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Category: Analysis

  • MIL-Evening Report: Why Muslims often don’t celebrate Eid on the same day – even within one country

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zuleyha Keskin, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Charles Sturt University

    Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

    Eid is a special time for Muslims. There are two major Eid celebrations each year: Eid al-Fitr is celebrated at the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting, and Eid al-Adha is connected to the dates of Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

    Eid, which means “festival” or “feast” in Arabic, is a celebratory occasion for more than one billion Muslims worldwide. However, in some countries, especially multicultural ones like Australia, Muslims don’t always celebrate Eid on the same day. Here’s why.

    Worshippers pray outside the Taj Mahal on Eid al-Fitr. Muslim emperor Shah Jahan commissioned the mausoleum in 1631 to hold his wife’s tomb.
    Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

    Eid comes 10-12 days earlier each year

    Beyond different groups celebrating on different days, the timing of Eid celebrations also shift as a whole each year. That’s because Islam follows the lunar calendar, based on the moon’s cycles – unlike the Gregorian calendar, which follows the sun.

    As such, dates on the Islamic calendar come 10–12 days earlier each year. This means the dates of both Eids also move about 11 days forward each year.

    In terms of the Islamic calendar:

    • Eid al-Fitr happens on the 1st of the month of Shawwal (the 10th month), which comes right after the month of Ramadan.
    • Eid al-Adha happens on the 10th of Dhul-Hijjah (the 12th month), during Hajj.

    What about local discrepancies?

    Since Islam follows the lunar calendar, determining the start of each Islamic month, and the dates of both Eids, requires sighting the new crescent moon, which comes directly after the new moon (the phase in which the moon is invisible).

    But there are different methods for doing this, and different scholarly interpretations regarding what method is best. These variations are the reason one group in a community might celebrate on a Sunday, while others may celebrate on a Monday.

    The Islamic month of Ramadan lasts 29 to 30 days, from one sighting of the crescent moon to the next. Moon sighting approaches can vary between countries, communities and even households.
    Shutterstock

    Some Muslims believe each country should rely on its own local moon sighting.

    This means if the new crescent moon is visible in neighbouring countries, but not in Australia (such as if it’s hidden behind clouds), then Australia should celebrate a day after its neighbours. The organisation Moonsighting Australia follows this method, only declaring Eid when the moon is seen locally.

    However, others argue if the moon has been sighted anywhere in the world, it should be accepted by all Muslims as the start of the new Islamic month. Some Muslims in Australia opt for this “global moon sighting” approach, following Saudi Arabia’s Eid announcement even when the moon is not sighted locally.

    As far back as the early centuries AD, people in the Arab world used astrolabes to survey the skies. This instrument belonged to Yemeni sultan, mathematician and astronomer Al-Ashraf Umar II (circa 1242-1296).
    Metropolitan Museum of Art

    Apart from the question of where the crescent moon is sighted, there are also different views over how it should be sighted. Many scholars believe in physically sighting it with the eyes, as was practised during the time of Prophet Muhammad.

    But some Muslim countries, such as in Turkey and parts of Europe, use astronomical calculations to predict the new moon’s birth. This allows them to pre-set the date of Eid months, or even years, in advance.

    Australia versus majority-Muslim countries

    In Muslim-majority countries, deciding the day of Eid happens at a government level.

    For example, in Saudi Arabia, the Supreme Court officially declares the date based on moon sighting reports. This decision sets the timing for Eid prayers and public holidays for the entire nation, allowing for unified celebrations across the country.

    But Muslims in Australia come from diverse cultural backgrounds, and hold varying views regarding how the moon should be sighted. Some may follow the Eid announcement from their country of origin. Others may rely on local announcements, or on dates set by peak bodies such as the Australian National Imams Council.

    One 2023 report published by the ISRA Academy surveyed more than 5,500 Muslims in Australia to understand how they determined the date of Eid.

    The findings reveal notable differences across communities. Respondents from the Arab community were almost evenly split between following their local mosque (28.5%) and the Australian National Imams Council (28.0%), with a slightly lower percentage (23.9%) following Moonsighting Australia. Only 0.6% followed their country of origin.

    Among the Turkish community, 16.1% followed their country of origin, while the largest proportion (28.5%) relied on a local mosque or Islamic organisation. But given Turkish mosques tend to follow Turkey’s state religious institution, Diyanet, most Australian Turks (44.6%) ultimately align with Turkey’s decision on Eid.

    Of the others, 18.8% followed Moonsighting Australia and 14.6% following the national imams’ council.

    In the African Muslim community, 48.4% followed Moonsighting Australia, while 32.8% relied on a local mosque, and 11.7% on the imams’ council.

    Eid celebrations will keep evolving

    While celebrating Eid on different days may seem divisive and fragmenting, there are positive aspects to this.

    For one thing, it means Australian Muslims actively seek out information from various religious authorities. This reflects a high level of public engagement in religious decisions – rather than following blindly.

    The strong influence of organisations such as the Australian National Imams Council and Moonsighting Australia also suggests local religious institutions are a trusted source for guidance.

    Moreover, the high percentage of Muslims now following Moonsighting Australia indicates a trend towards a localised determination of Eid. And this trend will likely become stronger with the emergence of third- and fourth- generation Australian Muslims who are less connected with their ancestral homelands.

    Only time will tell whether most Australian Muslims will eventually celebrate Eid on the same day. In the meantime, families and communities continue to navigate these differences with understanding and respect.

    Zuleyha Keskin 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 Muslims often don’t celebrate Eid on the same day – even within one country – https://theconversation.com/why-muslims-often-dont-celebrate-eid-on-the-same-day-even-within-one-country-248227

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: 25 years into a new century and housing is less affordable than ever

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Housing and Economic Security, Grattan Institute

    Of all the problems facing Australia today, few have worsened so rapidly in the past 25 years as housing affordability.

    Housing has become more and more expensive – to rent or buy – and home ownership continues to fall among poorer Australians of all ages.

    Housing makes up most of Australia’s wealth, so more expensive homes concentrated in fewer hands means growing wealth inequality, with a marked generational divide.

    To unwind inequality, we need to make housing cheaper, and that means building much more of it.

    Housing has become more expensive

    The price of the typical Australian home has grown much faster than incomes since the turn of the century: from about four times median incomes in the early 2000s, to more than eight times today, and nearly 10 times in Sydney.

    Housing has also become more expensive to rent, especially since the pandemic.

    Rental vacancy rates are at record lows and asking rents (that is for newly advertised properties) have risen fast – by roughly 20% in Sydney and Melbourne in the past four years, and by much more in Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth.

    Home ownership is falling fast among the young

    Rising house prices are pushing home ownership out of reach for many younger Australians.

    In the early 1990s it took about six years to save a 20% deposit for a typical dwelling for an average household. It now takes more than 12 years.

    Unsurprisingly, home ownership rates are falling fastest for younger people. Whereas 57% of 30–34 year-olds owned their home in 2001, just 50% did so by 2021. And just 36% of 25–29 year olds own their home today, down from 43% in 2001.

    And home ownership is falling fastest among the poorest 40% of each age group.

    Fewer homeowners means more inequality

    People on low incomes, who are increasingly renters, are spending more of their incomes on housing.

    The real incomes of the lowest fifth of households increased by about 26% between 2003–04 and 2019–20. But more than half of this was chewed up by skyrocketing housing costs, with real incomes after housing costs increasing by only 12%.

    In contrast, the real incomes for the highest fifth of households increased by 47%, and their after-housing real incomes by almost as much: 43%.

    Wealth inequality in Australia is still around the OECD average but has been climbing for two decades, largely due to rising house prices.

    In 2019–20, one-quarter of homeowning households reported net wealth exceeding $1 million. By contrast, median net wealth for non-homeowning households was $60,000.

    Since 2003–04, the wealth of high-income households has grown by more than 50%, much of that due to increasing property values. By contrast, the wealth of low-income households – mostly non-homeowners – has grown by less than 10%.

    The growing divide between the housing “haves” and “have nots” is largely generational. Older Australians who bought their homes before prices really took off in the early 2000s have seen their share of the country’s wealth steadily climb.

    This inequality will get baked in as wealth is passed onto the next generation.

    Some Australians will be lucky enough to inherit one or more homes. Others – typically those on lower incomes – will receive none.

    To unwind inequality, we need to make housing less expensive

    We haven’t built enough

    Australians’ demand for housing since the turn of the decade is a story of historically low interest rates, increased access to finance, tax and welfare settings that favour investments in housing, and a booming population.

    But one widely-blamed villain – the introduction of the 50% capital gains tax discount in 1999, together with negative gearing – is likely to have played only a small part in rising house prices.

    That’s because the value of these tax advantages – about $10.9 billion a year – is tiny compared to Australia’s $11 trillion housing market.

    Instead, the biggest problem is that housing construction in recent years hasn’t kept up with increasing demand.

    Strong migration over the past two decades has seen Australia’s population rise much faster than most other wealthy countries in recent decades, boosting the number of homes we need. Rising incomes, and demographic trends such as rising rates of divorce and an ageing Australia, have further increased housing demand.

    Yet Australia has one of the lowest levels of housing per person of any OECD country, and is one of only four OECD countries where the amount of housing per person went backwards over the past two decades.

    This is largely a failure of housing policy. Australia’s land-use planning rules – the rules that dictate what can get built where – are highly restrictive and complex. Current rules and community opposition make it very difficult to build new homes, particularly in the places where people most want to live and work.

    More homes would mean less inequality

    Fixing this will allow mores home to get built, moderate house price growth, and reduce barriers to home ownership. In turn, this will reduce the inequalities created by our broken housing system.

    Easing planning restrictions is hard for governments, because many residents don’t want more homes near theirs.

    The good news is that the penny has started to drop and state governments – particularly in Victoria and New South Wales – are making meaningful progress towards allowing more homes in activity centres and on existing transport links.

    But now the real test begins: how will governments respond to the backlash from people who would prefer their communities to stay the same?

    How well governments hold the line against the so-called NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) will tell us a lot about what we can expect to happen to inequality in Australia in the future.

    Grattan Institute began with contributions to its endowment of $15 million from each of the federal and Victorian governments, $4 million from BHP Billiton, and $1 million from NAB. In order to safeguard its independence, Grattan Institute’s board controls this endowment. The funds are invested and contribute to funding Grattan Institute’s activities. Grattan Institute also receives funding from corporates, foundations, and individuals to support its general activities, as disclosed on its website.

    Joey Moloney and Matthew Bowes 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. 25 years into a new century and housing is less affordable than ever – https://theconversation.com/25-years-into-a-new-century-and-housing-is-less-affordable-than-ever-250067

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How can I tell if my child is too sick to go to school?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Sturgiss, Professor of Community Medicine and Clinical Education, Bond University

    Chay_Tay/Shutterstock

    As a GP and mum to two boys I have many experiences of trying to navigate the school morning when my boys aren’t feeling well. It always seems to happen on the busiest days.

    None of us want to send our child to school when they are not well – I hate the thought of my kids feeling sick in the classroom and also the idea they might make other children sick.

    Lots of families have someone for whom illnesses are more dangerous. They might have a weakened immune system because they are going through cancer treatment or suffer from another illness.

    But it can be hard to tell. A child might be dramatically crying “my tummy HURTS” one minute and racing around with their sibling the next. Or you might wonder if they are angling for some time off in front of the TV.

    How can you tell if your child is too sick to go to school?

    None of us want to send our child to school when they are not well.
    Pixel Shot/ Shutterstock

    Symptoms to look out for

    In school-aged children here are some symptoms to consider.

    Fever: if your child feels hot to touch, or you have a thermometer showing a fever (a temperature above 38 degrees), then they shouldn’t attend school.

    This is even if you are giving them regular paracetamol or ibuprofen to keep their temperature down. Your child won’t feel comfortable at school with a fever and they have a high chance of making others unwell.

    Vomiting and diarrhoea: children should stay home until it is at least 24 hours since their last vomit or runny poo. This is to reduce the spread of viral gastroenteritis (or stomach flu) and to make sure your child can stay hydrated and well. If your child is vomiting or has diarrhoea, it also is important to keep a close eye on them to make sure they are improving and to seek medical care if they are getting worse.

    Runny noses: a runny nose without a fever might be a sign of hayfever, especially if your child has other symptoms like itchy eyes or sneezing. On its own, this is not a reason to stay home.

    But a new runny nose with a fever is a reason to stay home. Many infections, including influenza, COVID and even measles can start with a fever and runny nose, although usually it signals a common cold.

    The common cold needs rest, fluids and encouraging your child to keep their nose clear with gentle blowing or saline sprays. And a reminder, the annual flu vaccine is an excellent way to protect your family from the serious consequences of the “proper flu”.

    Cough: there are many different reasons for a child to cough. This includes infections such as COVID, whooping cough and influenza and non-infectious reasons such as hayfever and reflux. If your child has developed a new cough, and especially if they are also feverish, this is a reason to keep them at home. A cough that doesn’t go away after two weeks should also be checked out by your GP.

    Tiredness: mostly on Fridays, my kids are tired after a busy week – much like me! Tiredness can be an early sign of a lurking infection or some other health issue. But on its own is probably not a reason to keep your child home. However, ongoing tiredness is a good reason to have your child checked out by your GP as there are many causes from poor sleep to iron deficiency.

    Poor appetite: kids’ appetites can vary so wildly, especially when they move into growing phases. Not wanting to eat breakfast in the morning might be an early gastro infection, a sign of constipation or nervous butterflies for the day ahead. If your child is otherwise OK, with no tummy pain, fever or tiredness, then a lack of appetite for breakfast is not a solid reason to stay home.

    It’s common for kids to feel tired, but this on its own is not a reason to skip school.
    Andrew Will/ Shutterstock

    Watch out for school refusal

    I find it helpful to let my child know if they stay home, they will need to stay in bed with no screens to rest and get well. This tends to separate the “truly feeling unwell” days from the “just hoping to have a rest” days.

    But feeling unwell in the morning – particularly in the tummy, tiredness or unexplained headaches – can be an early sign something might not be going smoothly for your child at school or home.

    School refusal is a serious problem where a child is completely overwhelmed and unable to attend school. It can come on gradually or suddenly. Talking with your child’s school is a critical first step if you are concerned about school refusal – it should be a conversation that happens promptly and your school should have procedures for helping you to manage it.



    Read more:
    Is it school reluctance or refusal? How to tell the difference and help your child

    Phone a friend

    If you’re not sure, consider giving a trusted friends or family member a quick call to talk things over.

    You can also contact Healthdirect on 1800 022 222 (or 13 Health if you are in Queensland). This is a national phone service open 24 hours for anyone who has symptoms and needs advice on what to do next.

    Liz Sturgiss receives funding from the NHMRC, MRFF, RACGP Foundation, Diabetes Australia and VicHealth that is unrelated to this article. She is affiliated with Australian Journal of Primary Health (CSIRO), Australian Prescriber, RACGP, NAPCRG, Guidelines Development Committee for the review and update of the Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Management of Overweight and Obesity in Adults, Adolescents and Children in Australia and Australasian Association for Academic Primary Care.

    – ref. How can I tell if my child is too sick to go to school? – https://theconversation.com/how-can-i-tell-if-my-child-is-too-sick-to-go-to-school-252731

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The Coalition wants to increase Medicare psychology rebates from 10 to 20 sessions. Here’s what happened last time

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanne Enticott, Associate Professor, Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation, Monash University

    Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

    The most disadvantaged Australians have long experienced higher rates of mental illness than the broader population. But they also access fewer mental health services.

    Increasing everyone’s access to mental health care led to the creation of the Better Access initiative, which subsidised psychology sessions under Medicare. Officially called Better Access to Psychiatrists, Psychologists and General Practitioners through the Medicare Benefits Schedule, the Howard government launched the initiative in November 2006.

    During COVID, the former Morrison Coalition government temporarily expanded the yearly cap on the number of psychology sessions, from ten to 20. The Labor Albanese government reverted to ten sessions at the end of 2022.

    Now the Coalition says if elected at this year’s polls, it will take the number of sessions back to 20.

    But did capping sessions at 20 increase access to mental health care, especially for disadvantaged Australians? Or are there more effective ways to achieve this?

    How does it work?

    Australians can access up to ten rebated psychology sessions annually. Patients need to have a mental health treatment or management plan from their GP or psychiatrist.


    The Australian Psychological Society recommends consultation fees of around $311 for a standard 46- to 60-minute consultation.

    The typical Medicare rebate is $141.85 per session with a clinical psychologist and $96.65 with other registered psychologists. (All psychologists are university qualified mental health professionals, but clinical psychologists have more qualifications.)

    Psychologists can choose their own fees. They can bulk bill (no out of pocket cost for patients) or charge consultation fees, leaving some patients hundreds of dollars out of pocket for each session.

    How did access change during COVID?

    To assess the changes during COVID, we need to consider three components: number of people accessing services, service use rates (number of sessions per population) and the average number of sessions per patient.

    1. Number of people accessing services

    In 2020-21, all states saw a 5% jump in the number of people accessing Medicare mental health services, coinciding with the first year of the COVID pandemic.

    In the three years prior to this, there was an average yearly increase of about 3% more people.

    However, a 2022 independent evaluation of the Better Access initiative showed that between 2018 and 2021, new users declined from 56% to 50%, with the steepest drop between 2020 and 2021.

    This reduction in new users coincided with the temporary increased cap to 20 sessions.

    Australians from disadvantaged backgrounds continued to have poorer access to psychologists than those from wealthier population groups, despite an increase in the number of sessions.

    2. Service use rates (number of sessions per population)

    Service use rates tell us how much a particular service is being used each year. To compare service use rates between different years, and because the Australian population is growing yearly, we report service use rates per 1,000 people in the population.

    In 2020-21, service use rates for clinical psychologists and other psychologists increased by 18%. This was a large increase compared to the typical 5% increases in previous years. This persisted in the next two years.

    When the cap on number of sessions was reduced to ten sessions, there was a small drop in service use rates, but it didn’t return to the pre-pandemic levels.

    Most clients use ten or fewer sessions a year.
    Ben Bryant/Shutterstock

    3. Average number of sessions people used

    The increase in services occurring in the first two years of the COVID pandemic (and around the time as the cap temporarily increased from ten to 20 sessions), resulted in a small increase in the average number of sessions per patient.

    In the ten years between 2013-14 and 2022-23, average number of sessions with a clinical psychologist increased from five to six sessions whereas the average number of sessions with other psychologists increased from four to five sessions.

    Importantly, more than 80% of people received fewer than ten sessions.

    What does this tell us?

    Overall, most people used ten or fewer sessions, even when up to 20 sessions were available.

    Some extra services were provided to existing clients during COVID and this may have actually prevented new people from receiving services.

    So the evidence suggests simply increasing the number of rebated psychology sessions from ten to 20 for everybody isn’t the most effective approach.

    What should Labor and the Coalition do instead?

    We don’t limit the number of chemotherapy sessions for cancer patients, so why do we cap evidence-based psychological treatments for mental illness?

    Instead of capping access to Medicare rebates for mental health care, access should be based on a person’s needs and treatment outcomes. The number of sessions should be determined collaboratively between the person and the provider, ensuring people receive the appropriate level of evidence-based care for their condition.

    Measure outcomes

    Currently in Australia for Medicare-funded mental health services, we only measure service activity. Patient outcomes are not collected, which hinders the development of value-based mental health care.

    Without collecting outcomes, current initiatives to address inequities are only partially informed and may not work as intended.

    We urgently need to establish a set of outcomes (patient-reported outcome measures and experience measures) through consensus with the community, providers, professional organisations and governments.

    Address affordability

    We should also address inequities, such as gap fees that act as barriers to accessing services.

    Greater rebates and bulk billing incentives for vulnerable people can assist those with less money.

    Offer other evidence-based support

    Evidence also suggests people with mild to moderate mental health problems can benefit from psychological and social supports provided by people who are non-health-care professionals, such as the Friendship Bench and digital mental health programs.

    We need to develop and invest in a range of services that cater to differing levels of need. This would ensure more specialised services are available for those with higher complexity or severity.

    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. The Coalition wants to increase Medicare psychology rebates from 10 to 20 sessions. Here’s what happened last time – https://theconversation.com/the-coalition-wants-to-increase-medicare-psychology-rebates-from-10-to-20-sessions-heres-what-happened-last-time-249606

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Reliable science takes time. But the current system rewards speed

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Chin, Senior Lecturer, College of Law, Australian National University

    P.Cartwright/Shutterstock

    Lately, there have been many headlines on scientific fraud and journal article retractions. If this trend continues, it represents a serious threat to public trust in science.

    One way to tackle this problem – and ensure public trust in science remains high – may be to slow it down. We sometimes refer to this philosophy as “slow science”. Akin to the slow food movement, slow science prioritises quality over speed and seeks to buck incentive structures that promote mass production.

    Slow science may not represent an obvious way to improve science because we often equate science with progress, and slowing down progress does not sound very appealing. However, progress is not just about speed, but about basing important societal decisions on strong scientific foundations. And this takes time.

    Unfortunately, the pressures and incentives modern scientists face are almost universally against slow science. Secure, permanent university jobs are scarce, and with budget cuts, this appears to be getting worse.

    As a result, the pressure to publish has never been higher. Indeed, in my yearly performance meetings, I am asked how many articles I’ve published and what is the status of the journals I published in. I am not asked how robust my methods are and how discerning my peer reviewers were.

    The problems with fast science

    Our current “fast science” approach has produced a host of problems.

    Much as with fast food, scientists are incentivised to produce as much science as possible in as little time as possible. This can mean cutting corners. We know, for instance, that larger samples lead to more trustworthy results because they are more likely to be representative of the relevant population. However, collecting large samples takes time and resources.

    Fast science is also associated with gaming the system. As a hypothetical example, an educational scientist might collect data to find evidence for their theory that a new teaching style promotes better learning. Then, they look at the data and realise the intervention did not quite improve learning. But if you squint at it, there might be a trend if you drop a couple of pesky outliers that didn’t see a benefit. So, they do just that.

    This an example of what’s known as a “questionable research practice”, because it’s not considered outright fraud by conventional standards. Surveys in many fields suggest these practices are widespread, with about 50% of scientists saying they have engaged in them at least once.

    Fast science is also associated with more obviously unethical practices.

    Reports of fabricated data are likely due, in part, to scientists trying to publish as quickly as possible. An industry has even sprung up around scientific fraud – what are known as “paper mills”. These organisations produce articles around fabricated data and then sell authorship to those papers.

    Surveys have shown about 50% of scientists have engaged in questionable research practices such as slightly tweaking research data.
    National Cancer Institute/Unsplash

    Why trustworthy science takes time

    So, what does slow science look like and how can it help?

    The late English statistician Douglas Altman provided one of the most famous descriptions of the slow science mantra: “We need less research, better research, and research done for the right reasons”.

    In many ways, it is the opposite of fast science: large samples and careful, well-documented, transparent practices.

    Recall the hypothetical example of the scientists testing a new education practice. Rather than immediately jumping into data collection, the slow practice would be to first write a “registered report”. In other words, scientists would write out their theory and how they propose to test that theory, and send that out for peer review prior to collecting data.

    The journal would then follow the normal process of soliciting peer reviews and allowing the scientists to revise their report in response to those reviews. Then, the authors would collect data, with publication in the journal being assured as long as they follow the agreed upon methods.

    There are two major benefits to registered reports: it allows for peer feedback while it is still possible to improve the study and it removes an incentive to engage in questionable or fraudulent practices. Using the registered report format can take longer. But it is associated with more credible findings.

    Two other slow practices worth mentioning are conducting research in a way that is reproducible and correcting errors in the existing body of research.

    In theory, all science should be reproducible. That is, scientists should share their methods and data such that other scientists can both verify that work and build on it (developing new recipes, to continue the analogy to slow food).

    Similarly, cleaning up the scientific record is incredibly important. For the same reasons that chef Gordon Ramsay likes to a clean a kitchen out before improving it, science needs to get a handle on what existing findings are reliable before we can build on them.

    This means carefully going through existing publications to find studies that show indications of being fabricated or otherwise unreliable. This sleuthing is rare among university scientists because it does not typically result in publications. But it is highly important.

    Slow science is the opposite of fast science: large samples and careful, well-documented, transparent practices.
    National Cancer Institute/Unsplash

    Slow science is slowly gaining steam

    Currently, it requires bravery to engage in slow science.

    Universities are keen to move up the university rankings lists. Those rankings are driven by publishing. So, universities hire, promote and retain their scientists based on their publications. This makes it risky to slow down.

    There are, however, some reasons to hope. Movements are afoot to redefine research quality to take into account more aspects of slow science.

    The Declaration on Research Assessment is a worldwide initiative to move away from ranking systems that ignore the principles of slow science.

    Grassroots organisations are also creating platforms for more open and exacting peer review.

    And advocates for more careful research practices have recently been appointed to important positions, such as with research funders and academic journals.

    These developments are worth following and building upon because society does not need heaps of low-quality science. It needs science that deserves trust.

    Jason Chin is affiliated with the Association for Interdisciplinary Metaresearch and Open Science (AIMOS), a charity that promotes the study and improvement of research methods. AIMOS is a co-founder of the open peer-review platform, MetaROR.

    – ref. Reliable science takes time. But the current system rewards speed – https://theconversation.com/reliable-science-takes-time-but-the-current-system-rewards-speed-249497

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why Serena Williams joining the WNBA’s Toronto Tempo as a part-owner is so important for women’s sports

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Treisha Hylton, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Social Work, Wilfrid Laurier University

    Tennis legend Serena Williams is now part of the ownership group of the Toronto Tempo, marking a significant moment for women’s professional sports. The Toronto Tempo is set to kick off their inaugural WNBA season in 2026 and her involvement will help secure the longevity, success and impact the team.

    There has never been a better and more exciting time to be a fan, advocate and researcher of women’s professional sports. Momentum continues to build toward the ultimate goal of achieving equity in sports, and it’s clear that real progress is being made.

    Back in 2023, I attended the first WNBA exhibition game in Canada at Scotiabank Arena. The overwhelming support and enthusiasm made it clear that Toronto was ready to embrace and support women’s professional sports. Fast forward three years, and that vision is fast becoming a reality.

    Women’s professional sports are at an all-time high. Canada’s first professional women’s soccer league set to commence its inaugural season in April, the WNBA continues to expand and the Professional Women’s Hockey League keeps setting attendance records.

    Across the board, media coverage is skyrocketing for women’s sports. Opportunities for women and girls in sport have never been greater. All this and Williams’ investment in the Toronto Tempo is a fitting milestone to celebrate during Women’s History Month.

    A new era for women’s sports

    Williams is a trailblazer and widely considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time. She dominated tennis for years, made history and broke barriers, all while proudly being herself in the face of discrimination, blatant double standards and constant ridicule.

    She stands as an example of excellence and perseverance in women’s sports and social justice.

    Williams is a role model for many Black women and girls, athletes and non-athletes alike. Her new role as a part-owner of the Toronto Tempo holds just as much significance as her ground-breaking career in tennis. Now, she is once again paving the way by demonstrating how women, particularly Black women, can break into leadership positions in professional sports.

    Williams highlighted the significance of her new role, stating:

    “This moment is not just about basketball. It is about showcasing the true value and potential of female athletes. I have always said that women’s sports are an incredible investment opportunity.”

    Her commitment to advancing women’s sports is nothing new. Williams is also a founding owner of the National Women’s Soccer League’s Angel City FC. The WNBA, and other sports leagues, need more women like Williams in ownership and executive positions to drive real change.

    Despite the progress made toward equity in women’s professional sports, there is still a staggering difference in pay and representation in leadership roles.

    A glaring example is tennis star Coco Gauff, the highest-paid woman athlete of 2024, who didn’t even make it into the top 100 highest-paid athletes. This highlights the persistent gap in earnings and need for continued advocacy for pay equity in professional sports.

    Black women in sport leadership

    Black women remain vastly underrepresented in sports leadership roles, including as owners, CEOs, coaches and presidents. In the WNBA, where 70 per cent of the players are Black, there is currently only one Black woman head coach.

    There is a clear need for meaningful representation at all levels of the game. Leadership must reflect the diversity of the athletes on the court.

    For the WNBA and other women’s professional sports leagues to achieve equity, Black women must be better represented in leadership positions. The focus needs to go beyond token representation toward true representation to inspire future generations of young Black girls.

    Serena Williams’ investment in the Toronto Tempo is a step in the right direction. Equally significant is the appointment of Monica Wright Rogers, a former collegiate player and experienced executive, as the team’s new general manager.

    Together, Williams and Rogers represent the progress being made toward better representation of Black women in leadership roles.

    Elevating women’s sports

    The fight for racial and gender equality in sports is far from finished. The Toronto Tempo is a business first, and centring community must be part of its investment strategy.

    The Tempo must prioritize building connections with grassroots organizations and ensure racialized girls and women have access to opportunities in coaching, community spaces and building life-sports synergy skills.

    I’ve always believed grassroots organizations are the beating heart of sports, laying the foundation for the next generation of athletes and role models. Without them, many young girls would never get the chance to see themselves in the game. Two organizations that are community development-focused are Lady Ballers Centre and Black Girl Hockey Club.



    Read more:
    Women’s sports are thriving in Canada — here’s how to ensure it stays that way

    The Tempo must reject the notion that success and equity in sports can be represented by just one story. While Williams’ journey is undeniably inspiring, it cannot be the sole narrative that defines progress in women’s sports. Instead, a multitude of stories, particularly those of Black and racialized women across all levels of sport, must be uplifted.

    Investing in women’s sports isn’t just the right thing to do, but is also beneficial for society as a whole. Women athletes have consistently proven they deserve professional sports leagues, pay equity, endorsement deals, equal media coverage and better sporting facilities. Supporting this movement is the right direction for the Tempo.

    Williams’ experience and commitment to women’s sports make her an ideal fit for ownership. Toronto fans are ready, and there’s little doubt the first Tempo games will be sold out. I, for one, am excited to attend the inaugural game in 2026. Let’s go Tempo!

    Treisha Hylton 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 Serena Williams joining the WNBA’s Toronto Tempo as a part-owner is so important for women’s sports – https://theconversation.com/why-serena-williams-joining-the-wnbas-toronto-tempo-as-a-part-owner-is-so-important-for-womens-sports-252592

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Shoes that can warn you of injuries? How wearable technology is transforming foot care

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

    Your feet work hard every day supporting your body, absorbing impact and adapting to different surfaces. But they often get ignored until something goes wrong.

    Imagine your shoes alerting you to foot injuries before you feel any pain, or your socks warning you about the risk of an ulcer before symptoms even appear. This is the promise of new wearable foot technology.

    About one in five adults in middle and old age experiences foot pain, ranging from minor aches to problems that limit daily activities. Some foot conditions, particularly linked to diabetes, can be life-threatening.

    Diabetic foot ulcers have a five-year death rate of around 40%. This means that patients with foot ulcers caused by diabetes have a 40% chance of dying within five years of symptoms appearing, which is higher than many cancers. If untreated, ulcers can lead to severe infections and even necessitate amputation.

    New wearable devices, such as smart insoles and socks, can prevent these serious complications through early detection. They work by constantly tracking your foot pressure, walking patterns and even skin temperature.

    The collected information is analysed using advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence, providing timely warnings about potential foot problems. Machine learning, for instance, has successfully predicted diabetic foot ulcers from this wearable data, helping healthcare providers intervene before complications occur.

    A diabetic foot ulcer.
    Zay Nyi Nyi/Shutterstock

    Smart insoles contain tiny sensors that measure how pressure spreads across your feet when you walk or run. They can detect abnormal walking patterns with over 90% precision, spotting issues before they cause pain or injury.

    These devices have proven especially useful for older adults and people with neurological conditions like stroke, multiple sclerosis, or movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

    Smart socks use sensors to constantly measure foot temperature and pressure, detecting early signs of inflammation. They’re particularly beneficial for people with diabetes, as research shows these socks can predict and help prevent foot ulcers.

    Smart compression socks, which also monitor blood oxygen levels, can identify important changes during daily activities. This further reduces the risk of severe complications such as poor circulation, tissue damage and infection.



    Read more:
    Fighting fungal nail infections: simple steps for healthier toenails

    Continuously tracking a person’s foot health in these ways allows potential issues to be identified before they escalate, shifting foot care from reactive treatment to proactive management. So, wearable foot technology offers advantages for groups like athletes and people with chronic conditions.

    Athletes, especially those involved in high-impact sports like running, often put immense stress on their feet, increasing injury risk. Smart insoles provide immediate feedback, allowing athletes to adjust their running technique. Studies have shown that athletes using these insoles improved their running form and experienced fewer injuries.

    People with chronic health conditions, such as diabetes, also stand to benefit greatly from wearable technologies. Continuous monitoring with smart devices significantly lowers the risk of severe complications.

    For example, one study found that high-risk patients with diabetes who used smart socks with continuous temperature monitoring had much better outcomes. They experienced a 71% lower rate of foot ulcers and a 52% lower rate of amputations. This improvement was linked to earlier detection and intervention.

    Potential challenges

    Privacy remains a significant issue with these devices, as they constantly collect sensitive health data. Ensuring data is secure is therefore crucial. Accuracy is also important, as devices must reliably avoid false alarms or missed warnings. And although prices have decreased, wearable technology may still be expensive for many people, limiting its widespread use.

    The future of wearable foot technology is promising, however. Devices are becoming smaller, more affordable and easier to use. Innovations like 3D printing now enable customised smart insoles that perfectly match a person’s foot shape, boosting comfort and accuracy.

    Upcoming developments also include flexible sensors that can connect to smartphones and healthcare systems. These allow for remote monitoring and personalised care. For example, researchers have recently developed smart pyjamas with built-in fabric sensors. These sensors track breathing patterns and detect sleep disorders. The data is then sent directly to a phone app for analysis.



    Read more:
    High heels, flat arches, clubfoot and corns – our feet are amazing but they can be treated terribly

    Like these innovations, smart insoles and socks are moving toward more flexible, user-friendly designs that can integrate into everyday life. The goal across all this different technology is the same – to make health monitoring more accessible, comfortable and proactive without the need for bulky equipment or clinic visits.

    Wearable tech is a significant step forward for foot health. It offers early warnings and personalised insights beyond traditional methods. From preventing severe complications like diabetic ulcers to enhancing athletic performance, these devices could soon become standard parts of everyday healthcare.

    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. Shoes that can warn you of injuries? How wearable technology is transforming foot care – https://theconversation.com/shoes-that-can-warn-you-of-injuries-how-wearable-technology-is-transforming-foot-care-252463

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Investment in the Hundred could save UK cricket from a financial sticky wicket

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Robbie Millar, Lecturer, Academy of Sport, Sheffield Hallam University

    English cricket, up in the air? Brian A Jackson/Shutterstock

    Cricket is an old sport that has evolved over centuries. But 2025 is shaping up to be a historic – and lucrative – year for the game in England and Wales.

    For the first time, private equity investment has entered the domestic game, changing the business structure of professional cricket forever. The source of this corporate interest – worth around £550 million – is the league of eight teams known as the Hundred.

    Established in 2021 by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), the focus of the Hundred was appealing to new audiences who have not engaged with cricket before.

    It is a much shorter format than traditional forms of the game such as the four-day County Championship competition, or the One Day Cup, which is made up of 50 overs (300 balls) per side.

    With the Hundred, each side gets 100 balls to bowl at their opponent’s wickets. The highest number of runs wins. It’s very simple. And entertaining.

    Not everyone is a fan of course, and there has been criticism of the tournament’s design, its addition to an already congested cricket calendar, and the fact that only eight of the 18 county cricket clubs (CCCs) are involved.

    But the ECB stood firm. And given the recent investment into the Hundred, it will no doubt feel vindicated.

    Because the cash is sorely needed. Our research shows that CCCs have struggled financially for a while, and are overdue an economic boost.

    To help with this, the Hundred started off with the ECB owning all eight teams or “franchises” in the league. Now it has sold 49% of each franchise and gifted the remaining 51% to each Hundred-hosting county.

    So now, for example, 51% ownership of the Oval Invincibles is in the hands of Surrey CCC. Each hosting county was then given the option of selling their share – and so far Yorkshire and Lancashire have done just that.

    The total sale of the franchises has generated £550 million, far exceeding expectations. From that, 10% (£55 million) will be ringfenced by the ECB to invest in measures to increase participation in cricket throughout England and Wales.

    A slightly complicated division of the rest of the spoils then basically leaves each Hundred-hosting county cricket club with £18 million (plus the 51% ownership of the franchise). The non-hosting CCCs will receive around £32 million each.

    For context, in 2023, Surrey CCC had the highest revenue at £65 million, while Leicestershire had the lowest at £5.5 million. So a one-off injection of £18 million would represent significant growth for clubs across the scale.

    Not cricket?

    But it’s not all good news, as the influence of private equity may cause internal conflicts about a CCC’s strategy. For while the ECB has said it will remain in control of the Hundred as a competition, the primary goal of the franchise sales is to achieve a return for investors.

    This will probably mean that the Hundred is prioritised over the other formats of domestic cricket – and even international commitments. As many of the high-profile players play across the different formats, they will need to manage their schedules and are likely to choose whatever brings the greatest financial rewards.

    And while the ECB has hinted at increasing the number of franchises in the future, the worry will still be that some clubs benefit more than others.

    More traditional fans may feel alienated.
    Graeme Dawes/Shutterstock

    Yet investment in the future is essential if cricket is to remain relevant and appeal to new audiences. There are already suggestions that Gen Z prefers other sports such as basketball and boxing, over cricket.

    Investment must also be used to improve stadium infrastructure and facilities, to attract good crowds and to generate the superstars of the future. But the influx of money means the Hundred is likely to dominate the broadcast schedule, and prioritising the tournament in this way may alienate some more traditionally minded fans.

    The commercial interest now stretches towards international markets and other sports. Four of the investment groups now involved in the Hundred are owners of Indian Premier League cricket franchises, while others are linked to the worlds of professional football (Birmingham Phoenix and Birmingham City FC) and Silicon Valley (London Spirit).

    Eventually, this could lead to increasing levels of commercialisation, of the kind sports fans have become accustomed to within English Premier League football.

    Overall then, cricket fans may look back on 2025 as a year of major change in the sport in England and Wales. Success is far from guaranteed but the early indications, especially with regards to finance, are overwhelmingly positive.

    And that was probably the point of the whole exercise. It might not be cricket as it used to be – but as with other sports today, many of the biggest decisions come down to whether or not they make money.

    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. Investment in the Hundred could save UK cricket from a financial sticky wicket – https://theconversation.com/investment-in-the-hundred-could-save-uk-cricket-from-a-financial-sticky-wicket-244989

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The End: philosopher explains new climate-collapse musical using the allegory of Plato’s Cave

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matthew Duncombe, Associate Professor in Philosophy, University of Nottingham

    The End tells the story of a wealthy family who survived the collapse of the climate and civilisation in a bunker inside an abandoned mine. Before the collapse they were rich, and they continue to enjoy every luxury.

    Mother (Tilda Swinton) hangs Renoirs in their private gallery. Mary (Danielle Ryan) cooks delicious cakes. Doctor (Lennie James) provides medication, with casual cruelty. Butler (Tim McInnerny) decorates their library. And Father (Michael Shannon) tells Son tales from his life as an oil executive.

    Son (George MacKay), who was born in the bunker, spends his time making models of American history, including the Moon landings and the transcontinental railroad. The family live in an unreal world of fictions, from the paintings they hang, to the models they make, their artificial lights and their fake house within the bunker.

    They tell themselves, and each other, that they are good people, that their life is worth living and they did what they had to to survive. The fact that this film is a musical only makes it feel more unreal.

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    One day, Girl (Moses Ingram) stumbles into the bunker. Starving, weak and haunted by guilt, she tells the family of the terrible things she did get to safety. She challenges their response that “you had no choice”.

    As she grows closer to Son, she points out uncomfortable truths, like the fact that thousands of immigrant workers died while building the transcontinental railroad. At first, Son repeats what his parents have told him. But he soon comes to cruelly and openly mock the stories his family have concocted, seeing how self-serving they are.

    The trailer for The End.

    As the film unfolds, we learn the guilt, lies and self-deceptions that allowed each person to survive, and the stories they cling to.

    The End has more than one meaning. On the surface, the title refers to the end of civilisation. But “the end” can also mean the purpose of something, like the meaning of life. As one of the songs on the film asks, how can we make a “life worth living”?

    Plato’s Cave

    Some viewers have compared the film to Plato’s Cave. The allegory is described in The Republic, the ancient Greek philosopher’s exploration of justice, politics and the ideal society.

    The allegory describes a group of prisoners who are chained in a cave. On the wall, various shadow-images are projected: animals, people, objects. Because they don’t know any better, the prisoners take these shadows to be reality, and spend their time predicting which shadows will come next.

    One day, a prisoner escapes and makes their way to the surface. There they see the real things which correspond to the shadows. They even see the dazzling sun in real life. Upon returning to the cave, the prisoner tries to free the other prisoners from their delusions. But they refuse to be shaken from them, and kill him.

    Many interpret this escaped prisoner as Plato’s mentor, Socrates, the philosopher who was executed after he challenged Athenian citizens on questions of the ethical life.

    An animation of Plato’s cave analogy, narrated by Orson Welles.

    One message from the cave analogy is that living in ignorance, even wilful ignorance is not living a good life. The prisoners in the cave are not living a good life but they aren’t unhappy. In fact, they’re so comfortable with their illusions that they’d rather kill the escaped prisoner than listen to him. But their lives are still empty, because they are built on lies.

    The End is not Plato’s Cave: The Movie, but the similarities with the allegory are clear. It too focuses on a group of people who live in an underground, unreal world, where their activities are meaningless because they are disconnected from reality, and who actively deceive themselves and others. Someone with knowledge of the outside world enters the community and confronts them with the truth – that their lives are built on falsehoods.

    Just like the prisoners in Plato’s Cave allegory, the lives of the family before the Girl arrives are fine. But the Girl forces them to see things differently. When she finds the wine bitter, Father admits that that the wine is bitter. Her guilt forces them to face their own. Her integrity, and refusal to deceive herself about the choices she made, forces them to confront their self-deceptions. The love that blooms between Girl and the Son forces Mother, Father and Butler to recognise their own isolation.

    In a way Girl is like Socrates, forcing people to examine their lives. But unlike Socrates, she allows herself to be vulnerable. She causes the change in the others not through Socratic questioning of their beliefs, but simply by expressing her own feelings, and what she knows to be true.

    Unlike Socrates, Girl does not declare that the unexamined life is not worth living. But she does cause the family to examine their lives, albeit briefly and incompletely.

    When we sit in a cinema, we are a bit like Plato’s prisoners, watching images projected onto a wall. Mostly, movies let us escape reality. But The End doesn’t. It forces us to face real truths – the need for honesty and self-examination in the face of the immanent collapse of our climate. We have a choice – how to respond.

    Matthew Duncombe receives funding from the British Academy, Loeb Classical Library Foundation and the Spanish Ministry of Education.

    – ref. The End: philosopher explains new climate-collapse musical using the allegory of Plato’s Cave – https://theconversation.com/the-end-philosopher-explains-new-climate-collapse-musical-using-the-allegory-of-platos-cave-252315

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The US has the power to switch off the UK’s nuclear subs – a big problem as Donald Trump becomes an unreliable partner

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Becky Alexis-Martin, Peace Studies and International Development, University of Bradford

    Keir Starmer aboard one of the UK’s Vanguard class submarines. CC BY-NC-ND

    Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently boarded one of the UK’s four nuclear-armed submarines for a photo call as part of his attempts to demonstrate the UK’s defence capabilities as tensions with Russia continue.

    However, Starmer faces a problem. The submarine, and the rest of the UK’s nuclear fleet, is heavily reliant on the US as an operating partner. And at a time when the US becomes an increasingly unreliable partner under the leadership of an entirely transactional president, this is not ideal. The US can, if it chooses, effectively switch off the UK’s nuclear deterrent.

    British and US nuclear history is irrevocably interwoven. The US and UK cooperated on the Manhattan project, under the 1943 Quebec agreements and the 1944 Hyde Park aide memoire. This work generated the world’s first nuclear weapons, which were deployed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

    It also led to the first rupture. In 1946, the US classified UK citizens as “foreign” and prevented them from engaging in secret nuclear work. Collaboration with the UK immediately ceased.

    The UK decided to develop its own arsenal of nuclear weapons. The successful detonation of the “Grapple Y” hydrogen bomb in April 1958 cemented its position as a thermonuclear power.

    In the meantime, however, Russia’s launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 had demonstrated the lethal reach of Soviet nuclear technology. This brought the US and UK back together as nuclear partners.

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    Talks on how to counter the Russian threat became the foundation of an atomic partnership that endures to the present day. This mutual defence agreement, signed in 1958, has provided the UK with affordable access to the latest nuclear technology and a reliable western ally. The treaty has been amended and adapted over time to reflect changes in the US-UK working relationship and the two are now so entangled that it is very hard to leave the co-dependent relationship.

    Both sides have benefited from security and protection, especially during the cold war. However, Trump’s new “special relationship” with Russia’s Vladimir Putin has reconfigured the global order of geopolitics.

    Serious concerns are now being raised about the UK’s nuclear capacity, given the unpredictability and potential unreliability of the new US administration. Trump could ignore or threaten to terminate the agreement in a show of power or contempt.

    The UK’s nuclear subs

    The UK’s Trident nuclear deterrence programme consists of four Vanguard nuclear-powered and armed submarines. The UK has some autonomy, as it is operationally independent and controls the decision to launch.

    However, it remains dependent on the US because the nuclear technologies at the heart of the Trident system are US designed and leased by Lockheed Martin – and there is no suitable alternative. The Trident system therefore relies on the US for support and maintenance.

    The UK is currently in the process of upgrading the current system. But its options seem limited. If the US were to renege on its commitments, the UK would either have to produce its own weapons domestically, collaborate with France or Europe or disarm. Each scenario creates new issues for the UK. Manufacturing nuclear weapons from scratch in the UK, for example, would be a costly and protracted activity.

    Technical collaboration with France seems the most plausible back-up option at the moment. The two countries already have a nuclear collaboration treaty in place. France has taken a similar submarine-based approach to deterrence as the UK and French president Emmanuel Macron has suggested its deterrent could be used to protect other European countries. Another alternative would be to spread the cost across Europe and create a European deterrence – but both strategies just re-embed the UK’s current nuclear reliance.

    The UK is reliant on others for its nuclear deterrent.
    Number 10/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

    While these weapons may deter a hostile nuclear strike, they have failed to prevent broader acts of aggression. Nuclear weapons have not been used in warfare for 80 years. Perhaps it is time to completely and permanently unshackle the UK from nuclear deterrence, and consider alternative forms of defence.

    The UK’s nuclear arsenal is expensive to maintain. The cost of replacing Trident is £205 billion. In 2023, the Ministry of Defence reported that the anticipated costs for supporting the nuclear deterrent would exceed its budget by £7.9 billion over the next ten years. This funding could be channelled into more pressing security threats, such as cybersecurity, terrorism or climate change.

    Nuclear weapons will become strategically redundant if the UK cannot act independently. As Nato and the US dominate the global nuclear stage, the UK’s capacity to respond has become contested. The time has come to decide whether the US is really our friend – or a new foe.

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

    – ref. The US has the power to switch off the UK’s nuclear subs – a big problem as Donald Trump becomes an unreliable partner – https://theconversation.com/the-us-has-the-power-to-switch-off-the-uks-nuclear-subs-a-big-problem-as-donald-trump-becomes-an-unreliable-partner-252674

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why rapid at-home PSA tests for prostate cancer are fast, convenient – and unreliable

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dipa Kamdar, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice, Kingston University

    Microscopic image of a prostate gland biopsy showing cancer in a patient with elevated PSA. David A Litman/Shutterstock

    A recent BBC investigation questioned the accuracy of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) self-tests – rapid at-home tests for men worried about prostate cancer. The BBC analysed five of these tests using one blood sample and found varying results: one positive, three negative, and one unreadable.

    PSA blood tests measures levels of PSA, a protein produced by the prostate gland. All men have some PSA in their blood but a raised level can suggest a problem with the prostate, including cancer.

    In the UK, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men. One in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime.

    Unlike many other cancers, there is no national screening programme for prostate cancer and the NHS doesn’t offer routine PSA testing. But anyone who has a prostate and is over 50 years old – or over 45 and from a high-risk group – can request PSA testing on the NHS. A doctor may also request testing if they think a patient has prostate cancer symptoms or want to monitor a diagnosed prostate condition.

    A faster and potentially more convenient alternative is self-testing. Currently, anyone over the age of 18 can buy a PSA self-testing kit for home use. With no proactive NHS screening programme, home testing is on the rise to catch prostate cancer early – even before there are any symptoms. By catching fast-growing cancers early, treatment can prevent them from spreading and causing serious problems.

    As with COVID self-testing, the PSA home kits use test cassettes. You use a lancet (small needle) to prick your finger to get a few drops of blood, put the blood into a pipette and then drip this on to the test cassette along with a buffer solution. Depending on the test kit, a positive or negative result is displayed in five-to-ten minutes.

    This might sound convenient, but some users find the detailed instructions for home PSA tests difficult to follow, which can lead to errors. A review found the information provided with self-tests is generally inadequate.

    But as the BBC report showed, even when used correctly, PSA home tests can give varying results.

    Not a cancer test

    Positive tests or high PSA levels may cause men to worry unnecessarily. PSA tests are not blood tests for prostate cancer, and a PSA test can neither diagnose nor rule out prostate cancer. Rather, higher levels of PSA indicate a potential problem with the prostate.

    In many men, this could be caused by a benign prostatic hyperplasia – an enlarged prostate. This is a non-cancerous condition affecting 8% of men in their fifties, where the prostate gland grows larger. It can cause urinary problems, such as difficulty in starting pee, a weak urine stream and frequent or urgent urination. The likelihood of developing an enlarged prostate increases with age.

    An inflamed prostate (prostatitis) can also cause raised PSA, as can urine infections – and even vigorous exercise and sexual activity.

    In some cases, rapid home tests can give a false negative result, offering false reassurance for users who should go on to have further tests for cancer.

    Another drawback of home-testing kits is that there is no medical professional to refer a test user for further checks or to help interpret results. For example, a normal PSA level doesn’t mean the person testing is cancer-free: PSA levels can be normal even in someone with prostate cancer.

    Tests are not a GP substitute

    While rapid at-home PSA tests can be unreliable, other types of PSA self-testing kit allow you to collect the blood sample in a small tube, then send it to a laboratory for testing. Getting these results can take a few days but can offer a more detailed PSA value, compared with rapid at-home tests. But again, these lab tests can neither diagnose nor rule out prostate cancer.

    Whatever the method of testing, high PSA levels should be followed up with a doctor who can order more tests and scans to check for cancer.

    Many men might find the Prostate Cancer UK online risk checker useful. It asks three main questions about age, ethnicity and family history.

    The older a man is, the higher their risk of prostate cancer. Men of black ethnic heritage have double the chance of developing prostate cancer, while those with a close relative – father or brother – who has had prostate cancer are also at increased risk.

    The online risk checker also provides useful resources, information to take to the doctor, and contact details for specialist nurses.

    If a man is experiencing any symptoms of prostate problems, falls into a higher risk group, has genetic risk factors, has a positive PSA home-test, or just has concerns about prostate cancer, it’s always best to check with the doctor – they can provide more support, information and further testing.

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

    – ref. Why rapid at-home PSA tests for prostate cancer are fast, convenient – and unreliable – https://theconversation.com/why-rapid-at-home-psa-tests-for-prostate-cancer-are-fast-convenient-and-unreliable-252415

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Energy bills and debt are rising yet again – here are three things that would help vulnerable households

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Elaine Robinson, Research Associate, Centre for Research in Social Policy, Loughborough University

    Energy prices are rising faster than benefits, wages or pensions, meaning the amount that UK households owe to energy suppliers – their energy debt – is also likely to grow.

    On April 1 2025, the energy price cap, which is the maximum amount suppliers can charge, will rise by 6.4%. This is the third consecutive quarterly increase, and a rise of 9.4% compared with the limit set the previous April, which amounts to an increase of £159 on the typical bill.

    Meanwhile, benefits such as universal credit are being increased by only 1.7%, which will mean those on low incomes will find it challenging to pay for the energy they need. The increase is so low because, every April, benefits rise in line with the rate of overall inflation for the previous September.

    State pension increases have outpaced increases to working age benefits due to “the triple lock”, which ensures annual increases are pegged to the highest of earnings growth, inflation or 2.5%. Nonetheless, the state pension is set to rise by only 4.1%.

    Combined with the loss of the winter fuel payment (at least £200 a year) for all but the poorest pensioner households, the price cap rise will especially hurt those who are just above the threshold to receive pension credit.

    People in low-paid work will fare slightly better. But still, the minimum wage rise of 6.7% for those over 21 in April 2025 will not keep pace with the 9.4% annual increase in energy prices. Essentials, such as energy, make up a greater proportion of spending for low-income households, so these price rises will have a greater impact here.

    Energy debt highest since 2012

    Energy regulator Ofgem reported those in arrears (without a repayment plan) owed an average of £1,568 for electricity and £1,324 for gas at the end of September 2024, an annual increase of 33% and 85% higher than debt levels in September 2021.

    Even for those on repayment plans, debt remains high, having risen by two-thirds since the start of 2022. Record levels of energy debt – the highest since records began in 2012 – are inflating bills for all consumers, as energy providers seek to recover the cost of debt. This situation looks set to worsen, given that this data precedes price rises since October 2024.

    Moving to a fixed rate or cheaper tariff with another supplier is not possible for those with more than 28 days unpaid energy bill debt. Households at risk of going into debt also tend to ration their energy use or self-disconnect. But living in a cold home risks damp and mould, which has severe health consequences.

    Available help is not enough

    The government is expanding the warm home discount scheme to make more households eligible for an annual payment of £150, but it is unclear at this stage who will benefit. The payment may not be enough, since price cap changes mean that from April 2025, average annual bills will be £159 more expensive. Crucially, energy debt repayments are not reflected in the government’s fuel poverty calculations.

    The government urgently needs to introduce an effective debt relief scheme.

    Ofgem has acknowledged that energy is essential for everyone and that disconnection has harmful consequences. It also recognises energy market failures prevent those with small debts from accessing better deals. The regulator recommends a debt relief fund of up to £1 billion to help vulnerable households that have been affected by the energy crisis and for suppliers to adopt consistent standards in handling and preventing debt.

    Here’s are three ways the government can protect vulnerable households.

    1. Store more energy

    Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are intermittent, so demand won’t always match supply. In a marketised energy system, that means prices will be more volatile. However, a leading cause of high bills in the last few years has been the fact that Britain’s privatised system sets electricity bills according to the wholesale price of gas, which is often the most expensive energy source.

    If the UK can create more energy storage options (such as batteries, pumped hydro and thermal storage), the grid can store excess green energy when it is abundant to use when it is needed. This would reduce price volatility and reliance on expensive gas.



    Read more:
    How gas keeps the UK’s electricity bills so high – despite lots of cheap wind power

    2. Insulate homes

    Home improvements such as insulation and draught-proofing can help people spend less on energy for heating, which accounts for most of the cost of domestic energy bills. This needs to be combined with adequate ventilation to prevent damp and mould.

    3. Cover medical energy costs

    Since late 2024, energy pricing reform has permitted tariffs without a standing charge. This is an amount you pay on your energy bill every day, regardless of whether you use any energy. The change will benefit those who spend the least on energy. However, it won’t help people whose energy needs are higher due to health conditions, or who spend more time at home.

    Older people, the disabled and those who are terminally ill will need more help, as highlighted by research I led on fuel poverty in the last year of life. Living in a cold home can exacerbate health conditions and cut lives short.

    People who are dying are more vulnerable to cold and may need to use more electricity for medical equipment. Our research found that they are more likely to be in fuel poverty. For the terminally ill, home energy-efficiency improvements take time that they don’t have. Getting work done is disruptive. What these people urgently need is help with their bills.

    End-of-life charity Marie Curie is campaigning for a social tariff which would provide cheaper energy for those who are terminally ill. It has asked the government for additional help to cover the energy costs of medical equipment, so that vulnerable people don’t fall into energy debt.

    Incomes are failing to keep pace with rising energy prices and existing schemes to help those on low incomes fall well short. This will push more people into hardship. The government must put the needs of the most vulnerable first.

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

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Elaine Robinson is a member of the Labour Party. She has received funding from Marie Curie.

    – ref. Energy bills and debt are rising yet again – here are three things that would help vulnerable households – https://theconversation.com/energy-bills-and-debt-are-rising-yet-again-here-are-three-things-that-would-help-vulnerable-households-252570

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Melsonby hoard: iron-age Yorkshire discovery reveals ancient Britons’ connections with Europe

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Duncan Garrow, Professor of Archaeology, University of Reading

    The Melsonby hoard is a remarkable collection of more than 800 iron-age metal artefacts, which was found in a field near Melsonby, North Yorkshire, in December 2021.

    Its discovery represents a triumph of cross-sector collaboration in British archaeology. This extraordinary find excavated from Yorkshire soil is not just a collection of ancient objects, but signals a need for a significant revision of how we understand iron-age Britain.

    The presence of materials imported from the Mediterranean, and a type of continental European wagon new to Britain, challenges the idea that iron-age Britons were isolated. Instead, it tell us that “wealthy” iron-age people in northern England had contacts extending out across Europe.

    This 2022 excavation, supported by a £120,000 grant from Historic England and expertise from the British Museum, revealed more than 800 items dating to the first century BC – around the time of the Roman conquest under Emperor Claudius. The objects are almost certainly associated with the Brigantes tribe who dominated northern England during this period.

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    The scale of this discovery sets it apart from typical iron-age finds. The hoard includes partial remains of at least seven four-wheeled wagons and/or two-wheeled chariots, harnesses for at least 14 horses, 28 iron tyres (many deliberately bent), three ceremonial spears and two ornate cauldrons.

    In iron-age Britain, communities regularly placed metalwork in rivers and bogs to mark significant life events, including death. The Thames has yielded deliberately deposited human skulls alongside weapons and metal objects. The Melsonby hoard can be seen as a land-based equivalent of these water deposits.

    One of the most significant aspects of this discovery is the first evidence of four-wheeled wagons used by iron-age British tribes, possibly imitating vehicles seen in continental Europe. This finding suggests that northern Britain was far from isolated, instead participating in widespread networks spanning Europe to the Mediterranean.

    The craftsmanship displayed in the hoard as whole is exceptional. Some horse harnesses feature Mediterranean coral and coloured glass, showcasing the distinctive curving patterns typical of Celtic Art. One cauldron, likely used for mixing wine, combines Mediterranean and iron age artistic styles – concrete evidence of cultural exchange between Britain and continental Europe.

    Particularly intriguing is evidence that many items were deliberately burned or broken before burial. This practice of ritually “killing” valuable objects has deep roots in British prehistory, stretching back to the bronze age. By destroying such items, iron age elites may have been demonstrating their wealth and status through conspicuous consumption.

    However, the burning might also relate to funerary practices in some way. Though no human remains were found, the objects could have been burned on a funeral pyre in a cremation ritual. This places the Melsonby hoard in an interesting position between traditional archaeological categories. It is part “hoard” (a deliberate deposit of objects) and part “grave goods” (items placed with the dead).

    This dual nature isn’t without precedent. Chariot burials are well-documented in iron-age Yorkshire, while collections of horse equipment appear in other discovered hoards. The Melsonby find might represent a combination of these traditions.

    However, we wouldn’t know about any of this if it hadn’t been for the decision of metal detectorist Peter Heads to resist unearthing the hoard himself.

    On making the discovery in December 2021, Heads immediately contacted archaeologists at Durham University, setting in motion a textbook example of proper archaeological practice. This allowed crucial contextual information that would have been lost forever had the site been disturbed without professional supervision.

    The hoard’s objects were carefully identified using scanning technology at the University of Southampton, allowing archaeologists to excavate without causing damage. This meticulous approach will enable years of productive research into these artefacts.

    Valued at £254,000, the Melsonby hoard is now the subject of a fundraising campaign by the Yorkshire Museum. A selection of objects is already on display, giving the public access to these remarkable artefacts.

    As research continues on this extraordinary find, it stands as a powerful example of how proper archaeological practice – from responsible metal detecting to collaborative, well-funded excavation – can transform our understanding of Britain’s past.

    The Melsonby hoard offers a unique window into iron-age life in Britain, challenging long-held historical assumptions about regional development and cultural sophistication.

    Duncan Garrow 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. Melsonby hoard: iron-age Yorkshire discovery reveals ancient Britons’ connections with Europe – https://theconversation.com/melsonby-hoard-iron-age-yorkshire-discovery-reveals-ancient-britons-connections-with-europe-253274

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Embracing Uncertainty: what we can all learn from how artists thrive in an unpredictable world

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Pearson, Professor of Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience, Anglia Ruskin University

    In a recent interview, the 91-year-old Trinidadian artist John Lyons described painting as “an adventure in creative uncertainty. It is a way of existing in a world we still know very little about.”

    A similar perspective forms the central theme of entrepreneur Margaret Hefferman’s latest book, Embracing Uncertainty. This is a spiritual successor to her previous book, Uncharted, which portrayed uncertainty as an inevitable aspect of modern life that should be embraced rather than controlled.

    This time Hefferman focuses on the creative industries, proposing that artists, musicians and writers constantly live with uncertainty and can still thrive in this increasingly unpredictable world.

    The book’s five core chapters are interspersed with evocative vignettes describing episodes of creative uncertainty. These include the establishment of Bristol’s Paraorchestra, a collective of disabled and non-disabled musicians led by conductor Charles Hazlewood, and director Gabriella A. Moses’s work on the film Boca Chica.

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    Hefferman argues that such seemingly disparate episodes can be linked by a shared artistic drive that approaches uncertainty with a combination of pragmatism and optimism. She concludes that applying a mindset of curiosity and flexibility is essential not just for promoting artistic endeavour, but to flourish in general.

    The book is at its most successful when advocating for the importance of viewing the arts as an essential foundation for a prosperous and healthy society – not as a frivolous and dispensable luxury. The closing chapters focusing on arts education and the role of art in politics are particularly compelling.

    Hefferman notes that arts education worldwide has suffered substantial cutbacks and marginalisation. In the UK, funding for arts, design and media courses has been decimated despite the sector contributing an estimated £126 billion to the country’s economy. In the US, arts and cultural funding is increasingly portrayed as a partisan political issue instead of a common good.

    The political belief that the sciences should be prioritised over arts education ignores the substantial evidence that they’re mutually beneficial. My career in science owes much to my involvement as a teenager in Leicestershire Youth Theatre. Led by the pioneering educator Robert Staunton, this experience taught me a creative and reflexive way of viewing human behaviour that has informed my research ever since.

    I was struck while reading the numerous accounts of creativity in this book how many would be unlikely to reach fruition today. Hefferman produced programmes for the BBC for 13 years and in one chapter, discusses the complex development of the classic 1990s TV serial Our Friends in the North. Such a uniquely British drama would struggle to secure funding in the current television landscape, dominated by international streaming services.

    Hefferman is less convincing, though, when trying to explain how creative individuals can thrive.

    In the opening chapter, she discusses the early 20th-century psychological movement of Behaviourism – which claimed that all human behaviour could be explained by mechanisms of conditioned learning. But otherwise, there is no consideration of research focused specifically on understanding human creativity.

    Rather, the overarching theme of “embracing uncertainty” is applied very broadly and conflates certain concepts. For instance, it combines divergent thinking (the ability to create multiple possible solutions to a problem) with resilience and creative flow (a highly motivating mental state associated with effortless concentration). In my view, these ideas are better considered separately.

    Bristol’s Paraorchestra features as a creative case study in the book.

    Many of the stories of creative problem-solving discussed in the book brought to my mind the pioneering work of creativity researcher Frank X. Barron in the 1960s. Barron described highly creative individuals as “more primitive and more cultured, more destructive and more constructive, occasionally crazier and yet adamantly saner than the average person”.

    Hefferman is an engaging storyteller and there is a great deal to enjoy in her accounts of how – frequently against all odds – artists succeed in producing work that reflects and changes wider society.

    This book is published at a time when the creative industries are facing unprecedented challenges worldwide. Writers, musicians and artists will certainly not thrive if the uncertainty they are forced to embrace is a lack of financial support – or the cannibalisation of their work by AI.

    Albert Einstein noted that “the greatest scientists are artists as well”. As our world faces a perfect storm of environmental, societal and economic challenges, the need to support innovation and champion persistence has seldom felt greater. The hopeful and inspiring stories portrayed in Embracing Uncertainty point the way to a more optimistic future.

    David Pearson receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.

    – ref. Embracing Uncertainty: what we can all learn from how artists thrive in an unpredictable world – https://theconversation.com/embracing-uncertainty-what-we-can-all-learn-from-how-artists-thrive-in-an-unpredictable-world-252993

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: David Blunkett: the world has changed since Liz Truss’s mini budget, so what is Labour still so scared of?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Blunkett, Chair in Politics in Practice, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield

    Much has been said about UK chancellor Rachel Reeves’ self-imposed fiscal rules, and her repeated assertion – which she included in the spring statement – that they are “non-negotiable”. Of course, this is true if you’re not prepared to listen to alternatives, but in the real world there is no set economic template with which people cannot argue.

    Put simply, the chancellor’s rules demand that day-to-day expenditure should be covered by government income at the end of the five-year economic cycle. This is what has led to the current need to cut spending – including to health and disability benefits – so drastically. The length of this cycle is determined by the government as part of their “rule”.

    All of this is predicated on the government’s belief that economic policy will be undermined if the international financial markets (including the bond markets on which governments depend for borrowing) react badly. Which, it is commonly asserted, would significantly push up the cost of borrowing. Other factors, such as US president Donald Trump’s extraordinary threats to trade, and the borrowing requirements of other countries, will also have an immediate impact.

    Underpinning all of this is the split between capital investment – spending on things like roads and hospitals – and day-to-day revenue to keep services operating.

    Therefore, the chancellor imposes rules to avoid the financial markets hitting the UK in the way they did when former prime minister Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng introduced a “mini budget”. The unfunded tax cuts it contained led to the markets losing confidence in the UK’s financial stability.

    This is the spectre at the feast. Everything being done by the present government is with the backcloth of what happened in 2022. We are, in effect, binding ourselves to a moment in time.

    Many economists disagree with the rigidity (or what is known as “Treasury orthodoxy”) about how the economy works. Leading international economist Mariana Mazzucato, along with a group of other renowned academics, published a letter in the Financial Times spelling out their concerns about the imposition of the “rules”.

    In practice, while public spending over the next two years will not be hit drastically (other than the welfare budget), the following three years will see a massive tightening of what is available for most public services. This includes local government and the criminal justice system – which have seen eye-watering cuts in previous years.

    The average 1.2% increase in departmental budgets projected over the three years from 2027 is far less than this for many government departments and for local government. This is because spending in areas such as health and for schools (but not education more broadly) are predicted to rise much more substantially.

    This is why people are starting to use the word “austerity” – they are seeing a reflection of the years between 2010-2017, when many felt that public services were decimated.

    Scorecard for government spending plans

    During that austerity period, the body known as the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) was brought in by the then-chancellor George Osborne. Now being carried through even more rigidly by Reeves, this is intended to be an independent group which “scores” the government’s likely success against its predictions. I use the word “likely”, because just three members are charged with the analysis, by the Treasury, of how successful the policy is likely to be.

    The OBR has come to have massive influence over what the government believes it can undertake, confining the options even beyond the self-imposed rules.

    Just before her spring statement, the chancellor altered the amount that would have to be saved from changes in the welfare system. This was in order to take account of the analysis by these three individuals who believed that the reforms as proposed would not achieve the savings required.

    So, we go round in a circle – with one set of economists double-checking the calculations and projected analysis of another set of economists. But they have such enormous influence that they can change government policy.

    You might believe that the OBR (being full of experts) is pretty much infallible. You would be wrong. Since its inception, it has often been wide of the mark. Even when only marginally, this has had an impact on both policy and perceptions, including by those financial markets that have such a stranglehold on nation states.

    In 2012, the OBR projected that over the five years ahead, growth would average 2.8%. In fact, it was 1.7%. In 2020, their prediction was that gross domestic product (GDP) would fall by 11.3% when in fact the drop was 9.8%. Most recently, in 2023, it projected a fall in GDP of 0.3% – which sadly turned out to be 0.8%.

    I use these stats merely to illustrate that forecasts and scorecards as to whether the government has got its sums wrong are highly subjective. For politicians to place their economic and political policies in the hands of a group of disparate individuals with their own political and economic outlook and personal experiences is, in my view, bizarre.

    This is why some of us who know about the difficulties of government from having been there, and who are not in any way dismissive of the huge power of the international markets, are challenging this economic orthodoxy.

    We are simply asking whether rigid economic respectability is truly more important than long-term investment and sustaining essential public services.

    David Blunkett is a Fellow of the Association of Social Sciences and a Labour Peer in the House of Lords.

    – ref. David Blunkett: the world has changed since Liz Truss’s mini budget, so what is Labour still so scared of? – https://theconversation.com/david-blunkett-the-world-has-changed-since-liz-trusss-mini-budget-so-what-is-labour-still-so-scared-of-253270

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Signal-gate security blunder overshadows Black Sea ceasefire

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor

    Depending on what you think of Donald Trump, his administration could fit either of the following two descriptions. Chaotic, vindictive and accident-prone, marked by mendacity, driven by impulse and bent on securing the will of the leader, rather than – as in the US constitution – the will of the people. Or it could be a government masterminded by a man playing 4D chess while all around him are playing chequers. A president whose deal-making skills and focus on outcomes ensure the security and prosperity of America and its allies.

    If you base your assessment on the people Trump has chosen as his key national security advisers then, after the recent Signal chat group intelligence debacle, you’d almost certainly opt for chaotic and accident-prone, at the very least.

    Looking around the Signal chatroom, who do we have? National security advisor Mike Waltz, Vice-President J.D. Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA director John Ratcliffe and a supporting cast of other senior Trump staffers. And, unwittingly, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg.

    Heads must roll, say Trump’s critics. But who from this hydra-headed beast should take the fall? Should it be Waltz, who invited Goldberg to the chat group? Or Hegseth, who posted operational details of a US attack, including the when, where and how, hours before it was due to take place? Should it be Vance, whose swipe at America’s freeloading European allies has caused considerable angst across the Atlantic?

    Or perhaps one or another of Gabbard and Ratcliffe, who sat in front of the Senate select committee on intelligence on Tuesday and maintained that no classified material or “war plans” had been revealed to the group – sworn evidence now revealed to be unreliable at best?

    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.

    At present it seems as if none of them are going to pay for their dangerous incompetence. Instead their ire is turned on Goldberg, who has variously been called a “sleazebag” by Trump himself, “loser” and the “bottom scum of journalists” by Waltz and a “deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again” by Hegseth.

    Robert Dover of the University of Hull, whose research centres on intelligence and national security, believes this is a “national security blunder almost without parallel”. He points to the hypocrisy of people like Hegseth who savaged Hillary Clinton for using a private email server to conduct official business when she was secretary of state under Barack Obama.

    Dover also notes the damage the episode will have done to America’s already shaky relations with its allies in Europe. Being disparaged by the vice-president as freeloaders and dismissed by the defense secretary as “pathetic”, he believes, will be “difficult to unsee”.



    Read more:
    Signal chat group affair: unprecedented security breach will seriously damage US international relations

    But credit where it’s due, it appears that US diplomacy may at least be bearing some – limited – fruit. At least, that is, if the two partial ceasefires recently negotiated between Russia and Ukraine actually materialise. That’s a fairly big if, of course. Despite a pledge by both sides that they could support a deal to avoid targeting each other’s energy infrastructure, there’s no sign yet of a cessation of attacks.

    And there has been a degree of scepticism over the recently announced plan for a maritime ceasefire to allow the free passage of shipping on the Black Sea. Critics say this favours Russia far more than Ukraine. Over the course of the war, Ukraine has successfully driven Russia’s Black Sea fleet away from its base in Crimea, giving it the upper hand in the maritime war. But maritime strategy expert, Basil Germond, says the situation is more nuanced, and the deal represents considerable upside for Ukraine as well.



    Read more:
    Russia has most to gain from Black Sea ceasefire – but it’s marginal, and Ukraine benefits too

    Setting aside America’s eventful recent forays into foreign relations, there’s a major domestic fix brewing which many US legal scholars believe could plunge the country into a constitutional crisis.

    Anne Richardson Oakes, an expert in US constitutional law at Birmingham City University, anticipates a potential clash between between the executive and the judiciary which could threaten the separation of powers that lies at the heart of American democracy.

    Oakes observes there are more than 130 legal challenges to Trump administration policies presently before the courts, some of which will end up in front of America’s highest legal authority, the Supreme Court, which is tasked with assessing the constitutionality of those policies. She warns that we’ve already seen evidence that Trump and his senior officials resent what they consider to be interference from the judiciary into the legitimate executive power of the elected president.

    Will there be a stand-off where the Trump administration simply ignores the Supreme Court’s ruling? It’s happened before, says Oakes. In the mid-20th century, in Little Rock, Arkansas, when the governor used the state’s national guard to prevent the court-ordered desegregation of public schools. On that occasion the then president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, sent in federal troops to enforce the court’s ruling and a constitutional crisis was averted.



    Read more:
    US stands on the brink of a constitutional crisis as Donald Trump takes on America’s legal system

    But what if it’s the serving president who chooses to ignore a Supreme Court ruling? This was the case in the 1830s when greedy cotton farmers in Georgia were bent on forcing the Native American peoples off their lands. The Cherokee actually took the state of Georgia to the Supreme Court, which ruled that as a “dependent nation” within the United States they were entitled to the protection of the federal government and that the state of Georgia had no right to order their removal.

    As historian Sean Lang of Anglia Ruskin University recounts, Georgia ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling and sent in troops to expel the Cherokee who were then forced to move to new lands in a journey known as the “Train of Tears”. Lang writes that then US president, Andrew Jackson, a populist advocate of states’ rights and former “Indian fighter”, ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling, “sneering that [Chief Justice John] Marshall had no means of enforcing it”.

    Lang concludes: “It’s a history lesson Greenlanders, Mexicans and Canadians – and indeed many Americans who may fall foul of this administration and seek recourse to the law – would do well to study.”



    Read more:
    Trump’s America is facing an Andrew Jackson moment – and it’s bad news for the constitution

    Trump’s chilling effect

    The Trump administration’s antipathy towards judges who have opposed its policies have extended towards those law firms who have in some way crossed the US president. But the legal system is not the only sector to feel the chilling effect of Trump’s displeasure, writes Dafydd Townley.

    The world of higher education in the US is also apprehensive after the administration went after Columbia University, home to some of the most outspoken protest over US policies towards Israel and Gaza. Columbia has recently had to agree to allow the administration to “review” some of its academic programmes, starting with its Middle Eastern studies, after the administration threatened to cancel US$400 million (£310 million) of government contracts with the university.

    The news media is also under heavy pressure. The administration has taken control of the White House press pool from the non-partisan White House Correspondents’ Association and has blackballed Associated Press for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. We’ve also seen Trump himself bring lawsuits against media organisations he judges to have crossed him. And now the president has called for the defunding of America’s two biggest public broadcasters, NPR and PBL, for what he perceives as their liberal bias.

    Townley, an expert in US politics at the University of Portsmouth is concerned that this all adds up to a deliberate attempt to cripple institutions which underwrite American democracy.



    Read more:
    Donald Trump’s ‘chilling effect’ on free speech and dissent is threatening US democracy

    Popularity falls as prices rise

    Trump’s leadership continues to be very polarising, writes Paul Whiteley, a political scientist and polling specialist at the University of Essex, who has spent years studying political trends in the US. Looking at the most recent numbers, Whiteley finds that while Trump’s approval ratings are fairly steady at 48% approval and 49% disapproval, when you dig down you find that only 6% of registered Democrats approve of his performance, while 93% disapprove. For registered Republicans it’s almost exactly the opposite.

    Whiteley takes his analysis further, looking at measures such as consumer sentiment, which has fallen sharply since January, with talk of tariffs and the return of inflation affecting people’s confidence in the economy. He points out there tends to be a fairly strong historical correlation between confidence in the economy and popular approval of a president’s performance.



    Read more:
    Three graphs that show what’s happening with Donald Trump’s popularity

    Another factor which will surely affect people’s confidence in the government are the job losses flowing from Elon Musk’s work as “efficiency tsar”. Thomas Gift, the director of the Centre on US Politics at University College London, believes that federal job losses as a result of Musk’s cuts are spread indiscriminately among Democrat and Republican states. As a result there may be some Republican voters who are experiencing what he calls “buyer’s remorse”.

    At the same time, rising inflation is flowing into the cost of living, something many people voted for Trump to punish the Democrats for. As Gift points out, both parties are experiencing a dip in support at present as people reject politics for having a generally negative effect on their lives. But from now, it’ll be the Republicans who will feel the sting of popular disapproval more keenly.



    Read more:
    Trump’s job cuts are causing Republican angst as all parties face backlash

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    – ref. Signal-gate security blunder overshadows Black Sea ceasefire – https://theconversation.com/signal-gate-security-blunder-overshadows-black-sea-ceasefire-253245

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How Shakespeare can help us put meaning back in money

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Paul Yachnin, Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies, McGill University

    From greed for resources and money to technology run amok and a politics of domination, hatred and fear of others, our world sometimes seems to be on a course of assured destruction.

    How can our society not only avert disaster, but move toward a better path forward, driven not only by money-making (the accumulation of wealth, power and status), but also by meaning-making (the search for deeper purpose for ourselves in community with others and with the natural world)?

    As scholars who have respectively studied Shakespeare and health and economics — along with a team of thinkers in economics, health policy, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and a number of theatre and literary artists and humanities scholars — we’re building a project called Reimagining Shakespeare, Remaking Modern World Systems.

    Shakespeare and the arts can help researchers see the way toward new ways of thinking through our period of massive disruption, especially since the world in Shakespeare’s time, like our world now, was riven by social, political, ecological and epidemic crises.



    Read more:
    After the plague, Shakespeare imagined a world saved from poison, slander and the evil eye

    Making meaning with audiences

    Why Shakespeare? In some ways, Shakespeare was the Jeff Bezos of his time.

    Unlike the billionaire entrepreneur Bezos, who founded Amazon and is now its executive chair, Shakespeare didn’t sell everything under the sun. However, like Bezos, who innovated new ways of packaging stories for people via books and movies, for example, Shakespeare repackaged existing stories and authored plays as a leader of the creation of a new money-making industry.

    Shakespeare’s new industry was different from TV streaming in important ways. Theatre, which fosters real-time, embodied and collective experiences, never operates on a one-way supplier-to-buyer axis.

    Shakespeare’s theatre made money — he became a wealthy man — but his theatre always also made meaning in collaboration with its audiences, educating playgoers and stimulating conversations about about state politics, money and power and about the care of other people and of the natural world.

    Shakespeare as social entrepreneur

    Shakespeare was a social entrepreneur whose work strengthened the convergence of money-making and meaning-making. Shakespeare showed all kinds of people how they might play creatively with the systems that ruled their world.

    Shakespeare didn’t dismantle the systems, but what the characters in the plays say and do opens up fissures in those systems that invite characters like Rosalind in As You Like It or Imogen in Cymbeline to wriggle through, toward the possible restoration of freedom that allows them to do things differently.

    The divine right of kings was the foundation of the political system in Shakespeare’s time.

    In Richard II, John of Gaunt says to the Duchess of Gloucester that there is nothing he can do to avenge the murder of her husband (King Richard’s uncle) because while the king orchestrated the murder, he is above the law.

    Shakespeare’s play, which dramatizes the history of the deposition and assassination of King Richard, does not dismantle the system of monarchy as it stood in Shakespeare’s time — the divine right of kings remains in place. But it dramatizes how the characters are able to do what they need to do for the good of the state by finding their way through the cracks in the political system.

    Recognition of mortality

    Theatrical art like Shakespeare’s also leads us away from the fatuous life goal of the endless accumulation of wealth.

    In King Lear, Shakespeare shows us how money-making can become divorced utterly from meaning-making and how money and meaning have to be brought back into convergence. At the start, Lear is wedded to wealth, power and prestige.

    Even his daughters are required to declare publicly their worshipful love and loyalty to him. By virtue of his uncrowning, the suffering that follows for him, and his recognition of his own mortality, he learns to see other people as people, including his truly loving daughter Cordelia. He also learns how his meaningfulness as a man can come back to him only once he embraces the equitable distribution of resources among all the people of Britain.

    Not that Shakespeare is the only one offering insights into how to address the multiple crises that the world is facing. Many others have brought forward new ideas about how to “green” the world of finance or how to restore human values to a sense of value calculated exclusively in monetary terms.

    But something more is needed now to move us toward a healthier and more just future, and the makers of art are the ones who can provide it.

    Money poisonous when ill-used

    Consider one moment from Shakespeare’s play, Timon of Athens. The once fabulously wealthy Timon has squandered money on scores of men whom he thought were friends. Here the character Flavius distributes the money he has saved from his employment as Timon’s steward to the other household servants, all of them now unemployed.

    He insists that they take their share, and he reflects on the poisonous power of money when it is not used to support meaningful community:

    Good fellows all,

    The latest of my wealth I’ll share amongst you.

    Let each take some;

    Nay, put out all your hands—not one word more:

    (The servants embrace, and part several ways)

    O, the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us!

    Who would not wish to be from wealth exempt,

    Since riches point to misery and contempt?

    Who would be so mock’d with glory? or to live

    But in a dream of friendship?

    In Timon, Shakespeare shows us that money must not be stripped of a search for a meaningful life in community with others. Money without meaning conjures a mere dream of friendship, a fantasy world that must finally give way to a reality of misery and contempt.

    If that is what we want, bring on the dollars — so much money, we won’t know where to spend it all — and away with art!

    By bringing Shakespeare into conversations about finance, health, climate and AI, our research collaboration aims to help change the prevailing rationale of western modernity that positions money-making as the core driver of individual and collective progress.

    Paul Yachnin receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.

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

    – ref. How Shakespeare can help us put meaning back in money – https://theconversation.com/how-shakespeare-can-help-us-put-meaning-back-in-money-250903

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why it’s a critical time for Canada to renew its commitment to global health co-operation

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kelley Lee, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Health Governance; Scientific Director, Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society, Simon Fraser University

    As the United States moves to end longstanding commitments to global health co-operation — punctuated by its withdrawal from World Health Organization (WHO) — a new report by the joint Expert Panel of the Royal Society of Canada and Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, which we co-chaired, offers guidance on how Canada can strategically position itself in this fast-changing context.

    Traditionally, Canada has taken pride in being a good global health citizen through distinct contributions as a middle power. Active participation in multilateral institutions such as the WHO, close co-operation with like-minded states and research partnerships led by low- and middle-income countries have defined Canada’s global health brand.

    Since the early 2000s, Canada has also initiated and funded major initiatives on reproductive, maternal and child health, nutrition and the control of infectious diseases. The International Development Research Centre and Grand Challenges Canada, alongside researchers and civil society organizations, have generated further tangible benefits for the health and well-being of populations worldwide, while also elevating Canada’s standing on the world stage.

    Pandemic stress test

    However, the COVID-19 pandemic has since triggered seismic changes in the global health landscape. The pandemic itself stress-tested Canada’s global health role, earning the country mixed reviews.

    While the federal government provided billions of dollars to collectively fight SARS-CoV-2, through initiatives such as the COVAX Facility and ACT-Accelerator (Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator), these important contributions were overshadowed by Canada’s failure to champion global vaccine equity. Rather than bringing countries together, the pandemic prompted many to prioritize national interests.

    Since the end of the emergency phase, governments have struggled to agree to a pandemic treaty and there has been a shift in attention to other pressing needs. Calls to decolonize global health have instead been met with a decline in financial commitments by the U.S. and other donor countries.

    This concerning shift in the global health landscape signals an important need for Canada to reflect on its role in global health. Key findings of our panel’s report directly challenge the outdated notion that global health is simply about development assistance.

    Instead, we identify where domestic and global health needs intersect in an interconnected world of shared risks and opportunities. We conclude that domestic health and well-being cannot be advanced without a robust commitment to global health co-operation. The key is to urgently identify these win-wins as points of navigation in an era of what’s known as polycrisis.

    Priority issues

    To renew Canada’s global health role, the panel identifies four priority issue areas that bring together domestic and global health needs:

    • Champion an accelerated and equity-focused universal health coverage strategy with particular emphasis on primary care and the rights of women and girls;

    • Advance a One Health security approach to pandemic readiness that emphasizes the interconnectedness of all life, need for primary prevention and central importance of sustainability and equity; spans upstream risks as well as downstream preparedness and response measures; and builds core capacities such as a standing emergency workforce;

    • Renew Canadian leadership in health promotion and protection by advancing a well-being economy focused on serving people and the planet, rather than the generation of wealth as an end goal; and prevents the harms and promotes the benefits from for-profit businesses, their activities and the economic systems that sustain them, known as the commercial determinants of health;

    • Initiate a Canadian Emergency Workforce for Health Innovation Program to urgently tackle the domestic and global health workforce crisis including a commitment to zero poaching of international health-care workers by 2035.

    Taking action

    Microscopic view of H5N1 avian influenza particles. The growing threat from highly pathogenic avian flu offers a clear example of how a retreat from global health co-operation directly weakens the capacity of all countries to protect domestic populations.
    (CDC and NIAID), CC BY

    The panel recommends that three strategic actions are needed to take forward these priority issue areas:

    • A Canadian Global Health Strategy that sets out a renewed rationale for global health engagement, key priorities for federal, provincial/territorial and local levels of government, targeted investments and clear metrics to monitor progress;

    • A coherent and targeted plan to bolster public and private investments in science and innovation for critical priorities such as the health workforce, One Health Security, along with research capacity in Indigenous communities and the developing world; and

    • A commitment to ensuring Canadian capacity to engage in global health decision-making, diplomacy and partnerships through the appointment of a Global Health Ambassador; establishment of a Canadian Global Health Hub (CG2H) that brings together available expertise, talent and resources; and a training program for our next-generation of leaders.

    The growing threat from highly pathogenic avian influenza and the health impacts of climate change are looming examples of how a retreat from global health co-operation at this time would directly weaken Canada’s capacity to protect health and well-being at home.

    From the World Health Organization’s tracking of the ever-changing influenza virus to the rapid development and deployment of medical countermeasures and the joint tackling of the causes of global warming, a retreat behind national borders makes little sense. Building on a storied history of engagement that supersedes partisan politics, there is no time to lose for Canada to strategically renew its role in global health.

    Kelley Lee receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, New Frontiers in Research Fund, Canadian Biomedical Research Fund, Canada Foundation for Innovation, and British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

    Tim Evans is a Board member of the not-for-profit group CanWaCH.

    – ref. Why it’s a critical time for Canada to renew its commitment to global health co-operation – https://theconversation.com/why-its-a-critical-time-for-canada-to-renew-its-commitment-to-global-health-co-operation-251894

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The world is in crisis – what role should our universities play?

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Vinita Srivastava, Host + Exec. Producer, Don’t Call Me Resilient | Senior Editor, Culture + Society

    It’s hard not to categorize our present global moment as a crisis. And just when we think things can’t get worse — they do.

    Across the globe, we’re witnessing a rise in far-right movements and governments.

    Just a few weeks ago, the AfD party in Germany secured second place. This marks the first time a far-right party has gained this level of power in the country since the Second World War. Germany is not alone in this trend: Italy, Hungary, Finland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Croatia are now led by far-right governments.

    And it may come as no surprise that many of these new leaders are increasingly hostile towards universities.

    In India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, universities have the lowest academic freedom since the 1940s. In Brazil, former president Jair Bolsonaro claimed that public universities transform students into leftists, gays, drug addicts and perverts.

    Meanwhile in the United States, Vice President JD Vance has called universities the enemy for allegedly teaching that America is “an evil, racist nation.” (Vance was echoing President Richard Nixon who called professors and the press the enemy. President Donald Trump even signed an executive order demanding higher education institutions dismantle their DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) programs. He’s also pulled federal funding from universities that allow “illegal protests”, and he’s demanded that Columbia University’s Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Departments be independently reviewed.

    But, despite this hostility, universities — and students — have historically been springboards for progressive change. It was student protests 25 years ago that helped lead to the downfall of apartheid in South Africa. More recently, in Bangladesh, student protests helped topple the country’s authoritarian leader. This past year, students across the world have worked to raise public awareness of acts of genocide in Gaza.

    Meanwhile, here in Canada, universities are facing financial pressure because of reductions in international student permits. This drop in revenue has caused alarming budget constraints at universities, revealing a deep reliance on international students as a revenue source.

    This has led to existential questions about our universities. With today’s world in crisis, what should the role of the university be? And why are our public universities so underfunded? And how can they continue to serve their communities?

    Theses are big questions, ones that seemed fitting to tackle on our final episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient recorded live in front of an audience at the University of British Columbia. Joining us to tackle them was Annette Henry, a professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at UBC who is cross-appointed to the Institute for Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice. Her work examines race, class, language, gender and culture in education for Black students and educators in Canada.

    We also spoke with Michelle Stack, an associate professor in UBC’s Department of Educational Studies whose work looks at educational policy, university rankings and equity and education.

    At a time when critical conversations in higher education are under attack worldwide, can Canadian universities rise to the challenge and be a force for good?

    Read more:

    Universities should stand up for integrity and public trust in university teaching

    How Commonwealth universities profited from Indigenous dispossession through land grants

    Universities should respond to cuts and corporate influence with co-operative governance

    Cops on campus: Why police crackdowns on student protesters are so dangerous

    Student protests: How the university perpetuates colonial violence on campus

    This episode was coproduced by Ateqah Khaki (associate producer), Marisa Sittheeamorn (student journalist) and Jennifer Moroz (consulting producer). Our sound engineer was Alain Derbez, with onsite assistance from Josh Mattson. Thank you to UBC’s Global Journalism Innovation Lab and its crew, The UBC School of Journalism and the Social Science Research Council of Canada for their generous support.

    – ref. The world is in crisis – what role should our universities play? – https://theconversation.com/the-world-is-in-crisis-what-role-should-our-universities-play-250235

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The anti-Andrew Tate: how youth workers can counteract the impact of masculinity influencers

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amanda Dylina Morse, Research Fellow, Queen’s University Belfast

    defotoberg/Shutterstock

    Andrew Tate – online content creator, podcaster, former kickboxer, and subject of ongoing human trafficking investigations – has gained widespread influence with millions of men and boys. Tate promotes financial independence, being “mentally and physically strong,” and being successful with women, interspersed with (sometimes violent) misogyny.

    For my PhD research, I worked with 30 boys and young men aged between 16 and 19 from working-class backgrounds in Belfast, researching on the role of social connection to protect mental health. In the interviews I carried out, Tate’s name came up constantly.

    I found that almost all the participants had positive or mixed feelings about him. Even those less certain of him appreciated his financial advice or advocacy for men’s mental health. While other masculinity influencers were also mentioned, none achieved the same level of importance.

    But I also found that youth workers emerged as powerful counters, acting as “anti-Andrew Tate” figures and providing a positive example of manhood. This shows that, while the influence of online figures may seem unstoppable, we already have role models in our communities who can demonstrate an alternative version of what a man can be and how he should act with others.

    Looking for connection

    In their interviews, the young men spoke passionately about their enthusiasm for Andrew Tate and valued his advocacy for “traditional” manhood, including the classical ideal of a “strong mind in a strong body”. While none of the boys and young men endorsed Tate’s misogyny, they struggled to balance their discomfort with calling women property against his perceived valuable messages.

    I agree with some of the stuff he says, but not everything he says. So, with some of the stuff he says about men’s mental health, if you go to the gym, it can help, and eat well, that… all the stuff around men’s mental health, I believe in. But just some of the stuff he says about women being property and stuff like that, I don’t really properly agree with.

    The boys and young men drew a parallel between Tate’s childhood poverty and their own. They sometimes assigned Tate unexpectedly altruistic intentions in his targeting of young men desperate to attain financial security.

    All the controversial things that he says, I think he only said that to get himself a platform, so people would tune into him… More and more people listen to him. And he’s making more and more money. And he’s like, putting that money into his university, trying to help more people and then he promotes mental health and all. I think it’s brilliant like.

    Most of the people in my research had histories of substance use and violence at the boundaries between Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods from a young age. For them, these challenging experiences were their entry into the youth work organisations which mentored them to build skills in emotional literacy, forecast the consequences of unsafe or unhealthy behaviour, and build community cohesion through acts of service.

    Relatable and non-judgmental

    For the boys and young men I worked with, their youth workers were like them – working-class men from their own communities with shared experiences of socioeconomic deprivation, exposure to paramilitary violence, and early substance use. Those parallels made them trustworthy and relatable.

    Youth workers can provide a non-judgmental listening ear.
    ingkaninant/Shutterstock

    The youth workers offered a confidential, nonjudgmental ear for their mentees, without the same risk of consequences for bad behaviour. For instance, telling a youth worker about having used drugs at the weekend wouldn’t lead to the lecture or loss of privileges that telling a parent or teacher might.

    I just think that, you know, at a young age, it’s important, em, young men get to know that there is that supportive people that can turn to even if they haven’t got, you know, a lot of friends or any friends. But I just think that, you know, like, I’ve got the opportunity of the youth club and the youth groups.

    In contrast to the version of masculine success Tate presents, youth workers usually had a home in the neighbourhood, played sports recreationally, and were establishing their families through marriage and having children. My study participants admired the stability their youth workers demonstrated in this more attainable – but still aspirational – version of adult manhood.

    When asked what kind of man they wanted to be as an adult, most of them described the sort of success their youth workers had achieved, rather than a version closer to Tate’s.

    The boys and young men I worked with said that youth service organisations were supportive spaces. They credited them with both improvements to their mental health and with giving them strategies to avoid engagement in sectarian violence. Some participants were so moved by their engagement with youth workers that they were themselves training in the profession.

    Despite strong evidence for their value, youth services are consistently underfunded. But they represent an opportunity to invest in the health of both young men and their communities.

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

    – ref. The anti-Andrew Tate: how youth workers can counteract the impact of masculinity influencers – https://theconversation.com/the-anti-andrew-tate-how-youth-workers-can-counteract-the-impact-of-masculinity-influencers-252786

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: With 23andMe filing for bankruptcy, what happens to consumers’ genetic data?

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Julia Creet, Professor of English, York University, Canada

    23andMe has filed for bankruptcy, raising questions about future ownership of the genetic data of its 15 million customers. (Shutterstock)

    The announcement that 23andMe is filing for bankruptcy and has put its genetic genealogy database up for sale has sent its customers into a bit of a privacy tizzy. On March 21, California Attorney General Bob Bonta issued a consumer alert with detailed instructions about how to delete one’s data.

    23andMe and its databases are located in California; regardless of where customers live, privacy is then governed by California law and some weak U.S. federal laws. Canadian privacy laws have no sway in this case.

    CBC’s The National provides information to customers looking to delete their genetic data from the 23andMe databases.

    Rise of consumer genetic testing

    It’s worth backing up a bit to see how 23andMe built its brand, what makes the database valuable and who might be in the market to buy the database if Anne Wojcicki, its founder, is unsuccessful in her bid to buy back the company herself.

    I have been studying the development of the industry of family history for the last 20 years. Genetic genealogy rose to prominence in the early 2000s, with the development of the science and early databases by committed genealogists and the market demand for locating ancestors.



    Read more:
    The mythical quest for our ancestors is big business

    23andMe’s innovation was to use this burgeoning lust for ancestors as a way to build a new kind of direct-to-consumer database, one that looked at inherited markers for diseases afforded by the potent combination of genetic and genealogical information.

    They weren’t the first to hit on this idea. deCODE Genetics in Iceland had already built a national database of braided genealogical and genetic information for the same purpose. Within 10 years, it too went bankrupt and sold its database.

    Ahead of government

    23andMe was the first to market the idea in North America when Wojcicki founded the company in 2006.

    Wojcicki claimed a high mission: to liberate health information from the hands of the medical industry and put it directly into the hands of consumers. Her business model made it clear that the direct-to-consumer genetics industry was always in the business of doing an end run around government and university databases that were governed by much stricter privacy laws.

    23andMe ran into trouble with the FDA in 2013 for providing medical information without any medical supervision, a wrinkle that took two years for the company to iron out. But the more lucrative end of the business was always the sale of the accumulated data to the pharmaceutical industry.

    23andMe pitched its research arm as the greater good, and 80 per cent of its consumers opted in to share their information for research purposes. The database has always been monetized for secondary uses. In its profile of 23andMe in 2017, Nature quoted cardiologist Euan Ashley at Stanford University, California: “They have quietly become the largest genetic study the world has ever known.”

    A rapid unravelling

    Five years ago, the company and the genetic genealogy industry as a whole started to unravel almost as quickly and precipitously as it had risen. Sales of direct-to-consumer genetic genealogy kits plummeted, given a combination of privacy concerns and market saturation.

    The advent of law enforcement incursions into genetic genealogy databases gave consumers a fright, and woke them up to the possible unanticipated third-party uses of commercial databases.

    Almost a decade later, governments are still trying to figure out how to set up guardrails on the use of genealogy databases for law enforcement, a practice that has become widespread across the U.S. and Canada.

    Currently, the Information and Privacy Office of Ontario is actively working to develop regulations that are acceptable to all stakeholders since, once again, the greater good argument of catching cold-case killers holds considerable sway over the right to privacy of consumers.

    Nonetheless, the issue of third-party uses has had a marked effect on the popularity of what seemed like a benign pastime, the search for ever-more-distant relations.

    Industry expansion

    Over the years, 23andMe expanded by buying health services and pharmaceutical holding companies. But in 2023, a massive data breach exposed the vulnerabilities of the company, particularly its genealogical information.



    Read more:
    23andMe’s struggles are a sign that direct-to-consumer DNA testing needs stronger oversight

    In addition to the 1.5 million users whose profiles were breached, hackers accessed the personal information of about 5.5 million people who opted in to 23andMe’s DNA Relatives feature.

    Stolen data included customers’ names, birth years, relationship labels, percentage of DNA shared with relatives, ancestry reports and self-reported locations.

    Fully a third of 23andMe’s users’ genealogical information had been scraped by the hackers. And here we see the real vulnerability in the entire industry: Anyone who has submitted a DNA sample and built family connections has exposed everyone in their family line.

    This seems to be a classic case of closing the barn door after the horses have already bolted.

    Like 23andMe, deCODE was a high flier in the genetics space having built a genealogical database that included almost all Icelanders, who invested heavily in the company. The company went bankrupt during the financial crisis of 2008, and it sold its database to American pharmaceutical company Amgen. Amgen in turn sold part of it to a Chinese company.

    Corporate dealings

    So who are the likely buyers for 23andMe?

    Wojcicki herself, if she can somehow raise the capital, which seems unlikely. Any big pharmaceutical company, including international buyers (in 2018, 23andMe signed a US$300 million deal with GlaxoSmithKline). Chinese biotechnology company BGI might well bid on the company, as China is seemingly on a mission to collect DNA from around the globe.

    Other potential buyers include: Google, who were early investors and thus already part owners; Ancestry.com, which, with its own genetic genealogy testing arm, would make it one of the of the largest privately held genetic genealogy databases in the world; and an outlier, Dutch life sciences firm Qiagen.

    Qiagen acquired California-based forensic genomics company Verogen in 2023. Verogen had previously acquired the geneaology database GEDmatch (one of the earliest grassroots ancestor DNA matching sites) for the purposes of creating a one-stop forensics genealogy shop for law enforcement.

    Changing privacy

    Each time a database is sold, privacy provisions are subject to change. Even though Wojcicki is promising to protect the privacy of costumers currently in the database, she might not have much control in the long run.

    So what should 23andMe’s customers do? Should they delete what data they can? Absolutely. Will it make much difference in the end? Probably not.

    What is now manifestly apparent is that the industry of direct-to-consumer genetics has far outpaced the ability of governments to regulate the information, so consumers are suddenly nervous.

    We should have paid attention at the very beginning of this dubious exercise in the privatization of personal data. Now we have to live with all that relatedness as a valuable commodity over which we have little say.

    Julia Creet receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada and previously from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

    – ref. With 23andMe filing for bankruptcy, what happens to consumers’ genetic data? – https://theconversation.com/with-23andme-filing-for-bankruptcy-what-happens-to-consumers-genetic-data-253071

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Russia has most to gain from Black Sea ceasefire – but it’s marginal, and Ukraine benefits too

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Basil Germond, Professor of International Security, Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster University

    A maritime ceasefire deal to allow the safe passage of ships and end the use of force in the Black Sea could soon come into effect. Brokered over the past two weeks by the United States and agreed to by both Russia and Ukraine, it has immediately raised concerns that it could mainly benefit Russia.

    Indeed, at first sight, since Ukraine has had the upper hand in the Black Sea for the past two years, the ceasefire seems to not only benefit Russia but also undermine Ukraine’s strategic advantage at sea.

    But a more careful assessment of the naval situation in the Black Sea, balanced against possible diplomatic gains, reveals a more nuanced picture.

    Benefits for Russia

    There are obvious benefits for Russia. First and foremost, the ceasefire deal will improve Moscow’s access to the global grain and fertiliser market and possibly soften western sanctions on payment systems and access to ports to enable that.

    In addition to the expected economic benefits, the deal would also enable the Kremlin’s propaganda machine to claim that Russia cares – as Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov insisted – “about the food security situation in Africa and other countries of the global south”.

    In military terms, Black Sea fleet commanders will be happy to know that the remainder of their naval assets might be safe at last. The deal is also likely to prevent Ukraine from any attempt to destroy the strategically and symbolically important Kerch bridge linking occupied Crimea with Russia.

    Concessions by Russia

    Russia has almost nothing to lose operationally, since its remaining surface warships could not operate safely in the northwestern Black Sea and were thus stuck most of the time in ports as far away from Ukraine as possible.

    One concession may be that Russia pauses any submarine-launched cruise missile attacks on Ukraine. But this activity has been limited of late. So, with the clear economic and diplomatic benefits this deal represents in return for very limited military concessions, Russia appears as the logical winner of this deal – at least at first sight.

    Benefits for Ukraine

    Ukraine will certainly also benefit from cheaper and safer access to the global markets (insurance premiums are expected to fall considerably, for a start). And Kyiv will be able to use the time bought by the ceasefire to procure more drones and missiles that might be used later if naval operations against the Russian Black Sea fleet eventually resume.

    At the same time, the Russian navy cannot be reinforced as long as the Turkish Straits remain closed to warships under the Montreux Convention. Ukraine’s upper hand in the Black Sea is a result of its efficient use of asymmetrical weapons, such as drones and missiles, that can be stockpiled. But Russia’s Black Sea fleet remains depleted and vulnerable because it has been unable to repair or replace any of its warships, due mainly to the closure of the Turkish Straits passage mentioned above.



    Read more:
    What the Montreux Convention is, and what it means for the Ukraine war

    On the diplomatic front, this ceasefire enables Kyiv to show that they have made major concessions. This is a show of goodwill, and a clever way to appease the US president, Donald Trump, for whom the importance of being able to announce he has made progress towards an overall ceasefire is central. And all these benefits can be obtained at a limited cost.

    Concessions by Ukraine

    Ukraine will not lose key operational or strategic options as a result of the deal, since at the moment there is only a limited war going on at sea – given that Russia has largely been forced out and has moved its fleet east from Sevastopol to ports on the Russian mainland. In fact, Ukraine had already achieved almost everything realistically possible in the Black Sea. The ceasefire does not now cancel these achievements, since Russia is also prevented from attacking Ukraine from the sea.

    Peace in the Black Sea. But how long will it last?
    Peter Hermes Furian/Shutterstock

    Overall, the fact that this initial step toward a lasting peace agreement has been achieved at sea is testament to Ukraine’s upper hand in the maritime domain as well as the efficiency of western sanctions in cutting Russia off from the global maritime supply chain.

    Moscow is the winner but Kyiv is not a loser

    Based on the above assessment of the benefits and concessions in light of the naval situation in the Black Sea, both Russia and Ukraine benefit from the ceasefire – although this is indeed less obvious in the case of Ukraine.

    Kyiv can consider it a success because Ukraine has nothing substantial to pay or lose. In contrast it gets the ball rolling towards a bigger deal and – most importantly – it keeps the Trump administration onside. Putin can also assess himself to have won because of the direct economic and diplomatic gains Russia gets from the deal.

    It’s probably correct to say that Russia has gained more than Ukraine from this agreement – but the reality is more nuanced. The ball is now in Russia’s camp. If it violates any condition of the deal (and the level of trust in Moscow’s goodwill remains low), it will discredit the Kremlin’s diplomacy and anger Trump. And neither side wants to do that right now.

    Basil Germond 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. Russia has most to gain from Black Sea ceasefire – but it’s marginal, and Ukraine benefits too – https://theconversation.com/russia-has-most-to-gain-from-black-sea-ceasefire-but-its-marginal-and-ukraine-benefits-too-253165

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Uncorking the past: new analysis of Troy findings rewrites the story of wine in the early bronze age

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephan Blum, Research associate, Institute for Prehistory and Early History and Medieval Archaeology, University of Tübingen

    Depas amphikypellon from Schliemann’s excavations at Troy. Institute of Classical Archaeology at the University of Tübingen/Valentin Marquardt, CC BY-SA

    Wine drinking in ancient Troy was not restricted to the upper classes, as has long been supposed – something our new research has established for the first time. Colleagues at the University of Tübingen and I have discovered that wine was also enjoyed by the common folk, independent of upper-class celebrations and religious rituals.

    In the late 19th century, German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) excavated the ancient city of Troy. He was hoping to discover the residence of Priam, the king of the city besieged by the Greek army under Agamemnon, as immortalised by Homer in the Iliad.

    Among Schliemann’s most outstanding achievements was – alongside the identification of the site of Troy itself – undoubtedly the discovery of the so-called “treasure of Priam”.

    The find included several hundred gold and silver objects. But during his excavations, Schliemann was captivated by a more humble item mentioned in the Iliad – the depas amphikypellon (two-handed drinking cup). He discovered numerous cylindrical, double-handled goblets thought to be the cup mentioned in the epic tale.

    Schliemann believed the vessels had been used either for ritual wine offerings to the Olympian gods or, more likely, by the royal elite for drinking. The characteristic double handles, he suggested, allowed the vessels to be passed easily between participants seated next to each other.

    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.

    Despite fierce opposition to many of his interpretations in contemporary archaeological research, Schliemann’s hypotheses on the drinking customs of the early bronze age elite have become an enduring narrative.

    Further archaeological excavations at Troy (in modern Turkey) were led by the University of Tübingen between 1987 and 2012. Since then, my colleagues and I have been analysing the results, focusing on architectural findings and the vast array of artefacts uncovered.

    Over time, scientific methods have played an increasingly important role, with a particular focus on the analysis of organic residues in vessels (ORA). This method has proven particularly valuable, as it provides insights into what the early bronze-age inhabitants of Troy prepared in their cooking pots and enjoyed from their drinking vessels.

    Drilling into Troy’s wine culture

    Excavations over the past 150 years have shown that use of the two-handed drinking cup spanned from Greece in the west to Mesopotamia in the east.

    The silver example from the British Museum, found near Troy.
    The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-SA

    They were produced in various forms between BC2500 and 2000. Likely inspired by now-lost metal prototypes, except for one silver example in the British Museum, these ceramic vessels were often made on the potter’s wheel, a technological innovation introduced from the near east during this period.

    Many of the double-handled goblets have been found not only in settlements but also in graves. This is an indicator of their special significance in cult and ritual. Written sources also suggest that wine was regarded as particularly precious during this time, though these are generally from distant geographical regions. It has therefore been inferred that only the social elite, through their control of long-distance trade, had access to it.

    For many inland and eastern Anatolian settlements, this may have been true. However, Troy, like many other sites in the Aegean and western Asia Minor, was located in a region particularly favourable for the cultivation of wine, which means it would have been more widely available.

    So it’s hardly surprising that two-handed vessels have been found not only in Troy’s fortified citadel with its monumental buildings, but also in areas of the outer settlement. It led us to wonder – does this mean that farmers, craftsmen and others could also consume it on special occasions, or even in their daily lives?

    To address this question, it was first necessary to prove scientifically that the goblets were actually used for drinking wine. Just because they might seem suitable for it doesn’t provide proof. To this end, two fragments from the collections of the Institute of Classical Archaeology in Tübingen were analysed for organic residues by Dr Maxime Rageot.

    Two grams of ceramic material was drilled from the inner walls of the vessel, and the collected ceramic powder was then treated with solvents to extract lipid and resin compounds. After further chemical processing, these were heated to a maximum of 380°C and then analysed. Several aldaric acids were identified in both specimens. Namely, succinic, fumaric, pyruvic, malic and – in significant quantities – tartaric acids.

    The latter can be interpreted as a grape marker, since such concentrations are not documented in other fruits available in the Mediterranean. The identification of succinic and pyruvic acids, commonly associated with fermentation markers, suggests the presence of wine (or vinegar) derived from ripe grapes.

    So Schliemann was right: the depas amphikypellon was certainly used for wine consumption. Whether this was tied to religious practices, rituals and public banqueting, or simply drinking wine as part of everyday life, remains uncertain.

    However, when it comes to who consumed it, our analysis results necessitate a correction of the conventional archaeological perspective. It seems that not only the elite enjoyed drinking wine – but also the common folk. For a counter-test, two simple cups, commonly found by the hundreds in early bronze-age Troy, were also sampled. The results were striking: the exact same organic residues were identified in both specimens.

    Wine for all?

    In archaeology, it is often the seemingly insignificant small finds that, when viewed in a broader context, have a profound impact. Based on organic residues –imperceptible to the naked eye and detectable only at a molecular level – the role of wine consumption in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC must be fundamentally reconsidered, at least in the case of Troy.

    Here, wine was far from being reserved solely for the rich and powerful. The two-handed depas amphikypellon wasn’t a status symbol for the elite – it was a widely appreciated drinking vessel. Furthermore, for everyday drinking, it seems any type of vessel would do, with no particular one set aside for the task.

    Whether and to what extent a shift in perspective can be expected at other sites of the Aegean and Anatolian early bronze age can, of course, only be definitively answered through comparable biomolecular analyses. After all, as in so many cases, it wouldn’t be surprising if Troy turned out to be the exception that challenges the norm.

    Stephan Blum 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. Uncorking the past: new analysis of Troy findings rewrites the story of wine in the early bronze age – https://theconversation.com/uncorking-the-past-new-analysis-of-troy-findings-rewrites-the-story-of-wine-in-the-early-bronze-age-252953

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Coffee enemas probably won’t detox your system – they’re more likely to cause you serious damage

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dipa Kamdar, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice, Kingston University

    AJR_photo/Shutterstock

    What do King Charles and Gwyneth Paltrow have in common? Give up? They’ve both at one point or another caused coffee colonic-related controversies.

    In a 2004 speech to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists on complementary therapies and cancer care, the then Prince of Wales’s comments on Gerson therapy – a health programme, marketed as an alternative treatment for cancer, that includes regular coffee enemas as a way to clear toxins from the body – seemed to endorse the unproven regimen. The prince’s opinion drew criticism from medical experts.

    Wellness influencer Gwyneth Paltrow, on the other hand, promoted a DIY coffee enema kit on Goop, her lifestyle website – again drawing criticism from specialists who urged Goop fans to “keep the coffee out of your rectum and in your cup”.



    Read more:
    Gwyneth Paltrow’s new Goop Lab is an infomercial for her pseudoscience business

    Despite the expert critique, coffee enemas continue to be a social media wellness trend offered in many alternative health clinics as a method to cleanse the colon and detoxify the body. More worryingly, coffee enemas are still recommended by some influencers as an alternative treatment for cancer and other serious illnesses.

    So, why does the popularity of this controversial trend persist despite the bad press? Do the benefits of a coffee enema outweigh the risks?

    An enema clears the bowel of faecal matter. Usually, the procedure involves inserting a nozzle attached to a pouch containing fluid into the rectum so the liquid can be squeezed in. In conventional medicine, enemas are used to clear the bowel before surgery, for severe cases of constipation or sometimes as part of a bowel management scheme – in people with inflammatory bowel diseases, for example.

    It’s claimed by some coffee enema advocates that, before the advent of modern painkillers, Florence Nightingale used coffee enemas as a form of pain management in soldiers during the Crimean War, and doctors used them in the second world war.

    Gerson therapy

    But despite the advances in medicine and technology since Nightingale was nursing injured soldiers, coffee enemas continue to be promoted as a health practice.

    Gerson therapy continues to be highly publicised as an alternative option to chemotherapy. Patients follow a strict organic vegetarian diet, which can include up to 13 glasses of fruit juice and up to five coffee enemas daily.



    Read more:
    Apple Cider Vinegar: how social media gave rise to fraudulent wellness influencers like Belle Gibson

    The Gerson Institute claims the enemas can increase gut movement which helps to empty bowels. Coffee enemas are believed to help the body expel toxins from the liver and gut, which is thought to relieve pain.

    Coffee contains compounds kahweol and cafestol, thought to boost an enzyme which helps remove harmful substances from the body. These substances are turned into bile salts and expelled from the body. The caffeine in coffee is thought to stimulate the liver and widen the bile ducts to increase the flow of bile and help remove toxins.

    Several studies show there is no evidence to prove this regime works to cure cancer and it is not supported by any reputable cancer organisations. But it’s possible the placebo effect might help some patients feel better. A review showed there were more reports about the side effects of coffee enemas than their efficacy. Some people, for instance, experienced proctocolitis – inflamed rectum and colon – and rectal burns.

    Self-cleaning

    Because of the amount of waste that is expelled from the gut, coffee enemas can remove potassium from the body. This can lead to electrolyte imbalance, dehydration, muscle weakness and nausea. In severe cases, it can cause irregular heartbeats and lung problems. Using any enemas regularly for a long time can cause the bowel muscle to weaken, which is linked to constipation and inflammation of the bowel. In some cases, enemas may damage the balance of good bacteria in the gut, which can cause cramping, diarrhoea and bloating and increase the risk of infection.

    There no need for DIY enemas of any kind: the gut is self-cleaning. Regular digestion and bowel movements means the body gets rid of waste naturally. A high-fibre diet, rich in fruits, vegetables, wholegrains and seeds should be enough for good digestive health and could even reduce the risk of cancer. Current advice suggests we consume at least 30g of fibre daily. Most adults, however, have an average of only 19g of fibre daily. Drinking plenty of water is also crucial to gut health. Research suggests that eating fermented foods, such as kimchi, kefir and kombucha, can help the good bacteria in the gut and aid with digestion.

    Drinking coffee is more likely to be beneficial for health than coffee enemas. Studies show that moderate coffee intake is linked to lower risk of heart disease, for example.

    Social media can be a useful way to learn about health but it’s important to check who is giving this information – do they have credentials to back up their claims? It’s always best to check with your doctor or specialist before embarking on any alternative or complementary therapies.

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

    – ref. Coffee enemas probably won’t detox your system – they’re more likely to cause you serious damage – https://theconversation.com/coffee-enemas-probably-wont-detox-your-system-theyre-more-likely-to-cause-you-serious-damage-252412

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The anti-Andrew Tate: how youth workers can counteract the influence of masculinity influencers

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amanda Dylina Morse, Research Fellow, Queen’s University Belfast

    defotoberg/Shutterstock

    Andrew Tate – online content creator, podcaster, former kickboxer, and subject of ongoing human trafficking investigations – has gained widespread influence with millions of men and boys. Tate promotes financial independence, being “mentally and physically strong,” and being successful with women, interspersed with (sometimes violent) misogyny.

    For my PhD research, I worked with 30 boys and young men aged between 16 and 19 from working-class backgrounds in Belfast, researching on the role of social connection to protect mental health. In the interviews I carried out, Tate’s name came up constantly.

    I found that almost all the participants had positive or mixed feelings about him. Even those less certain of him appreciated his financial advice or advocacy for men’s mental health. While other masculinity influencers were also mentioned, none achieved the same level of importance.

    But I also found that youth workers emerged as powerful counters, acting as “anti-Andrew Tate” figures and providing a positive example of manhood. This shows that, while the influence of online figures may seem unstoppable, we already have role models in our communities who can demonstrate an alternative version of what a man can be and how he should act with others.

    Looking for connection

    In their interviews, the young men spoke passionately about their enthusiasm for Andrew Tate and valued his advocacy for “traditional” manhood, including the classical ideal of a “strong mind in a strong body”. While none of the boys and young men endorsed Tate’s misogyny, they struggled to balance their discomfort with calling women property against his perceived valuable messages.

    I agree with some of the stuff he says, but not everything he says. So, with some of the stuff he says about men’s mental health, if you go to the gym, it can help, and eat well, that… all the stuff around men’s mental health, I believe in. But just some of the stuff he says about women being property and stuff like that, I don’t really properly agree with.

    The boys and young men drew a parallel between Tate’s childhood poverty and their own. They sometimes assigned Tate unexpectedly altruistic intentions in his targeting of young men desperate to attain financial security.

    All the controversial things that he says, I think he only said that to get himself a platform, so people would tune into him… More and more people listen to him. And he’s making more and more money. And he’s like, putting that money into his university, trying to help more people and then he promotes mental health and all. I think it’s brilliant like.

    Most of the people in my research had histories of substance use and violence at the boundaries between Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods from a young age. For them, these challenging experiences were their entry into the youth work organisations which mentored them to build skills in emotional literacy, forecast the consequences of unsafe or unhealthy behaviour, and build community cohesion through acts of service.

    Relatable and non-judgmental

    For the boys and young men I worked with, their youth workers were like them – working-class men from their own communities with shared experiences of socioeconomic deprivation, exposure to paramilitary violence, and early substance use. Those parallels made them trustworthy and relatable.

    Youth workers can provide a non-judgmental listening ear.
    ingkaninant/Shutterstock

    The youth workers offered a confidential, nonjudgmental ear for their mentees, without the same risk of consequences for bad behaviour. For instance, telling a youth worker about having used drugs at the weekend wouldn’t lead to the lecture or loss of privileges that telling a parent or teacher might.

    I just think that, you know, at a young age, it’s important, em, young men get to know that there is that supportive people that can turn to even if they haven’t got, you know, a lot of friends or any friends. But I just think that, you know, like, I’ve got the opportunity of the youth club and the youth groups.

    In contrast to the version of masculine success Tate presents, youth workers usually had a home in the neighbourhood, played sports recreationally, and were establishing their families through marriage and having children. My study participants admired the stability their youth workers demonstrated in this more attainable – but still aspirational – version of adult manhood.

    When asked what kind of man they wanted to be as an adult, most of them described the sort of success their youth workers had achieved, rather than a version closer to Tate’s.

    The boys and young men I worked with said that youth service organisations were supportive spaces. They credited them with both improvements to their mental health and with giving them strategies to avoid engagement in sectarian violence. Some participants were so moved by their engagement with youth workers that they were themselves training in the profession.

    Despite strong evidence for their value, youth services are consistently underfunded. But they represent an opportunity to invest in the health of both young men and their communities.

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

    – ref. The anti-Andrew Tate: how youth workers can counteract the influence of masculinity influencers – https://theconversation.com/the-anti-andrew-tate-how-youth-workers-can-counteract-the-influence-of-masculinity-influencers-252786

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How corroding sea structures can provide vital habitats for marine life

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tamsin Dobson, Applied Marine Scientist and Biocorrosion Lead, Plymouth Marine Laboratory

    Wirestock Creators/Shutterstock

    Rust can be incredibly annoying if it appears on your new bicycle or car, but if you are a free-floating baby marine animal (larvae), it could be your dream home.

    When metal ends up in the sea, two things happen. The metal will rust (or corrode). Then it will become biofouled – that means it gets covered with marine slime, with seaweed and marine animals, such as barnacles and sea squirts, attaching onto the surfaces.

    Biofouling and corrosion are fundamentally linked. Corroded surfaces are more likely to be biofouled and biofouling worsens corrosion. That’s why rich and diverse ecosystems often develop around shipwrecks and offshore renewable energy structures, such as wind turbines.

    Corrosion happens when a metal structure’s chemical elements (usually in the form of charged “ions”) react with a chemical element in seawater. What we call rust is iron reacting with oxygen and the brown colour is iron oxide (a molecule containing iron and oxygen).

    Seawater corrosion of metal releases metal ions into the water. In high concentrations, some are potentially toxic to marine life. For example, copper can prevent juvenile barnacles from developing hard calcium-rich outer shells. Luckily, the potentially toxic components (such as heavy metals like mercury and lead) only appear in very low concentrations in most structural metals. In fact, the presence of the corroding structure will usually create an environmental benefit.

    Biofouling and corrosion on a welded sample of nickel aluminium bronze after it has been submerged for 18 months in seawater off the coast of Plymouth, UK.
    Tamsin Dobson, CC BY-NC-ND

    We are both marine scientists fascinated by how corroded structures affect larval dispersal and species distribution. While one of us (Tamsin Dobson) researches the effects of marine corrosion and biofouling on marine engineering applications, the other (Molly James) is a marine ecosystems modeller exploring both larval dispersal and pollutant pathways.

    Dobson’s research showed that biofouling organisms can worsen corrosion. Larger biofouling organisms (such as barnacles and sea squirts) will attach to the surface using special cement or glue that they secrete.

    Underneath the organism, the amount of oxygen starts to reduce as the organisms continue to respire (consuming food and oxygen to release energy and carbon dioxide). Because that oxygen cannot be replenished from the surrounding seawater, metal chlorides react with hydrogen in the water, producing hydrochloric acid. This acid is highly corrosive. There are also many biofouling bacteria that play a role in corroding metals.

    Marine life can more easily attach to the rough surfaces of corroded metal compared to new, smooth, polished metal. Think about climbing a cliff – it’s much easier when there are lots of craggy hand and foot holds to cling to. The crevices provided by corrosion also protect biofouling organisms from surrounding seawater currents. As corrosion develops further, the roughness provides bigger crevices for those organisms to grow in.

    When marine biofouling creatures attached to corroded marine structures reproduce or spawn, their tiny babies (larvae) are released into the seawater and carried by ocean currents. Eventually, they may settle on other marine structures, creating a web of connected habitats. The more corroded marine structures in an area, the more potential new homes for the marine larvae to attach to and grow on.

    Habitat hotspots

    James’s recent research used computer models to show how ocean currents and wind patterns act like highways, carrying larvae between the structures, helping to establish vibrant and interconnected marine communities. The existing structures in the North Sea have unintentionally created five distinct communities of marine life – larvae released from one of the North Sea structures will remain in the community that the structure is within.

    The same modelling demonstrates that marine larvae float on seawater currents and tides, spreading out in some areas and coming together in other areas known as “hotspots”. These hotspots are the perfect places for building artificial reefs or establishing protected zones where fishing practices or underwater developments are limited.

    By providing suitable habitats (like a patch of corroded metal) in hotspots, these areas could enhance the survival of marine biofouling organisms, giving them a safe place to settle and grow into adults. In turn, this provides more food for young marine animals that feed on the biofouling organisms and their larvae, therefore improving ocean health and building the resilience of the marine ecosystem.

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

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    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. How corroding sea structures can provide vital habitats for marine life – https://theconversation.com/how-corroding-sea-structures-can-provide-vital-habitats-for-marine-life-244446

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The battle for Khartoum: tracking Sudan’s war over two years

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Kagure Gacheche, Commissioning Editor, East Africa

    Sudan has been engulfed in brutal conflict since 15 April 2023, when tensions between the country’s two most powerful military factions erupted into civil war.

    The conflict stems from a long-standing power struggle over military control and integration. Fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces began in the capital, Khartoum, and quickly spread across the country. International efforts to broker peace since have largely failed.

    The conflict, which has been going on for two years now, has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies.

    An estimated 30 million Sudanese civilians are in need of aid. Brutal attacks, looting and destruction of infrastructure have become commonplace. Millions of people lack access to essential medical care. Food shortages and economic collapse have worsened the suffering.

    The war has also triggered a massive displacement crisis, with more than 14 million people forced to flee their homes. Many have sought refuge in neighbouring countries, while others remain trapped in dangerous conditions within Sudan.

    As the conflict drags on, the toll on Sudan’s people continues to grow. Estimates of those killed vary widely, from 20,000 to 62,000, but the actual figure could be much larger.

    With no clear resolution in sight, Sudan’s crisis is one of the most urgent and devastating conflicts in the world. At The Conversation Africa, we have worked with academics who have tracked the conflict since 2023.

    Weapons flow

    Early on, it was clear that both the Sudanese army and the paramilitary force had a sufficient supply of weapons to sustain a protracted conflict. The country was already awash with firearms. It is ranked second – after Egypt – among its regional neighbours in total firearms estimates. Khristopher Carlson, part of a research project tracking small arms and armed violence in Sudan, noted that the two Sudanese forces might have different fighting methods but were adequately equipped to trade fire. The army’s superiority was its air force and heavy arsenal on the ground. The paramilitary force relied on nimble mobile units equipped primarily with small and light weapons.



    Read more:
    Sudan is awash with weapons: how the two forces compare and what that means for the war

    External interference

    This proliferation of weapons has been compounded by financial and military support from external states. Various foreign players – Chad, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Qatar and Russia – have picked a side to support. However, the influence of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has been particularly problematic. Political scientist Federico Donelli explained that the two nations viewed Sudan as a key nation because of its location. Following President Omar al-Bashir’s ouster in 2019, the two monarchies bet on different factions within Sudan’s security apparatus. This external support exacerbated internal competition. Riyadh maintained close ties with army leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Abu Dhabi aligned itself with the head of the Rapid Support Forces, Mohamed Dagalo, or Hemedti.



    Read more:
    Middle Eastern monarchies in Sudan’s war: what’s driving their interests

    Regional dynamics

    The support from international players in Sudan’s war has had a damaging effect on regional dynamics. The Sudanese army recently accused the United Arab Emirates of supplying the Rapid Support Forces with weapons through Chad. At a ceremony for an officer killed in a drone strike carried out by paramilitary forces, a senior army official said Chad’s airports would be “legitimate targets” should retaliatory action become necessary. This heightened the risk of a spillover of the Sudanese conflict. Sudan shares borders with seven countries in an unstable region, including Chad, South Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia. Economics professor and legal expert John Mukum Mbaku warned that a spillover of the fighting could devastate the region economically, socially and politically.



    Read more:
    Sudan’s conflict will have a ripple effect in an unstable region – and across the world

    Protecting civilians

    The conflict has put millions of civilians in Sudan in the crossfire. A UN report in September 2024 called for an independent force to protect civilians; Sudan’s officials rejected the proposal. However, peace talks have yet to achieve a lasting ceasefire. Sudan had a peacekeeping force between 2007 and 2020, followed by a UN-led political mission that exited in February 2024. Since then, there has been no security presence in Sudan responsible for protecting civilians. Peacekeeping researcher Jenna Russo noted the need for a regional or international peace force that could create “green zones”. This would help protect areas where displaced persons were sheltering and facilitate humanitarian aid.



    Read more:
    Sudan’s civilians urgently need protection: the options for international peacekeeping

    What’s been missing?

    High-level peace talks brokered by the African Union and the UN to negotiate a ceasefire have largely been unsuccessful, putting civilians at constant risk. Talks held in Switzerland and Jeddah have had little impact. Philipp Kastner, a peace scholar, highlighted that the countries hosting or supporting these talks were pursuing competing interests in Sudan, which affected their impartiality. Progress to negotiate an end to the war would be unlikely if external military support to the warring parties continued unabated. Civilians would continue to pay the price.



    Read more:
    Sudan at war: the art of peace talks and why they often fail

    – ref. The battle for Khartoum: tracking Sudan’s war over two years – https://theconversation.com/the-battle-for-khartoum-tracking-sudans-war-over-two-years-253242

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: US stands on the brink of a constitutional crisis as Donald Trump takes on America’s legal system

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anne Richardson Oakes, Associate Professor and Director: Centre for American Legal Studies, Birmingham City University

    As the 19th-century French political philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, memorably observed, Americans have a tendency to fight their political battles in court. Barely two months into his presidency, Donald Trump is demonstrating increasing frustration as trade unions, civil rights organisations and states attorneys general challenge the implementation of his policies with lawsuits alleging presidential overreach that undermines the constitutional separation of powers.

    More than 130 lawsuits are now pending. As a result, federal courts have put on hold key policies of the Trump administration and Trump lawyers have lodged emergency petitions invoking Supreme Court intervention.

    First to face court check was the federal funding freeze order. This was swiftly followed by court rulings against the birthright citizenship order. This controversial measure would withdraw citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented or non-citizen parents who are in the country legally but temporarily.

    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.

    Another court ruling has overturned the Pentagon’s ban on transgender people enlisting in the US armed forces. Yet another has blocked the Department of Government Efficiency’s (Doge’s) access to treasury department records containing the personal financial details of millions of Americans.

    This was blocked for the very fundamental grounds that this has not been authorised by Congress and is not within the scope of the presidential power. Whether Doge can even exist without Congressional authority is also in contention.

    The president’s increasing anger with the courts erupted on March 18. The US president launched an astonishing personal attack on a US federal judge who ruled against the summary deportation of alleged members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang and ordered the administration to turn around the plane carrying them that had already taken off.

    The US president calls for a judge to be impeached.
    TruthSocial.

    Trump’s call for Judge James Boasberg to be impeached prompted a rare intervention from Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts. Roberts condemned the impeachment call in a statement that did not name the president but was clearly intended as a rebuke and a reminder of the constitutional boundaries that guarantee the role of the judiciary as the equal third branch of government.

    Unrepentant, Trump doubled down the next day on TruthSocial calling Judge Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic Judge” who wanted “to assume the role of president”. His charge was then echoed by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt who accused the judiciary generally of attempting to paralyse the administration’s programme, usurp the power of the president and undermine the will of the American people.

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Judge James Boasberg.

    Despite Judge Boasberg’s order, the plane carrying the Venezuelans did not turn back. The administration has denied wrongdoing and Judge Boasberg has yet to impose any penalty.

    This was not the first occasion that the administration has appeared to openly defy court orders. The previous week Dr Raiza Alawieh, a Brown University professor with an American visa was deported despite an order from a federal judge in Boston requiring that the court be given advance notice before the government attempted to remove her.

    All eyes on the Supreme Court

    All these cases are likely to go to the US Supreme Court. As its name suggests, this is the highest level of the judiciary in the US. It has the final say on what the US constitution means and authorises. At issue will be the scope of the presidential power – and the outcome is uncertain.

    It’s important to bear in mind that the court now has a six-to-three majority of conservative justices – three of whom were Trump nominees. We also need to be aware that this court, in a previous ruling, considerably extended the scope of presidential immunity to cover all official “core acts” so that, whatever the outcome, the president himself is unlikely to attract personal liability.

    But we do know that the Supreme Court’s ruling on a constitutional issue is final – and that all government officials at federal and state level will be required to respect it. The fear now is that the administration may go ahead regardless in which case we will find ourselves in unknown constitutional territory.



    Read more:
    US Supreme Court immunity ruling ideal for a president who doesn’t care about democracy

    To find parallels we could go back to the desegregation era of the middle of the 20th century and specifically to Little Rock in Arkansas where the then governor, Orval Faubus, called out the national guard to prevent the court-ordered desegregation of the local high school.

    The ensuing crisis ended when the then president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, sent in federal troops to enforce the court order. The US Supreme Court unanimously declared that its interpretations of what the constitution required were the supreme law of the land, which bound the governor and the state legislature.

    The chief justice of that era, Earl Warren, later regarded this ruling (Cooper v Aaron) as the most important of his time on the Supreme Court – more important even than the actual desegregation decision itself (Brown v Board of Education).

    It is clear that the judicial branch depends upon the executive to put its orders into effect and demonstrate respect for the rule of law and the separation of powers. But we now see a president who demonstrates open hostility to judges whom he considers have opposed him. His administration has also begun to vindictively target with punitive blocking orders the big law firms who assisted in the prosecutions brought against him before he took office.

    Does a constitutional crisis loom? How all this plays out remains to be seen.

    Anne Richardson Oakes 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 stands on the brink of a constitutional crisis as Donald Trump takes on America’s legal system – https://theconversation.com/us-stands-on-the-brink-of-a-constitutional-crisis-as-donald-trump-takes-on-americas-legal-system-249320

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Sudan army takes back Khartoum: tracking the war over two years

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Kagure Gacheche, Commissioning Editor, East Africa

    Sudan has been engulfed in brutal conflict since 15 April 2023, when tensions between the country’s two most powerful military factions erupted into civil war.

    The conflict stems from a long-standing power struggle over military control and integration. Fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces began in the capital, Khartoum, and quickly spread across the country. International efforts to broker peace since have largely failed.

    The conflict, which has been going on for two years now, has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies.

    An estimated 30 million Sudanese civilians are in need of aid. Brutal attacks, looting and destruction of infrastructure have become commonplace. Millions of people lack access to essential medical care. Food shortages and economic collapse have worsened the suffering.

    The war has also triggered a massive displacement crisis, with more than 14 million people forced to flee their homes. Many have sought refuge in neighbouring countries, while others remain trapped in dangerous conditions within Sudan.

    As the conflict drags on, the toll on Sudan’s people continues to grow. Estimates of those killed vary widely, from 20,000 to 62,000, but the actual figure could be much larger.

    With no clear resolution in sight, Sudan’s crisis is one of the most urgent and devastating conflicts in the world. At The Conversation Africa, we have worked with academics who have tracked the conflict since 2023.

    Weapons flow

    Early on, it was clear that both the Sudanese army and the paramilitary force had a sufficient supply of weapons to sustain a protracted conflict. The country was already awash with firearms. It is ranked second – after Egypt – among its regional neighbours in total firearms estimates. Khristopher Carlson, part of a research project tracking small arms and armed violence in Sudan, noted that the two Sudanese forces might have different fighting methods but were adequately equipped to trade fire. The army’s superiority was its air force and heavy arsenal on the ground. The paramilitary force relied on nimble mobile units equipped primarily with small and light weapons.



    Read more:
    Sudan is awash with weapons: how the two forces compare and what that means for the war

    External interference

    This proliferation of weapons has been compounded by financial and military support from external states. Various foreign players – Chad, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Qatar and Russia – have picked a side to support. However, the influence of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has been particularly problematic. Political scientist Federico Donelli explained that the two nations viewed Sudan as a key nation because of its location. Following President Omar al-Bashir’s ouster in 2019, the two monarchies bet on different factions within Sudan’s security apparatus. This external support exacerbated internal competition. Riyadh maintained close ties with army leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. Abu Dhabi aligned itself with the head of the Rapid Support Forces, Mohamed Dagalo, or Hemedti.



    Read more:
    Middle Eastern monarchies in Sudan’s war: what’s driving their interests

    Regional dynamics

    The support from international players in Sudan’s war has had a damaging effect on regional dynamics. The Sudanese army recently accused the United Arab Emirates of supplying the Rapid Support Forces with weapons through Chad. At a ceremony for an officer killed in a drone strike carried out by paramilitary forces, a senior army official said Chad’s airports would be “legitimate targets” should retaliatory action become necessary. This heightened the risk of a spillover of the Sudanese conflict. Sudan shares borders with seven countries in an unstable region, including Chad, South Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia. Economics professor and legal expert John Mukum Mbaku warned that a spillover of the fighting could devastate the region economically, socially and politically.



    Read more:
    Sudan’s conflict will have a ripple effect in an unstable region – and across the world

    Protecting civilians

    The conflict has put millions of civilians in Sudan in the crossfire. A UN report in September 2024 called for an independent force to protect civilians; Sudan’s officials rejected the proposal. However, peace talks have yet to achieve a lasting ceasefire. Sudan had a peacekeeping force between 2007 and 2020, followed by a UN-led political mission that exited in February 2024. Since then, there has been no security presence in Sudan responsible for protecting civilians. Peacekeeping researcher Jenna Russo noted the need for a regional or international peace force that could create “green zones”. This would help protect areas where displaced persons were sheltering and facilitate humanitarian aid.



    Read more:
    Sudan’s civilians urgently need protection: the options for international peacekeeping

    What’s been missing?

    High-level peace talks brokered by the African Union and the UN to negotiate a ceasefire have largely been unsuccessful, putting civilians at constant risk. Talks held in Switzerland and Jeddah have had little impact. Philipp Kastner, a peace scholar, highlighted that the countries hosting or supporting these talks were pursuing competing interests in Sudan, which affected their impartiality. Progress to negotiate an end to the war would be unlikely if external military support to the warring parties continued unabated. Civilians would continue to pay the price.



    Read more:
    Sudan at war: the art of peace talks and why they often fail

    – ref. Sudan army takes back Khartoum: tracking the war over two years – https://theconversation.com/sudan-army-takes-back-khartoum-tracking-the-war-over-two-years-253242

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: First fossil hyena tracks found in South Africa – how expert animal trackers helped

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Charles Helm, Research Associate, African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University

    “The art of tracking may well be the origin of science.” This is the departure point for a 2013 book by Louis Liebenberg, co-founder of an organisation devoted to environmental monitoring.

    The connection between tracking in nature, as people have done since prehistory, and “western” science is of special interest to us as ichnologists. (Ichnology is the study of tracks and traces.) We learned our skills relatively late in life. But imagine if we had learned as children and if, as adults, we tracked as if our lives depended on it? What additional visual and cognitive talents would we bring to our field work as scientists?

    Our mission is to find and document the fossilised tracks and traces of creatures that existed during part of the Pleistocene Epoch, between 35,000 and 400,000 years ago, on the Cape coast of South Africa. Since 2008, through the Cape South Coast Ichnology project, based in the African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience at Nelson Mandela University, more than 370 vertebrate tracksites have been identified. They have substantially complemented the traditional record of body fossils. Examples include trackways of giant tortoises and giraffe.

    Given the challenges inherent in identifying such tracks, we wondered how hunters who’ve been tracking all their lives would view our work, and how age-old indigenous expertise might align with our approach.

    Fortunately we could call on experts with these skills in southern Africa. The Ju/’hoansi (pronounced “Juun-kwasi”) San people of north-eastern Namibia are perhaps the last of southern Africa’s indigenous inhabitants who retain the full suite of their ancient environmental skills. The Nyae Nyae conservancy in which they live gives them access to at least some of their historical land with its remaining wildlife. They still engage in subsistence hunting with bow and poisoned arrow and gather food that’s growing wild.

    A handful among them have been recognised as Indigenous Master Tracker, a title created by Liebenberg’s CyberTracker initiative in recognition of their top-flight hunter-gatherer status. And so, late in 2023, the Master Trackers #oma (“Komma”) Daqm and /uce (“Tchu-shey”) Nǂamce arrived in Cape Town.

    We were not the first to think along these lines. Ju/’hoansi Master Trackers have assisted scientists in the interpretation of hominin tracksites in French caves, and prehistoric tracks in the rock art record in Namibia. However, we knew that our often poorly preserved tracksites in aeolianites (cemented dunes) might present a stiffer challenge.

    Our purpose was to compare our own interpretations of fossil trackways with those of the Master Trackers, and possibly find some we had overlooked. As we’ve set out in a recently published paper with the Ju/’hoansi trackers and our colleague Jan De Vynck as co-authors, they did exactly this, confirming the first fossil hyena trackway ever to be found.

    Swapping techniques

    The Late Pleistocene is not that far distant from the present (a mere 125,000 years), and many of the species that made tracks on the Cape south coast then are still with us. Some are extinct but have recognisable tracks, like the giant long-horned buffalo and giant Cape zebra.

    We knew, though, that tracking in Kalahari sand, like the Ju/’hoansi do, is not the same as tracking on Pleistocene rock surfaces. Many of our tracks are preserved on the undersides of ceilings and overhangs, or are evident in profile in cliff exposures. Our track-bearing surfaces are usually small, and present no associated signs. We can’t follow the spoor for any distance. We don’t know at what time of day the tracks were made or the role of dew, and we have never succeeded in actually tracking down our quarry. Coprolites – fossilised droppings – are seldom found conveniently beside the tracks of the depositor.

    We showed our new colleagues known fossil tracksites, without providing our own interpretations. #oma and /uce discussed these between themselves and presented their conclusions about what had made the tracks and how the animal had been behaving. We then shared our insights and our 3D photogrammetry data where applicable, and reached joint conclusions.

    Soon they were identifying freshly exposed tracksites without our input, and were providing fascinating, new interpretations for sites which had puzzled us. For example, they saw ostrich tracks which we had missed, beside ostrich egg remnants, and concluded that we were probably looking at a fossilised ostrich nest. On another occasion they pointed out the distinctive track pattern of a scrub hare on the hanging wall of an eroded piece of cliff.

    First fossilised hyena trackway

    One of the most memorable experiences involved a 400,000-year-old trackway on a rock surface at Dana Bay, identified a few years earlier by local geologists Aleck and Ilona Birch. This rock had only been transiently exposed for a few days in the past decade, usually being covered by beach sand.

    Our earlier interpretation had been that the trackmaker might have been a hyena, probably the brown hyena.

    We were vindicated when our master tracker colleagues independently reached the identical conclusion. Examining our digital 3D images together fortified our collective judgement.

    This was a big deal: it was the first fossil hyena trackway to be confidently identified, as previous examples had involved only individual tracks or poorly preserved possible trackway segments. Hyena trackways are distinctive: the forefoot tracks are substantially larger than those of the hindfoot.

    Different ways of seeing

    Both of us are privileged to have university degrees and institutional affiliations. But there is another way in which acumen can be measured: the ability to use the ancient methods of discernment and pattern recognition to support and feed one’s family and community through tracking, hunting and gathering.

    What we have demonstrated, we believe, is a novel confluence of old and new ways to reveal fascinating features of the past. We use geological understanding, satellite technology, paleontological databases, tracking manuals and sophisticated dating methods. But hunter-gatherers see what escapes us and our drones: obscure strokes and enigmatic configurations on time-beaten surfaces. They tap an alternative knowledge base, both culturally received and cultivated from childhood.

    The follow-through challenge must be to develop this partnership for mutual discovery and reward, understanding the past to better equip us for our uncertain future.

    Clive Thompson is a trustee of the Discovery Wilderness Trust, a non-profit organization that supports environmental conservation and the fostering of tracking skills.

    Charles Helm 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. First fossil hyena tracks found in South Africa – how expert animal trackers helped – https://theconversation.com/first-fossil-hyena-tracks-found-in-south-africa-how-expert-animal-trackers-helped-251377

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –