Source: European Union 2
The Council and European Parliament have struck a deal on detergents that will make them safer to use and cause less harm to the environment. It will improve their biodegradability, enable the reduction of harmful substances and improve information on the label, without extra red tape.
Source: South Africa News Agency
Health Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, has praised the adoption of the Pandemic Agreement during the 4th Health Working Group meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) held in Johannesburg.
This significant international treaty, supported by 124 member states on 20 May 2025, is only the second international health treaty approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO) since its establishment in 1948.
The agreement’s adoption follows three years of intensive negotiation launched due to gaps and inequities identified in the national and global COVID-19 response.
It aims to boost global collaboration to ensure a stronger, more equitable response to future pandemics.
Delivering the welcome address on Tuesday morning, Motsoaledi celebrated the momentous achievement and emphasised the importance of collective action in ensuring global health security.
“Your presence here today is a testament to our collective commitment to global health security,” he said.
Motsoaledi stated that the agreement results from the diligent efforts of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), which was established to develop a legally binding framework for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.
“The stark lessons of the COVID-19 crisis fuelled our collective resolve to forge a more robust and equitable framework, one that ensures international cooperation and protects all nations from the devastating impact of future pandemics,” the Minister told the attendees.
South Africa, playing a pivotal leadership role as a co-chair of the INB, worked alongside partners from France and the Netherlands, while acknowledging contributions from vice-chairs representing Brazil, Thailand, Egypt, and New Zealand.
The Minister stated that the four key pillars of the agreement are designed to fundamentally transform the global response to health emergencies.
The agreement emphasises the importance of equitable access to pandemic-related health products, the establishment of a global supply chain and logistics network, and the creation of a coordinating financial mechanism to strengthen pandemic response capabilities.
In addition, the agreement highlights a holistic “One Health” approach, which stresses the connections between human, animal, and environmental health, which is now a central focus of global pandemic strategies.
The Minister said the agreement incorporates a Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) system, requiring pharmaceutical companies to contribute 20% of production during pandemics in exchange for access to critical pathogen data.
This mechanism aims to ensure that all nations benefit from scientific advancements, especially in times of crisis.
“As an active participant and representative member for the African region, I can say with certainty that we see this agreement as a crucial step towards rectifying the deep-seated imbalances in access to life-saving pandemic products that were so painfully exposed during the recent crisis.”
Although Motsoaledi has acknowledged the agreement’s adoption as a significant success, there is still much work ahead.
“While we celebrate the adoption of the Pandemic Agreement, our work is far from over. We are now entering a critical new phase.”
He urged immediate engagement in further discussions regarding the PABS system, to convene the Intergovernmental Working Group before 15 July 2025.
“Finalising a robust and equitable PABS annex is the ultimate litmus test of our collective commitment. It is the essential next step to transform the Pandemic Agreement from a document of principles into a functional, life-saving tool for justice and our shared global health security.”
He has since called for continued collaboration and commitment to safeguarding global health for everyone.
This important week-long meeting began this morning and will conclude on Friday, 13 June 2025.
The event brings together health leaders, experts, and policymakers from the world’s largest economies, invited nations, and international organisations. – SAnews.gov.za
Source: South Africa News Agency
South Africa is closely monitoring the emergence of a new COVID-19 variant, known as Nimbus or NB.1.8.1, associated with a rise in cases in certain regions of Asia.
This is according to Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, who addressed the 4th Health Working Group meeting of the Group of 20 (G20), which is underway in Johannesburg.
Motsoaledi said the World Health Organisation (WHO) has designated this “a variant under monitoring” due to its growing presence.
India is the latest country to experience a surge in new COVID-19 cases due to the emergence of the new variant, NB.1.8.1.
According to the Independent, infections have been confirmed in several Asian countries, including Thailand, Indonesia and China.
In addition, the United Kingdom Health Security Agency reported the first 13 cases of this variant in England last week.
“I wish to reassure this esteemed gathering that South Africa has robust surveillance systems in place.
“Our National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) manages a comprehensive sentinel surveillance programme that systematically tests for key respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, influenza, and RSV. Currently, our data show very low SARS-CoV-2 activity,” Motsoaledi explained.
South Africa is currently experiencing a seasonal rise in influenza, but the country is well-prepared to manage the situation, he said.
“Crucially, the new variant remains a descendant of the Omicron lineage. This means that current recommendations for updated SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are still effective. Therefore, at this stage, no specific new public health actions are required from the public.”
Motsoaledi said government continues to promote good hygiene practices, including handwashing, covering coughs, and staying home when feeling unwell.
“These simple measures are effective in reducing the spread of all respiratory illnesses. We will continue to monitor the situation closely through our established networks and will report any significant changes.”
Meanwhile, he called on the attendees of the meeting to work together with “renewed urgency and unwavering resolve”.
“Let us build a future where solidarity, equity, and cooperation are the cornerstones of our global health architecture.”
The week-long Health Working Group meeting began on Tuesday and will conclude on Friday.
It brings together health leaders, experts, and policymakers from the world’s largest economies, invited nations, and international organisations.
The plenary sessions will build on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and address ongoing barriers to accessing countermeasures, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
There will be a focus on prioritising the expansion of local and regional manufacturing capacity, especially in regions like Africa.
Delegates will also explore opportunities for technology transfer, sustainable financing, and regulatory alignment to ensure timely and equitable access to life-saving tools during health emergencies. – SAnews.gov.za
Source: South Africa News Agency
International Relations and Cooperation Minister, Ronald Lamola, is visiting Changsha, Hunan province, to participate in the Ministerial Coordination Meeting of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).
Founded in 2000, FOCAC seeks to enhance economic cooperation and promote sustainable development in Africa through mutual respect, equality, and collaborative efforts that benefit all parties involved.
The purpose of this week’s meeting is to discuss the implementation of the outcomes of the 2024 FOCAC Summit, which was held in Beijing in 2024.
According to the Global Africa Network, the summit held last year led to the signing of several bilateral agreements in areas such as industrialisation, trade, technology, and agricultural modernisation.
To ensure effective implementation of the desired cooperation between China and Africa, 10 key measures and areas of collaboration have been identified.
The FOCAC Action Plan for 2025 – 2027 outlines cooperation across 10 partnership areas, which include trade prosperity, industrial chain cooperation, connectivity, and development collaboration.
This significant gathering coincides with the commemoration of FOCAC’s 25th anniversary, highlighting the enduring partnership between Africa and China.
“Our participation reflects our strategic priority to strengthen bilateral and multilateral relations within this important framework,” Lamola said.
The meeting will be immediately followed by the 4th China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo (CAETE), from 12 – 15 June 2025, where further avenues for economic collaboration and mutual prosperity will be advanced.
Twenty South African companies will exhibit their products and engage with Chinese investors with a view to opening further avenues for the export of South African products to China. – SAnews.gov.za
Source: South Africa News Agency
As winter’s chill sets in, communities across the North West are urged to stay vigilant amid severe weather and strong, fire-spreading winds.
“Freezing weather is upon us and an increasing dependence on indoor heating techniques like paraffin stoves, heaters and open fires are likely to be the order of the day,” the North West Provincial Government (NWPG) said in a statement.
The provincial government is urging community members to exercise extreme caution to avoid disastrous domestic and wildfires.
The South African Weather Service (SAWS) has reported that cold weather will continue in the coming days, bringing a mix of snowfall at higher elevations, strong winds, severe thunderstorms, and extremely low daytime temperatures.
The SAWS has issued level 9 warning in the Eastern Cape and levels 5 and 6 warning for certain areas in KwaZulu-Natal for Tuesday.
In addition, the N2 highway has been closed in the southern regions of KwaZulu-Natal due to snowfall, as adverse weather conditions persist in parts of the province.
READ | N2 in KZN closed due to snowfall
Families are encouraged not to leave children unattended near open flames or heating devices, and to practice safe fire behaviours during the winter season.
“These conditions significantly increase the potential for uncontrolled fires, both in domestic settings and across open velds.
“Strong winds, in particular, can propel and rapidly spread veld fires, putting lives, property, and natural ecosystems at great risk.”
In addition, the provincial government cautioned that using heating appliances and open flames indoors during extremely cold weather often leads to accidental domestic fires, particularly in informal settlements.
Residents and communities are encouraged to take additional precautions during this winter season and to follow these guidelines:
Meanwhile, disaster management teams led by the Provincial Disaster Management Centre are on high alert and ready to respond to any eventuality.
“Let us all do our part to stay warm and safe and protect our communities from unnecessary fire disasters this winter.” – SAnews.gov.za
Source: South Africa News Agency
Public Works Deputy Minister Sihle Zikalala has, during a media briefing on Tuesday, set the record straight regarding the appointment of the Independent Development Trust (IDT) Chief Executive Officer, Tebogo Malaka.
The Deputy Minister said he had noted with “deep concern” media articles which appear to have been deliberately planted and arranged to defame and tarnish his image, disguised as concerns about issues of governance in the IDT.
The IDT is a Schedule 2 State-owned entity, which manages the implementation and delivery of critically needed social infrastructure programmes on behalf of government. It reports to the Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, who is the shareholder representative.
Addressing the media in Pretoria, the Deputy Minister explained that when he was appointed as Minister in March 2023, the appointment of the CEO had already been processed by the IDT Board with the concurrence received from his predecessor.
He said the recommendation to appoint Malaka as CEO had already been submitted to Cabinet for final processing when he joined the department.
“As the Minister, I withdrew the matter due issues that were emerging at the time about the entity and had to deal with the issues of due diligence,” Zikalala said.
He added that also informing his decision to withdraw the matter were allegations related to the office lease at the IDT, which was an issue that had been in the public domain long before his arrival in the department.
“I had to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. During the period of my arrival at the department, I found the IDT plagued by challenges and infighting among the board members, which defocussed the entity from its primary mandate of delivering social infrastructure to communities,” Zikalala said.
According to the Deputy Minister, at the time of his appointment as Minister, there were serious concerns about governance affairs of the IDT.
“As Minister at the time, I held a number of meetings to refocus the board to its governance and fiduciary duties, these efforts to focus the board on governance issues did not yield expected results.
“I am the first Minister to task the board of the IDT to investigate the matter of the office lease and to give a report after six months,” Zikalala said.
The Minister said he was committed to serving with integrity, transparency and accountability. – SAnews.gov.za
Source: South Africa News Agency
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
The Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) has called on motorists to take extra caution when driving on the roads as icy cold weather conditions have gripped the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
The South African Weather Service (SAWS) warned of widespread rain with disruptive snow over escarpments of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal on Tuesday.
“The RTMC advises travellers in affected areas to delay their trips until the situation improves.”
Travel routes are also affected with the N2 from Ingeli towards Kokstad in KwaZulu Natal being closed due to snow.
The R58 Barkley East and West towards Barkley Pass was also closed due to snow.
Heavy rains with strong wind were reported in Umzimkhulu and Ixopo KwaZulu Natal and this could lead to flash flooding in low lying areas. Motorists are advised to switch their headlights on to increase their visibility.
Motorists should heed the following road safety precautions when driving on the road:
Source: International Chamber of Commerce
Headline: ICC joins Business Call to Action to accelerate global cooperation for our oceans
As the largest business association in the world, the International Chamber of Commerce is proud to be a convener of this important call to action, bringing the voice of the global business community to the United Nations Ocean Conference.
The call is convened by an unprecedented coalition of business networks, supported by signatories, including 80 businesses with a combined turnover of over €$600 billion and 2 million employees. In anticipation of the upcoming 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France,the call builds on the experience of leading businesses and organisations already advancing a sustainable blue economy. It emphasises the intrinsic connection between land and sea, highlighting the contribution and interdependencies between coastal and marine environment and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
This call is directed at all economic actors, whether directly or indirectly connected to the ocean, and includes:
With this Business Call to Action, companies and business networks urge policymakers to:
This business declaration is still open to new signatories. For information on signing this declaration please contact
The Business Call to Action is convened by global and leading business networks including International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), World Economic Forum (WEF), We Mean Business Coalition (WMB), Business for Nature (BfN), Mouvement des Entreprises de France (MEDEF), UN Global Compact Network France and Association française des Entreprises pour l’Environnement (EpE).
Source: The Conversation – France – By Sihem BenMahmoud-Jouini, Associate Professor, HEC Paris Business School
In the face of US President Donald Trump’s wavering commitments and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inscrutable ambitions, the talk in European capitals is all about rearmament.
To that end, the European Commission has put forward an €800 billion spending scheme designed to “quickly and significantly increase expenditures in defence capabilities”, in the words of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
But funding is only the first of many challenges involved when pursuing military innovation. Ramping up capabilities “quickly and significantly” will prove difficult for a sector that must keep pace with rapid technological change.
Of course, defence firms don’t have to do it alone: they can select from a wide variety of potential collaborators, ranging from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to agile start-ups. Innovative partnerships, however, require trust and a willingness to share vital information, qualities that appear incompatible with the need for military secrecy.
That is why rearming Europe requires a new approach to secrecy.
A paper I co-authored with Jonathan Langlois of HEC and Romaric Servajean-Hilst of KEDGE Business School examines the strategies used by one leading defence firm (which we, for our own secrecy-related reasons, renamed “Globaldef”) to balance open innovation with information security. The 43 professionals we interviewed – including R&D managers, start-up CEOs and innovation managers – were not consciously working from a common playbook. However, their nuanced and dynamic approaches could serve as a cohesive role model for Europe’s defence sector as it races to adapt to a changing world.
Our research took place between 2018 and 2020. At the time, defence firms looked toward open innovation to compensate for the withdrawal of key support. There was a marked decrease in government spending on military R&D across the OECD countries. However, even though the current situation involves more funding, the need for external innovation remains prevalent to speed up access to knowledge.
When collaborating to innovate, firms face what open innovation scholars have termed “the paradox of openness”, wherein the value to be gained by collaborating must be weighed against the possible costs of information sharing. In the defence sector – unlike, say, in consumer products – being too liberal with information could not only lead to business losses but to grave security risks for entire nations, and even prosecution for the executives involved.
Although secrecy was a constant concern, Globaldef’s managers often found themselves in what one of our interviewees called a “blurred zone” where some material could be interpreted as secret, but sharing it was not strictly off-limits. In cases like these, opting for the standard mode in the defence industry – erring on the side of caution and remaining tight-lipped – would make open innovation impossible.
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Studying transcripts of more than 40 interviews along with a rich pool of complementary data (emails, PowerPoint presentations, crowdsourcing activity, etc.), we discerned that players at Globaldef had developed fine-grained practices for maintaining and modulating secrecy, even while actively collaborating with civilian companies.
Our research identifies these practices as either cognitive or relational. Cognitive practices acted as strategic screens, masking the most sensitive aspects of Globaldef’s knowledge without throttling information flow to the point of preventing collaboration.
Depending on the type of project, cognitive practices might consist of one or more of the following:
Encryption: relabelling knowledge components to hide their nature and purpose.
Obfuscation: selectively blurring project specifics to preserve secrecy while recruiting partners.
Simplification: blurring project parameters to test the suitability of a partner without revealing true constraints.
Transposition: transferring the context of a problem from a military to a civilian one.
Relational practices involved reframing the partnership itself, by selectively controlling the width of the aperture through which external parties could view Globaldef’s aims and project characteristics. These practices might include redirecting the focus of a collaboration away from core technologies, or introducing confidentiality agreements to expand information-sharing within the partnership while prohibiting communication to third parties.
Using both cognitive and relational practices enabled Globaldef to skirt the pitfalls of its paradox. For example, in the early stages of open innovation, when the firm was scouting and testing potential partners, managers could widen the aperture (relational) while imposing strict limits on knowledge-sharing (cognitive). They could thereby freely engage with the crowd without violating Globaldef’s internal rules regarding secrecy.
As partnerships ripened and trust grew, Globaldef could gradually lift cognitive protections, giving partners access to more detailed and specific data. This could be counterbalanced by a tightening on the relational side, eg requiring paperwork and protocols designed to plug potential leaks.
As we retraced the firm’s careful steps through six real-life open innovation partnerships, we saw that the key to this approach was in knowing when to transition from one mode to the other. Each project had its own rhythm.
For one crowdsourcing project, the shift from low to high cognitive depth, and high to low relational width, was quite sudden, occurring as soon as the partnership was formalised. This was due to the fact that Globaldef’s partner needed accurate details and project parameters in order to solve the problem in question. Therefore, near-total openness and concomitant confidentiality had to be established at the outset.
In another case, Globaldef retained the cognitive blinders throughout the early phase of a partnership with a start-up. To test the start-up’s technological capacities, the firm presented its partner with a cognitively reframed problem. Only after the partner passed its initial trial was collaboration initiated on a fully transparent footing, driven by the need for the start-up to obtain defence clearance prior to co-developing technology with Globaldef.
Since we completed and published our research, much has changed geopolitically. But the high-stakes paradox of openness is still a pressing issue inside Europe’s defence firms. Managers and executives are no doubt grappling with the evident necessity for open innovation on the one hand and secrecy on the other.
Our research suggests that, like Globaldef, other actors in Europe’s defence sector can deftly navigate this paradox. Doing so, however, will require employing a more subtle, flexible and dynamic definition of secrecy rather than the absolutist, static one that normally prevails in the industry. The defence sector’s conception of secrecy must also progress from a primarily legal to a largely strategic framework.
Sihem BenMahmoud-Jouini ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
– ref. Defence firms must adopt a ‘flexible secrecy’ to innovate for European rearmament – https://theconversation.com/defence-firms-must-adopt-a-flexible-secrecy-to-innovate-for-european-rearmament-258302
Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Shannon Bosch, Associate Professor (Law), Edith Cowan University
On June 9, the Madleen, a UK-flagged civilian ship carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, was stopped by Israeli forces in international waters, about 200 kilometres off the coast.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition had organised the voyage, setting sail from Sicily on June 1. The vessel’s 12 passengers included climate activist Greta Thunberg, European Parliament member Rima Hassan, two French journalists and several other activists from around the world.
The Israeli military boarded the ship and diverted it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The aid it carried — baby formula, food, medical supplies, water desalination kits — was confiscated. All passengers were detained and now face deportation.
This interception has sparked international condemnation. Importantly, it also raises questions about whether Israel’s actions comply with international law.
Naval blockades are not automatically illegal. Under the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea (1994), a blockade may be used in wartime, but only if five legal conditions are met:
If even one of these conditions is not met, the blockade may be considered illegal under customary international humanitarian law.
The fifth condition is especially important here. According to a comprehensive study of international humanitarian law conducted by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the parties to a conflict must allow the rapid and unimpeded delivery of humanitarian relief to civilians in need.
A blockade that prevents this could be in breach of international law.
Israel and Egypt have imposed a blockade of varying degrees on Gaza since 2007 when Hamas came to power. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz claims the purpose of the blockade is to “prevent the transfer of weapons to Hamas”. Critics say it amounts to collective punishment.
The Madleen was operating in compliance with three binding International Court of Justice orders (from January 2024, March 2024 and May 2024) requiring unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza.
International law also strongly protects the freedom of navigation, particularly in international waters beyond any state’s territorial limits.
There are only a few exceptions when a country can lawfully stop a foreign ship in international waters – if it is involved in piracy, slave trading, unauthorised broadcasting, or the vessel itself is stateless. A country can also stop a ship if it is enforcing a lawful blockade or acting in self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter.
So, if Israel’s actions do not fully meet the international legal requirements for enforcing a blockade during wartime, it would not have the right to intercept the Madleen in international waters.
More broadly speaking, international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, protects civilians during conflict. This protection extends to people delivering humanitarian aid, so long as they do not directly take part in hostilities.
To be considered directly participating in hostilities, a person must:
Bringing aid to civilians, even if politically controversial, does not meet this legal threshold. As a result, the Madleen’s passengers remain protected civilians and should not be treated as combatants or detained arbitrarily.
International law also sets out how civilians detained in conflict situations must be treated. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, detainees must be given access to medical care, lawyers and consular representatives. They must also not be punished without fair legal processes.
Reports that Madleen passengers have been detained and are facing deportation raise concerns about whether these standards are being upheld.
In response to the ship’s interception, the Hind Rajab Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group, has filed a complaint with the UK Metropolitan Police War Crimes Unit. The complaint alleges a number of breaches of international humanitarian law, including forcible detention, obstruction of humanitarian relief, and degrading treatment.
This is not the first time Israel has stopped an aid ship and faced accusations of violating the law of the sea and humanitarian law.
In 2010, the Israeli military raided a flotilla of six ships organised by international activists aiming to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza and challenge the blockade.
Violence broke out on the largest vessel, the Mavi Marmara, resulting in the deaths of nine Turkish nationals and injuries to dozens of others. The incident drew international condemnation. Israel agreed to ease its blockade after the incident.
A fact-finding mission established by the UN Human Rights Council found that Israel violated a number of international laws and that its blockade was “inflicting disproportionate damage upon the civilian population”.
This is not just a political or moral issue – it’s a legal one. International law lays out clear rules for when and how a country can enforce blockades, intercept vessels and treat civilians.
Based on these rules, serious legal questions remain about Israel’s handling of the Madleen and its passengers.
Shannon Bosch 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. There are clear laws on enforcing blockades – Israel’s interception of the Madleen raises serious questions – https://theconversation.com/there-are-clear-laws-on-enforcing-blockades-israels-interception-of-the-madleen-raises-serious-questions-258562
Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Peter Greste, Professor of Journalism and Communications, Macquarie University
The video of a Los Angeles police officer shooting a rubber bullet at Channel Nine reporter Lauren Tomasi is as shocking as it is revealing.
In her live broadcast, Tomasi is standing to the side of a rank of police in riot gear. She describes the way they have begun firing rubber bullets to disperse protesters angry with US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants.
As Tomasi finishes her sentence, the camera pans to the left, just in time to catch the officer raising his gun and firing a non-lethal round into her leg. She said a day later she is sore, but otherwise OK.
Although a more thorough investigation might find mitigating circumstances, from the video evidence, it is hard to dismiss the shot as “crossfire”. The reporter and cameraman were off to one side of the police, clearly identified and working legitimately.
The shooting is also not a one-off. Since the protests against Trump’s mass deportations policy began three days ago, a reporter with the LA Daily News and a freelance journalist have been hit with pepper balls and tear gas.
British freelance photojournalist Nick Stern also had emergency surgery to remove a three-inch plastic bullet from his leg.
In all, the Los Angeles Press Club has documented more than 30 incidents of obstruction and attacks on journalists during the protests.
It now seems assaults on the media are no longer confined to warzones or despotic regimes. They are happening in American cities, in broad daylight, often at the hands of those tasked with upholding the law.
But violence is only one piece of the picture. In the nearly five months since taking office, the Trump administration has moved to defund public broadcasters, curtail access to information and undermine the credibility of independent media.
International services once used to project democratic values and American soft power around the world, such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, have all had their funding cut and been threatened with closure. (The Voice of America website is still operational but hasn’t been updated since mid-March, with one headline on the front page reading “Vatican: Francis stable, out of ‘imminent danger’ of death”).
The Associated Press, one of the most respected and important news agencies in the world, has been restricted from its access to the White House and covering Trump. The reason? It decided to defy Trump’s directive to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.
Even broadcast licenses for major US networks, such as ABC, NBC and CBS, have been publicly threatened — a signal to editors and executives that political loyalty might soon outweigh journalistic integrity.
The Committee to Protect Journalists is more used to condemning attacks on the media in places like Russia. However, in April, it issued a report headlined: “Alarm bells: Trump’s first 100 days ramp up fear for the press, democracy”.
Why does this matter? The success of American democracy has never depended on unity or even civility. It has depended on scrutiny. A system where power is challenged, not flattered.
The First Amendment to the US Constitution – which protects freedom of speech – has long been considered the gold standard for building the institutions of free press and free expression. That only works when journalism is protected — not in theory but in practice.
Now, strikingly, the language once reserved for autocracies and failed states has begun to appear in assessments of the US. Civicus, which tracks declining democracies around the world, recently put the US on its watchlist, alongside the Democratic Republic of Congo, Italy, Serbia and Pakistan.
The attacks on the journalists in LA are troubling not only for their sake, but for ours. This is about civic architecture. The kind of framework that makes space for disagreement without descending into disorder.
Press freedom is not a luxury for peacetime. It is a requirement for peace.
Peter Greste is Professor of Journalism at Macquarie University and the Executive Director for the advocacy group, the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.
– ref. In Trump’s America, the shooting of a journalist is not a one-off. Press freedom itself is under attack – https://theconversation.com/in-trumps-america-the-shooting-of-a-journalist-is-not-a-one-off-press-freedom-itself-is-under-attack-258578
Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Stefan Szymanski, Professor of Sport Management, University of Michigan
The FIFA World Club Cup, which kicks off in the U.S. on June 14, 2025, may seem like a new competition.
Certainly, soccer’s governing body, FIFA, is promoting it as is it were, marketing the monthlong competition between 32 of the world’s biggest soccer teams as the “pinnacle of club football,” with up to US$125 million in prize money for the winning team and $250 million set aside for promoting “football solidarity.”
In reality, the competition is the latest chapter in FIFA’s long-running quest – going all the way back to 1960 – to create a global championship that would determine which club really is the best in the world.
The organizing body has trumpeted a $1 billion prize pot for the World Club Cup. But FIFA has been less vocal about the broadcasting deal underpinning the event, which is being financed by Saudi Arabia reportedly to tune of $1 billion. That deal was announced just days before Saudi Arabia was confirmed as the host of the men’s 2034 World Cup – a lucrative prize for the Gulf kingdom.
This sounds more like the FIFA we all know, with the whiff of corruption and dodgy dealing that has dogged the organizing body for decades.
FIFA’s critics argue that the competition is nothing more than an attempt to line the governing body’s coffers. FIFA’s line is that it will not keep “one dollar” from the event, and instead plans to distribute revenue to the clubs.
Not helping FIFA’s case is the fact that clubs and players are similarly unimpressed, protesting that the event is an unnecessary addition to an already-overburdened soccer calendar.
As always, the litmus test for success will come from the fans. So far, things are not going well on that front. Falling prices on Ticketmaster bode ill for the competition. Just days before the games were due to begin, FIFA slashed prices for the opening match: MLS club Inter Miami against Egypt’s Al-Ahly. Reports suggest that less than a third of tickets at the 65,000-seat venue for the opener, Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, had sold – despite the likely presence of soccer superstar Lionel Messi.
Of course, the declining number of tourists coming to the U.S. since the second inauguration of Donald Trump – and the president’s recently announced travel ban affecting 19 countries – hasn’t helped encourage fans of the global game to the U.S., even if none of the competing clubs come from one of those countries.
So, given all the problems and controversies, why is FIFA so invested?
As someone who has long researched the nexus of soccer, money and power, I see the World Club Cup as part of a struggle between UEFA, the European governing body that runs the Champions League – currently seen as the pinnacle of soccer club competition – and FIFA, which wants to supplant the Champions League with its own competition.
UEFA’s power stems from hosting the world’s biggest clubs. Only one club from outside Europe appears in soccer data website Transfermarkt’s list of the 50 most valuable squads – with Palmeiras from Brazil squeaking in at 50.
Top players in their prime rarely quit Europe to play on another continent – the high-profile names that opt to play in the U.S. or Saudi leagues tend to be veterans cashing in on their name.
Meanwhile, the world’s soccer talent flocks to European clubs. It’s not just that big clubs like Real Madrid, Liverpool or Bayern Munich that can pay top dollar for the star players – less storied clubs like Brentford, Real Sociedad or VfB Stuttgart have the wherewithal to fish in the global player market.
The wealth and status of these clubs form the muscle behind UEFA. And the jewel in the UEFA crown is the Champions League, an annual competition that brings together the best clubs in Europe.
While UEFA also has its own national competition, the Euros, its pull is nowhere near as great as FIFA’s World Cup.
This division – with FIFA dominating the international team competition and UEFA the club competition – dates back to the 1960s and the early years of mass television.
When the 1966 World Cup was hosted by England, it was one of the very first global sports events, watched by an estimated audience of 400 million people worldwide.
The 1970 World Cup, a legendary event in the eyes of boomer soccer fans, established the four-year ritual that surpasses even the Olympics as a global sporting event.
At this time, UEFA’s Euros were barely a competition at all. The 1968, 1972 and 1976 editions – played in Italy, Belgium and Yugoslavia, respectively – each had only four teams and only four or five games.
UEFA had by then established its role in club competition. The European Cup, as the Champions League was then called, started in 1955.
But the game remembered today for establishing the dominance of European club competition is the 1960 final between Real Madrid and Eintract Frankfurt – a 10-goal thriller that Los Blancos won 7-3.
Witnessed by a crowd of 128,000 at Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland, the more important statistic was the estimated 70 million television audience in Europe.
The 1968 final at London’s Wembley Stadium, when Manchester United overcame Benfica in honor of the “Busby Babes” – Manchester players who died in a 1958 Munich air disaster while traveling home from a European Cup game – saw a TV audience of 270 million.
The ambition to create a club world cup to rival the European Cup goes back to the 1950s. Soccer powerhouses Brazil and Argentina in particular promoted the idea that the top clubs in Europe should face off against the top South American teams.
The resulting Intercontinental Cup ran from 1960 to 2004, with the top teams from UEFA and CONMEBOL, the South American soccer federation, taking part.
But played in midseason, it barely made an impression on the fans.
In 2000, FIFA created the Club World Championship, with eight teams drawn from the five international federations.
It also attracted little love, and the 2001-to-2004 editions had to be canceled for lack of financial backing.
In the early years, it seemed like an excuse to emulate the Intercontinental Cup, and the first three winners were South American. However, since 2006, all the winners bar one – Brazil’s Corinthians in 2012 – have been European.
Then, in 2017, Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, announced plans to expand the competition and move it to the summer. With 32 teams, the competition will look more like the World Cup and will receive a lot of TV coverage.
The fact that it will be free to watch will help. So too will the presence of Messi.
Yet the overwhelming feeling going into the competition is that, like its predecessors, the revamped FIFA club competition is destined for failure.
With the European domestic leagues all completed and the Champions League final – the unofficial marker of the end of the soccer season – having taken place on May 31, players and fans appear to be “on the beach,” to use a favorite phrase of soccer commentators.
Ultimately, FIFA’s revamped World Club Cup faces the same issues that beset its forerunners: European teams are overwhelmingly tipped to win.
Rather than the global soccer “solidarity” that FIFA hopes, the competition sets to reinforce the dominance of European clubs – and of Europe’s governing body when it comes to club competition.
Stefan Szymanski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. Dismal ticket sales, grumblings from fans and clubs – is FIFA’s latest attempt to establish a global club game doomed before it starts? – https://theconversation.com/dismal-ticket-sales-grumblings-from-fans-and-clubs-is-fifas-latest-attempt-to-establish-a-global-club-game-doomed-before-it-starts-258378
Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Linggong Kong, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, Auburn University
On June 5, U.S. President Donald Trump held a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping. It marked the first direct conversation between the two leaders since Trump began his second term — and the first since tensions sharply escalated in 2025’s U.S.-China trade war.
After the call, Trump was quick to frame it as a success for his administration, posting on social media that it led to “a very positive conclusion for both Countries.” He later told reporters that Xi had agreed to resume exports of rare earth minerals and magnets to the U.S. — allaying the fears of the auto industry, which had previously warned that parts suppliers were facing severe and immediate risks to production.
The presidential phone call also yielded an invitation for Trump and first lady Melania to visit China, an invitation that Trump reciprocated.
But aside from the easing of some trade tension and surface-level niceties, the call conveyed subtle messages about an imbalance in the bilateral dispute. As an expert on U.S.-China relations, I believe these subtleties point to Xi having the upper hand in U.S.-China talks and also using Trump as a foil to burnish his own image as a strong leader at home and abroad.
The Trump-Xi call should not distract from the fragile state of China-U.S. relations — and the willingness of Beijing to play its “rare earth materials card.”
Beijing suspended rare earth shipments to prominent American companies following the U.S. imposition of tariffs on China.
Although China and U.S. delegations reached a 90-day tariff truce in Geneva on May 12, negotiations between the two countries remain ongoing. As many observers have noted, deep-rooted and structural differences — such as disputes over currency manipulation, export subsidies and other nontariff barriers — continue to cast a long shadow over the prospects of U.S-China trade talks.
Under the terms of the Geneva deal, China agreed to suspend or lift its export ban on rare earths — something the U.S. accuses China of dragging its feet on.
Beijing, in turn, accuses the U.S. of breaking the Geneva agreement first and blames Washington for rolling out a wave of discriminatory measures against China after the talks, including new export controls on artificial intelligence chips, a ban on selling electronic design automation software to Chinese companies, and plans to revoke visas for Chinese students.
Trump’s order banning American companies from using AI chips by China-based Huawei — issued just one day after the Geneva agreement on May 12 — was seen by many in Beijing as directly countering the spirit of the agreement. Indeed, it may well have prompted Beijing to delay the resumption of rare earth exports to the U.S. in the first place.
Aside from the actual effect of the resumption of rare earth exports, Trump’s apparent priority given to the issue signals to Beijing just how reliant the U.S. is on China in this regard — something that would not have gone unnoticed by Xi.
Just one day before the June 5 call, Trump wrote on social media: “I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!”
His conversation with the Chinese leader would have further reinforced Xi’s tough image — not just for a Chinese audience, but for international observers as well.
This was certainly encouraged by how China described the call. According to China’s official statement, Xi “took a phone call from U.S. President Donald J. Trump” – the subtle implication being that it was Trump who initiated the call.
This framing promotes the idea that Xi holds the upper hand. The Chinese statement also highlighted that the Geneva talks were “at the suggestion of the U.S. side,” implying that China did not back down in the face of Trump’s trade pressure — and that it was Trump who ultimately blinked first.
China’s message is particularly significant given that, as the U.S.-China trade war intensified in April, Washington believed it could gain “escalation dominance” by imposing tariffs on Chinese goods — perhaps underestimating China’s ability to retaliate effectively and assuming Beijing would be eager to negotiate.
Prior to the June 5 communication, Trump repeatedly expressed hope that Xi would call him, yet Xi never took the initiative. On April 22, Trump told Time magazine that Xi had phoned him — an assertion that Beijing quickly denied.
Throughout the trade standoff, Xi refrained from initiating contact with Trump, and in the end, it was Trump who reached out.
This undoubtedly enhanced Xi’s image back home — and potentially undermined Trump’s negotiating posture.
The official Chinese statement following the talks noted: “The Chinese side is sincere about this, and at the same time has its principles. The Chinese always honor and deliver what has been promised. Both sides should make good on the agreement reached in Geneva.”
Those words appear aimed at signaling to the international community that it is the U.S. — not China — that failed to uphold its end of the Geneva agreement.
The second-to-last paragraph of the Chinese statement on the phone call noted: “President Trump said that he has great respect for President Xi, and the U.S.-China relationship is very important. The U.S. wants the Chinese economy to do very well. The U.S. and China working together can get a lot of great things done. The U.S. will honor the one-China policy. The meeting in Geneva was very successful, and produced a good deal. The U.S. will work with China to execute the deal. The U.S. loves to have Chinese students coming to study in America.”
While much of this language may be standard diplomatic rhetoric, it clearly aims to box in Trump as the supplicant in the current dispute and implies that he is moving closer to China’s positions, including key nontrade issues like U.S. visas for Chinese students.
Aside from the optics or broader question of who is “winning” the dispute, the Trump-Xi call has certainly eased some tensions on both sides — at least temporarily.
For the U.S., concerns over rare earth supplies were alleviated. Since the call, it has been reported that China has issued temporary export licenses to companies that supply rare earth materials to America’s three largest automakers.
For China, Trump’s remarks seemingly helped reduce anxiety over issues such as Taiwan and student visa restrictions.
But given the deep and fundamental differences between the two countries on trade and economic matters — and recalling how trade negotiations repeatedly stalled and restarted during Trump’s first term — there is good reason to believe that future talks could face similar setbacks.
But what is clear now, especially compared with the trade war during Trump’s first administration, is that Beijing appears better prepared and more skilled at leveraging its rare earth exports as a bargaining chip.
In many ways, Trump faces the greater pressure in his handling of Xi. Should talks collapse, any resulting supply chain disruptions could lead to rising inflation, market volatility and economic woe for the U.S. — with the associated risks of political fallout ahead of the midterm elections. Xi will know this and, in rare earth materials, has an ace up his sleeve to pull out when needed.
Indeed, Trump may find himself needing to reach out to Xi again in the future in an effort to revive troubled trade negotiations. But doing so would only reinforce Xi’s image as the tougher and more dominant figure.
Linggong Kong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. Trump–Xi call boosts Chinese president’s tough man image — and may have handed him the upper hand in future talks – https://theconversation.com/trump-xi-call-boosts-chinese-presidents-tough-man-image-and-may-have-handed-him-the-upper-hand-in-future-talks-258437
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michelle Spear, Professor of Anatomy, University of Bristol
Ice baths are everywhere in modern fitness culture. From professional athletes to weekend warriors, many swear by the post-workout plunge, hoping the icy shock will ease soreness, calm inflammation and help their bodies bounce back faster. But recent research from the Netherlands reveals a surprising downside: those freezing dips might actually slow muscle growth.
When you expose your body to cold, like during an ice bath, your blood vessels constrict. This can reduce swelling, flush out waste products from your workout and ease the muscle soreness that occurs a day or two after intense exercise. That post-workout ache is a sign that your muscles are repairing. So when it fades, it feels like you’re ready to hit the gym again, which helps explain why ice baths are so popular.
But there’s a twist. The very inflammation that causes soreness is also part of how your muscles heal and grow. Shut it down too soon and you might be holding back your progress.
In the recent study, researchers at Maastricht University tested how cold temperatures affect nutrient delivery and muscle-building signals. Twelve healthy young men each did a strength workout using just one leg. Immediately afterwards, each immersed that leg in 8°C water for 20 minutes, while the other leg sat in 30°C water (the “control”). The scientists then measured blood flow and tracked how the muscles used protein to see how the cold affected recovery and muscle-building processes.
The results were clear: right after the ice bath, blood flow in the cold-exposed leg dropped by about 60% compared with the warm-water leg.
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Even three hours after the workout, blood flow to the muscle that had been cooled was still noticeably lower. Since muscles rely on blood to deliver nutrients, such as amino acids and oxygen, this meant they were getting less of what they needed to grow. In fact, the researchers found about 30% less of the building blocks of protein being used by the muscle.
After strength training, blood flow to your muscles normally increases – a response known as hyperemia. This rush of blood brings important nutrients like amino acids, oxygen and insulin, all of which help to trigger the muscle-building process.
But when you expose your muscles to cold right after a workout, the blood vessels tighten – a reaction called vasoconstriction – which limits how much of those nutrients get through. That means your muscles may miss out during an important window for growth and recovery.
After a workout, a bit of inflammation is actually a good thing – it signals your body to start the repair process. Immune cells release special proteins called cytokines – chemical messengers that help spark muscle repair.
But cooling the muscles too soon, like with an ice bath, can reduce this natural response. It dampens the signals and slows the activation of those repair cells, which may lead to slower progress and less muscle growth over time.
Most athletes who use ice baths jump in within minutes after a workout, usually soaking in water between 8°C and 15°C for ten to 20 minutes. This is the standard protocol, although coaches and athletes often adjust the timing and temperature, depending on their goals.
Waiting at least an hour before taking an ice bath might be a smart move as it gives the body time to initiate important muscle-building signals and absorb nutrients without interference. Also, using milder cold water (around 15°C) is gentler on blood flow compared with very cold water. That means it can still help ease soreness without slowing muscle growth as much as colder temperatures might.
How often you use ice baths makes a difference too. In the Maastricht study and others like it, participants used cold plunges after every workout, which led to less muscle growth over time. But if you save ice baths for especially tough days, like during competitions or intense training weeks, athletes can avoid some of those negative effects while still getting recovery benefits when they need them most.
If the goal is to stay sharp and recover quickly – rather than building maximum muscle – then a slight drop in muscle growth might be a fair trade-off for feeling fresher and bouncing back faster.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about ice baths and muscle growth. Most studies so far have focused on young men, so it’s unclear if women, older adults or people with muscle loss due to health conditions respond the same way. More research is needed to understand how cold therapy affects different groups of people.
Most research so far has focused on soaking just one arm or leg, but full-body ice baths might cause different reactions in the body, such as changes in hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, that could affect how muscles adapt. Bigger studies are needed to figure out the best timing, temperature and how different people respond to cold therapy.
The allure of ice baths is understandable: who doesn’t want to feel less sore after a gruelling training session? But current data should serve as a cautionary tale – muscles need blood, nutrients and even inflammation to grow. By plunging immediately into icy water, athletes risk dampening the very signals that drive muscle growth.
For people who want to maximise muscle size and strength, it might be best to skip the ice bath or delay it by at least an hour. But for athletes facing tough competition schedules who need to recover quickly, carefully timed ice baths can be a helpful tool. Ultimately, each athlete must weigh the benefits of feeling less sore against the possibility of slower muscle growth and adjust how they use cold therapy based on their personal goals and training demands.
Michelle Spear 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. Skip the ice bath if you want bigger muscles – https://theconversation.com/skip-the-ice-bath-if-you-want-bigger-muscles-258407
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Emily Rowe, Lecturer in Early Modern Literature, King’s College London
The new musical film Juliet and Romeo arrives on screen with lavish visuals, saccharine pop songs and a reworked Shakespearean plot that tries to dazzle. With its vivid colour palette and dreamy masquerade aesthetic, this is Verona as filtered through a Eurovision lens: glittering, melodramatic and frequently overwrought.
Writer and director Timothy Scott Bogart and composer Evan Kidd join a lineage of Romeo and Juliet adaptations that blend music with spectacle. Who could forget Harold Perrineau’s drag rendition of Young Hearts Run Free as Mercutio in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996)? More recently, the stage show & Juliet (2019) used the iconic songwriting of Max Martin for a jukebox musical meets feminist retelling of the tragedy. So where does Juliet and Romeo fall in comparison?
Let’s begin with the fair, before turning to the foul. Shot on location in the real Verona, Juliet and Romeo makes excellent use of its scenery, with inventive sets and clever staging that breathe some vitality into its world.
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Verona’s jewel tones, candlelit street parties and endless twisting streets grant the film its fairytale quality. There’s a tactile richness to the production design that occasionally feels immersive, evoking a heightened world somewhere between Shakespeare’s imagined Verona and a perfume advert. The array of fight, dance, and crowd scenes are well-choreographed and the camera often moves with an energetic theatricality that hints at what the musical could have been.
Unfortunately, the music doesn’t keep pace. While the pop soundtrack is relentlessly inoffensive – think bubblegum ballads and power choruses – it lacks the lyrical bite or emotional weight needed to sustain a tragedy.
With sugary harmonies and banal lyrics, these numbers evoke more Eurovision than Elizabethan drama – not inherently a bad thing, but in this case, it results in emotional flatness. For example, a number like Better Than This, led with verve by Martina Ortiz Luis as Veronica, stands out slightly with its charming melody and joyful choreography. It’s a moment of brightness that briefly lifts the energy. But even that slips into the overall sameness of the score. At its best, the music is cutesy; at its worst, it’s filler.
The character work is similarly uneven. Juliet (Clara Rugaard) emerges as the most compelling figure – wry, self-aware, and played with just enough spunk to avoid cliché. Romeo (Jamie Ward), by contrast, is a forgettable boy-band archetype, rebelling weakly against a domineering father (Jason Isaacs channelling medieval Lucius Malfoy) and contributing little beyond brooding charm.
Derek Jacobi’s gravitas is squandered on narration and playing the hapless Friar Lawrence. Juliet and Romeo opens with a flurry of historical exposition delivered by Jacobi: medieval Italy, papal politics, the splintering of city-states, and the threat of “mighty Rome” coming for Verona. It’s an ambitious – if unnecessary – reframing that sets up a late-stage twist that gestures toward a sequel.
The supporting cast is also a mix of intriguing choices and tonal confusion. Mercutio’s (Nicholas Podany) subplot, involving his own forbidden love and tense relationship with an adoptive Montague patriarch, hints at deeper parallels to the central couple, but is never fully developed. The apothecary (Dan Fogler), bafflingly, gets a solo about alchemical experiments that feels lifted from a mid-tier Disney sequel. Meanwhile, the nurse (Sara Lazzaro), usually a comedic gem, is stripped of humour entirely.
A standout number comes from Rebel Wilson’s Lady Capulet and Verona’s women, who lament in The Mask I Wear about the constraints of femininity in well-arranged harmony. Yet the song’s emotional resonance is blunted by underwritten character arcs. The women sing beautifully, but we barely know why they’re angry.
In the end, Juliet and Romeo is a musical that strains to be meaningful but never earns its emotional crescendos. It gestures toward political intrigue, feminist revision and star-crossed romance, but settles for spectacle. Still, with its sparkling visuals and glossy score, for fans of unapologetic musical fanfare, there’s some joy to be found in the glitter.
Emily Rowe 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. Juliet and Romeo strains to be meaningful but never earns its emotional crescendos – https://theconversation.com/juliet-and-romeo-strains-to-be-meaningful-but-never-earns-its-emotional-crescendos-258507
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alex Newman, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Sustainability Assessment at the Grantham Centre, University of Sheffield
A new project in Bradwell, Essex, aims to change how we grow food and how we deal with our rubbish. Slated to begin operations in 2027, the Rivenhall greenhouse project could become Europe’s largest low-carbon horticulture facility.
While smaller scale applications already exist, primarily in the Netherlands, a proposal of this size is ambitious: to use heat from waste incineration to power and warm a massive 40-hectare greenhouse to produce up to 30,000 tonnes of tomatoes a year (around 6% of the UK’s current consumption).
The idea is to close two loops at once. By processing most of Essex’s household waste, the region’s reliance on landfill can be reduced – this cuts the amount of biodegradable waste decomposing to release methane (a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide). Also, by diverting the energy from that waste to grow food locally, less produce will need to be imported from regions increasingly vulnerable to climate-related stresses like drought and water scarcity.
The giant greenhouse will sit next to the Rivenhall integrated waste management facility, operated by waste company Indaver. Household waste will be incinerated on site, producing steam. Some of that steam will drive turbines to generate electricity and power the greenhouse. The rest of the steam will heat the greenhouse at a constant temperature all year round.
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To further reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a carbon capture system (separates CO₂ from other gases in exhaust streams) will extract around 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually from the incinerator’s flue gases. Rather than releasing this into the atmosphere, the captured carbon dioxide will be piped into the greenhouse to enhance plant growth.
Still, the scale of carbon capture is modest and not a quick fix. The 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide expected to be captured annually represents less than 10% of typical emissions from similar-scale waste facilities.
The facility will include 13 hectares of artificially lit greenhouse space for winter growing and a vertical farm (growing crops in stacked layers) converted from a former RAF hangar to grow leafy greens. In theory, this creates a resilient, year-round food production system largely decoupled from fossil fuels and climate-sensitive imports.
Burning waste to grow tomatoes might sound counterintuitive. Incinerators still release emissions after all. As a method of electricity generation, incineration of waste has a higher carbon footprint than burning coal. But in the context of current waste management and food import practices, it may make sense.
According to the UK government’s Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, around 30.8% of England’s household waste went to landfill in 2023 (around 8 million tonnes). Landfill emissions (primarily methane) are not just large – they’re long-lived and hard to capture.
Rivenhall’s model claims to reduce total greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 20% compared to landfill. When electricity, heat, and food outputs are factored in, and carbon capture included, emissions per kilogram of tomato could be substantially lower than those from conventional imports or fossil-powered greenhouses.
But low-carbon status is not a badge that companies claim, it’s a result that needs to be verified. In lifecycle assessment (a method for measuring the environmental impacts of a product, service, or system, and the focus of my research), low-carbon status only applies if net emissions per kilogram of tomato are demonstrably lower than those from the realistic baseline.
That baseline, be it landfill, composting, anaerobic digestion, or recycling, must be clearly defined. If incinerated waste includes material better suited to recycling, the claimed benefits narrow or vanish.
The success of this particular project hinges not just on technical integration, but on accurate emissions accounting and efficient performance of carbon capture systems.
According to the waste hierarchy, the most sustainable strategy for reducing waste-related emissions is not incineration, but waste prevention and reduction. Energy recovery is better than landfill, but less preferable than eliminating waste altogether.
In the Netherlands, greenhouses often run on combined heat and power systems. In Canada, some horticultural operations use industrial waste heat. But Rivenhall’s scale and its tight integration with waste management infrastructure makes it unusual. If it works, it could serve as a blueprint for how regions can simultaneously tackle food security and waste while keeping the environmental cost of consumption closer to home.
Beyond greenhouse gas emissions, there are other environmental considerations. Even modern incinerators produce air-polluting nitrogen oxides and particulates, which must be rigorously controlled to avoid human health problems such as lung disease. To comply with the UK’s biodiversity net gain rules, natural habitats and wildlife populations around this site must be enhanced, not degraded.
While delivering on its technical promises, Rivenhall must also prove that its low-carbon credentials are more than just hot air. Even so, projects like this are no substitute for upstream solutions like waste prevention, reduced consumption and circular design.
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Alex Newman 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 burning waste to power a giant greenhouse really could be a greener way of growing food – https://theconversation.com/why-burning-waste-to-power-a-giant-greenhouse-really-could-be-a-greener-way-of-growing-food-258241
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Francesco Grillo, Academic Fellow, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University
I believe we Europeans feel far too safe. Europe’s political and economic leadership in the world, which was still unchallenged at the beginning of the century, has long since ceased to exist. Will the dominant cultural influence of Europe be maintained? I think not, unless we defend it and adjust ourselves to new conditions; history has shown that civilisations are all too perishable.
It is astonishing how much these words used in 1956 by Konrad Adenauer, one of the founding fathers of the European Union, still sound valid today. They perfectly define the current state of the union. Europeans are still struggling to adjust to new conditions – and the conditions to which they need to adjust also continue to change dramatically.
The battle for technological leadership is the current version of this struggle. Success in this domain could transform Europe, yet the continent remains complacent about its decline into backwardness. The European commission itself calculates that of the 19 digital platforms that have more than 45 million EU users, only one (Zalando) is from the EU.
Information is (economic and political) power and losing control means to gradually lose both market share and the ability to protect European democracies. Brussels has produced a mass of regulation on digital services, yet American digital platforms are getting away with what European leaders themselves call the manipulation of democratic elections, with very little repercussions. Elon Musk’s X, was banned in Brazil for less – refusing to ban accounts accused of spreading misinformation.
This decline, however, has been slow enough to lull European leaders into complacency about the future.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has a point when he laments that the European Union has been slow to engage in the negotiations he imposed on trade. Indeed, even on trade – one of the very few areas in which the European Union has a mandate from the member states to deal directly with third parties – progress is generally stuttering. The commissioner in charge has to constantly find a common denominator with the agendas of 27 member states, each of which has a different industrial agenda.
Europe’s decision-making processes are sub-optimal. Indeed, they were built for a different age. There is no shared voice on foreign policy – the EU has been able to say far less on Gaza than individual countries like Spain or the UK, for example. This may have the practical consequence of eroding the “moral leadership” that should still be Europe’s soft advantage.
Europe’s failure to respond to real-world changes is due to sub-optimal institutional settings. However the current paralysis in the face of clear need for action may be due to an even more fundamental question of trust in its own capabilities.
On one hand, there still seems room for complacency. As Stanley Pignal, the Charlemagne columnist for The Economist, recently put it, Europe can take a moderate amount of satisfaction from its continued status as a place where people are free to pursue “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. Yet, it is evident that the institutions needed to concretely achieve those objectives are crumbling: healthcare systems and welfare; robust and independent media; energy and military autonomy in a world without order.
On the other hand, Europe is increasingly resigned. A global poll taken by Gallup International shows that when responding to the question “do you think that your children will live better than you?” seven of the most pessimistic countries of the world are from the EU. Only 16% of Italians and 24% of French respondents answered “yes” to this question.
According to Ipsos, less than half of young Europeans feel prepared to enter the job market. And they blame the education system for that. The picture may well be even worse now – this survey was taken in 2019, before the pandemic, war in Europe and, more importantly, AI made the picture even more uncertain.
Europe has no alternative, as even far-right and far-left parties seem to acknowledge. Note that France’s Rassemblement National and Italy’s Lega no longer talk about exiting the EU but about changing it from the inside. Individual nation states simply do not have the minimum scale to even try to take leadership in a world looking for a new order.
In a world abandoned by the US, Europe stands a real chance. However, it urgently needs to be creative enough to imagine new mechanisms through which EU institutions take decisions and EU citizens have their say. This in turn requires an entire society to somehow recover the reasonable hope that decline is not inevitable (although we also must be aware that it may even nastily accelerate).
Finally, young people are absolutely crucial in the process. The rhetoric of “listening to them” must now be replaced by a call for them to govern. They are today what Karl Marx would have probably defined as a class – with very specific demographic, cultural, economic and linguistic characteristics. These must be turned into a political agenda and a new vision of what Europe of the future could look like.
The challenges ahead for the European Union will be the subject of the forthcoming conference on the Europe of the future in Siena, Italy. This will feed into a seven-point paper that will be discussed with EU institutions.
Francesco Grillo is associated to VISION think tank.
– ref. Europe is perfectly placed to lead a world abandoned by the US – but will it meet the moment? – https://theconversation.com/europe-is-perfectly-placed-to-lead-a-world-abandoned-by-the-us-but-will-it-meet-the-moment-258030
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jay L. Zagorsky, Associate Professor Questrom School of Business, Boston University
President Donald Trump’s promise to eliminate taxes on tips may sound like a windfall for service workers — but the fine print in Congress’ latest tax bill tells a more complex story.
Right now, Republican lawmakers are advancing the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — a sprawling, 1,100-page proposal that aims to change everything from tax incentives for electric vehicles to health care. It also includes a proposal to end taxes on tips, which could potentially affect around 4 million American workers. The Senate has recently passed its own version – the No Tax on Tips Act.
The idea started getting attention when Trump raised it during a 2024 campaign stop in Las Vegas, a place where tipping is woven into the economy. And the headlines and press releases sound great — especially if you’re a waiter, bartender or anyone else who depends on tips for a living. That may be why both Democrats and Republicans alike broadly support the concept. However, like most of life, the devil is in the details.
I’m a business-school economist who has written about tipping, and I’ve looked closely at the language of the proposed laws. So, what exactly has Trump promised, and how does it measure up to what’s in the bills? Let’s start with his pledge.
Back in January 2025, Trump said, “If you’re a restaurant worker, a server, a valet, a bellhop, a bartender, one of my caddies … your tips will be 100% yours.” That sounds like a boost in tipped workers’ income.
But when you look at the current situation, it becomes clear that the reality is far more complicated.
First, the new tax break only applies to tips the government knows about — and a lot of that income currently flies under the radar. Tipped workers who get cash tips are supposed to report it to the IRS via form 4137 if their employer doesn’t report it for them. If a worker gets a cash tip today and doesn’t report it, they already get 100% of the money. No one really knows what percentage of tips are unreported, but an old IRS estimate pegs it at about 40%.
What’s more, the current tax code defines tips only as payments where the customer determines the tip amount. If a restaurant charges a fixed 18% service charge, or there’s an extra fee for room service, those aren’t tips in the government’s eyes. This means some tipped workers who think service charges are tips will overestimate the new rule’s impact on their finances.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” would create a new tax code section under “itemized deductions” This area of the tax code already includes text that creates health savings accounts and gives students deductions for interest on their college loans.
What’s in the new section?
First, the bill specifies that this tax break applies just to “any cash tip.” The IRS classifies payments by credit card, debit card and even checks as “cash tips.” Unfortunately for workers in Las Vegas, noncash tips, like casino chips, aren’t part of the bill.
While the House bill limits the deduction to people earning less than US$160,000 the Senate bill caps the deduction to the first $25,000 of tips earned. Everything over that is taxed.
Second, the current House bill ends this special tax-free deal on Dec. 31, 2028. That means these special benefits would only last three years, unless Congress extends the law. The Senate bill does not include such a deadline.
Third, the exemption is only available to jobs that typically receive tips. The Treasury secretary is required to define the list of tipped occupations. If an occupation isn’t on the list, the law doesn’t apply.
I wonder how many occupations won’t make the list. For example, some camp counselors get tips at the end of the summer. But it’s unclear the Treasury Department will include these workers as a covered group, since counselors only make up a proportion of summer camp staff. Not making the list is a real problem.
And while the new proposal gives workers an income tax break, there’s nothing in either bill about skipping FICA payments on the tipped earnings. Workers are still required to contribute slightly more than 7% in Social Security and Medicare taxes on all tips they report, which won’t benefit them until retirement. This isn’t an oversight — the bill specifically says employees must furnish a valid Social Security number to get the tax benefits.
There are a few other ways the legislation might benefit workers less than it seems at first glance. Instituting no taxes on tips could mean tipped employees feel more pressure to split their tips with other employees, like busboys, chefs and hosts. After all, these untipped workers also contribute to the customer experience, and often at low wages.
And finally, many Americans are tired of tipping. Knowing that servers don’t have to pay taxes might make some to cut back on it even more.
The specifics of any piece of legislation are subject to change until the moment Congress sends it to the president to be signed. However, as now written, I think the bills aren’t as generous to tipped workers as Trump made it sound on the campaign trail.
Jay L. Zagorsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. For Trump’s ‘no taxes on tips,’ the devil is in the details – https://theconversation.com/for-trumps-no-taxes-on-tips-the-devil-is-in-the-details-258276
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Stewart Edie, Research Geologist and Curator of Paleobiology, Smithsonian Institution
About 66 million years ago – perhaps on a downright unlucky day in May – an asteroid smashed into our planet.
The fallout was immediate and severe. Evidence shows that about 70% of species went extinct in a geological instant, and not just those famous dinosaurs that once stalked the land. Masters of the Mesozoic oceans were also wiped out, from mosasaurs – a group of aquatic reptiles topping the food chain – to exquisitely shelled squid relatives known as ammonites.
Even groups that weathered the catastrophe, such as mammals, fishes and flowering plants, suffered severe population declines and species loss. Invertebrate life in the oceans didn’t fare much better.
But bubbling away on the seafloor was a stolid group of animals that has left a fantastic fossil record and continues to thrive today: bivalves – clams, cockles, mussels, oysters and more.
What happened to these creatures during the extinction event and how they rebounded tells an important story, both about the past and the future of biodiversity.
Marine bivalves lost around three-quarters of their species during this mass extinction, which marked the end of the Cretaceous Period. My colleagues and I – each of us paleobiologists studying biodiversity – expected that losing so many species would have severely cut down the variety of roles that bivalves play within their environments, what we call their “modes of life.”
But, as we explain in a study published in the journal Sciences Advances, that wasn’t the case. In assessing the fossils of thousands of bivalve species, we found that at least one species from nearly all their modes of life, no matter how rare or specialized, squeaked through the extinction event.
Statistically, that shouldn’t have happened. Kill 70% of bivalve species, even at random, and some modes of life should disappear.
Most bivalves happily burrow into the sand and mud, feeding on phytoplankton they strain from the water. But others have adopted chemosymbionts and photosymbionts – bacteria and algae that produce nutrients for the bivalves from chemicals or sunlight in exchange for housing. A few have even become carnivorous. Some groups, including the oysters, can lay down a tough cement that hardens underwater, and mussels hold onto rocks by spinning silken threads.
We thought surely these more specialized modes of life would have been snuffed out by the effects of the asteroid’s impact, including dust and debris likely blocking sunlight and disrupting a huge part of the bivalves’ food chain: photosynthetic algae and bacteria. Instead, most persisted, although biodiversity was forever scrambled as a new ecological landscape emerged. Species that were once dominant struggled, while evolutionary newcomers rose in their place.
The reasons some species survived and others didn’t leave many questions to explore. Those that filtered phytoplankton from the water column suffered some of the highest species losses, but so did species that fed on organic scraps and didn’t rely as much on the Sun’s energy. Narrow geographic distributions and different metabolisms may have contributed to these extinction patterns.
Life rebounded from each of the Big Five mass extinctions throughout Earth’s history, eventually punching through past diversity highs. The rich fossil record and spectacular ecological diversity of bivalves gives us a terrific opportunity to study these rebounds to understand how ecosystems and global biodiversity rebuild in the wake of extinctions.
The extinction caused by the asteroid strike knocked down some thriving modes of life and opened the door for others to dominate the new landscape.
While many people lament the loss of the dinosaurs, we malacologists miss the rudists.
These bizarrely shaped bivalves resembled giant ice cream cones, sometimes reaching more than 3 feet (1 meter) in size, and they dominated the shallow, tropical Mesozoic seas as massive aggregations of contorted individuals, similar to today’s coral reefs. At least a few harbored photosymbiotic algae, which provided them with nutrients and spurred their growth, much like modern corals.
Today, giant clams (Tridacna) and their relatives fill parts of these unique photosymbiotic lifestyles once occupied by the rudists, but they lack the rudists’ astonishing species diversity.
Mass extinctions clearly upend the status quo. Now, our ocean floors are dominated by clams burrowed into sand and mud, the quahogs, cockles and their relatives – a scene far different from that of the seafloor 66 million years ago.
Ecological traits alone didn’t fully predict extinction patterns, nor do they entirely explain the rebound. We also see that simply surviving a mass extinction didn’t necessarily provide a leg up as species diversified within their old and sometimes new modes of life – and few of those new modes dominate the ecological landscape today.
Like the rudists, trigoniid bivalves had lots of different species prior to the extinction event. These highly ornamented clams built parts of their shells with a super strong biomaterial called nacre – think iridescent pearls – and had fractally interlocking hinges holding their two valves together.
But despite surviving the extinction, which should have placed them in a prime position to accumulate species again, their diversification sputtered. Other types of bivalves that made a living in the same way proliferated instead, relegating this once mighty and global group to a handful of species now found only off the coast of Australia.
These unexpected patterns of extinction and survival may offer lessons for the future.
The fossil record shows us that biodiversity has definite breaking points, usually during a perfect storm of climatic and environmental upheaval. It’s not just that species are lost, but the ecological landscape is overturned.
Many scientists believe the current biodiversity crisis may cascade into a sixth mass extinction, this one driven by human activities that are changing ecosystems and the global climate. Corals, whose reefs are home to nearly a quarter of known marine species, have faced mass bleaching events as warming ocean water puts their future at risk. Acidification as the oceans absorb more carbon dioxide can also weaken the shells of organisms crucial to the ocean food web.
Findings like ours suggest that, in the future, the rebound from extinction events will likely result in very different mixes of species and their modes of life in the oceans. And the result may not align with human needs if species providing the bulk of ecosystem services are driven genetically or functionally extinct.
The global oceans and their inhabitants are complex, and, as our team’s latest research shows, it is difficult to predict the trajectory of biodiversity as it rebounds – even when extinction pressures are reduced.
Billions of people depend on the ocean for food. As the history recorded by the world’s bivalves shows, the upending of the pecking order – the number of species in each mode of life – won’t necessarily settle into an arrangement that can feed as many people the next time around.
Stewart Edie receives funding from the Smithsonian Institution.
– ref. Ancient fossils show how the last mass extinction forever scrambled the ocean’s biodiversity – https://theconversation.com/ancient-fossils-show-how-the-last-mass-extinction-forever-scrambled-the-oceans-biodiversity-258389
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Daniel Cohan, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University
When it comes to energy policy, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” – the official name of a massive federal tax-cut and spending bill that House Republicans passed in May 2025 – risks raising Americans’ energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions.
The 1,100-page bill would slash incentives for green technologies such as solar, wind, batteries, electric cars and heat pumps while subsidizing existing nuclear power plants and biofuels. That would leave the country and its people burning more fossil fuels despite strong popular and scientific support for a rapid shift to renewable energy.
The bill may still be revised by the Senate before it moves to a final vote. But it is a picture of how President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans want to reshape U.S. energy policy.
As an environmental engineering professor who studies ways to confront climate change, I think it is important to distinguish which technologies could rapidly cut emissions or are on the verge of becoming viable from those that do little to fight climate change. Unfortunately, the House bill favors the latter while nixing support for the former.
Wind and solar power, often paired with batteries, are providing over 90% of the new electricity currently being added to the grid nationally and around the world. Geothermal power is undergoing technological breakthroughs. With natural gas turbines in short supply and long lead times to build other resources, renewables and batteries offer the fastest way to satisfy growing demand for power.
However, the House bill rescinds billions of dollars that the Inflation Reduction Act, enacted in 2022, devoted to boosting domestic manufacturing and deployments of renewable energy and batteries.
It would terminate tax credits for manufacturing for the wind industry in 2028 and for solar and batteries in 2032. That would disrupt the boom in domestic manufacturing projects that was being stimulated by the Inflation Reduction Act.
Deployments would be hit even harder. Wind, solar, geothermal and battery projects would need to commence construction within 60 days of passage of the bill to receive tax credits.
In addition, the bill would deny tax credits to projects that use Chinese-made components. Financial analysts have called those provisions “unworkable,” since some Chinese materials may be necessary even for projects built with as much domestic content as possible.
Analysts warn that the House bill would cut new wind, solar and battery installations by 20% compared with the growth that had been expected without the bill. That’s why BloombergNEF, an energy research firm, called the bill a “nightmare scenario” for clean energy proponents.
However, one person’s nightmare may be another man’s dream. “We’re constraining the hell out of wind and solar, which is good,” said Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican backed by the oil and gas industry.
Cuts fall even harder on Americans who are trying to reduce their carbon footprints and energy costs. The bill repeals aid for home efficiency improvements such as heat pumps, efficient windows and energy audits. Homeowners would also lose tax credits for installing solar panels and batteries.
For vehicles, the bill would not only repeal tax credits for electric cars, trucks and chargers, but it also would impose a federal $250 annual fee on vehicles, on top of fees that some states charge electric-car owners. The federal fee is more than the gas taxes paid by other drivers to fund highways and ignores air-quality and climate effects.
Combined, the lost credits and increased fees could cut projected U.S. sales of electric vehicles by 40% in 2030, according to modeling by Jesse Jenkins of Princeton University.
Meanwhile, the bill partially retains a tax credit for electricity from existing nuclear power plants. Those plants may not need the help: Electricity demand is surging, and companies like Meta are signing long-term deals for nuclear energy to power data centers. Nuclear plants are also paid to manage their radioactive waste, since the country lacks a permanent place to store it.
For new nuclear plants, the bill would move up the deadline to 2028 to begin construction. That deadline is too soon for some new reactor designs and would rush the vetting of others. Nuclear safety regulators are awaiting a study from the National Academies on the weapons proliferation risks of the type of uranium fuel that some developers hope to use in newer designs.
While cutting funding for electric vehicles, the bill would spend $45 billion to extend tax credits for biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.
Food-based biofuels do little good for the climate because growing, harvesting and processing crops requires fertilizers, pesticides and fuel. The bill would allow forests to be cut to make room for crops because it directs agencies to ignore the impacts of biofuels on land use.
The bill would end tax credits for hydrogen production. Without that support, companies will be unlikely to invest in the seven so-called “hydrogen hubs” that were allocated a combined $8 billion under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021. Those hubs aim to attract $40 billion in private investments and create tens of thousands of jobs while developing cleaner ways to make hydrogen.
The repealed tax credits would have subsidized hydrogen made emissions-free by using renewable or nuclear electricity to split water molecules. They also would have subsidized hydrogen made from natural gas with carbon capture, whose benefits are impaired by methane emissions from natural gas systems and incomplete carbon capture.
However it’s made, hydrogen is no panacea. As the world’s smallest molecule, hydrogen is prone to leaking, which can pose safety challenges and indirectly warm the climate. And while hydrogen is essential for making fertilizers and potentially useful for making steel or aviation fuels, vehicles and heating are more efficiently powered by electricity than by hydrogen.
Still, European governments and China are investing heavily in hydrogen production.
The conservative Tax Foundation estimates that the House bill would cut the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy tax credits by about half, saving the government $50 billion a year. But with fewer efficiency improvements, fewer electric vehicles and less clean power on the grid, Princeton’s Jenkins projects American households would pay up to $415 more per year for energy by 2035 than if the bill’s provisions were not enacted. If the bill’s provisions make it into law, the extra fossil fuel-burning would leave annual U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 1 billion tons higher by then.
No one expected former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act to escape unscathed with Republicans in the White House and dominating both houses of Congress. Still, the proposed cuts target the technologies Americans count on to protect the climate and save consumers money.
Daniel Cohan receives funding from the Carbon Hub at Rice University.
– ref. How the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ positions US energy to be more costly for consumers and the climate – https://theconversation.com/how-the-big-beautiful-bill-positions-us-energy-to-be-more-costly-for-consumers-and-the-climate-257783
Source: United States of America – Department of State (video statements)
Spokesperson Tammy Bruce leads the Department Press Briefing at the Department of State, on June 10, 2025.
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Source: United States Department of Defense (video statements)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth commemorates the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings by American and Allied troops during a ceremony at Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France. June 6, 2025.
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Source: The Conversation – USA – By Nathaniel M. Tran, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Administration, University of Illinois Chicago
When LGBTQ+ patients are unsure if they can be open about their identity and related health needs, it becomes more difficult for them to access high-quality health care.
In our recently published research, my colleagues and I found that how LGBTQ+ people are treated at the doctor’s office has a measurable effect on whether they stay up to date with lifesaving preventive care like flu shots, colorectal cancer screenings and HIV testing.
We examined how LGBTQ+ adults rated their health care provider across three areas: LGBTQ+ cultural competency, such as if providers used inclusive language on forms and in person; LGBTQ+ clinical competency, such as their doctor’s knowledge on all aspects of their health; and experiences of discrimination, such as being told to seek care elsewhere.
After analyzing survey data on the experiences of more than 950 LGBTQ+ adults from across the U.S., we saw that three clear patterns emerged.
First, 34% of participants reported having positive health care experiences – meaning their providers were culturally and clinically competent about LGBTQ+ health needs, and did not discriminate against them. These patients were more likely to be up to date on at least one preventive service recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, compared to those receiving neutral or discriminatory care.
Second, 60% of participants reported having neutral experiences, when their providers were clinically competent about LGBTQ+ health needs and didn’t discriminate against them, but were not culturally competent. These patients were 43% less likely to get an HIV test compared to patients reporting affirming care.
Third, 6% of participants reported experiencing discrimination, when their providers were neither culturally nor clinically competent on LGBTQ+ health. These patients were 24% less likely to get a colorectal cancer screening compared to patients reporting affirming care.
Most LGBTQ+ adults in our study reported neutral or even discriminatory care, which leads to avoidable health risks and higher costs for the health system. This provides additional evidence that being supportive of LGBTQ+ patients has measurable improvements for health outcomes.
Preventive care saves lives and saves money. When diseases like colorectal cancer or HIV are caught early, treatments are often simpler, more effective and less expensive.
When LGBTQ+ patients are made to feel unwelcome or unsafe, we found that they are less likely to get routine preventive care, ultimately driving up long-term costs across the health system. States like North Carolina and Georgia that have more health systems participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s Healthcare Equality Index, which evaluates policies and practices around LGBTQ+ care, had higher rates of LGBTQ+ patients reporting positive care experiences compared to states with few participating health systems, such as Tennessee and Alabama.
Other researchers have found that health systems participating in the Healthcare Equality Index have lower rates of nurse burnout and better quality of care, along with higher patient satisfaction among all patients.
This study was originally funded by the National Institute on Aging, but it was among the first LGBTQ+-focused projects terminated by the Trump administration in its efforts to eliminate “gender ideology.”
Our team has continued the work independently to ensure that the over 1,250 participants who already shared their experiences and data would not have this information sit idly.
Our findings reinforce what many LGBTQ+ patients already know – nonjudgmental and competent care is not a luxury, but a public health necessity.
Nathaniel M. Tran received funding from the National Institute on Aging and Vanderbilt University.
– ref. LGBTQ+ patients stay up-to-date on preventive care when their doctors are supportive, saving money and lives throughout society – https://theconversation.com/lgbtq-patients-stay-up-to-date-on-preventive-care-when-their-doctors-are-supportive-saving-money-and-lives-throughout-society-258338
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Gilles Martin, Associate Professor of Neurobiology, UMass Chan Medical School
Despite the profound human, social and economic costs of alcohol abuse, existing treatments have failed to provide meaningful relief. Excessive alcohol consumption remains a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. In the U.S. alone, 16.4 million people age 12 and older reported binge drinking on five or more days in the past month.
Although there are several drugs available to those seeking to stop or lower their alcohol consumption, their effectiveness is limited, and they often have significant side effects. Over the past three decades, efforts to treat excessive drinking have focused primarily on developing drugs that target proteins that can control how neurons respond to stimuli. Because these proteins are present in almost every neuron throughout the brain, the drugs also affect neurons that aren’t directly responsible for regulating alcohol’s effects. This often leads to unwanted side effects like headache, fatigue, drowsiness or insomnia.
In my work as a neurobiologist, I study the idea that pinpointing the specific brain circuits that play a role in suppressing alcohol consumption is critical to developing targeted treatments with limited side effects. In my newly published research, my team and I identified a small cluster of neurons responsible for suppressing binge drinking.
Researchers have identified several brain regions that play a key role in alcohol abuse. But there has been strong evidence that only a very small number of neurons within these regions underpinned the effects of the drug on brain function.
Small populations of neurons, called neuronal ensembles, have been shown to play a key role in memory formation and experiencing fear. However, researchers haven’t known whether the neuronal ensembles activated during binge drinking also influence binge drinking behavior.
Considering the billions of neurons contained in the brain, the task of identifying these neurons is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. To solve this challenge, my colleagues and I used a genetically modified mouse model that, upon exposure to alcohol, activates a gene coding for a red fluorescent protein that is selectively expressed in alcohol-sensitive neurons. By tracing these fluorescent neurons, we were able to make a map of the precise locations of affected neurons.
We identified a discrete number of neurons that respond to binge drinking in a brain region called the medial orbitofrontal cortex. This area is known for its key role in controlling decision-making and adapting behavior to a changing environment.
We also found that turning this neuronal ensemble off resulted in a sharp increase of alcohol consumption in mice. This means that the brain has, in essence, a built-in regulation system that is activated during alcohol drinking to act as a brake on its consumption. Should these neurons misfire, the regulatory system would fail, possibly leading to uncontrolled drinking.
Although this study advances our understanding of how and where binge drinking modulates brain function in mice, it remains unclear whether human brains are also equipped with the same neuronal ensemble. If they are, stimulating these neurons may provide a path toward helping people who experience difficulty controlling their alcohol intake.
Although selective control of neuronal activity is a formidable challenge, progress in gene therapy for patients with cancer and other rare diseases offers hope for more effective alcohol use disorder treatments with fewer side effects.
Gilles Martin receives funding from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.
– ref. Binge drinking brake found in mouse brains, offering future path to treating alcohol abuse – new research – https://theconversation.com/binge-drinking-brake-found-in-mouse-brains-offering-future-path-to-treating-alcohol-abuse-new-research-257217
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Rob Coyne, Teaching Professor of Physics, University of Rhode Island
About a century ago, scientists were struggling to reconcile what seemed a contradiction in Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Published in 1915, and already widely accepted worldwide by physicists and mathematicians, the theory assumed the universe was static – unchanging, unmoving and immutable. In short, Einstein believed the size and shape of the universe today was, more or less, the same size and shape it had always been.
But when astronomers looked into the night sky at faraway galaxies with powerful telescopes, they saw hints the universe was anything but that. These new observations suggested the opposite – that it was, instead, expanding.
Scientists soon realized Einstein’s theory didn’t actually say the universe had to be static; the theory could support an expanding universe as well. Indeed, by using the same mathematical tools provided by Einstein’s theory, scientists created new models that showed the universe was, in fact, dynamic and evolving.
I’ve spent decades trying to understand general relativity, including in my current job as a physics professor teaching courses on the subject. I know wrapping your head around the idea of an ever-expanding universe can feel daunting – and part of the challenge is overriding your natural intuition about how things work. For instance, it’s hard to imagine something as big as the universe not having a center at all, but physics says that’s the reality.
First, let’s define what’s meant by “expansion.” On Earth, “expanding” means something is getting bigger. And in regard to the universe, that’s true, sort of. Expansion might also mean “everything is getting farther from us,” which is also true with regard to the universe. Point a telescope at distant galaxies and they all do appear to be moving away from us.
What’s more, the farther away they are, the faster they appear to be moving. Those galaxies also seem to be moving away from each other. So it’s more accurate to say that everything in the universe is getting farther away from everything else, all at once.
This idea is subtle but critical. It’s easy to think about the creation of the universe like exploding fireworks: Start with a big bang, and then all the galaxies in the universe fly out in all directions from some central point.
But that analogy isn’t correct. Not only does it falsely imply that the expansion of the universe started from a single spot, which it didn’t, but it also suggests that the galaxies are the things that are moving, which isn’t entirely accurate.
It’s not so much the galaxies that are moving away from each other – it’s the space between galaxies, the fabric of the universe itself, that’s ever-expanding as time goes on. In other words, it’s not really the galaxies themselves that are moving through the universe; it’s more that the universe itself is carrying them farther away as it expands.
A common analogy is to imagine sticking some dots on the surface of a balloon. As you blow air into the balloon, it expands. Because the dots are stuck on the surface of the balloon, they get farther apart. Though they may appear to move, the dots actually stay exactly where you put them, and the distance between them gets bigger simply by virtue of the balloon’s expansion.
Now think of the dots as galaxies and the balloon as the fabric of the universe, and you begin to get the picture.
Unfortunately, while this analogy is a good start, it doesn’t get the details quite right either.
Important to any analogy is an understanding of its limitations. Some flaws are obvious: A balloon is small enough to fit in your hand – not so the universe. Another flaw is more subtle. The balloon has two parts: its latex surface and its air-filled interior.
These two parts of the balloon are described differently in the language of mathematics. The balloon’s surface is two-dimensional. If you were walking around on it, you could move forward, backward, left, or right, but you couldn’t move up or down without leaving the surface.
Now it might sound like we’re naming four directions here – forward, backward, left and right – but those are just movements along two basic paths: side to side and front to back. That’s what makes the surface two-dimensional – length and width.
The inside of the balloon, on the other hand, is three-dimensional, so you’d be able to move freely in any direction, including up or down – length, width and height.
This is where the confusion lies. The thing we think of as the “center” of the balloon is a point somewhere in its interior, in the air-filled space beneath the surface.
But in this analogy, the universe is more like the latex surface of the balloon. The balloon’s air-filled interior has no counterpart in our universe, so we can’t use that part of the analogy – only the surface matters.
So asking, “Where’s the center of the universe?” is somewhat like asking, “Where’s the center of the balloon’s surface?” There simply isn’t one. You could travel along the surface of the balloon in any direction, for as long as you like, and you’d never once reach a place you could call its center because you’d never actually leave the surface.
In the same way, you could travel in any direction in the universe and would never find its center because, much like the surface of the balloon, it simply doesn’t have one.
Part of the reason this can be so challenging to comprehend is because of the way the universe is described in the language of mathematics. The surface of the balloon has two dimensions, and the balloon’s interior has three, but the universe exists in four dimensions. Because it’s not just about how things move in space, but how they move in time.
Our brains are wired to think about space and time separately. But in the universe, they’re interwoven into a single fabric, called “space-time.” That unification changes the way the universe works relative to what our intuition expects.
And this explanation doesn’t even begin to answer the question of how something can be expanding indefinitely – scientists are still trying to puzzle out what powers this expansion.
So in asking about the center of the universe, we’re confronting the limits of our intuition. The answer we find – everything, expanding everywhere, all at once – is a glimpse of just how strange and beautiful our universe is.
Rob Coyne receives funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the US National Science Foundation (NSF).
– ref. Where is the center of the universe? – https://theconversation.com/where-is-the-center-of-the-universe-252695
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Dylan Thomas Doyle, Information Science Researcher, University of Colorado Boulder
From family photos in the cloud to email archives and social media accounts, the digital lives of Americans are extensive and growing.
According to recent studies by the password management companies NordPass and Dashlane, the average internet user maintains more than 150 online accounts. Individuals produce hundreds of gigabytes of data each year. But few people have plans for what happens to that digital legacy after they die.
Unlike physical possessions, online assets often don’t pass smoothly from one generation to the next. Loved ones struggle to access important accounts or recover treasured photos. Many families face these challenges while already overwhelmed with grief.
Most tech companies haven’t kept up with this reality. Fewer than 15% of popular online platforms have clear systems for handling a user’s death, and customer support is often limited, according to our new study. As people’s “digital footprints” expand, the lack of planning has become both a practical and emotional burden for families. This is especially true for older adults who may not be aware of the steps required to manage their digital estate.
We are an associate professor of information science and a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder. We are researching how to design technologies for people engaged in end-of-life planning for their data.
We realized there was no organization or comprehensive website to help people navigate the technical, privacy or practical challenges they were facing. In response, we launched what we believe is a first-of-its-kind solution: the Digital Legacy Clinic.
Just as writing a will helps manage physical possessions after death, planning your digital legacy ensures that your online life is handled according to your wishes.
Our clinic opened in late 2024. The free clinic offers support both to people planning for the end of their digital lives and to those managing the digital estates of loved ones who have died.
Led by students and housed in the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Information Science department, the clinic operates much like a pro bono law clinic. Community members in the Denver and Boulder areas, as well as from across the country, can contact the clinic for help.
First, a person interested in getting support fills out a simple form. Then, a member of the clinic will send a follow-up email to clarify and offer preliminary advice. Since every case is different, often clinic workers will then meet via Zoom with a client to create a personalized plan for them and their family.
The clinic offers guidance on a wide range of digital estate concerns, including setting up digital legacy tools such as trusted contacts on Google and Apple or legacy contacts on Facebook – someone you choose to manage your main profile after you’ve died. People can also get guidance on how to memorialize or delete social media or other online accounts after a loved one has died.
For example, Facebook allows you to either memorialize an account or request its removal. To memorialize it, you’ll need to submit a form with the person’s name, date of death, proof of passing, such as an obituary, and verify your relationship to the deceased. Including these steps can help your loved ones manage a digital legacy with clarity and care.
The clinic also helps people recover and preserve digital assets. That includes photos, videos, emails and other important documents, such as legal documents stored on a Google Drive.
For those who are planning for after they die, the clinic can guide them in creating a digital estate plan. That plan might include inventorying online accounts, documenting login credentials and leaving instructions for account closure, or determining steps to email the documents to your lawyer.
The ongoing work of the clinic is run entirely by undergraduate and graduate students, who build and maintain the clinic’s website, manage the client intake process and research solutions tailored to each case.
For the students, it’s a hands-on learning opportunity that connects academic work to real-world needs. The experience is also professionally valuable. Students learn how to communicate complex tech topics with empathy, navigate privacy laws and manage sensitive data responsibly.
While the Digital Legacy Clinic is available to people across the country, its location in Boulder makes it especially accessible to older adults in the Boulder and Denver areas who may prefer or benefit from in-person support.
For older adults, the clinic can play a crucial role in helping them organize their digital lives while they’re still alive. This can reduce confusion for loved ones later and even help prevent issues such as identity theft or account misuse. Many older adults now maintain extensive online presences, but they may not have the tools or knowledge to ensure their accounts are secure and accessible to people they trust.
Jed Brubaker currently receives research funding from the National Science Foundation and Google. In the past he has recieved research funding from Facebook and Mozilla. During 2014-2020 he worked as a research for the Legacy Contact and Memorialized Profile features at Facebook.
Dylan Thomas Doyle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. Do you know how to prepare for your digital life after death? CU Boulder’s student-run clinic has some advice – https://theconversation.com/do-you-know-how-to-prepare-for-your-digital-life-after-death-cu-boulders-student-run-clinic-has-some-advice-257867
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Scientists comment on news that the UK government is investing in a nuclear plant at the Sizewell C site and a small modular reactor programme.
Prof Patrick Regan, Professor of Nuclear Metrology, University of Surrey, said:
“The announcement that the UK government has committed £14.2bn of investment to build European Pressurized Reactors (EPRs) at the Sizewell C site will contribute to the UK tackling the delicate balance between ever-increasing secure energy requirements and our commitment to achieving net-zero. The EPRs planned at Sizewell C represent Generation 3+ technology and build on more than 70 years of operational reactor experience worldwide to provide the cleanest, safest and most efficient form of nuclear power yet.
“This large investment, however, brings with it the obvious need to produce and maintain a highly skilled, expert workforce related to all phases of the Sizewell C project. Science and Engineering Apprentice, Graduate and Post-Graduate training in areas such as chemical engineering, material science, nuclear physics & radiochemistry, environmental monitoring, radiation measurement and health physics will be key in enabling ‘life-long’ UK-based careers in this industry, in line with such a far horizon project. This is a long-term investment in the UK’s national infrastructure, and it needs a skilled workforce to ensure its ultimate success.”
Dr Phil Johnstone, Principal Research Fellow, University of Sussex Science Policy Research Unit, Patron of Nuclear Information Service, Member of Sussex Energy Group, and Member of Nuclear Consultation Group:
Is this a good move?
“The decision on Sizewell C is a bad move. It will likely lead to increasing costs for UK electricity consumers and represents a significantly slower means of combatting climate change than alternative options. The announcement comes alongside the decision to select submarine reactor manufacturer Rolls Royce as the winning bidder to develop Small Modular Reactors. These are part of the same underlying goal: to sustain the UK military nuclear industrial base via subsidies from civil nuclear power, with democratic scrutiny of this strategy almost entirely absent.”
Prof Andy Stirling, professor of science and technology policy at the University of Sussex Science Policy Research Unit:
Is this a good move (or not) when it comes to energy and fossil fuels?
“It is well acknowledged behind the scenes (but denied in public), that this move is more intended to support the kind of nuclear industrial base needed for military than for climate reasons. Nuclear power stations like Sizewell C are so slow and expensive compared to renewables and storage strategies, that they erode rather than enhance climate action.”
What does this mean for UK energy production? Is there overspeculation?
“This will make UK energy production needlessly more expensive, less secure and less effective in climate terms, than if the same money had been spent on renewables and energy storage.”
What does the science say?
“On this as on many other policy issues, what counts as ‘the science’ is more uncertain and context-dependent than any side typically implies. If either nuclear advocates or critics claim their arguments to be uniquely or unequivocally science-based then that is a sign that they are seeking to mislead.”
Dr Sarah Darby, Emerita Research Fellow, Energy Programme, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, said:
“The argument that building Sizewell C will be markedly cheaper and quicker than Hinkley C is weak. Hinkley C is ‘first of a kind’ in the UK but has the same design as Olkiluoto in Finland and Flamanville in France. These two have been, respectively, over 10 years late and almost four times over budget [1] and over 12 years late and over four times over budget in real terms [2,3]. Neither is yet working reliably [4,5].
“The unfinished Hinkley C was reported by EdF last year as already 90% over budget and 7 years late – and EdF do not expect it to be finished before 2029-31.
“In the light of these figures from three power plants of the same design as SZC, Ed Miliband’s forecast of a 10-year build time looks wildly optimistic. Where cost and complexity are concerned, there is the additional concern about the SZC site being on a flood-prone and eroding coastline, with sea levels on the rise.
“EdF are now wholly owned by the French government, following their extreme financial difficulties, and it is unclear whether they will take any stake at all in SZC. This is hardly a vote of confidence in the prospects of their own design.
“The argument that nuclear build helps with climate goals is similarly weak. New nuclear would arrive too late to assist – renewables already supply over half of UK generation [6] – and are on the rise. The massive sums involved are money not spent on quicker and more effective moves towards energy transition. Bloomberg NEF’s latest assessment of energy transition investment trends* refers to renewables, energy storage, electric vehicles, and power grids as ‘proven, commercially scalable [and with] established business models’, yet categorises nuclear power as an ‘emerging’ technology, with investment held back by lack of affordability and technology maturity [7].
“Nuclear is being presented by the Government as complementary to renewables, for ‘when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow’. But what we need for these times – and for times of abundant renewable supply – is flexibility from storage and demand-side response, not large-scale inflexible power plants that cannot easily be turned down or up and that can be shut down at a moment’s notice [5,8].
“As so often, the debate is focused on supply rather than demand – what we use energy for. The government are citing figures of a doubling of demand by 2050 that are certainly not set in stone and likely to be exaggerated. AI demands are the new kid on the block but, as DeepSeek has shown, they need not be nearly as high as is often made out. There is still plenty of scope to improve energy security through energy efficiency, allied with storage and demand-side response, without compromising quality of life [9].
“Successive governments have already sunk £6.4bn of taxpayers’ money into Sizewell C, but this is no reason to compound the error. A further £14.2bn is substantial but falls a long way short of the £40bn ‘overnight’ cost estimated by the FT [10]. Further, this £40bn estimate does not take into account the costs of capital, decommissioning and disposal of waste. The last of these is itself a topic of major concern to the Public Accounts Committee [11].
“It is not too late to avoid a FID for Sizewell C and to steer funding in more productive directions, including modernisation of the electricity grid, energy efficient buildings and transport systems, and storage. Such investment could create jobs and improve living conditions around the country.”
References
3 – https://www.edf.fr/sites/groupe/files/2023-04/edf-urd-annual-financial-report-2022-en.pdf
5 – https://eandt.theiet.org/2025/03/12/radioactive-coolant-leak-europes-largest-nuclear-reactor
6 – https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/total-energy-section-1-energy-trends
8 – https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2016.0462
10 – https://www.ft.com/content/0b483728-de5b-4f2e-8d00-c49885c572c9)
Stephanie Baxter, Head of Policy, Institution of Engineering and Technology, said:
“The £14.2 billion of funding announced today for the development of Sizewell C, alongside selecting Rolls-Royce SMR as the preferred bidder to develop the UK’s first small modular reactors, marks an important step forward towards nuclear playing a significant role in the UK’s energy mix.
“Nuclear infrastructure, both large and small, will be needed in our energy system if the UK is to have a secure, affordable and sustainable energy system for 2030 and beyond. However, the Government must also take a whole system view of the wider energy system to ensure new nuclear infrastructure compliments other energy generation and distribution resources currently deployed and being developed.
“Significant infrastructure projects such as these rely on long-term stability – in the supply chain, regulations and the skills pipeline. That is why today’s announcements must be backed up by clear plans for delivery, including engagement with local communities.
“These ambitions will also not be met without the skilled engineering and technician workforce that will be critical to delivering and maintaining new nuclear infrastructure.
“Great British Energy must work closely with Skills England to ensure that these plans are backed by a long-term workforce strategy to deliver skilled job opportunities across the country – both by training up new workers in schools and colleges, and upskilling/reskilling the existing workforce through flexible funding in the Growth and Skills Levy.”
Will Davis, Nuclear Expert and a Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s Sustainability and Net Zero Policy Centre, said:
“Today’s announcements are a clear demonstration of the government’s long-term commitment to low-carbon energy security, extending beyond the 2030 clean power target and taking concrete steps toward achieving net zero by 2050.
“To meet our net zero ambitions, we must significantly scale up electricity generation – by two to three times current levels – and this will only be possible through large-scale projects like Sizewell C and the Small Modular Reactor (SMR) programme.
“While these developments are both welcome and necessary, the UK nuclear industry must address its ongoing credibility challenges around delivering projects on time and within budget. Unlike the UK’s Hinkley Point C, nuclear projects in countries like China and the UAE have avoided major delays. Learning from these international examples is essential if we are to attract private investment and reduce reliance on gas-fired power stations.
“The selection of a preferred bidder for the SMR fleet is a long-awaited milestone – over a decade in the making – and we’re pleased to see it finally progressing.
“The clarification of roles between Great British Energy and Great British Energy – Nuclear, with NESO overseeing the critical upgrades to our national electricity infrastructure is welcomed. These upgrades are vital and must be properly funded, not treated as an afterthought.
“With the announcements on Sizewell C and SMRs, we urge the government to clarify its position on future gigawatt-scale nuclear projects, such as the previously proposed development at Wylfa.
“New nuclear power stations require a high-tech supply chain and a highly skilled workforce. Investment in key manufacturers like Sheffield Forgemasters is encouraging, but broader supply chain investment hinges on project certainty – contracts must be signed.
“The IET continues to support the sector through initiatives like the Nuclear Skills Taskforce. We’re also pleased to see continued investment in STEP, the UK’s prototype fusion power plant. A £2.5 billion commitment is significant and deserves more visibility.
“However, we note the absence of updates on advanced nuclear technologies, which could play a crucial role in decarbonising hard-to-abate sectors such as steelmaking and hydrogen production. We hope to see further clarity on this soon.”
Dr Lewis Blackburn, Lecturer in Nuclear Materials, University of Sheffield, said:
“Today the UK government demonstrated a clear and renewed commitment to nuclear fission as a means to achieve Net Zero, a key goal that was outlined in the 2024 White Paper “Civil Nuclear: Roadmap to 2050”. This comes in the form of an approximately £14B commitment to the Sizewell C project, comprising two EPR (European Pressurised Reactors) delivering a total of 3.2 GWe. The project is forecast to support 70k jobs and produce enough energy to power 6M UK homes. Today’s news also comes alongside an announcement that Rolls-Royce have been identified as the preferred bidder to construct the UK’s first Small Modular Reactors (SMR) – a fleet of smaller fission reactors designed to be built ‘modular’ on a production line, prior to shipping and assembly on-site.
“The UK faces a potential skills challenge in the field of nuclear engineering and projects like Sizewell C and Rolls-Royce SMR offer an exciting opportunity to build a skills pipeline, increasing the number and diversity of people entering the nuclear workforce, and bolstering the supply chain.
“In order for the UK to maintain its international reputation as a leader in civil nuclear, it must continue to invest heavily in new infrastructure, the wider industrial supply chain and R&D. Thus, producing the next generation of nuclear expertise in both the industrial and academic sectors, equipping them with the skills required for the UK to continue to utilise nuclear fission, safely, for generations to come.
“An important aspect of this is ensuring that highly radioactive waste, generated as a by-product of nuclear fission, is not passed onto future generations and is permanently disposed of. In this area, the UK is in the process of siting a geological disposal facility – a dedicated site wherein intermediate and high-level radioactive waste will be isolated from the wider environment permanently. The international consensus in the wider scientific and technical community is that this is the only feasible way to safely manage such wastes, ensuring passive safety. This is the focus of significant R&D in both the technical and academic space.”
Dr Mark Foreman, Associate professor of Nuclear Chemistry / Industrial Materials Recycling, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, said:
“Building a new power plant based on light water reactors at Sizewell is a good idea, it will provide a reliable supply of electric power which will help society reduce its dependency on fossil fuels. I hold the view that it will be a safe means of providing for the energy needs of society. Many critics of nuclear power use the example of the Chornobyl accident to argue that all nuclear power plants are unsafe. This is unreasonable, operating the Chornobyl reactor in the same way as it was just before the accident can be thought of as like roller blading along the M1. While running modern (or even a 1980s era) light water reactor is like calmly driving a Volvo equipped with all the latest safety features along the M1.”
Prof Robin Grimes FRS FREng, Professor of materials physics, Imperial College London, said:
“Large plants such as Hinckley, currently under construction and this announced plant at Sizewell are very good at providing constant base load electricity capacity. They are also good for supporting grid stability and providing inertia. Of course they offer generation diversity and energy security. They will offer these benefits for many decades. As we turn to more electricity use to reduce carbon emissions we will need more nuclear electrify. However, large plant are less good at helping with the inherent intermittency of renewables. For this we need the greater flexibility as provided by small modular reactors or the higher temperatures of advanced modular reactors which offer access to more technology options for decarbonisation. I therefore see this announcement as part of the systems approach by which we progress to greater energy security and decarbonisation.”
Prof David Armstrong, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering (Department of Materials), University of Oxford, said:
“This is excellent news for the UK energy landscape. As the UKs aging AGR fleet retires new baseload energy is required. Sizewell C will sit alongside Hinkley Point B to provide sustainable emission free baseload energy complementing the growing wind and solar power and making a significant contribution to UK energy security.”
Dr Iain Staffell, Associate Professor of Sustainable Energy at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, said:
“Today’s decision is an important one, but even with Hinkley C and Sizewell C, the UK’s nuclear capacity in the 2030s will still be below its 1990s peak.
“After a decade of dithering, Sizewell C is a litmus test of the UK’s ability to deliver complex infrastructure on schedule.
“This deal lives or dies on its delivery. Sizewell C must be built on time and on budget, learning from the (many) mistakes from Hinkley Point C and other UK mega-projects.
“Nuclear power offers a strong energy security hedge. Fuel and key parts can be stockpiled, insulating consumers from foreign instability and gas price spikes.
“Sizewell C won’t start generating for nearly a decade if it is built on time, so it only just contributes towards the Government’s 2035 clean-power goal. But, it is building for the long-term, and will deliver carbon-free electricity well into the 2080s.
“People are rightly concerned by the environmental impacts and emissions from the enormous construction project, but compared to the scale of energy production over the next six decades, nuclear remains one of the cleanest power sources we have.
“The upfront cost is undoubtedly high. £14 billion could fund around 10 GW of offshore wind versus just 3.2 GW of nuclear. But, these reactors will run day and night, especially valuable when the wind is not blowing.”
Louis Barson, the Institute of Physics Director of Science, Innovation and Skills said:
“It is good to see this decision made about developing Sizewell C. New nuclear will play a vital role in bringing reliable, secure and affordable power to new markets, decarbonising industry and helping countries meet their net zero commitments – as part of our future low-carbon energy mix.
“But we need to make sure we also pay attention to the desperate need for hundreds of thousands of skilled workers to support both this project and the development of smaller, modular, nuclear reactors.
“Signing off on Sizewell C is only half the picture, we need the nuclear-ready scientific workforce to make it a reality: that means more physics teachers, well-funded physics departments in universities and a healthy pipeline of physics talent.”
Tom Greatrex, Chief Executive, Nuclear Industry Association, said:
On Sizewell C Given Go-Ahead from Government
“This is a momentous day for Sizewell C and for the British nuclear programme. Sizewell C is one of Britain’s most important clean power projects, and will give the country the jobs, the economic growth and the energy security we need to ensure a secure and reliable power supply for the future. This record investment confirms the government is serious about building new nuclear and all the economic benefits that come with it, and will be welcomed in communities the length and breadth of Britain.”
On Rolls-Royce SMR Winning the UK SMR Competition
“This is a hugely significant moment for Rolls-Royce SMR and for the British nuclear programme. These SMRs will provide essential energy security and clean power alongside large scale reactors, all the while creating thousands of well-paid, skilled jobs, opportunities for growth right across the country and significant export potential. We look forward to working with Rolls-Royce SMR and all other potential SMR vendors, including those not successful today, on making Britain the best place to build new nuclear anywhere in the world.”
Prof Mark Wenman, Professor in Nuclear Materials, Imperial College London, said:
“This is a big step forward. Since the 1990s the amount of nuclear energy the UK produces has been steadily declining from around 12 to 4.5 GWe today. Sizewell C will help reverse this trend and further provide the UK with energy security. It will help balance the grid with the increase of renewables, replace fossil fuel plants and protect us against potential blackouts, as recently seen in Spain. Whilst the costs may seem high initially, this needs to be balanced against the fact that these reactors will produce low carbon electricity for 80 or possibly 100 years, 24/7, providing around a tenth of the current UK electricity needs. Once paid for, nuclear reactors produce the cheapest electricity of any kind, so this investment should be seen as future proofing the UK electricity system.”
Prof Adrian Bull, Chair in Nuclear Energy and Society, Dalton Nuclear Institute, University of Manchester, said:
“It’s very welcome news to see the announcements today of Government support for a new wave of nuclear power in this country. We’ve known for decades that reliance on imported gas could ruin the environment – but recent years showed us that it can ruin the economy too. Nuclear gives much-needed resilience against global fossil fuel prices, without emitting the gases that cause climate change, so it’s excellent news that we are going to see new plants – both large and small – built.
“I’m especially pleased that we have finally got over our national phobia of replicating a previous project. We’ve never done that in our UK nuclear fleet before, but the rest of the world learned ages ago that series construction is the route to certainty over the time and budget for such projects. Doing the same things at Sizewell which we have already done at Hinkley Point is much easier than starting from scratch to build a massively complex plant for the first time.
“The announcement of Rolls Royce as the winner of the SMR competition is a welcome sign of progress, but it’s disappointing to see only one winner selected, when we had all anticipated more. Government has long been supporting the Rolls Royce SMR project – with over £200m of public funds provided already – so it was inconceivable they would not be on the podium at the end of the race. Seeing them there alone makes the two years spent by Great British Nuclear on running a competition look like time and effort that could have been better spent.
“Overall though, these nuclear plants – whilst not cheap – will produce reliable, low carbon electricity around the clock and will most likely do so for the best part of a century. This is an investment in our grandchildren’s future as well as helping towards our 2050 climate goal.”
Prof Dame Sue Ion GBE FREng FRS, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said:
“It’s really good news that the Government is finally taking steps to ensure that nuclear energy plays the vital role it should in achieving significant quantities of stable low carbon electricity. Perhaps as importantly, if not more so, is the news that Rolls Royce’s Small Modular Reactor has been selected as the technology of choice to progress the opportunity presented by SMRs. These systems are designed from the outset to be modular, with modern construction techniques using much more factory fabrication, so they will be faster and easier to build.”
Prof Tom Scott, Professor in Materials, University of Bristol, said:
“This is an extremely important strategic step for the UK towards achieving net zero carbon emissions. Nuclear energy is a safe, secure and reliable form of electricity generation. With the lessons learnt from the Hinkley Point C project, and with the experienced workforce and supply chain that has been established because of it, my expectations are high for the delivery of Sizewell C at a much lower cost and shorter timescale.
“The announcement about Government investment in Sizewell C and more excitingly, about the investment in Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), really shows the Government’s understanding and commitment towards nuclear as a key part of the solution towards achieving zero carbon emissions in the UK.
“SMRs offer the potential for providing new nuclear power stations much faster and more cheaply than conventional large-scale light water reactors like Hinkley Point C. Ultimately, the roll-out of SMRs delivered by British companies like Rolls-Royce will help to keep our electricity prices low whilst also generating high-value jobs across the U.K. This is a smart investment for the UK.”
Dr Mark Foreman, Associate professor of Nuclear Chemistry / Industrial Materials Recycling, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, said:
“Building a new power plant based on light water reactors at Sizewell is a good idea, it will provide a reliable supply of electric power which will help society reduce its dependency on fossil fuels. I hold the view that it will be a safe means of providing for the energy needs of society. Many critics of nuclear power use the example of the Chornobyl accident to argue that all nuclear power plants are unsafe. This is unreasonable, operating the Chornobyl reactor in the same way as it was just before the accident can be thought of as like roller blading along the M1. While running modern (or even a 1980s era) light water reactor is like calmly driving a Volvo equipped with all the latest safety features along the M1.”
**https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gr3nd5zy6o
Declared interests
Prof Adrian Bull: “I am a (paid) part time Professor at the Dalton Nuclear Institute, part of the University of Manchester; I am a (paid) consultant for US nuclear communications consultancy Full On Communications; I am an (unpaid) Board member of the Northern Nuclear Alliance; I am an (unpaid) Trustee of the Nuclear Institute; and am also the President-Elect, taking over in Jan 2026.”
Prof Dame Sue Ion: “Sue is Honorary President of the National Skills Academy for Nuclear.” “Sue is also a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Task Force.”
Prof Tom Scott: “In terms of interests, I am Director of the Spur West Nuclear Hub and Professor of Nuclear Materials at the University of Bristol sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the UK Atomic Energy Authority.
The nuclear hub is a consortium of academic, industrial and governmental partners coalescing around the requirement for research, skills and innovation in the UK nuclear sector.”
Dr Mark Foreman: “I have worked on advanced nuclear reprocessing for years and have also have worked on nuclear reactor safety issues. I have done and supervised research on the chemistry of nuclear accidents.”
Prof Mark Wenman “I have previously received funding for research from EDF Energy, Rolls-Royce, the UK National Nuclear Lab”
Tom Greatrex “The NIA is funded by its 320 member companies from across the civil nuclear industry.”
Dr Iain Staffell “I receive industry funding from a several companies in the UK and European energy sector, I try to keep this balanced so as not to over-represent any one technology or organization. Recent funding sources include: Drax, Octopus, SSE, HM Government, NESO (National Grid), EWE, Aurora, Baringa, Shell, Uniper, SLB, and the World Bank.”
Prof David Armstrong “I’ve had funding from UKAEA, Rolls Royce and EdF for research and students over the last 20 years.”
Prof Robin Grimes “I am a non-executive director of UKAEA and receive research funding from the UK national nuclear laboratory.”
Dr Mark Foreman “I do not currently get any money from the nuclear industry, I do not stand to make any money from the sales of nuclear products / technology. I have not been employed by the nuclear industry. I think that in terms of conflicts of interest I have none.”
Dr Lewis Blackburn “He receives funding from industry via Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, National Nuclear Laboratory, and Nuclear Waste Services”
Stephanie Baxter “No conflicts of interest.”
Will Davis “No conflicts of interest.”
Prof Andy Stirling “no conflicts of interest to declare.”
Dr Phil Johnstone “no conflicts of interest to declare.”
Dr Sarah Darby “I have no conflicts of interest to declare.”
For all other experts, no reply to our request for DOIs was received.
Source: Scottish Government
Delivering Scotland’s Blue Economy Vision.
Applications will open for the fifth year of the Marine Fund Scotland today.
The fund will make £14 million available in 2025-26 to help deliver Scotland’s Blue Economy Vision, transform the way the marine environment is used and how Scotland’s ‘blue’ resources are managed.
Eligible individuals, businesses, and organisations can apply for funding for new projects that will contribute to an innovative and sustainable marine economy, support coastal communities, and help Scotland reach net zero emissions.
Last year, a total of 67 projects received funding, with grants ranging from under £1,000 up to £1.6 million. These projects included the modernising of seafood processing facilities to reduce energy consumption and improve efficiency; the first Scottish facility to recycle mixed material from fishing and aquaculture nets and marine litter prevention; support for young fishers purchasing their first fishing vessel; and marine research and innovation to protect iconic wild salmon.
Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands Mairi Gougeon said:
“Since 2021 the Marine Fund Scotland has awarded more than £55 million in grants to 330 projects, facilitating a total of £121 million of investment and supporting jobs and communities right around our coastline and throughout our islands. I urge all those with ideas for projects to help marine industries to evolve and flourish to apply.
“We are backing Scotland’s marine economy, which is crucial to the economic, social and cultural fabric of our rural, coastal and island communities. They now need the UK government to do the same and to provide Scotland with its fair share of funding.
“The UK Government recently announced a new £360 million Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund, and I am calling for a fair share of the budget allocation to be devolved. This multi-year funding will be key to delivering benefits for the marine economy and environment, as well as supporting coastal communities, for years to come. If this newly announced funding isn’t devolved to Scotland, it will duplicate the current funding programmes, causing stakeholder confusion and dilution of intended benefits.”
Donna Fordyce Chief Executive of Seafood Scotland said:
“The Marine Fund Scotland funding has been vital to not only retain existing markets for our premium Scottish seafood but to develop new markets to achieve the highest value for the industry. Funding also allowed Seafood Scotland to further develop the Seafood in Schools programme launching the Scottish Seafood Ambassador scheme and Teach the Teacher curriculum-linked educational resources. The aim is to increase consumption of our delicious seafood and highlight the sector as a career of choice; this is very relevant given the labour shortage the industry is currently facing.”
Background
Information on eligibility and how to apply can be found at: https://www.gov.scot/isbn/9781836916017
Details of all projects that have received grant funding from the Marine Fund Scotland to date can be found here: https://www.gov.scot/policies/marine-and-fisheries-grants/grants-awarded/
Source: Government of Canada News (2)
June 10, 2025 – Dorchester, New Brunswick – Correctional Service Canada
On June 2, 2025, as a result of the vigilance of staff members, a package containing contraband and unauthorized items was seized on the perimeter of the medium security unit at Dorchester Penitentiary.
The items seized included methamphetamine, marijuana, shatter, nicotine patches and tobacco. The total estimated institutional value of this seizure is $534,100.
The police have been notified and the institution is investigating.
The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) uses a number of tools to prevent drugs from entering its institutions. These tools include ion scanners and drug-detector dogs to search buildings, personal property, inmates, and visitors.
CSC is heightening measures to prevent contraband from entering its institutions in order to help ensure a safe and secure environment for everyone. CSC also works in partnership with the police to take action against those who attempt to introduce contraband into correctional institutions.
CSC has also set up a telephone tip line for all federal institutions so that it may receive additional information about activities relating to security at CSC institutions. These activities may be related to drug use or trafficking that may threaten the safety and security of visitors, inmates, and staff members working at CSC institutions.
The toll-free number, 1‑866‑780‑3784, helps ensure that the information shared is protected and that callers remain anonymous.
Source: Government of Canada News (2)
June 9, 2025 – Ottawa, Ontario – Global Affairs Canada
The Honourable Anita Anand, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today announced that she will welcome Deputy Prime Minister,
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade, Cooperation, and Humanitarian Affairs of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, to Ottawa from June 10 to 12, 2025.
Minister Anand and Minister Bettel will meet to discuss working together to advance our countries’ shared interests, including bolstering the rules based international order and maintaining a strong global economy.
During his visit, Minister Bettel will inaugurate Luxembourg’s new diplomatic presence in Canada, highlight 80 years of bilateral relations, and celebrate Luxembourg’s National Day, which is on June 23. The Honourable Rob Oliphant, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, will participate in a reception hosted by Luxembourg to mark these important occasions.
