed.

    What is the difference — for marine environments — between excavation under an international legal framework or U.S. domestic law? Both systems permit state and private organizations to mine vulnerable marine ecosystems: does an international framework offer stronger environmental protections than U.S. law?

    A ‘constitution’ for the ocean

    Under the United Nations’ watch, ocean conditions have declined.

    The international seabed zone encompasses 54 per cent of the planet’s surface. The designation was created in 1994 under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). When described as the “constitution for the oceans,” UNCLOS deceivingly implies that its role is protective. However, the treaty functions as architecture for exploiting ocean resources.

    It does this by dividing the ocean into zones that control how and where nations and corporations can exploit the seas. As well, it supports the idea of the ocean as a vast, exploitable resource. Weak environmental protections are offered in return. UNCLOS speaks little of either the ocean itself or of diverse human-ocean relationships.

    It is a constitution for the ocean, without the ocean.

    PBS reports on the impacts of deep-sea mining.

    Regulating mining

    UNCLOS established the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to manage the international seabed as the “common heritage of humankind.” Since it was established 30 years ago, the ISA has prioritized the development of a regulatory framework for commercial mining. But the ISA’s stewardship of the deep seabed as humankind’s common heritage involves more than the advancement of commercial mining.

    Given the multiple ocean crises intensifying under the impacts of climate change, it is bewildering that the ISA could still be pursuing such a destructive regime.

    Under UNCLOS, the ISA has legal responsibilities to protect the marine environment. Yet it doesn’t have a comprehensive environmental policy, environmental management plan or dedicated scientific division. This is despite the central role marine science plays in understanding and protecting the ocean. Instead, the ISA appears to be patching together environmental regulations on the fly.

    Extractive interests

    The scientific data that the ISA relies on comes from the very companies seeking to mine the seabed. Commercial miners conduct their own environmental assessments and benchmarks, and as such, the ISA’s governance approach appears to be one of companies self-regulating.

    Despite the “ocean emergency” and scientific concerns about marine ecological risks, the ISA maintains an extractivist path.

    It is now finalizing regulations to allow commercial mining in the Clarion–Clipperton zone of the North Pacific Ocean. If all exploration licences currently issued in this zone are converted to exploitation licenses, this will be the largest mining operation the planet has ever experienced.

    The ISA’s 170 members, including the U.S., have upheld a consensus-based governance approach. In doing so, they’ve prevented any unilateral claims to the international seabed. Although the U.S. never ratified UNCLOS, it too has largely observed the consensus-based legal order. Until now.

    The Metals Company (TMC), a Canadian deep-sea mining company, recently announced its intention to bypass the ISA and work with the Trump administration to pursue seabed mining in international waters. To do so, it will rely on the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act (DSHMRA), administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). Congress had previously noted that this domestic law was always considered a temporary measure until the development of an acceptable system under UNCLOS.



    Read more:
    Terminations at U.S. government agencies that monitor extreme weather events will have negative effects

    In principle, NOAA’s deep ocean scientific expertise enables it to competently oversee U.S. seabed mining. This includes assessing the potential environmental impacts of mining and ensuring the protection of the marine environment. It has already developed DSHMRA mining regulations within a “precautionary and adaptive management framework.”

    Before granting a mining licence, NOAA is required to prepare and publish an environmental impact statement. However, recent staff cuts and the new administration’s rollback of marine environmental protections potentially compromise its oversight capacity.

    How NOAA’s scientific teams feel about fast-tracking a “gold rush” is another story.

    The ISA has denounced its snubbing by The Metals Company. However, by shopping around for a jurisdiction of convenience, TMC has inadvertently shone a spotlight on gaps in the ISA’s environmental governance approach.

    Future marine research

    In the meantime, momentum for a ban or moratorium is growing.

    Without a foundational science policy or in-house scientific expertise, the ISA is ill-equipped to safeguard the deep ocean. Marine science offers a way to better understand the deep ocean and its vulnerabilities and can help re-imagine the ISA’s direction toward a more generative role as an environmental steward.



    Read more:
    Humanity depends on the ocean — Here is what we need to prioritize for immediate ocean science research

    Through marine social sciences, ocean humanities and Indigenous knowledge, other pathways can be explored toward a better understanding of human-ocean relationships. The ISA has the potential to step up to its planetary stewardship role by developing policy guidelines to guide such transitions. The oceanographic background of the ISA’s new secretary-General, Leticia Carvalho, bodes well. Perhaps this may happen through a renewed focus on marine science — time will tell.

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

    – ref. Current legal frameworks can’t protect the oceans from deep-sea mining and the negative impacts on humankind – https://theconversation.com/current-legal-frameworks-cant-protect-the-oceans-from-deep-sea-mining-and-the-negative-impacts-on-humankind-254967

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Using fire to produce nanoparticles could revolutionize various industries

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Keroles Riad, Postdoctoral fellow, Energy and Particle Technology Laboratory, Carleton University

    Fire is how most widely used nanoparticles — and by extension nanotechnologies — are made. (Shutterstock)

    Fire is arguably humanity’s earliest discovery. It was pivotal in advancing society — underpinning many of humanity’s most transformative inventions, from cooking and forging weapons to generating energy and enabling car combustion engines.

    Today, fire continues to be the gateway to some of the most cutting-edge nanotechnologies currently being developed for use in cancer treatments and as breath sensors for early detection of diabetes and other metabolic diseases.

    Nanotechnologies can be found in almost every aspect of our daily lives. For instance, I have previously written about the nanotechnology used in the mRNA vaccines that helped us through the pandemic, and have facilitated conversations discussing how nanotechnology affects our wine, gut and climate.

    For example, gas sensors incorporating nanoparticles made via fire can be used to verify that there’s no methanol in alcoholic beverages. Methanol is a highly poisonous alcohol contaminant, and has caused numerous poisonings worldwide.

    Fire is how most widely used nanoparticles — and by extension, nanotechnologies — are made. For example, a third of a car tire’s weight is comprised of carbon black nanoparticles, which are made using fire. These nanoparticles help to reinforce the tire. The white paint we use on our walls and the coatings on some pills contain fire-made titania nanoparticles. Similarly, fumed silica — which is used in the optical fibres needed for internet and communication systems — are also forged in fire.

    How nanotechnology is made

    So how do nanoparticles, which are 80 to 100 thousand times smaller than the thickness of a human hair, form inside a fire?

    I specialize in making nanoparticles in fire — specifically using a technology called flame spray pyrolysis.

    In my research, I burn flammable chemicals that contain the target metal elements to form my nanoparticles. Everything gets oxidized during combustion: carbon becomes CO2, hydrogen becomes water vapor and metal elements become metal oxides.

    During the milliseconds that these metal oxide particulates spend inside the fire, they collide and grow into nano- or micro-particles. I collect these particles on a filter on top of the fire. Important properties such as the size and crystal structure of the nanoparticles that are produced depend on how much time these particles spend inside the fire.

    The more time the particles have to collide inside the forging fire, the larger they grow. We can also make complicated particles consisting of multiple elements by burning a mixture of different chemicals. This process is both versatile and scalable — allowing millions of tonnes of nanoparticles to be produced each year.

    Carbon black is a nanoparticle that is produced through flame spray pyrolysis.
    (Shutterstock)

    Overcoming limitations

    Being able to mass-produce nanoparticles has been one of the biggest challenges of producing nanotechnologies on a larger scale. This is because most of the nanoparticles used in nanotechnologies can only be made via “wet chemistry,” or by using liquids.

    It can take hours of working with liquid in beakers, mixing them, heating them, then separating and centrifuging them just to obtain tiny amounts of material. These processes are often too expensive and too dangerous to scale enough for viable commercialisation.

    For instance, quantum dots (nanoparticles made from semiconducting materials which have both optical and electrical properties) — the discovery of which was celebrated by the Chemistry Noble Prize in 2023. These have the potential to revolutionize many technologies — including solar cells, carbon capture and contrast agents used in medical imaging.

    However, quantum dots are hardly ever used in those technologies on a large scale because the prohibitive cost of making them via wet chemistry can be as high as US$45,000 per gram.

    But unlike wet chemistry, fire is simple, cheap, scaleable and surprisingly safe. So when processes that allow for the production of high value nanoparticles, such as quantum dots, with fire are developed, costs drastically drop and they become immediately scaleable and of potential interest to industry.

    Fire can also produce harmful particles and by-products.

    For instance, if you place a napkin in front of the exhaust of your car, black stuff will accumulate on it. This black residue is soot particles produced by the fire burning inside the engine. Similarly, smoking cigarettes causes soot to form and accumulate in a smoker’s lung, often causing cancer.

    Soot is also, by some estimations, the third highest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide and methane. However, those assessments may actually be underestimating the true contribution of soot to greenhouse gas effects.

    Flame spray pyrolysis technology has also been used to simulate combustion conditions to not only study the impact of generated soot more accurately, but also test process changes that could virtually eliminate soot emissions. For example, one study used flame spray pyrolysis to show that injecting air downstream of jet fuel combustion can reduce soot emission by more than 90 per cent. Flame spray pyrolysis could continue to be a useful tool in researching the impacts of pollution.

    The future of nanoparticles

    But not all nanoparticles can be produced by fire. As such, research exploring new recipes and processes to make high-value nanoparticles that are not yet possible to make in fire could have a large impact.

    For example, a major focus of my current work is to explore the possibility of using fire to make graphene. Graphene is the strongest material known at the nanoscale. My previous work shows that by using ultraviolet light, graphene can be transformed into strong macroscopic structures — possibly allowing it to be used in 3D printing.

    Graphene is the strongest material known at nanoscale.
    (Shutterstock)

    Further, there’s massive untapped potential in nanomedicine to integrate the nanoparticles that are already possible to make in fire. Only about 30 types of nanoparticles are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — such as those used in COVID-19 vaccines, as well as iron-based nanoparticles used for treating anemia and kidney disease.

    All those approved nanomedicines are given via injections. This leaves plenty of room to explore the benefits of inorganic nanoparticles in medicine — especially orally administrated therapeutics.

    Keroles Riad is the founder and CEO of O Nanotech Solutions, a startup that produces flame-made quantum dots. He also receives funding from NSERC as a Canada Banting Postdoctoral Fellow. He also receives funding from MITACS as a part of their Accelerate Entrepreneur Program. He holds both scholarships at Carleton University. He is also the CEO of enuf, a Bcorp-certified social enterprise focused on sustainable waste management.

    – ref. Using fire to produce nanoparticles could revolutionize various industries – https://theconversation.com/using-fire-to-produce-nanoparticles-could-revolutionize-various-industries-234058

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The woman who turned the Met Gala into the biggest party of the year

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén, SweAmfo/ASF Research Fellow at USC School of Cinematic Arts | Fulbright Scholar, University of Southern California

    Diana Vreeland takes a drag from her cigarette as she greets Andy Warhol. Ron Galella Collection/Getty Images

    The annual Met Gala in New York City is a dazzling collision of celebrity, fashion and media frenzy.

    The event is ostensibly a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, which houses a vast collection of historical costumes and fashion artifacts.

    But for many people, it’s that time of year when their social media feeds become awash with posts, stories and live streams of A-list actors, musicians and influencers ascending the iconic steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to showcase their elaborate outfits.

    Zendaya at the 2024 Met Gala, which was themed ‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.’
    Neilson Barnard/MG24/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue

    The gala has come a long way since its early days as an intimate fundraising event for the local fashion industry and New York’s old-guard elite.

    Through my research at the Met’s Thomas J. Watson Library, I discovered the ways in which a former fashion editor named Diana Vreeland elevated this formerly stuffy charity ball into a global media sensation.

    A low-key affair

    Philanthropist and arts patron Irene Lewisohn launched the Museum of Costume Art in 1937 to promote the preservation and study of historical clothing. In 1946, New York fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert helped bring the museum’s collection under the purview of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the caveat that it would operate independently of the museum’s budget. It was then renamed the Costume Institute.

    Dorothy Shaver burnished the reputation of the Costume Institute in its early years.
    Erwin Blumenfeld/Condé Nast via Getty Images

    In 1948, Lambert organized the inaugural gala to raise funds for the institute. The following year, Lord & Taylor president Dorothy Shaver established a formal management structure for both the institute and its annual gala, streamlined operations, and helped burnish the reputation of the fledgling institution among New York’s social elite. During her tenure, gala revenues climbed steadily, from US$31,723 in 1949 to $118,775 in 1958 – roughly $1.3 million in today’s dollars.

    The Met Gala that Shaver shaped looked similar, in many ways, to today’s: There was a theme, a formal dinner, live entertainment and a fashion parade that attendees could participate in. There were also a photographers row, where guests could be snapped by famed fashion photographers for a fee, and raffles with department store prizes.

    After Shaver’s death in 1958, department store executives continued to steer the gala, but attendance and revenue waned. In 1961, in an effort to cut costs and revive interest, the event was moved into the museum itself.

    The gala needed a reinvention. Soon, it would get one.

    Vreeland’s vision

    Diana Vreeland took the reins of the Met Gala in 1973.

    She’d had a storied career in fashion journalism, including stints as fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar and editor-in-chief of Vogue.

    Vreeland, however, understood that in order for the gala to grow, it needed to become a newsworthy event that would be of interest to those who might not even attend the gala itself. So she selected spectacular, sometimes controversial themes that would generate interest from the press.

    Vreeland’s first exhibition in 1973 was bold: a tribute to a single designer, Cristóbal Balenciaga.

    “The World of Balenciaga” was funded by the Spanish government, Iberia Airlines and five Spanish banks – a controversial move, considering Spain was still under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. The show featured Franco’s granddaughter’s wedding dress as one of the central pieces.

    Some curators also bristled at Vreeland’s unorthodox approach to exhibition planning, such as blurring time periods, displaying clothes without providing historical context and prioritizing beauty over scholarship.

    “She knows fashion and who wore it,” one former museum official said, “but she doesn’t know history.”

    Nonetheless, critics deemed the gala and its accompanying exhibition a huge success. American designer Stan Herman declared that the garments “belong in a museum, like good paintings.”

    In the coming years, Vreeland’s other themes included “Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design,” “The ‘10s, ’20s and ’30s,” and “American Women of Style.” The latter was accompanied by a Vogue magazine spread starring actress and model Marisa Berenson, who channeled iconic American “it girls” like Irene Castle, Consuelo Vanderbilt and Josephine Baker.

    Models and actresses wear costumes and masks for the Costume Institute’s 1974 exhibition ‘Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design.’ Diana Vreeland is seated in the center, sans mask.

    Buzz and pizzazz

    Before Vreeland, coverage of the gala was limited to society pages and publications like Women’s Wear Daily.

    Vreeland knew how to generate buzz because she thought like an editor. She also knew how to charm the press. Vreeland popularized words like “pizzazz,” “splendeur” and “deeveen.” She told tales of discovering model and actress Lauren Bacall and the work of fashion designer Roy Halston. She regaled reporters with stories of allegedly visiting Buffalo Bill in Wyoming.

    Under Vreeland’s leadership, media coverage of the gala and exhibitions exploded, with articles appearing in The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, People, Interview, Le Figaro, Le Monde, Revista Hola!, ABC de las Americas, Il Tempo, Paris Herald Tribune and Tokyo’s High Fashion, among others. During her tenure, she also opened the doors to reporters and photographers so they could cover the night of the event.

    In an interview with Women’s Wear Daily she said, “I am an entertainer. And I believe in wit, and good nature, and laughter.”

    Corporate controversies

    With “The World of Balenciaga,” Vreeland also pioneered the use of corporate sponsorships to finance the exhibitions and parties. In 1982, Pierre Cardin Management funded “La Belle Époque,” a Met Gala theme associated with the relaunch of the famed Paris restaurant Maxim’s, in which Cardin had invested.

    In 1983, Vreeland courted controversy again with the first exhibition honoring a living designer — Yves Saint Laurent — underwritten by the Pierre Bergé Foundation. Bergé was Saint Laurent’s life and business partner.

    The show was launched amid rumors of the designer’s declining health and growing criticism of the museum being exploited as a publicity platform.

    “One day the god of the Temple of Dendur will cry: ‘I am not on earth to share a museum with a bunch of fashion freaks!’” critic John Heilpern groused in the East Side Express.

    The following year, Ralph Lauren became the central sponsor and guest of honor for “Man and the Horse.”

    Diana Vreeland and designer Ralph Lauren at the 1984 gala, which was themed ‘Man and the Horse’ and sponsored by Lauren.
    Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images

    The Met set

    Under Vreeland, a new kind of guest list also emerged.

    The rise of celebrity culture in the 1960s gave birth to the “jet set” – beautiful people whose fame transcended traditional society circles.

    Vreeland embraced this shift. She made space at the gala for the likes of Andy Warhol, Bianca and Mick Jagger, Halston and his Halstonettes, David Bowie, Cher, Diana Ross, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson.

    Their presence helped transform the gala from society soirée to pop culture phenomenon.

    After Vreeland’s death in 1989, the event lost some its splendor under the guidance of museum curators. Women’s Wear Daily columnist Aileen Mehle later lamented the decline, writing that the event had become “a far cry from the dear old Diana Vreeland days when that fashion oracle called the Costume Institute’s shots, and elegance and anticipation abounded.”

    In the late 1990s, however, the museum curators who had run the event since Vreeland’s death ceded control back to the fashion industry. High-end brands like Chanel, Versace and Christian Dior sponsored the Met Gala, while fashion editors such as Liz Tilberis and Anna Wintour chaired the event.

    By channeling Vreeland’s vision, they were able to turn the gala into the global media spectacle it is today, which now thrives in an era of social media and global branding.

    This year’s theme, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Styles,” is co-chaired by rapper-producer Pharrell Williams, who is also the artistic director of Menswear at Louis Vuitton. The LVMH conglomerate – Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton – is the sponsor, showing how the gala continues to operate as a platform where corporate branding, celebrity culture and high culture converge.

    Taylor Swift attends the 2014 Met Gala, themed ‘Charles James: Beyond Fashion.’
    Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

    Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén received funding from Fulbright (2023-2024)

    – ref. The woman who turned the Met Gala into the biggest party of the year – https://theconversation.com/the-woman-who-turned-the-met-gala-into-the-biggest-party-of-the-year-250363

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Pandas and politics − from World War II to the Cold War, zoos have always been ideological

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By John M. Kinder, Professor of History and American Studies, Oklahoma State University

    Giant panda Xiao Qi Ji walks around his enclosure at the Smithsonian National Zoo in September 2023 in Washington, D.C. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

    President Donald Trump’s sweeping range of more than 130 executive orders and other decisions aim to upend everything from long-standing immigration policy to the control of a performing arts center.

    But so far, zoos are not among the many issues the Trump administration has focused on.

    That might no longer be the case.

    Trump issued an executive order on March 27, 2025, to restore “truth and sanity” at federal history sites.

    “Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history,” Trump wrote in the executive order, “replacing facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” As a corrective, he instructed Vice President JD Vance to ferret out “improper ideology” at the Smithsonian Institution, a group of museums and research centers created and funded by the federal government.

    The executive order also applied to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., which has been part of the Smithsonian since 1890.

    For Trump’s critics, the suggestion that zoos might be indoctrinating visitors was absurd.

    NBC “Late Night” host Seth Meyers joked about the executive order on his show on April 2, characterizing it as evidence of an authoritarian personality.

    “Seriously, what the hell is ‘improper’ ideology at the zoo? Trump is starting to get into weird dictator s—,” Meyers said.

    Meyers’ astonishment should come as no surprise. Zoos go to great lengths to portray themselves as scientifically objective and politically neutral.

    Yet as a scholar of wars’ effects on American culture and society, I know that zoos have always been ideological, sending subtle – and not so subtle – messages about topics that have little to do with animals.

    Historically, zoos have been used to justify colonial exploitation. They have lent weight to eugenicist ideas about racial hierarchy. And they have served as backdrops for all kinds of political theater.

    During the 1920s and 1930s, for example, Italian strongman Benito Mussolini liked to climb inside the lion cage at the Rome Zoo to demonstrate the courage and vitality he associated with fascist politics.

    As I argue in my 2025 book “World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Age,” the links between zoos and national politics are especially pronounced in periods of war.

    Benito Mussolini, the longtime fascist dictator of Italy, visits a zoo in Rome in 1924.

    World war zoos

    Zoo ownership and funding models depend on the individual zoo, but many zoos receive at least some government funding to operate.

    At the start of World War II, most governments required zoos to embrace an ideology of sacrifice – a willingness to set the needs of the state above their own.

    For zoos in North America and the British Empire, this meant slashing workers’ pay, rationing food supplies and offering uniformed soldiers special access to zoo facilities.

    It also meant destroying animals considered a threat to public safety, especially in the event of a bombing or assault that could set them free. In 1939, the London Zoo killed more than 200 animals, starting with the black widow spiders and venomous snakes. Other zoos did the same, slaughtering their animal collections as a precaution against possible escape.

    Joan the hippo at the London Zoo gets a drink of water in June 1939.
    Fox Photos/Getty Images

    Authoritarian governments during World War II exercised almost total control over their nations’ zoos.

    Under Adolf Hitler, German zoos enforced “Aryan-only” visitation policies, festooned their grounds with swastikas, hosted galas for Nazi dignitaries and exhibited animals looted from zoos in occupied nations.

    In Japan, the governor of Tokyo ordered the Ueno Zoo to carry out a series of “propaganda killings” aimed at strengthening public commitment to the wartime struggle. Starting in August 1943, zoo staff shot, electrocuted, stabbed and strangled more than 20 animals, including a polar bear, an American bison, a python and a leopard cub.

    Tokyo’s zoo also starved to death three elephants named Jon, Tonki and Hanako. Weeks after the zoo held an official funeral for its animals, two of the three elephants that were not actually dead continued to suffer, their cages covered in bunting so the public would not see the ghastly evidence.

    Even as the fighting raged, the Soviet government directed its zoos to develop practical measures to help the war effort. At the Moscow Zoo, staff taught people how to breed mice and rabbits for medical applications, such as vaccine testing.

    All the while, Soviet zoo employees had to demonstrate ideological vigilance in the workplace. Any slipup could mean official sanction, loss of position or worse.

    Cold War zoos

    During the Cold War, governments around the world continued to view zoos through an ideological lens.

    This was especially true in Berlin, where the city’s two zoos – one in the capitalist West, the other in the communist East – became symbols of competing ideological worldviews.

    No zoo animals were more ideologically fraught in the Cold War than giant pandas, endemic to the forested mountains of central China.

    In the 1950s and 1960s, American zoos were denied permission by the U.S. government to import pandas from China. The State Department considered them “enemy goods.”

    First lady Pat Nixon welcomes pandas to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., in 1972.

    That changed in 1972, when President Richard Nixon, during a thawing of the Cold War, famously returned from China with Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, the first giant pandas who were gifted to and exhibited in the U.S. in decades.

    The National Zoo unveiled China’s latest “soft power ambassadors” in January 2025. Three-year-old pandas Bao Li and Qing Bao are set to remain in D.C. for 10 years – long enough to win the hearts and minds of millions of zoo visitors.

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

    – ref. Pandas and politics − from World War II to the Cold War, zoos have always been ideological – https://theconversation.com/pandas-and-politics-from-world-war-ii-to-the-cold-war-zoos-have-always-been-ideological-255305

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Guns in America: A liberal gun-owning sociologist offers 5 observations to understand America’s culture of firearms

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By David Yamane, Professor of Sociology, Wake Forest University

    About 86 million American adults own at least one of the estimated 400 million firearms in the U.S. today. Paul Campbell, iStock / Getty Images Plus

    An Asian American and lifelong liberal from the San Francisco Bay Area, I became a first-time gun owner as a 42-year-old in 2011. I began a now 14-year journey into an unfamiliar and complex world of firearms. In my work, I draw on both my personal experiences and sociological observations to understand the long-standing presence of a robust legal gun culture in America.

    In contrast to the dominant scholarly approaches, which focus on gun deviance and harm, I find there is more to firearms than criminal violence, injury and death; more to gun owners than straight white men; and more to gun culture than democracy-destroying right-wing politics.

    Let me share five observations essential to understanding guns in America:

    1. Guns are normal

    About 86 million American adults – 1 in 3 – own at least one of the estimated 400 million firearms in the U.S. today.

    Imagine if everyone who uses TikTok in the U.S. owned a gun – and then add the population of New York City. That is enough gun owners to fill over 1,000 NFL stadiums.

    Humans have used projectile weapons like rocks and spears from the beginning. This unbroken history continues in every society, with firearms as the weapon of choice in all but the most isolated communities. People who could legally own guns in colonial America commonly did so. Even today, civilian firearms ownership remains exceptionally high in the U.S. compared with other industrialized nations.

    The right of everyday Americans to own guns is a deep part of American culture, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and many state constitutions.

    2. Gun culture 2.0

    The culture of guns in the U.S. has evolved over time.

    Before the mid-1800s, people primarily used firearms for practical purposes: hunting for food, defense from and offense against indigenous populations, controlling enslaved people, expanding territory and fighting against oppressive rulers.

    Kevin Dixie, at a firearms retailer and gun range in Ballwin, Mo., believes that gun rights are about empowering minority communities and ensuring freedom for every American.
    AP Photo/Jeff Roberson

    Starting in the mid-1800s, Americans developed a more complex gun culture that included recreational hunting, organized target shooting and gun collecting. These elements continue today, but, in a shift, Americans increasingly own guns for self-defense.

    Evidence for the evolution to what I call “Gun Culture 2.0” appears in three key areas: surveys about why people own guns, the loosening of gun-carrying laws beginning in the 1980s, and changes in both the types of firearms sold and how companies market them, especially toward small, concealable pistols.

    3. Gun ownership is diverse

    Black Americans have a particularly strong tradition of gun ownership dating at least to the 19th-century abolitionist movement.

    Today, 1 in 4 Black Americans, as well as 1 in 5 Latinos and 1 in 4 women, personally own a gun. Twenty percent of gun owners consider themselves politically liberal. For every four evangelical Protestants who own handguns, three people who don’t identify with any religion own them too. Scholars are even beginning to discover the importance of LGBTQ+ gun owners.

    Gun Culture 2.0 is more diverse and inclusive than the United States’ historical gun culture because security is a universal human concern.

    The response to feelings of insecurity varies. Portfolios of protective measures in the U.S. include home security systems, dogs, the hyperlocal social networking service Nextdoor, gated communities and firearms.

    4. Guns are lethal tools

    Many tools like knives and chainsaws are lethal, meaning they have the capacity to cause death. Guns differ because their lethality is by design. Consequently, guns can make dangerous situations more deadly.

    Despite their ubiquity and deadly potential, accidental firearm deaths are relatively rare and declining in the U.S., numbering fewer than 500 annually in recent years. Most gun deaths are intentional, with suicides accounting for 58% and homicides for 38% of 46,728 gun deaths in 2023.

    While the U.S. has a moderate overall suicide rate compared with other developed countries, it has a firearm suicide rate that substantially exceeds these other nations. This is because firearms are widely available and highly lethal. When people attempt suicide using guns, they die in up to 90% of cases.

    Similarly, although the U.S. is not exceedingly violent or criminal compared with peer nations, its criminal violence is more deadly because these lethal tools are more frequently involved.

    Starting in the mid-1800s, Americans developed a more complex gun culture that included recreational hunting, as depicted in this 1852 lithograph of woodcock hunters.
    Universal History Archive/Getty Images

    5. Guns are paradoxical

    Despite high rates of firearm suicide and homicide, most guns in the U.S. will not kill anyone, and most American gun owners will not commit violence against themselves or others. My calculations, based on the 2023 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, indicate that just one gun death occurred per 8,560 firearms and 1,840 gun owners – meaning at least 99.99% of guns and 99.95% of gun owners were not directly involved in fatalities that year.

    These observations collectively point to a final insight: Guns resist simple categorization and embody multiple paradoxes.

    To different people, they are fun and frightening, dangerous and protective, diffuse and concentrated, unifying and divisive, attractive and repulsive, interesting and controversial, useful and useless, good and bad, and neither good nor bad.

    This is to say, guns are not inherently anything. They take on different meanings according to the various purposes to which people put them.

    A realistic view requires maintaining a clear-eyed understanding of the lethal capabilities of firearms. But the tendency to focus exclusively on firearms-related harms, while understandable, becomes a problem, in my view, when it fails to acknowledge the normality of guns and the diversity of gun owners.

    David Yamane has received funding from The Louisville Institute for the Study of American Religion to study church security. He is a member of the Liberal Gun Club, National African American Gun Association, and National Rifle Association, and financially supports the Liberal Gun Owners 501c4 and Walk the Walk America 501c3 organizations.

    – ref. Guns in America: A liberal gun-owning sociologist offers 5 observations to understand America’s culture of firearms – https://theconversation.com/guns-in-america-a-liberal-gun-owning-sociologist-offers-5-observations-to-understand-americas-culture-of-firearms-251084

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Deporting international students risks making the US a less attractive destination, putting its economic engine at risk

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By David L. Di Maria, Vice Provost for Global Engagement, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

    Boston University students march to demand the school declare itself a sanctuary campus to protect their peers from the federal government regardless of their immigration status, on April 3, 2025. Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

    In early April 2025, the Trump administration terminated the immigration statuses of thousands of international students listed in a government database, meaning they no longer had legal permission to be in the country. Some students self-deported instead of facing deportation.

    The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently announced that it would reverse the terminations after courts across the country determined they did not have merit.

    These moves come as the White House seeks to enhance vetting and screening of all foreign nationals.

    The State Department in March announced plans to use artificial intelligence to review international students’ social media accounts.

    As an administrator and scholar who specializes in international higher education, I know that international students in the United States have long been subjected to a high level of vetting, screening and monitoring.

    Inserting additional bureaucracy into current processes could make the U.S. a less attractive study destination. I believe this would ultimately hamper the Trump administration’s ability to achieve its “America First” priorities related to the economy, science and technology, and national security.

    International students in the US

    The U.S. has long been the global leader in attracting international students. But competition for these students is increasing as other countries, such as Germany and South Korea, enact strategies for attracting international education.

    The U.S. hosts 16% of all students studying outside of their home country, down from 22% in 2014 and 28% in 2001, according to the Institute of International Education. Of the more than 1 million international students who were present in the U.S. during the 2023-2024 academic year, 54% came from just two countries, China and India.

    Most international students pursue graduate degrees in STEM fields – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. And, according to the National Science Foundation, international students make up a significant portion of enrollment at the master’s and doctoral levels.

    How international students are screened

    International students in the U.S. are already subjected to intense screening and continuous monitoring. These measures include:

    • Vetting the student’s school. Before they can apply for a visa, international students must be admitted to a school authorized by the Department of Homeland Security to enroll people on student visas.

    • Vetting at the embassy. As part of the visa application process, international students are subjected to national security reviews carried out by various intelligence and law enforcement agencies. In some cases, such as when a U.S. consular officer in their home country decides that more information is required from external sources to determine visa eligibility, additional screenings occur. That is done through a process known as administrative processing.

    • Vetting upon arrival. When they arrive in the U.S., international students are again screened by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer. If the officer is unable to verify any information, the student is sent to secondary inspection, a secure interview area where the student waits while officers complete additional assessment. The student is then either admitted to the U.S. or forced to depart the country.

    • Ongoing monitoring while in the U.S. If permitted to enter the country, students must enroll full time, earn good grades and notify their school within 10 days of substantive changes to their circumstances.

    Examples include a change to their address, academic major or financial sponsor. And school officials are required to report this information to the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s National Security Investigations Division.

    Students participating in temporary, postgraduation training programs must continue to comply with reporting requirements. And certain STEM graduates, and their employers, are subject to additional requirements. They include certification of training plans, annual evaluations and site visits.

    Most international students prefer to study in the U.S., recent research shows. But they are willing to change their preferences as other countries introduce friendlier visa policies, such as more flexible post-study work opportunities and lower visa costs.

    Given the current level of screening and monitoring already imposed on international students in the U.S., it is unclear how additional measures would add value.

    Boston University police officers speak to each other as students protest outside a dean’s office demanding the school declare itself a sanctuary campus, on April 3, 2025.
    Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

    Critical to an America First agenda

    President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda aims to grow the U.S. economy.

    It also intends to maintain U.S. leadership in science and technology and enhance national security.

    Trump administration officials have underlined the importance of recruiting top global talent. And Trump has said that international students who graduate from U.S. colleges should be awarded a green card with their degree.

    During the 2023-2024 academic year, international students contributed US$43.8 billion to the U.S. economy through tuition and living expenses, which supported an estimated 378,175 U.S. jobs.

    Their contributions don’t end following graduation, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Many go on to launch successful startups at a rate that is eight to nine times higher than their domestic peers. In fact, 25% of billion-dollar companies in the U.S. were founded by a former international student.

    Such companies include Eventbrite, Grammarly, Moderna, OpenAI, Robinhood and SpaceX.

    International students also help the U.S. maintain global leadership in STEM.

    Consider that 45% of STEM workers in the U.S. holding a doctoral degree were born outside the U.S.

    A 2024 report cautions that the U.S. is failing to develop domestic STEM talent at all levels of the education system. Just 3.2% of U.S. high school graduates are estimated to enter the STEM workforce.

    Moreover, the country’s ability to attract and retain international STEM talent is decreasing due to immigration restrictions and increased global competition.

    Finally, international students are critical to establishing global networks and promoting soft power diplomacy. This is evidenced by the U.S. having graduated more world leaders than any other nation.

    Further restricting the ability of international students to study in the U.S. will ultimately redirect talent to other countries, allies and adversaries alike.

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

    – ref. Deporting international students risks making the US a less attractive destination, putting its economic engine at risk – https://theconversation.com/deporting-international-students-risks-making-the-us-a-less-attractive-destination-putting-its-economic-engine-at-risk-249245

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: US-Ukraine minerals deal looks better for Kyiv than expected – but Trump is an unpredictable partner

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrew Gawthorpe, Lecturer in History and International Studies, Leiden University

    The United States and Ukraine have finally signed a long-awaited agreement on Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction – and, at first reading, the details appear more favourable for Kyiv than many observers expected.

    At the core of the “economic partnership agreement” is the exploitation of Ukraine’s mineral wealth. Ukraine will get access to US investment and technology, and the US will eventually get a share of the profits. The rest will finance the war-torn nation’s recovery if and when a peace agreement is signed with Russia.

    Several aspects of this deal stand out as positive for Ukraine. Unlike in previous drafts, the country retains ownership of its natural resources. All profits are to be invested in Ukraine for ten years after the agreement comes into force.

    Washington can also make its contribution in the form of new military aid, although it will be down to the US president to decide whether or not to do that.

    Earlier in the negotiations, a major sticking point was the demand from the US president, Donald Trump, that the agreement include compensation for past US aid to Ukraine, which he insisted amounted to US$350 billion (£260 billion). Many analysts estimate the figure is closer to US$120 billion.

    Before the deal was signed, Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said the deal would “not include assistance provided before its signing”. And the Ukrainian government announcement stated that the new agreement “focuses on further, not past US military assistance”. But when the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, spoke to journalists, he described the deal as “compensation” for “the funding and the weapons”.

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

    Whether Bessent’s statement represents political spin, or whether there is still distance between Washington and Kyiv on this critical point, remains to be seen. The formal text has not been released, and many details remain to be ironed out. Trump can be an erratic negotiator who is prone to sudden changes of direction.

    Indeed, the signing of this agreement is just the latest twist in a broader effort to bring the war in Ukraine to an end – one which probably still has many surprises ahead. Trump appears to be losing patience with what he views as Russia’s refusal to engage with the peace process. Signing the deal may have been intended as a warning to Moscow to get serious about ending the conflict.

    The new agreement reportedly states that the US and Ukraine share a “long-term strategic alignment”. That’s a far cry from Trump’s rhetoric only a few months ago, when he called Ukraine’s president, Vlodomyr Zelensky, a “dictator”“ and blamed Kyiv for starting the war with Russia. But given Trump’s changes of mood, this agreement is unlikely to be the final word on how he views the conflict.

    Despite talk of a long-term strategic alignment, one thing the deal doesn’t contain is any explicit security guarantees for Ukraine. But the White House argues – and other observers hope – that US investment in Ukraine will give the US an implicit stake in the country’s security. That might deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again, out of fear the US would act to protect its investment.

    However, once we move from the realm of politics and security to economics, several glaring flaws in this logic become apparent. They all come down to whether the mineral wealth at the heart of this agreement can be profitably exploited – and, indeed, whether it even exists.

    Is this a game-changing deal?

    The American humorist Mark Twain is said to have once defined a mine as “a hole in the ground owned by a liar”. Assessing the precise scale of underground mineral deposits is notoriously difficult – and not every deposit can be extracted in a profitable fashion.

    In Ukraine, the exploratory work has simply not been done. Even the supposed size of the deposits, which are based on old Soviet surveys conducted in a superficial fashion, is not certain.

    Many of the minerals that supposedly lie under Ukraine’s surface are so called “rare earths”, which are critical to hi-tech supply chains. But they are also expensive and time-consuming to exploit, requiring a massive upfront investment which may eventually be lost. Even in successful cases, it generally takes over a decade to get production onstream.

    Today, there are few rare-earth projects under development anywhere in the world outside China – even in countries that are not current (and possibly future) war zones. Most of Ukraine’s supposed deposits lie in the east of the country in areas vulnerable to Russian attack, making investment risky.

    All of this makes economic partnership agreement of doubtful long-term significance for the broader peace process. The potential gains from it are too hypothetical to make much difference within a meaningful timescale. The deal is unlikely to generate much real economic incentive for the US to defend Ukraine, and so is unlikely to become a new source of military assistance for Kyiv.

    For the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the deal doesn’t change a lot. While it might indeed be a signal that Trump is running out of patience with Russia, it does little to change the underlying realities of the conflict.

    We can’t rule out the possibility that Trump, as unpredictable as ever, might make a more meaningful commitment to Ukraine in the future, one that changes the course of the war. But – at first glance, certainly – this minerals deal is not it.

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

    – ref. US-Ukraine minerals deal looks better for Kyiv than expected – but Trump is an unpredictable partner – https://theconversation.com/us-ukraine-minerals-deal-looks-better-for-kyiv-than-expected-but-trump-is-an-unpredictable-partner-255723

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Grattan on Friday: Key markers on the bumpy road to this election

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

    When we look back, we can see the road to election day has had a multitude of signposts, flashing red lights, twists, turns and potholes. Some came before the formal campaign; others in the final countdown days; some have been major, others symbolic.

    The importance of certain markers has been obvious in the moment; the significance of others became clear in retrospect. Here is a recap of a few of those that have shaped this campaign and its battle for votes.

    1. Anthony Albanese’s January 6 $7.2 billion announcement to upgrade the Bruce Highway

    Why start here? Because this was the prime minister jumping out of the blocks at the start of January, with multiple announcements over the summer. Albanese laid down policy groundwork in these weeks, giving voters time to absorb the initiatives.

    In contrast, Peter Dutton, although he had a “soft” launch on January 12, was running slowly, believing voters weren’t yet paying attention.

    2. Donald Trump’s inauguration

    January 21 unleashed a tsunami; its waves would wash over the coming months, and profoundly affect the election. At first, the Coalition thought – wrongly – that the election of Trump would favour it, but Labor became the beneficiary. Many Australians (including Dutton) were appalled at the way Trump and Vice President JD Vance treated Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. Later, Trump’s tariffs hit Australia (although not as hard as many countries).

    Dutton argued he’d be better able than Albanese to handle the capricious president, but it became a spurious debate. Labor painted Dutton as Trump-lite and some of his decisions played into its hands, notably appointing in late January Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to a Musk-like role to pursue efficiencies in government. She later made the comparison even more obvious by saying the Coalition would “make Australia great again”.

    But the central factor was this: suddenly, the world had become more uncertain and many voters would think it wasn’t the time to change.

    3. The Reserve Bank’s cut in interest rates on February 18

    The amount was modest, 25 basis points, but the psychology was the thing. The cut reinforced Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ argument that the worst was over and the outlook was positive. In the campaign’s final week, just at the right time for the government, inflation figures pointed to another expected cut in May.

    4. Cyclone Alfred’s March 7 election delay

    Albanese appeared set to call an April 12 poll, when the approaching winds blew the plan off course. The prime minister was able to put himself at the middle of the response to the cyclone, projecting himself as a national leader as distinct from a partisan one; he appeared with Queensland LNP Premier David Crisafulli, and at the Canberra National Situation Room.

    The election delay meant Labor had to bring down the March 25 budget. Many in the government had wanted to avoid a budget, because of its deficits into the distance. But the budget became a useful frame for the start of the formal campaign, with Albanese going to Government House at the end of budget week.

    5. Dutton’s budget reply

    The opposition leader’s reply contained his proposal to cut petrol excise but did not include tax cuts. The opposition had already voted against the government’s budget tax cut package, and committed to repealing it.

    The excise move was popular – Dutton would visit countless service stations over coming weeks – but the government was able to say a Coalition government would raise taxes.

    At his campaign launch subsequently, Dutton promised a $1,200 tax offset, despite earlier flagging he would not be able to announce any income tax relief during the campaign. The tax offset was an attempt to rectify what had been the mistake of thinking that the Coalition – traditionally committed to lower taxes – could go to the election on the wrong side of the tax argument.

    6. Dutton’s April 7 backtrack on working from home

    The opposition policy to get public servants back into the office all week was a disaster-in-the-making from the start. Workers in the private sector would, rightly, see it as sending a signal to non-government employers.

    Women hated the policy, and it would further alienate the female vote. Dutton had to ditch the idea and apologise. Finance spokeswoman Jane Hume didn’t help the retreat by saying it was a good policy that hadn’t found its appropriate time.

    7. News on April 15 that the Russians wanted to base planes in Papua

    The story appeared on the respected military site Janes, and Dutton rushed to pick it up, but went off half-cocked, declaring wrongly that the Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto had announced the Russian request. It was symptomatic of Dutton being under-prepared. He had to make another apology.

    8. Neo-Nazis heckle during the Welcome to Country at the Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance Anzac Day Dawn Service

    This led to Dutton launching into “culture wars” in the final days of the campaign. In criticising the disruption, he at first said, “We have a proud Indigenous heritage in this country and we should be proud to celebrate it as part of today”.

    Subsequently he said most veterans didn’t want the Welcome to Country as part of the Anzac Day ceremonies, although it was a matter for the organisers. In general, he believed Welcome to Country ceremonies were used too frequently.

    Dutton segued the controversy back to criticism of the Voice, and seized on confusing remarks by Foreign Minister Penny Wong to claim Labor was still committed to bringing in a Voice, something Albanese flatly denied.

    9. The price of eggs

    In the last of the four debates neither leader could specify the cost of a dozen eggs. Dutton was way out ($4.20); Albanese rather closer (“$7, if you can find them.”. It was a small moment but sent the message that even in a cost-of-living election, the leaders do live in bubbles.

    10. Dutton comments on Thursday

    Almost at the road’s end, the opposition leader appealed to voters to overlook a flawed campaign. “This election really is a referendum not about the election campaign but about the last three years.”

    Asked if there was anything he could have done differently, he said “we should have called out Labor’s lies earlier on”.

    It was as though he was speaking to a postmortem, while praying for a miracle.

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

    – ref. Grattan on Friday: Key markers on the bumpy road to this election – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-key-markers-on-the-bumpy-road-to-this-election-255613

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: NZ doctors defend nationwide strike action over recruitment

    By Ruth Hill, RNZ News reporter

    Striking senior New Zealand doctors have hit back at the Health Minister’s attack on their union for “forcing” patients to wait longer for surgery and appointments, due to their 24-hour industrial action.

    Respiratory and sleep physician Dr Andrew Davies, who was on the picketline outside Wellington Regional Hospital, said for him and his colleagues, it was “not about the money” — it was about the inability to recruit.

    “We’ve got vacant jobs that we’re not allowed to advertise,” he said. “It’s lies that they’re not getting rid of frontline staff.

    “The job is technically there on paper, but if you’re not going to advertise for the job, you’re not going to fill it.

    “In our department, we’ve waited months and months and months to fill some jobs, and you don’t just get a doctor next week. It takes six months for them to come.”

    Dr Davies said no-one wanted to strike and have their patients miss out on care, but thousands of patients were already missing out on care every day, due to staff shortages.

    “Every week, we’ve got empty clinics,” he said. “There is space in the clinics that’s not being used, because there’s not a doctor in the chair there.

    “While, today, that’s 20 percent of the work of the week gone, because we’re on strike, in some departments, it’s 20 percent every week.

    “Every day of the week, there’s a 20 percent deficit in the number of patients people are seeing.”

    5500 doctors on strike
    Nationwide, about 5500 members of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists are on strike until 11:59pm today, causing the cancellation of about 4300 planned procedures and specialist appointments.

    In a social media post, Health Minister Simeon Brown blamed the union for the disruption, saying an updated offer last week — including a $25,000 bonus for those moving to “hard-to-staff regions” — was rejected by the union, before members even saw it.

    Union executive director Sarah Dalton said she would be very happy to facilitate a meeting between doctors and the minister — or he could accept the invitation to attend its national conference.

    “They would love to feel like someone up there was listening,” she said. “They don’t at the moment.

    “We need to move away from rhetoric, and actually have some time and space for meaningful discussion.

    “That’s one of the reasons we’re on strike today. After eight months of negotiating, there was nothing on the table from the employer.

    “It was only after we called for strike action that anything changed, so let’s do better.”

    Critical workforce shortages were undermining patient care and the current pay offer, which amounted to an increase of less than one percent a year for most doctors, would do nothing to fix that, Dalton said.

    “How do you tackle vacancies? You put more time and effort in good terms and conditions for your permanent workforce, and you stop spending spending $380 million a year on locums and temps.

    “We shouldn’t have that heavy reliance on those people, so we’ve got to change it.”

    NZ training doctors for Australia
     After many years of study subsidised by the New Zealand taxpayer, Maeve Hume-Nixon recently qualified as a public health specialist, but may yet end up going overseas.

    “I actually thought last year that I would have to go to Australia, where I would be paid another $100,000 minimum, because there were no jobs for me here, basically.

    Newly qualified public health specialist Dr Maeve Hume-Nixon says she has struggled to get a job in New Zealand but could earn $100,000 more in Australia. Image: RNZ/Ruth Hill

    “In the end, I managed to get an emergency extension to my contract and this has continued, but I don’t have security and it’s a pretty frustrating position to be in.”

    Neurologist Dr Maas Mollenhauer said he was not able to access the tests he needed to provide care for his patients.

    “I’ve seen patients that I have sent for urgent imaging, but they didn’t receive it, and then I got an email from one of my colleagues who was on call, telling me that patient had rocked up to the Emergency Department and, basically, the front half of their skull was full of brain tumour.”

    Cancer patients waiting too long
     Medical oncologist Dr Sharon Pattison said the health system had reached the point where it was so starved of people and resources, it had become “inefficient”.

    “Everyone is waiting for everything, so everything takes longer, and we are waiting until people get seriously ill, before we do anything about it.”

    The government’s “faster cancer treatment time” target — 90 percent of patients receiving cancer management within 31 days of the decision to treat — would not give the true picture of what was happening for patients, she said.

    “For instance, if I have someone with a potential diagnosis of cancer, there are so many points at which they are waiting — waiting for scan, waiting for a biopsy, waiting for a radiologist to report the scan to show us where to get the biopsy.

    Medical oncologist Dr Sharon Pattison says some cancer patients are waiting too long to even get diagnosed, by which point it can be too late. Image: RNZ/Ruth Hill

    “That radiologist may be overseas, so if I want to talk to that specialist I can’t do that. Then the wait for a pathologist to report on the biopsy can now take up to 6-8 weeks.

    “We know that, for some people with cancer, if you wait for that long before we can even make your treatment plan, we’re going to make your outcomes worse.

    “The whole system is at the point where we are making people more unwell, because we can’t do what we should be doing for them in the framework that we need to.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump is freezing funds to clear thousands of unexploded mines in Vietnam 50 years after war ended

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrew Priest, Lecturer in Modern US History, University of Essex

    Fifty years after the end of the Vietnam war, the long-term consequences of that conflict continue to affect many Vietnamese people’s daily lives. There are still thousands of unexploded mines and bombs strewn across the region in forests, rice fields and around villages.

    The war (1955-75) pitted communist North Vietnam and its allies against South Vietnam and its ally, the US, and spilled into Laos and Cambodia. It was seen partly as a symbol of the cold war and a conflict between communist values and the west.

    In 2019, the US Congress estimated that more than 20% of land in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia remained “contaminated” by unexploded ordnance (UXO). In 2023, in Vietnam alone, this was estimated to mean around 800,000 tonnes of bombs and mines remained. Since 1975, UXO accidents have caused more than 105,000 casualties, including more than 38,000 deaths of Vietnamese civilians.

    But mine clearance and attempts to clean up the results of the toxic Agent Orange sprayed on the Vietnamese countryside during the war have been put on hold by Donald Trump’s government, as the administration dismantles US foreign aid (USAID).

    In the last few weeks, funds for the clean-up of Agent Orange at Bien Hoa air base, close to Ho Chi Minh City, were frozen and then unfrozen. It remains unclear how, or whether, the process will be able to continue when many of the personnel involved have lost their jobs.

    Meanwhile, a USAID project helping the victims of Agent Orange appears to have ended along with the agency that delivered it. And in January, the US state department announced it was suspending mine clearance in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia for at least three months because of the cuts.

    In another development that suggests the relationship between Vietnam and the US is fragile, senior US diplomats based in Vietnam have been told not to attend any commemorations marking the end of the Vietnam war in Hanoi.

    What’s the backdrop?

    During the conflict, the US military dropped millions of tonnes of ordnance on Vietnam as well as neighbouring Cambodia and Laos.

    Even though Laos and Cambodia were not officially involved in the war, recent research has revealed that in the 1960s and 1970s, the Americans dropped more bombs on Cambodia than the allies did on their enemies during the second world war, and that Laos became the most bombed country per head of population in history.

    CBS coverage of the Vietnam war.

    As a result, every year hundreds of people across south-east Asia, many of them children, continue to be killed and maimed by these bombs and mines.

    Agent Orange’s legacy

    Agent Orange and other chemical defoliants used during the war are also still spreading their toxic legacy. US forces sprayed at least 70 million litres of these chemicals on the countryside during the war, to expose the enemy and destroy its food sources.

    This process proved potentially catastrophic for anyone, including Americans, who was exposed to Agent Orange at the time – as well as their children, as it is linked to birth defects.

    Today, millions of people — many of whom were not even alive during the conflict — continue to suffer from physical and mental conditions that can be directly linked to Agent Orange, despite the challenges of documenting cases.

    And countless people who fought and died in the war remain missing. While close to 60,000 Americans were killed and the bodies of some 1,600 of them are still unaccounted for, hundreds of thousands — probably millions — of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians died. Many of their remains have never been found.

    This has led the International Commission on Missing Persons to suggest that about 200,000 Vietnamese people killed during the war are in “anonymous or unknown gravesites” across the country.

    In recent years, the US and Vietnam governments have worked together to undo some of the damage of the war, as part of the American and Vietnamese diplomatic reconciliation process. This has included the state department in Washington providing millions of dollars for the clearance of unexploded ordnance.

    The US government had also funded a multi-million dollar clean-up of areas on which Agent Orange was used, and supported treatment for those it affected.

    In recent years, governments of both nations also worked on projects to find the remains of Americans and Vietnamese killed in the war. Members of the public and veterans have been part of this search.

    US-Vietnamese ties have taken decades to build and involve many people at different levels of government in Hanoi and Washington. But Trump’s decision to halt funding for landmine removal as well as medical support in Vietnam will seriously endanger this work, and could leave hundreds of lives still at risk.

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

    – ref. Trump is freezing funds to clear thousands of unexploded mines in Vietnam 50 years after war ended – https://theconversation.com/trump-is-freezing-funds-to-clear-thousands-of-unexploded-mines-in-vietnam-50-years-after-war-ended-255167

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Three scientists speak about what it’s like to have research funding cut by the Trump administration

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

    The Trump administration’s cuts to funding for American universities and research have left many scientists reeling and very worried. At the National Institutes of Health, which has an annual budget of US$47 billion to support medical research both in the U.S. and around the world, nearly 800 grants have been terminated. The administration is considering cutting the overall budget of the NIH by 40%.

    In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to three scientists, two in the U.S. and one in South Africa, about what it’s like to be a scientist whose funding has been cut by the Trump administration.

    Sunghee Lee was in a meeting when she received an email to say that her $5 million, five-year grant from the NIH had been terminated. It was March 21, and Lee, a research professor at the University of Michigan, was stunned.

    “ It was very short and opaque, which is very different than how NIH usually operates”, she said. Lee’s project, which started in 2024, looked at different risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease across racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. The termination email cited diversity, equity and inclusion studies, an early target of the Trump administration’s cuts to federal research funding, which it said no longer “effectuates agency priorities.”

    Lee was confused. “ Our study looks at everybody,” she said. “So if looking at everybody is a DEI study, just about any data collection in this country should be classified as DEI studies and terminated.”

    An arduous application process

    A few weeks earlier, Brady West, a colleague of Lee’s at the University of Michigan, had received similar news. West’s access to a federal research data center, a secure room to access restricted personal data, was withdrawn. He was told that one of his NIH-funded projects, which looked at measuring health disparities between people of different sexual identities, was no longer in compliance with recent executive orders. “Fortunately for me,” he said, “I was nearing the end of this project.”

    West explains that it can take up to two years for researchers to win a grant from a federal funding agency like the NIH. That money then supports a whole team of people, including researchers and administrators. All grant applications are reviewed by a panel of experts from the field who judge whether it’s novel, important research.

     ”A big misconception is that an administration chooses to fund these grants based on what they believe are important topics to research,“ West said. “That’s not the case.”

    HIV vaccine research

    The vast majority of NIH funding goes to institutions and researchers in the U.S., but a recent analysis by the journal Nature found 811 grants to international teams in more than 60 countries worth more than $340 million.

    In South Africa, where tensions are running high with the new Trump administration over land reform and other diplomatic fault lines, scientists have had NIH-funded research grants suspended.

    Glenda Gray is a professor at the infectious disease and oncology research institute at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and chief scientific officer at South Africa’s Medical Research Council. She’s at the forefront of research efforts to find a vaccine for HIV, work supported largely by grants from the NIH and aid from the United States Agency for International Development.

    In January, a $46 million project funded by USAID on experimental HIV vaccines that Gray ran was terminated after the Trump administration dismantled the aid agency. Then in mid-April, she saw that funding for a clinical trial unit in Soweto involved in trials for HIV vaccines had been marked as “pending.” On top of that,  four global research networks on HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment strategies that the Soweto unit was affiliated with were told by NIH that they could no longer spend any money in South Africa.

    Gray says the level of funding, which was won in a competitive, global process, is “irreplacable” and will have drastic impact on HIV research.

    “ Basically you lose the knowledge or the value of understanding HIV prevention, HIV vaccines or therapeutics. We have the infrastructure, we have the burden of disease, and we have the ability to answer these questions,” Gray said. “And so it’s going to take much longer to answer these questions than if you had South Africa there. Basically, we slow down HIV vaccine research … you slow down the process of knowledge generation.”

    Listen to Sunghee Lee, Brady West and Glenda Gray talk about their experiences and what it means for their research on The Conversation Weekly podcast. It also includes an introduction with Alla Katsnelson, associate health editor at The Conversation in the U.S.

    This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Gemma Ware and Katie Flood. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

    Newsclips in this episode from CBS News, Firstpost, ABC 7 Chicago, ABC News, CNN and PBS NewsHour.

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

    Brady Thomas West has received funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and National Science Foundation. Sunghee Lee has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice. Glenda Gray has received funding from USAID co-operative agreement for HIV vaccine research and US-NIH funding for HIV vaccines.

    – ref. Three scientists speak about what it’s like to have research funding cut by the Trump administration – https://theconversation.com/three-scientists-speak-about-what-its-like-to-have-research-funding-cut-by-the-trump-administration-255459

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Gallery: Doctors, health workers challenge NZ government over national crisis

    Asia Pacific Report

    Thousands of senior hospital doctors and specialists walked off the job today for an unprecedented 24-hour strike in protest over stalled contract negotiations and thousands of other health workers protested across Aotearoa New Zealand against the coalition government’s cutbacks to the public health service Te Whatu Ora.

    In spite of the disruptive bad weather across the country, protesters were out in force expressing their concerns over a national health service in crisis.

    Among speakers criticising the government’s management of public health at a rally at the entrance to The Domain, near Auckland Hospital, many warned that the cutbacks were a prelude to “creeping privatisation”.

    “Health cuts hurt services, the patients who rely on them, and the workers who deliver them,” said health worker Jason Brooke.

    “Under this coalition government we’ve seen departments restructured, roles disestablished, change proposals enacted, and hiring freezes implemented.

    “Make no mistake. This is austerity. This is managed decline.

    “The coalition can talk all they like about spending more on healthcare, the reality for ‘those-of-us-on-the-ground’ is that we know that money is not being spent where it’s needed.”

    Placards said “Fight back together for the workers”, “Proud to be union”, “We’re fighting back for workers rights”, and one poster declared: “Don’t bite the hand that wipes your bum — safe staffing now”.

    Palestine supporters also carried a May Day message of solidarity from Palestinian Confederation of Trade Unions.

    Fighting back for NZ’s public health system

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Tourism to the US is tanking. Flight Centre is facing a $100m hit as a result

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anita Manfreda, Senior Lecturer in Tourism, Torrens University Australia

    Doubletree Studio/Shutterstock

    Flight Centre, one of the world’s largest travel agencies, has warned it could lose more than A$100 million in earnings this year, citing weakening demand for travel to the United States.

    In a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) this week, the company pointed to “volatile trading conditions” linked to changes in US entry policies.

    This is the first major indication from an Australian company that travel to the US is becoming a serious concern. It follows growing consumer fears linked to US immigration checks, reports of tourists being detained, and rising costs.

    Australian visitor numbers to the US fell by 7% in March compared with the same time last year – the sharpest fall since the COVID pandemic.

    Australians are not the only ones staying away. New US data for March show sharp drops in visitors from key markets: Germany (down 28%), Spain (25%), the United Kingdom (18%) and South Korea (15%), to name a few. In total, inbound tourism fell 11.6%.

    Even Canadian travellers, traditionally the US’s most reliable market, dropped by more than 900,000 or 17% in March, as growing numbers of Canadians opt to boycott US holidays.

    What was once a reliable flow of high-spending international travellers is becoming a much quieter stream.

    America’s welcome mat is wearing thin

    The US, long marketed as the land of opportunity and adventure, is increasingly perceived as unwelcoming. Tighter border scrutiny, aggressive immigration enforcement, and a sharp shift in political tone have made travellers wary.

    The international arrivals terminal at Atlanta airport: Tourists are rethinking their US travel plans.
    Shutterstock

    While the Flight Centre statement used careful language, its chief executive Graham Turner was clear, saying:

    People from Europe, the United Kingdom and Australia really don’t want to go to the States, given what’s happening there. We’re hearing more and more people don’t want to go through passport control.

    Reports of tourists being detained, shackled and deported at US airports over minor alleged visa issues or misunderstandings have circulated widely. In some cases, visitors have had their phones and electronic devices searched without clear cause. For many travellers, that is a risk not worth taking.

    Governments have started to respond. Several countries, including New Zealand, Germany, France, Denmark and Finland, have updated their official travel advice for the US, urging citizens to exercise caution when visiting. The message filtering through international media is clear: the US is not as easy, safe or welcoming as it once seemed.

    But while diplomatic warnings grow louder, the economic costs of America’s hardening stance are only beginning to register.

    Tourism: America’s forgotten export

    While President Donald Trump has slapped tariffs on goods imports from most countries, he has ignored the contribution of services trade to the economy. The US actually runs a surplus in services such as education and tourism. Trump has dismissed the decline in visitors as “not a big deal”.

    The trade wars have focused on goods – cars, steel, farm products – but the service sector, which makes up a larger share of the economy, bears the hidden costs.

    Tourism is the US’ biggest service export, contributing more than US$2.3 trillion to the economy and one in ten jobs. That’s a bigger contribution than manufacturing jobs, which account for about 8% of total US employment.

    As a driver of economic prosperity, tourism isn’t simply about leisure; it sustains local businesses, rural economies and millions of livelihoods.

    A double blow to the tourism experience

    While the decline in arrivals has been widely reported, the experience for those who still choose to visit is also likely to change.

    Tourism relies on global supply chains, from food to hotel amenities to rental car fleets. Trade war tariffs have raised input costs across the board. Hotels, restaurants, airlines and attractions are passing those higher costs onto customers.

    Miami Beach, Florida: Tourism accounts for one in ten American jobs.
    MDV Edwards/Shutterstock

    Labour shortages are intensifying the problem. Nearly 20% of the US hospitality workforce was born overseas. Cuts to seasonal work visas and heightened deportation fears have left many businesses struggling to find staff, compounding existing labour shortages.

    The burden is heaviest on small- and medium-sized enterprises, which form the bedrock of the US economy and play a central role in accommodation, dining and local tourism experiences.

    A quiet but costly erosion

    Tourism is not just a big part of the economy; it’s also a soft power, shaping how the world perceives a nation through its culture, values and hospitality.

    Every visitor who feels unwelcome, scrutinised or disappointed is not just a lost sale, but a lost connection.

    Research group Tourism Economics forecasts the US could lose up to US$10 billion in international travel spending in 2025 if current trends continue.

    And while manufacturing job announcements grab headlines, the slow erosion of America’s tourism brand may leave a longer, deeper scar on its culture, its communities and its place in the world.

    The Flight Centre downgrade is not an isolated warning. It is a symptom of a broader shift, one that risks turning visitors away for good.

    And for thousands of US businesses, workers and communities – and now Australian ones too – the losses may not be so easily shrugged off.

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

    – ref. Tourism to the US is tanking. Flight Centre is facing a $100m hit as a result – https://theconversation.com/tourism-to-the-us-is-tanking-flight-centre-is-facing-a-100m-hit-as-a-result-255498

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The Coalition’s costings show some savings, but a larger deficit than Labor in the first two years

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bartos, Professor of Economics, University of Canberra

    The Coalition’s policy costings have been released, just two days ahead of the federal election.

    The costings show the Coalition would run up a larger budget deficit than Labor in the first two years of government, but make a greater contribution to budget repair in years three and four.

    This arises because two big-spending Coalition policies – the fuel excise reduction and cost of living tax offset – are short term. Their impact on the deficit disappears after year two.

    Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor said the deficit would narrow by A$14 billion by the end of the fourth year.

    There are other spending initiatives – notably a significant increase in defence rising to $5.7 billion by the last year of the estimates, 2028-29. This will bring defence spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product (GDP).

    The vexed question of nuclear costings

    On the vexed question of nuclear power, the statement promises to fund the program primarily through equity investments in exchange for an ownership stake.

    These do not appear in the budget, on the premise that they fund commercial activities. This funding is estimated to total $118.2 billion by 2050 – well short of the $600 billion Labor has estimated the proposal will cost. There is no independent Parliamentary Budget Office costing of the number – it is based on Coalition modelling.

    Smaller sums are proposed for “community engagement” on nuclear technology ($87 million over four years) and a nuclear coordinating authority and training facility ($65 million). Both look to be in the right ballpark; they are however tiny compared with the costs of building nuclear reactors.

    Items to reduce the budget deficit include income tax increases by abolishing Labor’s top-up tax cut and public service reductions. In 2028-29 the tax increase raises $7.4 billion and public service cuts save $6.7 billion.

    A range of savings measures

    There are numerous other savings, including:

    • taxation of vaping products
    • reduction in a variety of environmental programs
    • reversing tax incentives for electric vehicles
    • cuts to the Housing Australia Future Fund
    • reduced spending on overseas aid
    • restoring the activity test for childcare
    • changing eligibility for several government welfare payment programs.

    It is a long and detailed list.

    Most of the savings appear achievable, with the notable exception of cuts to the public service. It will be close to impossible to achieve a saving of 41,000 public servants in Canberra alone without forced redundancies.

    The total Canberra public service workforce according to the Australian Public Service Commission is only around 68,000.

    Under the Coalition’s plan, some 41,000 public servant jobs in Canberra will be axed.
    Phillip Kraskoff/Shutterstock

    At the press conference announcing the costings, Opposition spokesperson Jane Hume said however the figure was 110,000.

    It is not clear where that number comes from. If the Coalition is using a different set of public service numbers to those published by the Australian Public Service Commission, it should identify where the extra come from. Off a larger base the savings would be difficult, but not completely infeasible.

    As with the Labor proposal to cut consultants, it still leaves the question of what will happen to the work those public servants were doing. Without changes to programs or activities, the Coalition will need to spend budget funds to get the work done.

    Too late for the early voters

    The costing release comes after more than 4.8 million Australians have already cast their vote. This is less than ideal for helping inform voters’ choices.

    There is precedent for releasing costings late. The Albanese opposition similarly released costings on the Thursday before polling day in 2022.

    This week, the Labor government released its costings on Monday.

    It is not clear what drives the practice of late release. One possibility is small target strategy: the less detail there is to criticise the more comfortable an opposition feels.

    There is so much detail in this Coalition announcement, and so many interest groups potentially offended, that the caution about its release may be justified.

    Savings previously announced by the Coalition include scrapping production tax credits for critical minerals and hydrogen and removing fringe benefit tax breaks for electric vehicles.

    The Coalition also plans to scrap some of the government’s off-budget funds and measures, including the Rewiring the Nation fund for electricity transmission and the Housing Australia Future Fund.

    Stephen Bartos was Parliamentary Budget Officer for the past three New South Wales state elections.

    – ref. The Coalition’s costings show some savings, but a larger deficit than Labor in the first two years – https://theconversation.com/the-coalitions-costings-show-some-savings-but-a-larger-deficit-than-labor-in-the-first-two-years-255592

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –