Category: Education

MIL-OSI: Open Lending Announces Leadership Changes

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

Board Chair Jessica Buss Appointed Chief Executive Officer

Charles “Chuck” Jehl will Continue to Serve as Interim Chief Financial Officer and a Member of the Board of Directors

Michelle Glasl Appointed Chief Operating Officer

AUSTIN, Texas, March 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Open Lending Corporation (Nasdaq: LPRO) (the “Company” or “Open Lending”), an industry trailblazer in lending enablement and risk analytics solutions for financial institutions, today announced that its Board of Directors (the “Board”) has appointed Jessica Buss as Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. Chuck Jehl will continue to serve as Interim Chief Financial Officer and as a member of the Board. The Board also has appointed Michelle Glasl as Chief Operating Officer. The Board is conducting a comprehensive search process to identify a permanent Chief Financial Officer.

“We are thrilled to announce Jessica as our new CEO,” said Thomas Hegge, a member of the Board. “Her extensive experience in the insurance industry will be instrumental in ensuring a seamless and profitable collaboration between Open Lending, our insurance carrier partners, and our automotive lending partners. Our focus remains on enhancing loan performance, minimizing potential loan defaults, and improving our underwriting processes to more accurately price insurance premiums for the risk. We remain committed to serving our near and non-prime consumers alongside our valued partners.”

“We are grateful that Chuck stepped in to lead Open Lending through a challenging and volatile period for our Company and industry,” added Mr. Hegge. “He is passing the baton to Jessica to continue to execute our strategic plan and usher in the next phase of growth. Meanwhile, Chuck will continue to support Open Lending during this transitionary period as Interim Chief Financial Officer and a valued member of the Board.

“In addition to serving on Open Lending’s Board for the last five years, Jessica brings decades of executive experience in the insurance industry,” said Mr. Jehl. “She understands the opportunities and challenges of our industry, and I believe she will continue our legacy of serving our underserved near- and non-prime consumers.”

“I’d like to thank Chuck for his many contributions in various executive leadership roles at Open Lending since 2020, including taking the Company public,” said Ms. Buss. “He has been a critical part of the management team, and I am looking forward to continuing to work with him as a member of our Board.

Jessica Buss previously served as the CEO of Argo Group International Holdings, Ltd. a subsidiary of Brookfield Reinsurance Ltd (NYSE, TSX: BNRE), a leading capital solutions business providing insurance and reinsurance services to individuals and institutions. She was previously the president, U.S. insurance, of Argo prior to its acquisition by Brookfield Re. Prior to joining Argo, she was President and CEO of GuideOne Insurance Company and, prior to that, she was senior vice president – Commercial and Specialty Lines at State Auto Insurance Companies. Jessica held several other positions during her tenure at State Auto, including chief operating officer and chief financial officer of the company’s specialty subsidiary, and senior vice president of Specialty. Prior to joining State Auto, Jessica was a member of a three-person team that raised the capital for the formation and start-up operations of Rockhill Holdings, a niche property and casualty business that was purchased by State Auto in 2009. She was also CFO for Citizens Property Insurance Corporation. In 2016, Jessica was named one of Insurance Business’ Elite Women of the Year. Jessica earned her bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Wisconsin and her Master of Business Administration from the University of Florida.

Michele Glasl also joins Open Lending from Argo Group, where she has served as Head of Operations since 2022. As Head of Operations, she oversaw information technology, security, operations and communications. Glasl previously served as SVP of Strategy and Business Development at Argo Group. Prior to that, she served as Chief Information Officer at GuideOne Insurance from June 2017 to June 2022. She previously served as Vice President of Technology at State Auto from February 2009 to June 2017. Ms. Glasl holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.

Board Changes
Jessica Buss will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board but will no longer be a member of the nominating and corporate governance and audit committees of the Board. Thomas Hegge will join the audit committee. Chuck Jehl will continue to serve as a member of the Board.

About Open Lending
Open Lending (Nasdaq: LPRO) provides loan analytics, risk-based pricing, risk modeling and default insurance to auto lenders throughout the United States. For over 20 years, we have been empowering financial institutions to create profitable auto loan portfolios with less risk and more reward. For more information, please visit www.openlending.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release includes certain statements that are not historical facts but are forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements related to the benefits of any leadership transition and future strategic plans. Forward-looking statements generally are accompanied by words such as “believe,” “may,” “will,” “estimate,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “expect,” “should,” “would,” “plan,” “predict,” “potential,” “seem,” “seek,” “future,” “outlook,” and similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. These statements are based on various assumptions and on the current expectations of the Company’s management and are not predictions of actual performance. These forward-looking statements are provided for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to serve as, and must not be relied on by any investor as, a guarantee, an assurance, a prediction or a definitive statement of fact or probability. Actual events and circumstances are difficult or impossible to predict and will differ from assumptions. Many actual events and circumstances are beyond the Company’s control. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including general economic, market, political and business conditions; applicable taxes, inflation, supply chain disruptions including global hostilities and responses thereto, interest rates and the regulatory environment; the outcome of judicial proceedings to which Open Lending may become a party; and other risks discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024. If the risks materialize or assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. There may be additional risks that the Company presently does not know or that it currently believes are immaterial that could also cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. In addition, forward-looking statements reflect the Company’s expectations, plans or forecasts of future events and views as of the date of this press release. The Company anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause its assessments to change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company’s assessments as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. Accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed upon the forward-looking statements.

Contact:
Investors
openlending@icrinc.com

The MIL Network –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: How to talk with children about Canada-U.S. tensions

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jean-François Bureau, Professor, School of Psychology, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

Mainstream public discourse in the first months of 2025 have been dominated by tensions between Canada and United States. These include references to Canada becoming annexed as the 51st American state and the trade war, with threats and the application of tariffs by the U.S. and counter-tariffs by Canada.

While this political climate brings uncertainty at an international level, it comes with fear of job loss for many Canadians at a time when the cost of living is already straining many families’ finances.

Read more:
Canadians are feeling increasingly powerless amid economic struggles and rising inequality

These topics may appear to be concerns for adults, but children may also feel the effects. As psychology researchers studying parent-child relationships and child mental health, we believe it is important to consider children’s potential fears and anxiety in the current political climate.

Here, we explain why it’s important to address this topic with children, and how parents can do so in a reassuring and informative manner.

Children’s concerns and emotions

While the economy and politics could seem like topics that children would not really care about, recent research suggests that many children and youth actually worry about these topics.

Back in 2020, American parents of children aged six to 17 years old were asked to rate their child’s anxiety about political news, in terms of voting issues covered in media since the 2016 election. According to the study by psychology researcher Nicole E. Caporino and colleagues, 36 per cent of children worried about the U.S. getting into war, and 37 per cent worried about their family’s finances.

Studies suggest children worry about issues affecting their families.
(Shutterstock)

Similarly, studies elsewhere suggest children and youth worry about issues affecting their families. Based on these numbers, we can assume that many Canadian children also worry about the current Canada-U.S. political climate.

Of course, it’s worth remembering not all families experience political and economic events in the same way. For example, children whose families face economic precarity are likely already living with stressors affecting their households like unemployment or food insecurity. Current tensions may also exacerbate children’s existing concerns.

Given that children may be concerned and worried, some parents may intuitively seek to avoid the topic with children to avoid provoking more distress. However, discussing a stressful event can actually decrease the distress felt towards it.

When children are able to talk about what concerns them with their parents, they learn important emotional regulation and coping skills. For example, they learn how to identify and understand their emotions, and how to regulate those emotions. Discussions between parents and children also help foster a climate of trust, in which children feel like they can rely on their parents in moments of need.

Noticing, tackling children’s anxiety and fears

Children may not always have the words to articulate their concerns in the same way that adults do. Parents should watch for anxiety symptoms in their children, which may manifest in various ways, including having mood changes, being more irritable or sad, having difficulty sleeping, being more clingy than usual, or withdrawing from activities. There are also signs that may be harder to spot.

We present five ways to address the situation with your children:

1. Use direct questions to understand how children feel. Direct questions can help understand how children feel. For example, you may ask: “What have you heard about what’s happening?” or “How do you feel about it?” These questions can help understand what specifically is scary to them.

Children could be worried about no longer seeing family in the U.S., or some may even fear a military clash.
(Shutterstock)

This is especially important given that children tend to worry about different things than adults. For example, younger children with family in the U.S. may worry they will no longer be able to see their family members anymore. Older children may be worried about a parent losing a job, the country’s economic instability or environmental impacts. Some children may even fear a military clash.

2. Be sensitive to how the conflict is presented. In the media, it is common to refer to the diplomatic and economic tensions as a “trade war.” While adults understand that trade wars do not involve military attacks, this concept is much more abstract for children.

Hearing the word “war” may trigger difficult images for them, including armed soldiers, weapons and devastation. This is especially true for children with lived experience of war, political conflict or displacement.

Read more:
Coronavirus isn’t the end of ‘childhood innocence,’ but an opportunity to rethink children’s rights

It’s important to reframe the conflict in ways that children can understand. For example, parents can compare the conflict between two children. Parents might say: “You know when there are two children upset with each other at school, and they have a big disagreement. Sometimes it can take a lot of time to find a solution that works for everyone. The conflict between Canada and the U.S. is a bit like that. It could take a lot of time and trouble to find a solution.”

3. Avoid misinformation. When discussing these topics, parents should seek to clarify any misinformation and provide reassurance. They should also help ensure children receive information from credible sources rather than social media or peers, who may sensationalize or misinterpret events. Providing factual but age-appropriate explanations is a key ingredient in mitigating fear and uncertainty.

4. Focus on co-operation and opportunities instead of boycotting.

Many Canadian families are choosing to boycott American products. In order to ease the emotional burden on children, it can be helpful to reframe the boycott as an opportunity for co-operation. For instance, parents can highlight how they are trying to support local businesses.

Similarly, for families with resources to travel, changes in travel plans can be framed as a way to discover new places. A parent might frame it as: “This year, instead of going to the beach, we’re going to be exploring some incredible places closer to home. We’re going to have so much fun trying new things!” This approach creates curiosity and control, not anxiety. It can also be beneficial for children’s development to learn to be more flexible with change.

Read more:
When Canadian snowbirds don’t flock south, the costs are more than financial

5. Create a sense of normalcy and routine. As important as it is to validate children’s fears, it is equally important to help them maintain a sense of normalcy. Families should strive to balance discussions about the trade war and its potential ramifications with more light, mundane topics. Similarly, limiting the time that children watch the news or when it is audible can help limit further concerns from developing.

Routines are also beneficial for children’s development and well-being. Maintaining a predictable schedule, such as a bedtime routine, can help children feel safe and less anxious. Focus on adding fun and soothing activities to the daily routine. This lets children know life goes on.

Navigating turbulent times

As the trade war with the U.S. plays out, parents should consider how it may impact their children’s emotions and sense of safety. Even serious conflicts such as this one don’t last forever, and solutions will come.

In the meantime, parents can help children cope with these challenging times by offering age-appropriate explanations and encouraging resilience.

Jean-François Bureau receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Consortium National de Formation en Santé.

Audrey-Ann Deneault receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Centre de recherche universitaire sur les jeunes et les familles.

– ref. How to talk with children about Canada-U.S. tensions – https://theconversation.com/how-to-talk-with-children-about-canada-u-s-tensions-252435

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Reps. Cammack & Magaziner, Sens. Capito & Markey Introduce Alleviating Barriers To Caregivers Act (ABC Act)

Source: United States House of Representatives – Congresswoman Kat Cammack (R-FL-03)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL-03), Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI-02), Senator Shelley Moore Capitol (R-WV), and Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced the Alleviating Barriers to Caregivers Act (ABC Act). The legislation would require the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Social Security Administration (SSA), and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to review their eligibility, processes, procedures, forms, and communications to reduce the administrative burden on family caregivers. The legislation would then require CMS, SSA, and CHIP to report to Congress after two years about any issues they are facing and any next steps they are taking to support family caregivers.

Family caregivers serve as a primary source of support for seniors and people with disabilities of all ages. In the United States alone, there are more than 48 million family caregivers. More than half of family caregivers act as an advocate for their loved one with care providers, community services, or government agencies. However, one in four family caregivers say they want help with forms, paperwork, and eligibility for services. Many report competing responsibilities while experiencing serious emotional, physical, and finance challenges.

“America’s family caregivers work around-the-clock to provide essential care for their loved ones, and over half act as advocates on behalf of their family members. The last thing these caregivers need is more red tape that distracts from their support for those in their care,” said Representative Cammack. “I’m honored to introduce this bipartisan and bicameral ABC Act with my colleagues to lower the burden around the important medical decisions caregivers must make every day. Together we can support the 48 million caregivers that make up a critical part of our health care landscape in the U.S.”

“Family caregivers have a lot on their plates, devoting their lives to support others,” said Representative Magaziner. “They shouldn’t have to struggle with confusing paperwork and delays on top of their essential work. The bipartisan ABC Act will make it easier for families to get the support they need so caregivers can focus on what matters most — caring for their loved ones.”

“More than 1 in 4 Americans over 50 are now caregivers. I was one of these caregivers for my parents during their struggle with Alzheimer’s disease and know personally how hard it can be to balance all of the responsibilities put on individuals caring for their loved ones,” Senator Capito said. “One of the most common frustrations I hear from caregivers in West Virginia is how difficult it is to navigate federal processes and procedures. The Alleviating Barriers for Caregivers Act would attempt to ease this often-stressful time by requiring federal agencies, such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Social Security Administration, to review their processes, procedures, forms, and communications to reduce the administrative burden on family caregivers.”

“Caregivers, like my father was, serve on the frontlines of our nation’s health care system by giving our families and friends the care and support they need to remain in their homes and communities with their loved ones,” said Senator Markey. “But caregivers are struggling needlessly to navigate complex, burdensome, and stressful processes each and every day while also still managing day-to-day family and professional responsibilities. The Alleviating Barriers for Caregivers Act will help lift the weight off caregivers by clearing the red tape that so often gets in their way. I thank Senator Capito and Representatives Magaziner and Cammack for their partnership on this critical legislation.”

Cosponsors in the Senate include John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Katie Britt (R-Ala.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawai’i), Mike Rounds (R-S.Dak.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Chris Coons (D-DE), and Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.).

Cosponsors in the House include Jimmy Panetta (D-CA-19), Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ-02), Steve Cohen (D-TN-09), Nick Langworthy (R-NY-23), Sharice Davids (D-KS-03), Rob Wittman (R-VA-01), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ-05), Jen Kiggans (R-VA-02), Jared Golden (D-ME-02), Greg Steube (R-FL-17), Deborah Ross (D-NC-02), August Pfluger (R-TX-11), Ed Case (D-HI-01), Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY-11), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL-25), Mike Lawler (R-NY-17), Darren Soto (D-FL-09), and Vern Buchanan (R-FL-16).

The ABC Act is endorsed by: AARP, ADA Watch/Coalition for Disability Rights & Justice, Aging Life Care Association, Alliance for Aging Research, Alliance for Retired Americans, Allies for Independence, ALS Association, Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, American Academy of Nursing, American Association on Health and Disability, American Heart Association, American Network of Community Organizations and Resources (ANCOR), American Psychological Association Services, American Society for Transportation and Cellular Therapy, American Society on Aging, Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration, Association of University Centers on Disabilities, Autism Society of America, Autism Speaks, Caregiver Action Network, Caring Across Generations, Child Neurology Foundation, Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, Davis Phinney Foundation for Parkinson’s, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF), Diverse Elders Coalition, Elder Services of Berkshire County Inc., Elizabeth Dole Foundation, Family Caregiver Alliance, National Center on Caregiving, Fight Colorectal Cancer, Gerontological Society of America, Grayce, Greater Lynn Senior Services, Hispanic Federation, Huntington’s Disease Society of America, Japanese American Citizens League, Justice in Aging, Lakeshore Foundation, LeadingAge, LifePath, Lymphoma Research Foundation, Massachusetts Councils on Aging, Medical Alley, Mystic Valley Elder Services, National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, National Adult Day Services Association, National Alliance on Caregiving, National Asian Pacific Center on Aging (NAPCA), National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities, National Council on Aging, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, National Disability Rights Network, National Down Syndrome Congress, National Federation of Filipino American Associations, National Fragile X Foundation, National Health Council, National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation, National Patient Advocate Foundation, National Respite Coalition, NMDP, OCA- Asian Pacific American Advocates, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers, Senior Connection, Somerville-Cambridge Elder Services, Southeast Asian Resource Action Center (SEARAC), Speak Foundation, the Arc of the United States, The ERISA Industry Committee, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, Third Way, USAging, Village to Village Network, and Well Spouse Association.

Read the text of the bill here.

###

MIL OSI USA News –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Landmark summit agrees new measures against organised immigration crime
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

News story

Landmark summit agrees new measures against organised immigration crime

The Prime Minister and Home Secretary gathered leaders from across the world in London today (31 March) to tackle organised immigration crime.
The purpose of the Organised Immigration Crime Summit is to agree new action to tackle organised immigration crime (OIC) and boost border security.

Discussions at day 1 of the summit included:

tackling the supply chains and enablers of OIC

the role of criminal finances in facilitating OIC

the UK’s systems based approach to border security

as well as how countries can tackle organised crime groups’ operations online in relation to the advertising, promoting and facilitating of illegal immigration services.

The UK and allies including France, Iraq, Vietnam and the USA, and partners including the National Crime Agency (NCA) and representatives from social media organisations, met to agree actions to secure our collective borders, protect vulnerable people from exploitation, and tackle the global threat of organised immigration crime.

Unlike previous summits, this event engaged both European nations and key source and transit countries, as well as those that are integral to the supply of equipment, including small boats and engines, ensuring a broader, more comprehensive approach to tackling OIC.

Concrete outcomes have been agreed across Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa, and North America to strengthen international partnerships to disrupt OIC networks. This also includes new joint work with France to tackle irregular migration in source and transit countries, through community outreach and bolstering false document detection capabilities to Iraqi officials.

The agreement represents a key step forward in the government’s Plan for Change to deliver on working people’s priorities to restore order to the immigration system and comes after the publication of new figures showing more than 24,000 people with no right to be here have been returned since the election – the highest rate of returns in 8 years.

A communiqué was issued that sets out how we will deepen our collaboration internationally to tackle this vile crime.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said:

Organised immigration crime undermines our security and puts lives at risk. The criminal networks have spread across the globe and no single country can tackle this problem alone.

Today, at the Organised Immigration Crime Summit, the UK has led the way forward by securing international commitments to disrupt and pursue this vile criminal trade in people – part of our Plan for Change to strengthen our borders and keep communities safe.

Border Security Commander Martin Hewitt said:

I have said since I came into my post as Border Security Commander that organised immigration crime requires a coordinated international response to effectively dismantle criminal networks.

In my role I have seen first-hand how the cruelty and greed of criminal gangs puts the lives of the most vulnerable at risk in dangerous small boat crossings all for financial gain.

This summit marks a step change in the international community’s approach to tackling the problem, presenting a critical opportunity to strengthen global cooperation, disrupt criminal networks, and prevent further loss of life.

Director General of the National Crime Agency (NCA) Graeme Biggar said:

Criminal gangs are using sophisticated online tactics, the abuse of legitimate goods and services, and illicit financial networks to facilitate dangerous and illegal journeys which put thousands of lives at risk each year and undermine border security.

Today’s summit sets out international agreements to tackle an international problem.

International intelligence sharing and cooperation is absolutely crucial to track criminal activity across borders allowing us to put a stop to these dangerous criminals.

In addition, today the Home Secretary confirmed over £30 million in funding within the Border Security Command to tackle Organised Immigration Criminal Networks. This significant funding package will be spent on key security projects across Europe, the Western Balkans, Asia and Africa, designed to strengthen border security and combat international criminal smuggling gangs.

The Home Secretary also announced joint work with France to fund an additional grassroots engagement programme to educate local communities on the dangers of irregular migration and people smuggling gangs, raising awareness of the realities and difficulties with travelling to Northern France to cross the Channel to the UK.

This will target both potential irregular migrants and, for the first time, teachers, religious leaders, and family members within vulnerable communities, and builds on the Home Office digital deterrence comms campaign that is already running in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

The UK will also collaborate with France to deliver critical training to Iraqi officials and commercial transport staff, helping them detect fraudulent documents and passports used to facilitate irregular migration and OIC activities.

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Published 31 March 2025
MIL OSI United Kingdom –
April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Rep. Aguilar Re-Introduces the No Hungry Kids in Schools Act

Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Pete Aguilar (31 CD Ca)

Today, Rep. Pete Aguilar reintroduced the No Hungry Kids in Schools Act, which would expand access to meals for every student in America by allowing states to provide no-cost meal programs in public schools.
“As a father, the thought of any child going hungry in school is devastating,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar. “House Democrats believe that every child deserves a shot at a better life, and no kid can reach their full academic potential on an empty stomach. Meanwhile, the Trump Administration shows it doesn’t care about our children’s future by working to eliminate the Department of Education, which could force neighborhood schools to close and class sizes to increase, to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. We can make our community stronger and our children healthier by ensuring that no child in this country is hungry at school, regardless of their background or their zip code. That’s why I am proud to reintroduce the No Hungry Kids in Schools Act to help improve the health and academic performance of students in the Inland Empire and across America by ensuring that they do not go hungry.”
“We are pleased Rep. Aguilar has reintroduced the No Hungry Kids in Schools Act to allow states to adopt the Community Eligibility Provision statewide,” said Crystal FitzSimons, interim president of the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC). “Offering school meals at no charge to families is the future for school nutrition departments and for schools. The No Hungry Kids in Schools Act supports states that want to expand access to free school meals, fueling children’s health and learning while reducing stigma and shaming in the cafeteria. We urge Congress to pass this bill. Hungry children can’t wait.”
Currently, individual school districts can apply to serve free school meals to all students through the federal Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) if at least 25 percent of the student body is identified as low-income. The No Hungry Kids in Schools Act will enable states to remove the 25 percent threshold and allow all schools in a participating state to provide free meals to all students, regardless of the percentage of low-income students. The No Hungry Kids in Schools Act also would streamline the administration of school lunch programs in states that have existing universal free school meals, helping the students who are falling through the cracks, including nearly 2.5 million students in California and over 12.5 million students nationwide.
In the United States, nearly 1 in 7 children is at risk of hunger. Expanding and protecting school meal programs is especially important amidst ongoing Republican efforts to cut billions from nutritional funding. The Trump Administration recently froze $1 billion in food assistance for food banks and schools, and the proposed Republican Budget includes $12 billion in cuts to critical nutrition programs, which would harm over 12 million children.
Studies have shown that students at schools who participate in school meal programs benefit from better health and nutrition outcomes, higher test scores and better school attendance. Through CEP, more than 23 million children attending high-poverty schools were able to access free, healthy school meals in the 2023-2024 school year.
In addition to the Food Research & Action Center, The No Hungry Kids in Schools Act is endorsed by the National Education Association (NEA).
Rep. Aguilar serves as Chair of the House Democratic Caucus and as a member of the House Committee on Appropriations.

MIL OSI USA News –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Q&A With NREL Scientist Effie Kisgeropoulos

Source: US National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Effie Kisgeropoulos Discusses Her Early Scientific Inspiration and Journey to Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

As a young girl, Effie Kisgeropoulos dreamed about the endless universe of constellations. Photo from Effie Kisgeropoulos, NREL

Lying on the grass in Canton, Ohio, a young Effie Kisgeropoulos studied constellations with her eyes and later through her telescope, dreaming about the mechanisms of faraway celestial bodies.

Little did the future National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) researcher know that her budding scientific gaze would later turn to something closer to home: orbiting subatomic particles in microscopic structures.

The ability to translate perspectives between different worlds might be her superpower—although this superpower has come with its challenges. Yet Kisgeropoulos has persisted through all the uphill climbs, maintaining her joy of learning.

Kisgeropoulos was homeschooled for most of her childhood, and she benefited from a framework that empowered her to absorb knowledge and ask questions. Looking back, the ease with which Kisgeropoulos moved through primary education was perhaps unsurprising given her much later diagnosis with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). She thrived in the home setting where learning was fun, engaging, and flexible. But when it was time to begin her university honors program, Kisgeropoulos’ success at home became a struggle to maintain. Her passion for exploring new ideas came under serious doubt.

Although Kisgeropoulos struggled at first, she persevered through trial and error and by embracing new opportunities. Her path at NREL began with a postdoctoral position that employed her passion for using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy to decipher the subatomic interactions that dictate our world.

Kisgeropoulos is now a full-time researcher in NREL’s Biosciences Center, responsible for helping manage the Advanced Spin Resonance Facility (ASRF), which houses the EPR equipment. This facility helps illuminate the subatomic workings of chemical reactions, like those that sustain photosynthesis or enable light-driven ammonia production and hydrogen catalysis.

In this interview (edited for length and clarity), Kisgeropoulos discusses her contagious enthusiasm for science, her unique journey to NREL, and her passion for all things EPR.

You have an interesting upbringing that isn’t familiar to many people. Can you talk about that and how it was a factor in your embrace of science?

My mom homeschooled my sister and I until mid-high school. During our elementary years, she taught us for two days and worked the other three, when my dad—who worked midnights—would help.

Around this time, I fell in love with astronomy and spent countless hours poring over star maps and gazing at constellations. I even got a small telescope! It kick-started my obsession with science fiction and, later, theoretical physics.

Kisgeropoulos, as a child, gazes through her new telescope. Photo from Effie Kisgeropoulos, NREL

Homeschooling allowed me a certain freedom in how I assimilated information. I could work on my lessons while barefoot and sitting cross-legged on the floor, make as much noise as I wanted, go at my own pace. I was unencumbered by the classical rules of school.

Later when my parents separated, my mom juggled multiple jobs while still maintaining our education. Watching all this, I also learned a lot about hard work and perseverance. I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until 29, so these qualities—and the love of learning I grew up with—were vital to me navigating undergrad and then a Ph.D. without any context for why I had different needs than my peers.

Kisgeropoulos (right) and her sister, Sophia (left), pose in front of their school project—sprouting seeds from plants. Photo from Effie Kisgeropoulos, NREL

Can you tell me about your transition from homeschooling to the university world?

My science obsessions led me to join the honors program at Kent State University with a plan outlined by my guidance counselor: a bachelor’s in physics; grad school for astrophysics. Once classes started, a harsh reality formed. Many students are challenged during the transition to college, but I wasn’t aware of the unique challenges that came with a neurodivergent brain.

Tougher coursework meant I had to study in earnest, but sitting alone for hours in the library to accomplish this was a strange experience. It would take me significant time to clear my mind of distractions before I could fully immerse myself in a task. Although I had experience with self-directed learning, my skills began failing me in this demanding and unfamiliar college environment.

It was a disheartening first couple of years. I had been excellent at math, but I did poorly in calculus. I did okay in Physics I, but I dropped Physics II twice because it wasn’t clicking. The irony is the stuff in Physics II—like circuits, electricity, and magnetism—are foundations to some of what I do now at NREL.

So, how did you adjust?

The end of sophomore year was my worst. I wanted to study the stars, but I just couldn’t make the connections in my coursework. At around the same time, we found out my mom had breast cancer. It really impelled me, and I switched majors to biotech. I thought a more industry-focused degree would help with getting a job, if I needed to take care of my sister, and I hoped it would lead me to work in cancer research to help patients like my mom.

With the switch, I started to excel in my classes again. In Intro Biochem, I learned about enzyme pathways in cells. It was like a puzzle, mapping them all out. In some ways, it felt like mapping out the stars. I was becoming fascinated with microscopic biological and chemical mechanisms that I had no idea about. My fire for learning came back. And as I approached graduation, my mom cleared her cancer!

That’s wonderful. So at that point, you were on the path to a Ph.D. in biochem at The Ohio State University (OSU)?

Yeah. I was thrilled when I was offered a spot. I started with three different lab rotations: mouse models of cancer, yeast genetics, and spectroscopy. Although I was still invested in cancer research, I enjoyed the approach of spectroscopy the most, which was in the lab of a new OSU professor, Hannah Shafaat. And in the end, I was still awarded a fellowship for the connection of my work to cancer research!

My work at OSU involved applying advanced pulse EPR spectroscopy to biological systems. Before even developing these experiments, we needed to characterize the systems using a more common type of EPR: continuous wave (CW). At the time, the EPR capabilities we needed weren’t available at OSU. Instead, we would drive four hours roundtrip to Miami University and collect data for 10, 12 hours.

This was where I became mesmerized by the EPR process. There’s this giant magnet with a sample in the middle that’s cooled to 5 Kelvin, and then microwaves are shot at it. It’s so metal! The resulting data were beautiful. You’re investigating a signal that looks like a child’s drawing and translating it to give information on interactions happening at the electron level.

So, when were you able to work primarily with pulsed EPR?

During my fourth year, we shifted to pulsed EPR techniques, which use microwaves shot in pulses rather than continuously. Using pulses unlocks a whole new dimension of capabilities, especially manipulating electron spins to acquire different, higher-resolution information. But pulsed EPR demands a higher level of theory and understanding to run an experiment, let alone troubleshoot one or customize it to the sample.

I was applying pulsed EPR to proteins to answer questions about their electronic structure and function. This work was like what I do here at NREL in Paul King’s (Physical Biochemistry and Photosynthesis) group, except now I investigate how this reactivity is controlled and tuned into very complex redox enzymes.

Good segue to becoming a postdoc at NREL. I imagine your experience with pulsed EPR had a lot to do with you coming here?

Honestly, I struggled with the motivation to do research or become a professor. When I started EPR, my research interest sparked a bit, but I wasn’t sure how to do EPR at a private company. And then my OSU lab partner, Tasha Manesis, sent me a link for an NREL postdoctoral position in the Physical Biochemistry and Photosynthesis group. I read the job description and was ecstatic they wanted someone to study redox enzymes using pulsed EPR!

Postdoctoral researcher Effie Kisgeropoulos poses in 2022 by an MBraun anaerobic chamber at NREL’s Science and Technology Facility. This type of equipment allows researchers to work with the oxygen-sensitive proteins and enzymes that are involved in many of nature’s important energy conversion reactions and pathways. Photo by Werner Slocum, NREL

Another bit of serendipity. How was the postdoc experience here at NREL?

Right after they hired me, COVID-19 happened. COVID-19 protocols made lab interactions challenging and training and team-building difficult. Once the protocols loosened, this all improved, and we added some new postdocs that quickly became great friends of mine. My relationship with Paul, my group manager and principal investigator, also really began to develop. These working relationships, and the willingness everyone showed to put effort into making them better, were a large reason why I stayed at NREL.

How was the transition from postdoc to full-time researcher?

Getting an NREL staff position doing what I love felt validating, a recognition of my contributions to the team. It also really brought me a sense of permanence. Even though six years in graduate school was a long time, it always had an end date. With this transition, I experienced a sense of investment in my work that I never felt before.

Kisgeropoulos works with cell culture media containing ferredoxin proteins in the Research and Innovation Laboratory at NREL. These proteins are important for understanding the control electron transfer reactions in the photosynthetic cyanobacteria Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 and will be studied using techniques like EPR once they are purified from the media. Photo by Kaylee Weatherly, NREL

What are your responsibilities as a biological EPR spectroscopist?

I continue to build upon my postdoc work, contributing to research projects under Paul on photosynthetic energy transduction and mechanisms of photochemical nitrogen reduction. Both are funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science Basic Energy Sciences program.

I also took on safety-representative duties for our lab space and have an official role helping David Mulder manage and operate the ASRF, which houses the EPR equipment. David and I developed an approach for scheduling on the CW EPR, helping maintain access for all users amid high demand for instrument time. I also help train new EPR users and advise on project data collection, interpretation, and analysis.

NREL researchers (from left) Paul King, Effie Kisgeropoulos, and David Mulder talk in front of the electron paramagnetic resonance spectrometer in NREL’s Advanced Spin Resonance Facility in Golden, Colorado. Photo by Gregory Cooper, NREL

So, why does this new role and the Advanced Spin Resonance Facility at NREL excite you so much?

Most institutions operate one CW EPR at a single microwave frequency (commonly X-band). But at NREL, we have an incredible breadth of EPR capabilities in one place: CW EPR, pulsed EPR, both X-band and Q-band microwave frequencies, equipment to produce shaped pulses, the ability to incorporate radio waves and do EPR-detected nuclear magnetic resonance, and all using helium gas in a cryogen-free system to obtain super cold temperatures. All these capabilities are the perfect playground for me to explore and grow with.

There’s also a tremendous amount of expertise here applying EPR to understand highly complex enzymatic functions, like nitrogen fixation to ammonia or hydrogen generation from protons and electrons. There’s a great foundation to build from and use my understanding of pulsed EPR to advance the research.

Pulsed EPR, and really EPR in general, is such a powerful tool for obtaining targeted information on the movement, properties, and local environments of electrons, whether they exist as radicals, in defects, or on metal clusters. It’s highly applicable across a large swathe of research disciplines, from biology to materials—even brewing beer, although that’s not really in the NREL mission space. I’d like to continue to improve the experience of our core user group and expand the reach of the ASRF across NREL.

Okay, one last question. If you had the power to make one change in the world, what would it be?

Oh, tough, it’s hard to articulate, but I’d make empathy and compassion abundant. Through all my challenges, I’ve come out of it with a different appreciation for people. We’re all flawed, but people are also surprisingly great. I think it’s important to listen to what others are saying and consider how they might be feeling, the milieu that could be contributing to the actions they take.

I try to always remember this, and I would want to make the changes necessary so everyone could feel safe enough and empowered to extend this kind of empathy and compassion to each other. I think it would help the world a lot.

Learn more about NREL’s bioscience research and the Advanced Spin Resonance Facility.

MIL OSI USA News –

April 1, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: NZ’s Broadcasting Act is as old as Video Ezy. We need media reform for the streaming age
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jesse Austin-Stewart, Lecturer, School of Music and Screen Arts, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey University

Getty Images

One year after Video Ezy opened its first store in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Broadcasting Act 1989 was introduced. It established frameworks and funding for local content that largely still exist.

But in 2025, New Zealanders’ viewing and listening habits are radically different. We’ve shifted from local broadcasters to international streaming and online media services. Video and music streaming platforms now reach more people than local TV and radio.

This brings convenience and access to a world of film, TV, news, and music. But it also means local content risks being swamped on its own shores. A recent discussion document from Manatū Taonga/Ministry for Culture and Heritage is the latest attempt to address the problem.

Among the suggested changes to local content funding, promotion, and distribution are:
- requiring newly manufactured smart TVs to pre-install New Zealand apps
- the merger of NZ On Air with the NZ Film Commission
- changes to the Broadcast Standards Authority
- increased captioning and audio description
- and requiring local and global media providers to invest in and promote New Zealand content.
Some of these are welcome – and long overdue. But broader media reform must also take this opportunity to create future-proofed policy; one that’s responsive to where local audiences are consuming content, and which supports the media sector to adapt to a rapidly changing landscape.

Why local content struggles

New Zealand media, already hit by wider platform choice and the movement of advertising revenue offshore, has experienced deep job cuts, including at state-owned TVNZ, and the complete closure of Newshub.

As audiences migrate towards online streaming services, TVNZ’s digital platform TVNZ+ now has a daily reach of 26% of local audiences. In 2024, nine New Zealand shows featured in its top 20 most watched.

While that might seem positive, Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram each individually outperform TVNZ+ viewership. And many global video-on-demand platforms have fewer than ten local titles available for New Zealand audiences to watch.

Local music is also struggling. In 2024, only two national radio stations hit the voluntary 20% local music target. Only one local song featured in the end-of-year top 50 singles charts.

These figures might suggest New Zealanders aren’t interested in local content – but that isn’t necessarily true. If we compare local media structures to overseas markets, we see major differences in the opportunities for local content to reach audiences.

Unlike other comparable countries, New Zealand lacks government-owned and fully-funded platforms for locally produced content to find local audiences. Where these platforms exist overseas, engagement with local content is higher.

For instance, Norway’s publicly-owned youth station saw local music comprise 50% of its annual top 40 charts in 2023. Australia’s state-funded Triple J has a 40% local music quota, and the state-owned, advertising-free ABC iview platform has a weekly national audience reach of 62%.

Finding audiences where they are

Announcing his government’s creative sector strategy last year, Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith said it aims to “nurture talent and support a pipeline to provide sustainable career opportunities”.

Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Paul Goldsmith.
Getty Images

The strategy also speaks of “modernising and streamlining government regulation to enable our cultural sectors to thrive”.

But there are significant omissions in the latest discussion document. Video gaming, for example, is largely missing from the proposals, although research suggests the industry could represent up to 44% of global consumer entertainment spending by 2040.

Global video sharing platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram are similarly absent in the proposals, despite their 81% daily reach among Aotearoa New Zealand’s 15-39 age bracket.

Addressing those omissions and strategically embracing new opportunities offers a chance to support local producers in two key ways: enhancing the global presence of New Zealand content, and ensuring local audiences see themselves in the media they enjoy.

This would require an ambitious rethink around media infrastructure and investments, focused on what can have the biggest impact long term. This might include:
- investing in a fully-funded youth radio station
- changing the revenue structure of TVNZ to be primarily state funded
- legislating global video sharing platforms like YouTube and TikTok to promote New Zealand content
- or developing a progressive, industry-informed video game policy.
It’s vital that any proposed policy changes are fit for purpose and adaptable for years to come.

Past attempts at media reform in Aotearoa New Zealand have often been reactive to changing environments, rather than proactive. But there’s an opportunity now to consider more meaningful changes, addressing current challenges while looking to the future.

Jesse Austin-Stewart has completed commissioned research for NZ On Air and participated in focus groups for Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. He has received competitive funding from Creative New Zealand, NZ On Air, Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture & Hertiage, and the NZ Music Commission. He is a writer member of APRA AMCOS and a member of the Composer’s Association of New Zealand

Catherine Hoad has previously completed research in partnership with or commissioned by APRA AMCOS, Toi Mai Workforce Development Council, Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture & Heritage, ScreenSafe, and NZ On Air.

Dave Carter is a writer member of APRA AMCOS and has previously received funding from Manatū Taongao Ministry for Culture and Heritage.

Oli Wilson has previously completed research in partnership with or commissioned by APRA AMCOS, Toi Mai Workforce Development Council, Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture & Heritage and the NZ Music Commission. He has also received funding, or contributed to projects that have benefited from funding from NZ on Air, the NZ Music Commission and Recorded Music New Zealand. He has provided services to The Chills, owns shares in TripTunz Limited, and is a writer member of APRA AMCOS.

– ref. NZ’s Broadcasting Act is as old as Video Ezy. We need media reform for the streaming age – https://theconversation.com/nzs-broadcasting-act-is-as-old-as-video-ezy-we-need-media-reform-for-the-streaming-age-252713
MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –
April 1, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: A child killer, parenting struggles and ‘innies’ running wild: what to stream in April

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stuart Richards, Senior Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of South Australia

Drowning in streaming choices? If so, you’re not alone – as our experts have a particularly wide range of picks this month.

From musicals and comedy, to serial killers and twisted fictional corporations, there’s plenty to get stuck into.

The Pitt

Binge (Australia), Neon (NZ)

The Pitt is best described as a cross between ER and 24. The series follows an emergency room in Pittsburgh in real time across a 15-hour shift. Each one hour episode is an hour of their shift. Creator R. Scott Gemill and executive producer John Wells both worked extensively on ER, as did Noah Wyle who plays Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, the senior attending.

The day in question falls on the anniversary of the death of Robby’s mentor during the COVID pandemic and he experiences several flashbacks throughout the shift. The ER ward is chaotic due to the nursing shortage and failing American healthcare system. The series regularly cuts to the overcrowded waiting room of desperate people, waiting to receive care.

The large ensemble is fantastic and it’s great to see a medical show that actually includes nursing staff as key characters (take note, Grey’s Anatomy!). By unfolding in real time, we get a sense of how chaotic their work is, with several doctors jumping between patients. Several key cases also unfold across several episodes, with many building to dramatic effects.

It should also be noted that due to having its home on a streaming platform, the show is allowed to depict graphic and sometimes gruesome medical scenes without intruding soundtracks or montages, which only adds to the realism.

– Stuart Richards

Severance, season two

Apple TV

In absurdist psychological thriller Severance, individuals working for the multinational biotech corporation Lumon Industries can have their work-selves surgically “severed”, separating the memories and experiences of their workplace “innies” from those of their “outies”.

The second season, three years in the making, looks at the fallout from season one’s cliffhanger finale, in which the innies of Macrodata Analysis, Helly R (Britt Lower), Irving B (John Turturro) and Dylan G (Zach Cherry), led by Mark S (Adam Scott), staged a revolt and busted briefly into their outies’ worlds. In doing so, they exposed shocking secrets about Lumon – including that outie Mark’s wife, thought dead, is somehow alive but being held by Lumon.

This season has been as stylish and weird as the first, revelling in striking cinematography, impeccable direction, quirky scripting and inspired world-building. It also becomes increasingly eerie, focusing more on Lumon’s bizarre, cult-like history and culture, and the unsettling nature of the innies’ jobs.

Although lore-heavy, the show has avoided many of the pitfalls of “puzzle box” shows, balancing revelations with astonishingly good performances, particularly from Trammell Tillman as Lumon floor manager Mr Milchick. This uncanny and perversely funny season deserves its status as a water cooler hit. Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait three more years for a resolution.

– Erin Harrington

Happiness

ThreeNow (New Zealand) from April 3

With their new show Happiness, airing on Three and Three Now, Kip Chapman and Luke Di Somma have created a welcome New Zealand answer to the popular style of “backstage” musical TV show.

The protagonist is stage director Charlie (Harry McNaughton), who has returned from New York to his hometown of Tauranga having been dismissed from helming a Broadway revival of Cats. In a desperate attempt to demonstrate competency for a renewal of his visa, and to please his mum Gaye (Rebecca Gibney), Charlie decides to help out the local amateur musical theatre society Pizzaz (“the finest large-scale yet boutique classical musical theatre company in Tauranga”) with its latest production, an original musical called The Trojan Horse.

While the story is fairly predictable, the show blessed with an engaging pastiche score by Luke Di Somma that references a variety of fun musical theatre tropes. It is a welcome addition to the “let’s put on a show” backstager genre, and will appeal to fans of musical theatre as well as workplace comedies.

Happiness paints New Zealand musical theatre talent in a positive light – showing what the locals can do – while being highly entertaining in its own right.

– Gregory Camp

Running Point

Netflix

Running Point is writer-producer Mindy Kaling’s return to her roots with an office-family comedy. After spending some time in high-school with Never Have I Ever and college with Sex Lives of College Girls, Kaling returns to where she started her TV career with The Office and The Mindy Project. Based very loosely on the real-life story of Los Angeles Lakers President Jeanie Buss, this Kate Hudson vehicle is ripe with satire, family dynamics and absurdity.

When her older brother (Justin Theroux) goes to rehab, he names his sister (Hudson) as the new president of their family business: basketball empire the Los Angeles “Waves”. Running Point feels like a more fully-realised version of Kaling’s previous short-lived family sports comedy Champions.

The cast is stacked with TV comedy MVPs including Brenda Song, Drew Tarver, Scott MacArthur, Jay Ellis, Max Greenfield and Jon Glaser. Hudson is at her most Goldie Hawn-like here, mixing physical comedy with goofiness and heart. It’s easy and enjoyable watching, even if (like me) you are not a big sports fan!

– Jessica Ford

Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer

Netflix

True crime documentaries, particularly those concerned with serial killers, are often criticised for their silencing of the victims, while elevating the perpetrator and perversely celebrating their crimes.

Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer bucks that trend. Its focus is on the women who were murdered by Rex Heuermann, and the families and friends who band together in their shared suffering and pursuit of justice over a period of more than two decades. In particular, it is the disappearance of Shannan Gilbert, and her mother’s dogged perseverance in keeping the police department’s attention on her missing daughter, which leads to the discovery and identification of the bodies of another six women.

Like his namesake, the “Long Island Ripper”, Heuermann relied on the fact that his victims were sex workers – assuming their deaths would be of little consequence to law enforcement, or that their disappearances wouldn’t even be noticed. For some time this was true, as one interviewee observes: “knowing that sex workers might be afraid to come forward with information, police were not active in reaching out to them and making them feel comfortable coming forward”.

But these women were mothers, daughters, sisters and friends. Gone Girls rejects the marginalisation of the victims, just as their communities had worked so hard to do.

– Jessica Gildersleeve

Adolescence

Netflix

Why do children kill other children? What makes an intelligent boy from a loving suburban family borrow a knife from a school friend and, on a casual Sunday evening, stab another child to death? When someone so young commits a horrific act, who is to blame – the child, the family, or society?

With its technical mastery and gut-punch power, Adolescence is a tour de force. The series tracks the story of 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) after he is arrested and later charged with the murder of his classmate, Katie. Co-creator Stephen Graham stars as Jamie’s father, Eddie.

The series is a harrowing take on male violence and rage, and the misogynist radicalisation of vulnerable boys. Trapped in the dark mirrors of the manosphere, and allured by the grim logic of Andrew Tate, Jamie represents a generation of boys tragically and perhaps permanently lost to incel culture.

Skilfully filmed in Philip Barantini’s signature one-shot style, the series pushes the limits of television production. The high-wire act of timing and trust amplifies the message that one misstep can lead to failure. In Adolescence, however, there are no easy outs. Just as the continuous filming style offers no reprieve, the show refuses to offer a simple explanation for why Jamie did it.

Adolescence is not an easy watch, but for those parenting teens, it is a necessary one.

– Kate Cantrell

Read more:
Adolescence is a technical masterpiece that exposes the darkest corners of incel culture and male rage

The Role of a Lifetime

ABC iView (Australia)

Edutainment at its finest, The Role of a Lifetime approaches contemporary parenthood with good humour and even better, good research. Informative without being preachy, the short series focuses on parenting tweens (children in late primary school) and above, with a sympathetic approach to the pressures of modern life. In a nutshell: social media is everywhere, what can and should we do about it?

Leads Kate Ritchie and Nazeem Hussain serve as part-segment presenters and part-parent role players in this mixture of magazine show and sitcom, while the steady hands of Amanda Keller and Maggie Dent provide context and permission to get it wrong.

Aimed very squarely at a nuclear heterocentric Australian middle class, there are moments that still stray into cliché. For instance, why is mum still in charge of dinner even though she’s also worked a full day, often still in full work clothes, until late at night? Nonetheless, the warm dynamic between the family members and the chosen experts makes the show really engaging and invites further discussion rather than dictating rules and failures.

The featured “young experts” who participate in the casual panels are also excellent. If they are anything resembling Australia’s future, we are in good hands.

– Liz Giuffre

Nickel Boys

Prime Video

Nickel Boys, a new film adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel, follows Elwood Curtis – a studious, law-abiding teenager who is sent to the Nickel Academy in mid-1960s Florida after he unwittingly accepts a ride in a stolen car and is unjustly convicted as an accessory to the theft.

The Nickel Academy, based on the real-life Dozier School for Boys, is a segregated reform school operating as a front for the coercion of unpaid labour from the boys detained there. These boys are subject to beatings, rapes and psychological torture. And their efforts to run away or resist often prove fatal.

At Nickel, Elwood bonds with another 17-year-old inmate, Turner, whose cynicism provides a foil to Elwood’s idealism. A second timeline follows the adult Elwood’s efforts to build a life and maintain relationships in the aftermath of his imprisonment and escape.

You don’t watch Nickel Boys so much as experience it – seeing and hearing what Elwood and (later) Turner see and hear. The film’s first-person approach can sometimes be distracting, not least because of the impulse to compare it with your own sense of what looking looks like.

That said, the film honours Whitehead’s ambivalence, developing a visual style that amplifies a major plot twist in the novel. It turns the darkest events into a luminous fable of endurance.

– Sascha Morrell

Read more:
Nickel Boys could be the most radical literary adaptation ever made – but how does it compare to the book?

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. A child killer, parenting struggles and ‘innies’ running wild: what to stream in April – https://theconversation.com/a-child-killer-parenting-struggles-and-innies-running-wild-what-to-stream-in-april-253018

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

April 1, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Under a Coalition government, the fate of Australia’s central climate policy hangs in the balance

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Deane, Professor of Trade Law, Taxation and Climate Change, Queensland University of Technology

RobynCharnley/Shutterstock

The future of Australia’s key climate policy is uncertain after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said a Coalition government would review the measure, known as the “safeguard mechanism”, which is designed to limit emissions from Australia’s largest industrial polluters.

According to the Australian Financial Review, if the Coalition wins office it will consider relaxing the policy, as part of its plan to increase domestic gas supplies.

Evidence suggests weakening the mechanism would be a mistake. In fact, it could be argued the policy does not go far enough to force polluting companies to curb their emissions.

Both major parties now accept Australia must reach net-zero emissions by 2050. This bipartisan agreement should make one thing clear: winding back the safeguard mechanism would be reckless policy.

What’s the safeguard mechanism again?

The safeguard mechanism began under the Coalition government in 2016. It now applies to 219 large polluting facilities that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. These facilities are in sectors such as electricity, mining, gas, manufacturing, waste and transport. Together, they produce just under one-third of Australia’s emissions.

Under the policy’s original design, companies were purportedly required to keep their emissions below a certain cap, and buy carbon credits to offset any emissions over the cap. However, loopholes meant the cap was weakly enforced.

This meant greenhouse gas pollution from the facilities actually increased – rising from 131.3 million tonnes to 138.7 million tonnes in the first six years of the policy.

Labor strengthened the safeguard mechanism after it won office, by setting a hard cap for industrial emissions. The Coalition voted against the reforms.

Dutton has since labelled the safeguard mechanism a “carbon tax”
– a claim that has been debunked. Some members of the Coalition reportedly believe the policy makes manufacturers globally uncompetitive.

Now, according to media reports, a Coalition government would review the safeguard mechanism with a view to weakening it, in a bid to bolster business and increase gas supply.

Why the safeguard mechanism should be left alone

Weakening the safeguard mechanism would lead to several problems.

First, it would mean large facilities, including new coal and gas projects, would be permitted to operate without meaningful limits on their pollution. This threatens Australia’s international climate obligations.

Second, if polluters were no longer required to buy carbon offsets, this would disrupt Australia’s carbon market.

As the Clean Energy Regulator notes, the safeguard mechanism is the “dominant source” of demand for Australian carbon credits.

In the first quarter of 2024, about 1.2 million carbon-credit units were purchased by parties wanting to offset their emissions. The vast majority were purchased by companies meeting compliance obligations under the safeguard mechanism or similar state rules.

If companies are no longer required to buy offsets, or they buy fewer offsets, this would hurt those who sell carbon credits.

Carbon credits are earned by organisations and individuals who abate carbon – through measures such as tree planting or retaining vegetation. The activities are often carried out by farmers and other landholders, including Indigenous organisations. Indigenous-led carbon projects have delivered jobs, cultural renewal and environmental benefits.

The safeguard mechanism, together with the government pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, also provides certainty for the operators of polluting facilities. Many in the business sector have called for the policy to remain unchanged.

And finally, winding back the safeguard mechanism would send a troubling signal to the world: that Australia is stepping back from climate action.

Now is not the time to abdicate our responsibilities on climate change. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen dramatically since 1960. This increase is driving global warming and climate change, leading to extreme weather events which will only worsen.

A hard-won policy

The safeguard mechanism has not had time to deliver meaningful outcomes. And it is far from perfect – but it is hard-won, and Australia needs it.

The 2023 reforms to the mechanism were designed to support trade-exposed industries, while encouraging companies to invest in emissions reduction.

Undoing this mechanism would risk our climate goals. It would leave the government limited means to curb pollution from Australia’s largest emitters, and muddy the roadmap to net-zero. It would also create uncertainty for all carbon market participants, including the polluting facilities themselves.

Felicity Deane 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. Under a Coalition government, the fate of Australia’s central climate policy hangs in the balance – https://theconversation.com/under-a-coalition-government-the-fate-of-australias-central-climate-policy-hangs-in-the-balance-253426

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

April 1, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: From trading nutrients to storing carbon: 5 things you didn’t know about our underground fungi

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Frew, Lecturer in Mycorrhizal Ecology, Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University

marian galicia/Shutterstock

If you’re walking outdoors, chances are something remarkable is happening under your feet. Vast fungal networks are silently working to keep ecosystems alive.

These fungi aren’t what you might picture. They are not mushrooms, or brightly coloured growths on tree trunks. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi look like spools of thread wrapped around plant roots.

What makes these fungi remarkable is the deal they struck almost half a billion years ago with another kingdom of life – plants.

AM fungi make threads of hyphae thinner than spider silk and weave them through plant roots. Then, they begin to trade, offering plants water and phosphorus, a vital plant nutrient in soils. In return, plants offer carbon-rich sugars and fats from photosynthesis. Fungi can’t photosynthesise, but plants can.

This symbiotic relationship can help plants survive periods of drought and live in nutrient poor soils. More than 80% of all plant families rely on these fungi, while AM fungi cannot live without plants.

Without these fungi, many of Australia’s plants — and the soil they grow in — would be in real trouble. Our continent is ancient, dry, and nutrient-poor. But while we monitor the fate of plants and animals in response to human impact and climate change, we haven’t been tracking the fungi who support it all. We don’t even know how many species there are, let alone if we’re losing them.

To help fill this gap, I have developed the first dedicated database recording species and distributions of AM fungi in Australia – AusAMF.

The underground economy of roots and filaments

AM fungi deserve to be better known. These essential companions to most of the world’s plants maintain plant diversity, suppress invasive species, store carbon, cycle nutrients and prevent soil erosion.

Here are five remarkable things about AM fungi:

1. They’re older than roots

Incredibly, this fungus-plant symbiosis emerged before plants evolved roots some 360–420 million years ago.

AM fungi have been around for 475 million years, partnering with very early land plants such as the ancestors of today’s liverworts – which have no roots. This ancient alliance actually helped plants colonise land.

2. They can boost native plants and reject invasives

AM fungi do more than transport nutrients, carbon and water. They shape entire plant communities. Some plants benefit more than others, influencing competition and species co-existence. By giving some species a competitive edge, AM fungi allow some plants to survive which might otherwise be lost.

When AM fungal diversity declines, it can lead to a loss of native plants and open the door to invasive plant species.

But with the right management — such as reducing pesticides or reintroducing locally adapted fungi — AM fungi can boost plant nutrition and ecosystem restoration. They can help native vegetation recover and stop invasive species from gaining a foothold.

3. They run an invisible underground economy

The fungi-plant trade is more organised than you might think.

In some instances, plants reward the fungi giving them the most phosphorus with more carbon, while the fungi prioritise plants offering them the most carbon – a bit like a marketplace. Some plants have figured out how to cheat the fungi, taking resources without giving anything in return.

This high-magnification video shows water and nutrients flowing inside the hyphae of the AM fungus Rhizophagus irregularis. Source: Oyarte Galvez et al. (2025) Nature

4. They boost plant defences against pests and disease

Fungi don’t just help plants grow, they help them fight. As AM fungi colonise a plant’s roots, they boost its defences against threats such as diseases and plant-eating insects by strengthening and speeding up chemical responses. My research shows the size of this fungal-defence boost for plants can depend on what AM fungi are present.

And if one plant is attacked, it puts out chemical signals which can move through the fungal network and let other plants know to ready their defences.

5. They take in vast amounts of carbon

Plants take carbon from the atmosphere and store it in their leaves, roots and wood. But AM fungi store carbon from plants too.

Because mycorrhizal fungi are found wherever there are plants, their underground networks are vast – and so is their carbon impact. Recent research estimates the annual figure is more than a third of global fossil fuel carbon emissions.

Vitally important, all but unknown

If AM fungi vanished, many plant species would likely follow suit. Others would become more vulnerable to drought, disease, and pests. Soil would erode more easily, and nutrient and carbon flows would shift dramatically.

Are they in trouble? We don’t know. AM fungi are out of sight, out of mind. No federal or state government agency seem to be tracking them. Our current National Soil Action Plan doesn’t mention fungi at all, despite their importance to soil health.

Other than Antarctica, Australia is the least sampled continent for soil AM fungi, with just 32 sites in global databases. Europe, by comparison, has data from more than 1,200 sites.

AM fungi help plants grow better. On the left is grass in symbiosis with AM fungi with visible white hyphae. On the right is grass without the fungi.
Soil Ecology Wiki, CC BY

That’s where I hope the AusAMF database will help. I partnered with landholders and research networks to gather soil samples. So far, the database has data from 610 locations, with about 400 more on the way.

But this is still scratching the surface. AM fungal communities can differ between neighbouring fields or habitats, depending on land management methods and types of vegetation. Virtually all current records are a single snapshot in time — we lack the long-term monitoring needed to track seasonal or annual changes.

It would be a mistake to remain in the dark about AM fungi. The more we learn, the more we see their importance, not only in supporting biodiversity, but in helping our crops and ecosystems cope with a changing world. If they are in decline, we need to know – and set about protecting them.

Adam Frew receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the British Ecological Society.

– ref. From trading nutrients to storing carbon: 5 things you didn’t know about our underground fungi – https://theconversation.com/from-trading-nutrients-to-storing-carbon-5-things-you-didnt-know-about-our-underground-fungi-252184

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

April 1, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Menthol cigarettes will be banned from April 1. Here’s why – and what else is changing
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Becky Freeman, Professor in Public Health, University of Sydney

patpitchaya/Shutterstock

New laws come into effect in Australia today that change the look, ingredients, and packaging of tobacco products.

The Australian government passed the package of tobacco laws in late 2023, which include:
- standardised tobacco pack and cigarette stick sizes, no more novelty pack sizes or cigarette lengths
- updated and improved graphic health warnings and quitting advice inserts within all tobacco packs
- warnings printed directly on cigarettes
- banning ingredients that make tobacco taste better and easier to smoke, including menthol.
Retailers have a three-month grace period to sell any old stock already in their stores by July 1.

Here’s what’s behind these changes – and what needs to happen next.

Packs warn about the harms of smoking.
Department of Health and Ageing

New graphic health warnings

Cigarette packaging requirements have been stagnant since 2012, when Australia introduced plain packaging laws that banned the use of all on-pack logos and branding. This was a world-first.

While large graphic health warnings are effective in both preventing smoking uptake and aiding quitting smoking, the effects wear out if warnings are not refreshed and varied.

New warnings replace those from 2012.
Department of Health and Ageing

Cigarette packages must carry one of ten new health warnings. Fresh warnings that smoking doubles the risk of cervical cancer and leads to diabetes will be new information for many smokers.

There are also warnings for roll-your-own, cigar, bidi and shisha tobacco packaging.

Warnings on cigarettes

Cigarettes themselves must now include one of eight health warnings printed directly on the filter paper.

Canada was the first country in the world to adopt similar requirements in 2023.

The size, shape, and colour of cigarettes has also been standardised to prevent tobacco companies from using unique cigarette designs to attract new users. Long, thin cigarettes, for example, have been marketed to women as a fashion accessory and diet tool for nearly a century.

Warnings will now be on the sticks themselves.
Department of Health and Ageing

The ingredients permitted in cigarettes are also changing, with ingredients that enhance the flavour of tobacco being now banned. The long list of prohibited ingredients includes everything from cloves, to sugar, to probiotics and vitamins.

Until now, the tobacco industry has had free reign to add ingredients that increase the palatability and attractiveness of cigarettes. This banned list also captures menthol and any ingredients that mimic the cooling properties of menthol.

Why ban menthol?

Menthol masks the harshness of smoke. Just like cold lollies that contain menthol to soothe sore throats and tame coughs, menthol in cigarettes prevents inexperienced smokers from reacting to the rough effects of tobacco smoke in the throat. This helps to make smoking a more pleasant experience that young users will return to.

The introduction of crushable menthol capsules in cigarette filters has proven very popular with Australian teenagers. Teens who use these products are more likely to have recently smoked and have higher smoking intentions in the future. The new laws also explicitly prohibit these “crush balls” or “flavour beads.”

Other counties that have banned menthol have seen drops in tobacco sales and use and increases in quitting behaviours.

No similar reforms for the United States

Menthol cigarettes have been heavily marketed to African American people since at least the 1950s and make up one-third of the total US cigarette market share. Tobacco control groups in the US have been advocating for a menthol ban for well over a decade.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed a rule banning menthol in 2022, and a 2024 US Surgeon General report highlighted that menthol products increase addiction and are:

disproportionately used by Black people, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander people, women and people who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual.

Under the Biden Administration, the FDA delayed issuing the final rule which meant the ban was not properly enacted before Trump was elected.

In January 2025, the Trump administration completely withdrew the ban.

A menthol ban in the US was predicted to reduce total smoking by 15% and the number of smoking attributable deaths among African Americans by up to 238,000.

Reforms needed to stamp out our illicit market

Organised criminals are operating in Australia’s tobacco supply chain to illegally import and sell tobacco products. Government action to step in and gain control of that supply system is long overdue.

Until this year, Australia’s two most populous states didn’t even require tobacco sellers to be licensed, and Queensland only introduced licensing last year.

Australia will need to change how tobacco is sold. It should not be so easy and commonplace to sell such an addictive and deadly product.

Both state and national governments need timely and transparent reporting on the size and scope of the illicit market, and strict licensing of the entire tobacco supply chain.

Businesses that sell illicit tobacco must face real consequences – not only large fines and loss of licences to operate, but also criminal charges.

All aspects of the tobacco supply chain – from wholesalers to retailers – must be tightly controlled.

Becky Freeman is an expert advisor to the Cancer Council tobacco issues committee and a member of the Cancer Institute vaping communications advisory panel. She has received relevant competitive grants from the NHMRC, MRFF, NSW Health, the Ian Potter Foundation, VicHealth, and Healthway WA.

– ref. Menthol cigarettes will be banned from April 1. Here’s why – and what else is changing – https://theconversation.com/menthol-cigarettes-will-be-banned-from-april-1-heres-why-and-what-else-is-changing-251920
MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –
April 1, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Keep an eye on the Senate – the people elected to it this year will have immense power for years to come

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zareh Ghazarian, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, Monash University

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has finally ended weeks of speculation and named the election date for the national parliament.

After months of unofficial campaigning, Australians will now be treated to a festival of democracy as promises are made, policies are announced, and the leaders travel the country to rally support.

Much of the campaigning by the parties will be focused on the House of Representatives. This is to be expected as the lower house is where government is formed by the party that wins the majority of seats in this chamber, and the leader of this party becomes prime minister.

While the election for the lower house dominates the campaign, the contest for the Senate is rarely mentioned.

This is a bit unfair as the Senate is an immensely powerful chamber.

The power of the Senate

Barring its inability to initiate or amend supply bills, the Senate has almost the same powers as the House of Representatives. Senators can introduce their own bills, as long as they’re not supply bills.

For any proposed bill to become law, it must be passed by the Senate as well as the House of Representatives.

All states have equal representation in the chamber. Currently, every state is represented by 12 senators, each with six-year terms.

This means half the Senate is up for election at every general election.

The territories are represented by two senators each and they face re-election at every general election. The current number of senators is 76.

Winning a majority in the Senate has no bearing on who forms government (it’s the result of the lower house – the House of Representatives – which determines this). It does, however, make it easier for the government to pass bills to become law if it enjoys a majority in this chamber.

Who wins seats in the Senate?

The voting system in the Senate is very different to the House of Representatives. To win a seat in the House of Representatives, a candidate must win 50% +1 of the votes cast in the district.

In the Senate, however, a candidate must win a proportion (approximately 14.3%) of the state-wide vote.

This makes it a bit easier for minor parties to win representation as they can rely on broad support from across the state to reach the required threshold.

Changes introduced in 2016 mean Australians have choice on how to complete their Senate ballot paper. They can either number six or more candidates of their choice above the black line, or vote below the line by numbering 12 or more candidates.

While parties will organise their own preference deals to benefit them, voters are ultimately in control of where their preferences go.

Thanks to the voting system used in the Senate, it is rare for a government to hold a majority of seats in the upper house. The last time this occurred was in 2004 when the John Howard-led Coalition enjoyed a majority in the chamber.

The current Senate

Following the 2022 election, both major parties lost ground in the Senate. To have a majority in the chamber, a party must have 39 seats. Currently, Labor has 25 representatives, while the Coalition has 30.

The remaining seats are held by the Greens with the third highest number of representatives (11), One Nation (2), Jacqui Lambie Network (1), United Australia Party (1), and six Independents.

Several high-profile senators are up for election in 2025. In Queensland, for example, Malcolm Roberts from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation will be up for re-election, Jacqui Lambie will be recontesting in Tasmania, while Independent Senator David Pocock from the ACT will be seeking another term.

There will also be some other prominent senators hoping to be re-elected from established parties.

These include Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (Country Liberal Party) and Senator Malarndirri McCarthy (ALP) from the Northern Territory, Liberal James Paterson from Victoria, Sarah Hanson-Young from the Greens in South Australia, and Jordan Steele-John from the Greens in Western Australia.

The 2025 contest

Fewer people have been voting for the major parties in recent years. In 2022, the vote for non-major party candidates reached a high of 35.7% (which, as Antony Green reminds us, was higher than the primary vote for both the Coalition and Labor).

Since the 1980s, Australians appear to have become open to supporting non-major party candidates contesting the Senate. If this continues as expected in 2025, whoever becomes prime minister will have to deal with the diverse interests and policy demands from those in the upper house.

While the campaign for the Senate may go under the radar over the next few weeks, who is elected to the Senate will have a massive impact on Australian politics for years to come.

Zareh Ghazarian 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. Keep an eye on the Senate – the people elected to it this year will have immense power for years to come – https://theconversation.com/keep-an-eye-on-the-senate-the-people-elected-to-it-this-year-will-have-immense-power-for-years-to-come-252899

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

April 1, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Flawed medical studies can end up in doctors’ advice. We developed a tool to stop it
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aya Mousa, Senior Research Fellow in Women’s Cardiometabolic Health, Monash University

Maksym Dykha/Shutterstock

Good health care depends on evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. They translate the best available research into recommendations that shape diagnosis, treatment, and prevention strategies.

But what happens when the studies underpinning these guidelines are flawed?

Evidence suggests scientific misconduct – from fabricated or manipulated data to methodological errors and ethical concerns – is a growing problem. In some disciplines, estimates suggest as many as 40% of studies included in systematic reviews may have issues with their integrity.

This is not just an academic issue. When flawed studies are used to guide real-world health care, the consequences for health-care providers and ultimately patients can be serious. They include unnecessary or even harmful treatments, delay or denial of other effective treatments, wasted resources and a loss of public trust in science and health care itself.

Yet until recently, there has been no formal method to identify and manage flawed studies, before they make their way into clinical recommendations. We recently helped develop a framework that addresses this crucial gap. Published in The Lancet’s eClinicalMedicine, this framework provides a step-by-step process for evaluating the integrity of studies used in clinical guidelines and systematic reviews.

In an era of increasing concern about research misconduct, it’s a timely and much-needed advance.

Clinical care relies on research integrity

Randomised controlled trials are considered the gold standard in medical research.

Their results often underpin clinical guidelines that shape day-to-day decisions in health care. But what if a randomised controlled trial contains fabricated data? Or is conducted without ethics approval? Or is retracted after being used in a previous guideline?

A 2020 study found 44% of randomised controlled trials submitted to a major medical journal between 2017 and 2020 contained problematic or false data.

Compounding the problem is the fact that journal editors and publishers can be very slow to respond to concerns about research integrity.

For example, between November 2017 and April 2024, a group of researchers wrote to editors and publishers of 891 potentially untrustworthy papers published in 206 different journals. At the time their study was published earlier this year, only 30% of the papers they flagged had received an outcome – 58% of which were retracted.

Notably, it took a median time of 38 months for editors and publishers to make a decision. In only 13% of the flagged cases was a decision made within 12 months.

The ripple effects of this can be enormous. A review by the independent Cochrane Collaboration of nutrition interventions in pregnancy found that removing studies with integrity concerns changed the conclusions of 72% of reviews. One third (33%) needed to be updated because their guidance was no longer reliable.

Integrity concerns vary across fields. But some, such as complementary therapies or supplements, can be particularly prone to these concerns.

Despite this, most guideline development tools — including those from the World Health Organization — assess methodological quality, not the trustworthiness or integrity of the studies that are included.

When flawed studies are used to guide real-world medical advice, the consequences for doctors and ultimately patients can be serious.
Yuri A/Shutterstock

A practical framework for safeguarding integrity

Our framework features a six-step process for safeguarding research integrity:
- Review: conduct a standard systematic review to identify eligible studies
- Exclude: remove studies that have been formally retracted or are flagged with serious concerns
- Assess: use available tools and checklists to assess the integrity of the remaining studies
- Discuss: convene an independent integrity committee to review ratings and vote on each study
- Establish contact: reach out to authors of high-risk studies to clarify issues or provide missing information
- Reassess: based on responses (or lack thereof), determine whether a study should be included, excluded, or held in limbo.
The integrity committee is central to this approach. It is a multidisciplinary group responsible for assessing studies objectively, without preconceived judgements or biases around which studies to exclude.

Applying the framework to the real world

Our framework was developed alongside the international evidence-based guideline for polycystic ovary syndrome.

Polycystic ovary syndrome is a common hormonal, reproductive and metabolic condition affecting 8–13% of women of reproductive age, depending on the diagnostic criteria used. It can cause irregular menstrual cycles, elevated androgen levels, and an increased number of small follicles in the ovaries, visible on ultrasound. It is a leading cause of infertility.

The guideline was developed with input from diverse professional and consumer groups. It was endorsed by 39 organisations across six continents.

In making recommendations on infertility treatment in polycystic ovary syndrome, 101 studies were initially identified. After applying our framework, 45 studies were not included due to concerns about integrity. Only three authors responded to clarification requests. This illustrates the problem with transparency after publication.

Without our framework, these problematic studies may have directly shaped recommendations and health care for women with polycystic ovary syndrome around the world.

Our framework was incorporated into the National Health and Medical Research Council review process that approved the guidelines. It has since been applied to other guidelines in women’s health. Further scale up is planned.

A 2020 study found 44% of randomised controlled trials submitted to a major medical journal between 2017 and 2020 contained false data.
T.Schneider/Shutterstock

Some drawbacks

While our framework offers a much-needed solution, it’s not without drawbacks.

First, the tools it relies on — such as a checklist for measuring trustworthiness in randomised controlled trials and the research integrity assessment tool — are still being refined. They also need to be validated across different research contexts.

Second, older studies (conducted before trial registries were common) or those from countries with different ethics standards, may be unfairly penalised.

There is also a risk that valid research could be excluded simply because authors do not respond to integrity enquiries.

Implementing the framework can also take time. In resource-limited settings, this may be a barrier.

But failing to assess integrity will likely cost more in the long run. It could lead to flawed recommendations, misplaced public confidence and patient harm.

Aya Mousa receives funding from NHMRC.

Ben W. Mol receives funding from NHMRC, MRFF as well as international competitive grants.

Helena Teede receives funding from NHMRC and MRFF as well as international competitive grants. She is President of International Endocrine Society.

– ref. Flawed medical studies can end up in doctors’ advice. We developed a tool to stop it – https://theconversation.com/flawed-medical-studies-can-end-up-in-doctors-advice-we-developed-a-tool-to-stop-it-253213
MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –
April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Thanks to social media platforms, election interference is more insidious and pervasive than ever

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Andrew Buzzell, Postdoctoral Fellow, Rotman Institute of Philosophy, Western University

Seemingly innocuous conversations, informed by online campaigns, could interfere with elections. (Matt Quinn/Unsplash), CC BY

Election interference is a much broader phenomenon than is often assumed. Once limited to intimidation, voter fraud or hacking, election interference includes more mundane, pervasive and ubiquitous interactions. A seemingly innocuous and casual chat with a neighbour or barista could now be considered part of a hostile influence campaign.

From this perspective, interference is less about how ballots are cast and more about shaping the motivations, intentions and contexts in which voters think about politics. Yet those same processes, debates, persuasions and messy arguments are integral to democracy.

If “election interference” encompasses all efforts to influence opinion, do we risk diluting its meaning, creating a new hollow accusation like “fake news?” More importantly, if this broad view is right, it raises difficult new challenges beyond the narrow measures of election law.

Blurred lines

Germany recently accused Elon Musk of meddling in their February election, claiming that his prominent endorsement of the Alternative for Germany party on X was an illegal foreign donation. During the 2022 Brazilian election, misinformation on WhatsApp and Telegram swayed voter intentions, and the Superior Electoral Court frequently requested that content be taken down.

Much of this content was homegrown, produced, endorsed and circulated by Brazilians themselves. If such content was traditional journalism, existing laws and standards could be applied. But when it resembles ordinary political speech, many see takedowns as censorship. Blurred lines between citizen speech and journalism complicate the laws and policies designed to address clearly defined electioneering.

During the 2020 Taiwan elections, officials worried that pro-unification memes came not only from Chinese-controlled bots and paid posters (itself a form of election interference), but were trending because the TikTok algorithm systematically prioritized it.

And in the United States, the legislative push to ban TikTok gained momentum alongside political concern that an apparent uptick in anti-Israel sentiment was caused by covert manipulation of TikTok’s algorithm.

Broader concerns

Concerns about election interference should extend the focus beyond the ballot to include information vulnerabilities. Politicians of all stripes have called for action on deceptive speech, but there is little agreement on the nature of the problem, especially across partisan divides

Complaints about fake news are as likely to be strategic as sincere. News isn’t just about facts, it’s about what matters and why, and as such, media regulation should not solely be determined by the legal system. There is the risk that any effort to control content used to interfere with elections (propaganda, disinformation, fakes) will be inescapably partisan, thus unacceptable in democracies.

The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) notes some of these concerns. The act indicates that monitoring and reporting about societal risks and public transparency databases will be required. It establishes “trusted flaggers” (experts and civil society groups) to help moderate content. It doesn’t mention elections, but voices concerns that platforms may be “used to disseminate or amplify misleading or deceptive content, including disinformation,” which can undermine fundamental rights.

The DSA is new but already facing friction. The U.S. has indicated that enforcement may undermine free speech. Other issues include the absence of funding, the lack of standards for transparency databases and growing mistrust in the very idea of flagging. Flagging posts has been criticized for conflating editorship with censorship

Free speech

There are two schools of thought in competition with each other pertaining to free speech. The first defines it as freedom from interference with the media environment, and the view that the response to bad speech should be more and better speech, not censure.

Currently, too much speech is circulating, along with the power given to algorithms and human moderators to make sense of it. This suggests a different ideal — the freedom to be informed and in control of our information environments, to feel authentically represented and to have fair dealings with speech platforms. Translating these to policies and slogans is much harder than a hands-off approach to media regulation.

Overwhelmed with information, consumers favour brands, curators, editors, tastemakers, vibes and tribes that align with their personal values. If there is a shift in values, consumers cancel, unfollow and disconnect — and then replace the source.

Trust-breaking disrupts the systems we use to filter, verify and contextualize information. This is exemplified in “firehose of falsehood” tactics and hack-and-leak operations that simultaneously sow distrust and weaponize predictable reactions.

Scales of influence

For every internationally important election or referendum, there are hundreds of local contests, municipal elections, internal party nominations and the like that shape political realities just as meaningfully. Influencers operating at small scales can have outsized effects that ripple through broader constituencies. A post on a local forum might spark a thousand invisible offline conversations.

These broad concerns about vulnerabilities in our media systems matter all the time, not just during elections. Political representation requires trust in the media that inform us about what other people and communities think and care about. These reflections are distorted by online social media platforms and messaging apps.

We will have to eventually consider something like a “made in Canada” Digital Services Act that can give voters a voice in the kind of information environment they want. There’s much to be learned from the EU’s early lessons, especially as they respond to American tech companies that control so much of the online information space.

Andrew Buzzell received funding from SSHRC.

– ref. Thanks to social media platforms, election interference is more insidious and pervasive than ever – https://theconversation.com/thanks-to-social-media-platforms-election-interference-is-more-insidious-and-pervasive-than-ever-251764

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Stone tool discovery in China shows people in East Asia were innovating during the Middle Paleolithic, like in Europe and Middle East

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ben Marwick, Professor of Archaeology, University of Washington

The artifacts found at Longtan, southwest China, were as old as 60,000 years. Qijun Ruan

New technologies today often involve electronic devices that are smaller and smarter than before. During the Middle Paleolithic, when Neanderthals were modern humans’ neighbors, new technologies meant something quite different: new kinds of stone tools that were smaller but could be used for many tasks and lasted for a long time.

Archaeologists like me are interested in the Middle Paleolithic – a period spanning 250,000 to 30,000 years ago – because it includes the first appearance of our species, our arrival into many parts of the world for the first time, and our invention of many new kinds of stone tools.

Illustration of a typical Quina scraper and related tools. The toolmaker would flake pieces of stone off the core to carefully shape the Quina scraper.
Pei-Yuan Xiao

In our study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of international collaborators and I describe our discovery in China of the first complete example of a Middle Paleolithic technology previously seen only in Europe and the Middle East.

Archaeologists have thought that ancient people in East Asia completely skipped the Middle Paleolithic. Our discovery challenges the long-standing notion that while ancient people in Europe and Africa were inventing new tools during this period, people of East Asia stuck to only the most basic tools that remained unchanged for thousands of years.

The Quina tool kit from Longtan. (A–D) Quina scrapers. (E–G) Quina cores. (H-J) Resharpening flakes showing Quina retouch at the near end of the top face. (K) Small tool made on resharpening flake.
Hao Li

Quina scrapers helped hunters process kills

The tool we’ve identified is called a Quina scraper. This type of stone tool is well known from archaeological sites in Europe and the Middle East.

Quina scrapers are typically quite thick and asymmetrical, with a broad and sharp working edge that shows clear signs of being used and resharpened multiple times. This shape results in durable cutting edges, ideal for long cycles of use followed by resharpening.

People used Quina scrapers to scrape and cut soft materials, such as meat and animal skins, and medium-hard materials, such as wood. We know this from tiny scratches and chips on the scrapers that match traces caused by working these materials in experiments using contemporary stone tools.

European archaeologists believe that Quina scrapers were invented to meet the needs of highly mobile hunters living in cool and dry climates. These hunters were focused on seasonal migratory prey such as reindeer, giant deer, horse and bison. Quina scrapers would have helped them process their kills into food and other resources – for example, to extract marrow.

A. Map showing the location of the discovery of the Quina tool kit in China, at the southern margin of the Hengduan Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau. B. View of the landscape showing the Longtan archaeological site.
Hao Li, CC BY-ND

First find of a Quina tool in East Asia

Our team, led by Hao Li of the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research and Qijun Ruan of the Yunnan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, excavated Quina scrapers and related stone tools from the Longtan archaeological site in southwest China.

Bo Li collects samples from Longtan for luminescence dating at his laboratory at the University of Wollongong.
Qijun Ruan

Our colleague Bo Li at the University of Wollongong used optical luminescence dating methods on the layers of earth that contained the artifacts. This technique can identify how much time has passed since each individual sand grain was last exposed to the Sun. Dating many individual grains in a sample is important because tree roots, insects or other animals can mix younger sediments down into older ones.

After we identified and removed intrusive younger grains, we found the layers containing the artifacts were 50,000 to 60,000 years old. This is roughly the same time Quina scrapers were being used in Europe at Neanderthal sites.

Keliang Zhao from China’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology looked at pollen grains from the Longtan excavations. He found that the Middle Paleolithic people of Longtan lived in a relatively open forest-grassland environment and a dry and cool climate. This environment is similar to that of Quina sites in Europe.

Davide Delpiano, Marco Peresani and Marie-Hélène Moncel, experts on European Middle Paleolithic tools, joined our team to help with the comparison of the Chinese and European specimens and confirm their similarities.

Hélène Monod, from Universidad Rovira i Virgili in Spain, looked at our Quina scrapers under the microscope and found traces on them from scraping and scratching bones, antlers and wood. She also found polish from using the tools on meat, hides and soft plants.

Who lived in East Asia during this period?

Our new discovery of Quina scrapers joins another recent find of a different kind of Middle Paleolithic technology in East Asia: Levallois tools from Guanyindong Cave in Guizhou Province in south-central China. Levallois tools result from a distinctive multistep sequence that efficiently produces lots of useful cutting tools, with minimal wasted stone. Taken together, these two finds make a strong case that Middle Paleolithic technologies were present in East Asia.

But why are we only just finding this Quina tool kit now, when it has been known in Europe for such a long time?

One reason is that archaeologists have been looking in Europe for longer than almost anywhere else in the world. Another reason Middle Paleolithic evidence appears rare in East Asia is because what now seem to be less typical variations of the Quina tool kit previously found in China had been overlooked, likely due to archaeologists’ narrow definitions based on European examples.

The Quina tools at Longtan are among the earliest artifacts from that site, which makes it hard for researchers to determine the origins of this new technology. Was it introduced by visitors from Europe? Or did local people in East Asia independently invent it?

The research team shows off the Longtan artifacts.
Hao Li

To answer these questions, we hope to find more Quina scrapers at sites with deeper – meaning older – layers than Longtan. If older layers hold what look like the remnants of experiments in stone toolmaking that would eventually result in Quina tools, it suggests Quina tools were invented locally. If deeper layers have dissimilar tools, that suggests Quina technology was introduced from a neighboring group.

We also hope future work will reveal who made these tools. Our excavations at Longtan did not find any human bone or DNA that could help us identify the toolmakers.

During the Middle Paleolithic, there were multiple human species that could make tools like this. It could have been modern humans like us. But it could also have been Neanderthals. Considering that the Quina technology in Europe is directly associated with Neanderthals, this seems likely. But it could also have been Denisovans, an extinct species similar to modern humans found during this time in Siberia, the Tibetan Plateau and Laos, or even a new human species that hasn’t been seen before.

Whoever was making and using these Quina scrapers, they were able to be inventive and flexible with their technology, adapting to their changing environment.

Ben Marwick 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. Stone tool discovery in China shows people in East Asia were innovating during the Middle Paleolithic, like in Europe and Middle East – https://theconversation.com/stone-tool-discovery-in-china-shows-people-in-east-asia-were-innovating-during-the-middle-paleolithic-like-in-europe-and-middle-east-252868

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Marine Le Pen’s victim narrative is already being constructed – but there are ways to stop her criminal conviction benefitting her

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aurelien Mondon, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Bath

Marine Le Pen, figurehead of France’s Rassemblement National (RN), one of the most established far-right parties in Europe, has been found guilty of embezzling funds from the European parliament.

During her time as an MEP between 2004 and 2017, Le Pen and her team paid party staff with funds that should have gone to European parliamentary aides. The ruling estimates that a total of €2.9 million (£2.4 million) in European parliament funds were involved in the crimes and that Le Pen personally embezzled €474,000 of that total.

She has been sentenced to four years in prison, two of which would be electronic monitoring. She is also unlikely to see the inside of a cell for the other two years as she is appealing her conviction.

More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that she has been banned from holding public office for five years. Crucially, the ban is to start immediately, meaning that even with an appeal, Le Pen is highly unlikely to be able to stand as a candidate in the next presidential election in 2027.

For many in the RN, the court’s decision will be a major blow. The party appears to have lost the candidate they believed was on course for victory in 2027. However, others will no doubt see this as a chance to distance the party further from the Le Pen name, following the death of Marine Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie Le Pen earlier this year.

This process has been in motion for some time. Jordan Bardella took over from Le Pen as president of the party in 2022 and has clearly been waiting and preparing for this eventuality. Allegations were first levelled at Le Pen many years ago and her crimes relate to her time as an MEP between 2004 and 2017. He has been the plan B option throughout her trial.

Bardella led the RN to victory in the 2024 European election in France. He also managed to send a record number of parliamentarians to the National Assembly after French president Emmanuel Macron called a snap election just weeks later.

This was, nevertheless, a somewhat disappointing outcome as many on the far right had started to imagine Bardella as prime minister. Since failing to meet this expectation, his leadership has come under more scrutiny. His reaction to Le Pen’s sidelining will be watched carefully.

Playing the victim

Overall, it is good news to see corruption being taken seriously and justice being served. However, Le Pen’s conviction comes after years of embezzlement which has allowed the far right to build its strength. All this has come on the back of a system it has vowed to destroy. As such, it feels like too little too late.

Furthermore, this decision, and the fact that it is tied to the European Union, is likely to feed into typical far-right propaganda on the domestic stage. Le Pen and the party will play the victim, blaming Le Pen’s fate on a wide conspiracy organised by something akin to the deep state operating via Brussels.

The deep levels of distrust in public institutions and mainstream politics are likely to play a role here. Le Pen will aim to paint the decision of an independent court as the political assassination of the “champion of the people”.

She could become a martyr, turning her cause into a revolt against “the system”. Bardella has already said that Le Pen’s conviction amounted to the “execution” of democracy.

Crucially, though, this outcome isn’t inevitable. Whether such a narrative takes hold is a choice that is very much in the hands of mainstream elite actors. Those who have a privileged access to shaping public discourse, such as journalists, politicians and experts will therefore play a key role.

Instead of giving pride of place to Le Pen and the far right in a tempting sensationalising coverage, the mainstream media must turn to serious analysis. This would involve removing the focus from individuals and putting it on the wider issues at hand. That would lessen the potential for a narrative of victimisation to take hold.

Beyond providing an accurate picture of the case itself, good coverage should predominantly focus on politics rather than on the spectacle the RN will inevitably try to construct as a diversion tactic. This would mean engaging seriously with what the RN actually proposes as a model of society: one that is not against the “elite” and for the people, but merely in favour of a different elite taking control at the head of a top-down authoritarian state.

This would then allow voters to understand that the far right is not on their side, but on the side of power, wealth and hierarchies. Those who oppose such a takeover could go some way to fix the damage that has been done with carelessly associating these parties with “populism”.

Finally, good coverage would also mean shifting the agenda away from the far right and its pet issues. Had politicians – left, right and centre – not continuously used the far right as a diversion from their own failures to tackle the many crises their countries face, the far right would not be as powerful as it seems.

As opinion polls show, when people are asked what are their biggest concerns personally, issues core to the far right such as immigration are low. Instead, it is issues that would require radical measures to tackle economic and social insecurity which are prioritised.

The far right offers nothing to address these – only division to make citizens powerless to fight back. Now that Le Pen is out of the picture, it is a good time to shift the agenda back to democracy and hope.

Aurelien Mondon 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. Marine Le Pen’s victim narrative is already being constructed – but there are ways to stop her criminal conviction benefitting her – https://theconversation.com/marine-le-pens-victim-narrative-is-already-being-constructed-but-there-are-ways-to-stop-her-criminal-conviction-benefitting-her-253469

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Idarucizumab, levetiracetam, ustekinumab: how do drugs get their names and why are they so hard to pronounce?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Craig Russell, Lecturer, Pharmacy, Aston University

Asier Romero/Shutterstock

If you’ve ever tried discussing medicines with friends or family and found yourself stumbling over the pronunciation — or even resorting to snapping a photo of the medicine’s packaging to show your pharmacist, instead of remembering the name — you’ve probably wondered: where do drug names come from, and why can’t they be easier to remember?

Occasionally, drug names are short and snappy. But more often, they seem more like something from Greek or Norse mythology. While these names may seem overwhelming at first, they’re chosen with purpose, not as a way for big pharma to show off.

Naming a new drug can resemble watching a yacht race or an American football game for the first time — chaotic and confusing, with rules and a structure that only those involved truly understand. To the untrained eye, it might seem random, but there’s a method to the madness. So, how are these names chosen?

Most drugs typically have three names: a chemical name, a generic name, and a brand name. Each serves a different purpose.

An example of this is the branded drug Viagra. Its generic name is sildenafil and its chemical name is 5-[2-ethoxy-5-(4-methylpiperazin-1-ylsulfonyl)phenyl]-1-methyl-3-propyl-1,6-dihydro-7H-pyrazolo[4,3-d]pyrimidin-7-one.

In this example, it is clear why the chemical name is not practical for everyday use. But why have a brand name and a generic name?

The brand name is assigned by the pharmaceutical company that develops, patents and markets the medicine. These names are chosen to be catchy and easy to remember, helping in marketing and recognition. They are usually easy to pronounce.

Once a patent expires, other manufacturers can market the same drug under a generic name, as long as it meets the same standards of quality, safety and effectiveness.

To avoid confusion

Generic names were introduced in the 1950s and are the official, non-proprietary names for the active drug. Each drug has only one generic name, which ensures clear communication and standardisation worldwide.

Pharmaceutical companies must follow strict guidelines when naming drugs, which are set by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Non-proprietary Names system.

In the US, the United States Adopted Names Council assigns generic drug names in collaboration with the WHO. This ensures that drugs with similar functions have similar-sounding names.

Generic drug names often incorporate stems or suffixes that denote the drug’s mechanism of action, chemical structure or target receptor, and a prefix that differentiates it from drugs in the same family.

This is why lots of drug names share the same ending. Examples include cholesterol medicines ending in -statin, Ace inhibitors for reducing blood pressure ending in -pril, monoclonal antibody drugs ending in -mab, and tyrosine kinase inhibitors (mainly used in cancer treatment) ending in -tinib.

Despite all of this, there are still lots of drugs that are easy to mix up. Medicines that look or sound alike (known in the field as “Lasa medicines”) are a leading contributor to medication errors. So, recognising where there is risk is important.

It is particularly important to consider the sound of the name and not just how it appears when written. Examples of Lasa medicines are Losec (omeprazole) and Lasix (furosemide), and Maprocin (ciprofloxacin) and Macrocin (erythromycin). To avoid confusion, prescriptions and labels include both the brand and generic names to help differentiate between similar-sounding medications.

Patients should be educated about their medicines and how to use them, including the importance of checking the name and appearance of the medication before taking it.

Craig Russell receives funding from BBSRC.

– ref. Idarucizumab, levetiracetam, ustekinumab: how do drugs get their names and why are they so hard to pronounce? – https://theconversation.com/idarucizumab-levetiracetam-ustekinumab-how-do-drugs-get-their-names-and-why-are-they-so-hard-to-pronounce-252049

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Protein is being added to yoghurt, bread and even coffee – but is it really good for our health?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aisling Pigott, Lecturer, Dietetics, Cardiff Metropolitan University

Not all of these protein-enhanced food products are healthy. MAYA Lab/ Shutterstock

Protein intake dominates fitness advice. Whether you want to build muscle, improve your fitness or watch your weight, the common advice handed out by everyone from fitness influencers to doctors is that we need more protein.

But while protein does play an essential role in maintaining our muscle mass and overall health, all this increased attention on the importance of protein in the media and fitness circles has sparked a surge in products marketed specifically for their protein content. Some chocolate bars, ice cream, pizza, coffee and even alcoholic beverages now market themselves as protein foods.

But our enthusiasm for protein might have gone too far. While protein is certainly important for our health, most of us don’t need these protein-enhanced foods as a regular feature in our diet. Not to mention that this marketing may lead to a “halo effect,” where consumers mistakenly equate high protein content with overall nutritional value. This effect can lead to the perception of protein-rich foods being inherently nutritious – even though many may not be.

Protein is essential for maintaining muscle mass and immune function.

Nutrition guidelines recommend people aim to eat around 0.75g of protein per kilogram of body weight. But some evidence suggests this recommendation may be an underestimate – and that the recommendation should be around 1.2g-1.6g per kg of body weight per day

There’s also a strong body of evidence that suggests the amount of protein we need changes depending on our health. For instance, people need to eat more protein when they’re recovering from an illness. Research also shows that older adults should be aiming for at least 1.2g per kg of body weight in order to combat age-related muscle loss.

Athletes also need to eat a greater amount of protein to support their training and recovery. Moreover, with the rising popularity of weight-loss drugs, strategies increasingly emphasise protein intake to minimise muscle loss while losing weight.

But just because protein is good for maintaining muscle mass, that doesn’t mean more is better. In fact, it seems that even when we consume large amounts of protein, only a some of this is actually used by the body.

Most of us probably need a little more protein than current guidelines suggest, but less than is often promoted by wellness influencers on social media (with some even suggesting we need up to 3g of protein per kg of body weight).

Ironically, the necessary amount of protein suggested by emerging evidence (1.2g-1.6g per kg of body weight per day) is close to what the average protein consumption already is in most western countries.

It’s better to try and eat a bit of protein from a whole food source at each meal.
Margouillat Photo/ Shutterstock

Most people can probably benefit from being more protein aware – not about how much protein they’re consuming, but about the quality and frequency of their protein choices. Ideally, we should aim to consume small amounts of protein-rich foods more often during the day.

Current evidence suggests around 20g-30g of protein (around a handful of a protein source) at each meal supports muscle maintenance alongside physical activity.

In an ideal world, this protein would come from whole foods (such as nuts, seeds, milk, eggs and legumes). But fortified protein products may have their space as a quick and easy snack – especially for those who may struggle to eat this much protein at each meal. It’s important to eat these foods in moderation, however.

Ultra-processed products

Supermarkets are full of “protein-enhanced” products. But while these products may contain additional protein, they may also contain additional sugars or carbohydrates.

For example, protein milk often contains double the protein of regular milk. It does this by removing water or adding dried milk.

Protein bars are another example. But depending on the brand you choose, alongside their additional protein content they may also be high in sugar.

Many protein-fortified products share another common trait: they fall into the category of ultra-processed foods. Ultra-processed foods are commercially made products that include ingredients you wouldn’t typically find in your own kitchen.

Research shows regularly consuming ultra-processed foods is consistently linked with poorer health outcomes – such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Current discussions around ultra-processed foods suggests uncertainty regarding whether it’s the processing itself, the poor nutritional quality of these foods or the combination of both of these factors that contribute to these negative health outcomes.

Another issue with protein-enhanced products is that while they do indeed contain extra protein, some products may lack fibre, vitamins and essential minerals. A lack of fibre in modern diets is currently one of the biggest contributors to population-wide ill-health.

All foods have their place within a balanced diet. But protein is only one component of overall nutritional health. The rise in protein-fortified foods as health foods is concerning.

Protein-enhanced products are occasional foods that might support meeting protein intake, but they should not be mistaken for universally healthy foods. For people looking to reach their protein goals, choose a variety of protein sources, consider the role of convenience foods within the context of whole diet and think about other nutrients like fibre to really maximise health.

Aisling Pigott receives funding from RCBC Wales (as part of Health Care Research Wales)

– ref. Protein is being added to yoghurt, bread and even coffee – but is it really good for our health? – https://theconversation.com/protein-is-being-added-to-yoghurt-bread-and-even-coffee-but-is-it-really-good-for-our-health-252236

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Colombia’s fragile peace process in danger as guerrilla violence rises

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dale Pankhurst, PhD Candidate and Tutor in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen’s University Belfast

Colombia has experienced an upsurge in political and criminal violence over the past few months. In late February, the National Liberation Army (ELN) leftist guerrilla insurgent group carried out four bombings in Cúcuta, a city on the border with Venezuela. Several people were left injured by the attacks, and 1,200 soldiers were subsequently deployed across the city.

Then, in early March, dissidents from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) Marxist-Leninist rebel group captured 29 members of the security forces in the Cauca region, including a police lieutenant colonel and an army major. The renegade faction expressed anger at government efforts to eradicate 8,000 hectares of coca in the area.

Colombia’s fragile peace process, in which the government has sought to bring the country’s multiple armed groups to the negotiating table, looks to be in danger. Some leftist insurgent groups remain active, while drug cartels and offshoots of Colombia’s former right-wing paramilitaries, such as the Clan del Golfo, continue to expand their influence.

Colombia suffered Latin America’s longest-running insurgency. In the 1960s, Farc emerged with the goal of overthrowing the Colombian state and establishing a communist government.

It wasn’t until the late 1990s, when the drug trade emerged as a funding source, that the Farc insurgency became a serious threat to Colombia’s government. Farc took over large parts of rural Colombia, forcing state control to retreat to the urban centres of regional towns and cities. By 2001, Farc was operating in the periphery of Colombia’s capital, Bogotá.

At the same time, the Colombian security forces also battled other left-wing insurgent forces. These included the 19th of April Movement (M-19), the Popular Liberation Army (EPL) and the ELN, which is now Colombia’s largest active guerrilla insurgent group.

In response to the revolutionary Marxist threat, anti-insurgent paramilitaries coalesced under the banner of the United Self-Defense Forces. These paramilitary groups both collaborated and conflicted with the state, before the vast majority disbanded through a government demobilisation programme between 2002 and 2006.

It is estimated that the decades-long armed conflict in Colombia resulted in the deaths of over a quarter of a million people, with many more injured and displaced from their homes. Tens of thousands are still missing.

The insurgency was officially brought to an end in 2016, when the Colombian government signed a peace agreement with Farc. The group was to be demobilised, victims of the conflict would receive justice, and the government promised significant investment in rural areas previously under Farc control.

It also guaranteed seats for former Farc rebels in the Colombian Senate and House of Representatives for two terms, starting in 2018. In its new incarnation as a political party, Farc would then have to secure seats through engaging in elections.

Despite the peace agreement and demobilisation programmes, there are a variety of armed groups across Colombia still intent on collapsing the peace process. The ELN, for example, has rejected every peace deal since its inception in 1964.

It continues to carry out attacks and seeks to control territory throughout Colombia, particularly in regions where the drug trade proliferates. In 2019, the ELN carried out a suicide car bombing at the General Santander National Police Academy in Bogotá, killing 21 people as police cadets readied for their graduation ceremony.

Several Farc fronts also rejected the 2016 peace agreement and formed their own dissident factions, including the so-called Central General Staff and the Segunda Marquetalia. Farc dissidents and the ELN have clashed over the years, but have both used neighbouring Venezuela as a launch pad to conduct attacks into Colombia.

Demobilised Farc combatants face assassinations and threats from dissident rebel factions who view former militants that are now pro-peace as traitors. These threats may encourage some demobilised groups to rearm in the future.

Alongside the growing insurgent threat, Colombia’s security forces are also dealing with neo-paramilitary factions which are, like the remaining dissident guerrillas, heavily involved in drug trafficking.

Groups such as the Clan del Golfo seek to generate wealth and power through criminality while also attacking rebel groups such as the ELN and Farc dissidents. These neo-paramilitary groups have an estimated membership of 6,000 volunteers spread throughout Colombia.

Establishing ‘total peace’

Following the 2022 election of Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, a new peace strategy was announced that was designed to disarm and demobilise the remaining leftist insurgents, neo-paramilitary factions and organised crime cartels. Petro, himself a former M-19 guerrilla and the country’s first leftist president, sought to use his plan for “total peace” to end Colombia’s remaining violent campaigns.

It was hoped that peace talks between Petro’s government and rebel factions may have produced better outcomes than previous attempts due to Petro’s left-wing politics and his history as a rebel combatant in the 1980s. However, attempts at establishing peace have repeatedly collapsed.

The decision by the US president, Donald Trump, to cut foreign aid to Colombia has also heightened fears that groups such as the ELN will benefit as a result. The funding that has been slashed primarily focused on helping communities living in poverty and isolation as well as supporting anti-gang and pro-peace programmes.

Government initiatives to secure peace continue to stall. But community organisations at a regional and local level have achieved success in transitioning demobilised combatants back into civilian life.

Groups such as the Medellín-based Peace Classrooms Foundation have used the experiences of former paramilitary members and rebels to warn of the dangers of violence. These groups may hold the key to addressing some of the social injustices that encourage dissent and violence in Colombia.

The continued violence in Colombia should remind anyone with an interest in wanting peace to succeed that the internal armed conflict is far from settled.

Dale Pankhurst 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. Colombia’s fragile peace process in danger as guerrilla violence rises – https://theconversation.com/colombias-fragile-peace-process-in-danger-as-guerrilla-violence-rises-252582

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Looking for a job? Understanding how you make career decisions can help
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Julia Yates, Professor of Organisational Psychology, City St George’s, University of London

Mix and Match Studio/Shutterstock

If you’re getting ready to leave school or university and are trying to figure out your future career, you may well have been given the advice to start with some self-exploration. This means thinking about what you are like as a person and what you want from a job.

After this, you can identify a short list of possible options, research them in depth, and make a rational choice to pursue the one that best meets your needs. Once you have made a decision, then you can start applying for jobs.

But in my personal and professional experience as a career coach and researcher, this traditional approach to career choice is rarely how it works in practice. This is a normative model, meaning it shows us how decisions ought to be made and assumes that we are all completely logical, rational decision-makers.

No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.

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In practice, we know that people rarely make decisions logically and rationally, particularly when it comes to complex and significant decisions such as choosing a career path.

And while normative models can, in theory, help us to make better decisions, we know that normative models are only useful in practice if they are somewhat aligned with people’s natural instincts.

Figuring it out

I interviewed 40 recent graduates who are currently working. I asked them to think back to a time when they had no clue what they wanted to do. They talked me through how they went from having no idea at all about their future path to their current employment.

The graduates had studied different subjects and were now working in a wide range of positions and industries, but their career decision-making stories followed a surprisingly similar trajectory. Rather than considering what range of jobs might suit them, they started with a single appealing career idea.

Considering one occupation at a time reduces the amount of brain power required: it’s much easier to decide yes or no to a single option than to compare the pros and cons of a handful.

This approach also helps to allay career anxiety, as it allows people to do some fairly in-depth research before they commit. It downplays the significance of the first job they take, so they feel that it doesn’t really matter if they get it wrong and don’t enjoy the job after working there a while.

If this analysis suggested that the job seemed suitable enough, they would next do some in-depth research, often by actually applying for jobs. If not, they would go back and find another occupation to consider.

The application process can provide more information about a career.
Zivica Kerkez/Shutterstock

Through the application process they would learn more about the culture and the people within the sector and they would get some external feedback on whether their skills were a good match for the job (in the form of job offer or a rejection, for example).

Summaya, one of the graduates I spoke to, is now a recruitment consultant. “I studied psychology at university … I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want to go into psychology as a career, but I quite liked the idea of understanding people,” she said.

She explained that she decided to look into careers in HR, “because it’s quite well paid and obviously it’s not really psychology, but there are sort of hints of psychology within it”. Summaya found that she could get a job in recruitment with no need for additional qualifications beyond her degree. She said:

The moment I decided was probably when I applied to my current company, and I had my first interview with them and they explained the job to me. Before that point, I had no idea really … I think, at that moment where I kind of understood, and I was like, oh, I think I’d actually really like doing this job.

Bound by experience

This process – considering one career option at a time and using the application process as a way to find out more – capitalises on a gut instinct to identify one occupation from thousands, but relies on rational logic to make a final choice. The process of introspection takes place within the much easier, bounded context of one particular occupation. This helps make the whole process of choosing a career less demanding.

This approach has a couple of key limitations. First, if you’re young, your available options are constrained by your experiences. While some students might have been introduced to a wide range of career ideas, others, because their life experiences have been more limited, have a much narrower pool of options to choose from.

And while the apply-and-decide approach makes some logical sense, in practice it can lead to graduates devolving the responsibility of their career choice to recruiters.

Understanding this process can help young people make better career choices. It might prompt you to get more experience in the workplace, to broaden your horizons and to develop a realistic idea of different roles. It might help you to take a bit more ownership of the decision. Applying for a job may be a good way to find out more, but leaving the choice in the hands of the recruiters is risky.

We can downplay the significance of a first job. This generation of young people are going to be working for a long time. There’s no harm in trying a few things out before you make a longer-term commitment.

Julia Yates 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. Looking for a job? Understanding how you make career decisions can help – https://theconversation.com/looking-for-a-job-understanding-how-you-make-career-decisions-can-help-247408
MIL OSI – Global Reports –
April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: How Beijing plans to bounce back against Trump’s tariffs

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Chee Meng Tan, Assistant Professor of Business Economics, University of Nottingham

China’s president Xi Jinping recently held a meeting with 40 leaders of multinational companies, including BMW and AstraZeneca.

In contrast to Donald Trump’s rhetoric, Xi told the top level executives that globalisation was not going away. Xi is attempting to boost foreign investment in China, which has dropped in the last few years, and build new relationships that will offset Trump’s tariffs on many Chinese goods.

In the March 28 meeting, Xi “vowed to improve market access” and assured corporate leaders that “lines of communication” between them and the Chinese government are open.

Xi is hoping to build on an anti-Trump bounce and inspire businesses to back Beijing as some signs emerged that China’s economy was doing a little better than expected in early 2025. Industrial production went up by 5.9% in January and February. Credit growth, which measures the amount of loans banks give out, also appears to be picking up, suggesting that businesses might be growing in China.

Retail sales, which are a major economic marker indicating consumer spending, has risen by up to 4% in January and February this year, compared to last year.

Beijing is also willing to create further stimulus packages to sustain China’s economic growth, which might lift consumer confidence further.

But this is hampered by a real estate crisis that began in 2021. What followed was an already high local government debt that was exacerbated by the property crisis, and high youth unemployment that existed since 2023.

The big question then is what are the factors that could lead to a more buoyant outlook in China’s economic fortunes?

Beijing’s policy resolve

According to a Bloomberg report, China has traditionally relied on cheap loans and subsidies to boost economic sectors in infrastructure, manufacturing, and the property market. However, those times are over.

The problem is China has produced more goods to sell than people are willing to buy. In the past, Beijing relied on the west to purchase its products, but with rising protectionism and looming tariffs stemming from a Donald Trump-led US, US consumption of Chinese goods is likely to fall.

And if another key market in the form of the EU were to take a cue from Trump’s economic playbook and impose more tariffs on China, then Chinese hope for sales in the west for economic growth may not materialise.

Beijing’s surest way of boosting sales is through domestic consumption. This isn’t easy as China’s domestic spending remains relatively low at 40% of the country’s GDP, which is about 20% lower than the global average. And if Beijing wants cautious consumers to spend amid a relatively weak economic outlook, it needs to do more to raise consumer confidence.

Although China did introduce a stimulus package in September 2024, it has resolved to do more. In an early March 2025 speech in the Chinese parliament, Chinese premier Li Qiang promised a “special action plan” to vigorously raise domestic consumption for 2025. Several weeks later Li reiterated in the China Development Forum that Beijing would roll out more stimulus packages when the need arose.

These assurances are likely to have helped improve market sentiment, and the fact that China’s GDP growth target was also set at an ambitious level of around 5%, might signal Beijing’s confidence and resolve that the economy will improve.

China’s AI revolution

In the past, China was considered a copycat nation known for manufacturing shanzai, or fake and pirated products. This difficulty in innovating and reliance on the designs of others largely lay with an education system steeped in rote learning, and a top-down culture with a conformist approach.

This is why experts thought China would struggle when the US decided to introduce restrictions on Chinese access semiconductor and AI technologies. However, despite these restrictions, China has managed to develop a highly capable AI model of its own in the form of DeepSeek, which was unveiled early this year, and immediately boosted China’s image as an innovator.

Unlike other AI models, DeepSeek was apparently made at a fraction of the cost of other traditional AI models such as ChatGPT, and may have a more efficient coding scheme that allows for quicker problem solving. This has prompted Donald Trump to coin DeepSeek’s development as a wake-up call for the US tech industry.

Many AI startups in China are now revamping their business models to compete with DeepSeek, following widespread adoption of the latter’s technology. As the AI revolution in China could potentially reduce costs and thereby boost efficiency in the financial sector.

Following Trump’s return to the Oval Office, investors across the globe have been trying to reduce their reliance on the US by looking for investment opportunities elsewhere. This isn’t entirely surprising given Trump’s knack for the unpredictable, and how new US tariffs have been applied to a host of US allies such as Mexico, Canada, and the European Union.

While Trump is striking an increasingly protectionist tone, China is taking the opposite approach. Trump’s penchant for tariffs and disregard for the economic interest of US allies may mean Beijing might not need to do too much to attract more nations and businesses to consider turning towards Chinese markets.

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

– ref. How Beijing plans to bounce back against Trump’s tariffs – https://theconversation.com/how-beijing-plans-to-bounce-back-against-trumps-tariffs-253086

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Inner London residents told me their food waste problems – composting definitely isn’t the answer

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sayed Elhoushy, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Queen Mary University of London

“It’s always frustrated me that we can’t compost here – even though I get why. Tower blocks just aren’t built for it,” said Alexandra, a 42-year-old Tower Hamlets resident, living on the ninth floor. She gestures toward the tall buildings in her neighbourhood. Her frustration is shared by many, where food waste collection from blocks of flats remains a challenge.

Tower Hamlets in east London is England’s most densely populated borough, with more than 15,000 people per square kilometre. More than 81% of its residents live in high-rise flats, and 30% of its rubbish is food waste.

For residents like Alexandra, the lack of options is disappointing. “When I first moved here, I looked into food waste disposal, but there weren’t many options for people in flats,” she says. Unfortunately, her experience reflects a wider problem.

According to the UK waste charity Wrap, nearly a quarter of the UK’s food production is wasted each year – that’s over 6.4 million tonnes of edible food worth £21 billion, enough to feed the country for nearly three months. Households contribute approximately 60% of this waste, which not only costs money but also fuels climate change.

London authorities have introduced reduction and recycling plans (RRPs) to tackle food waste and increase recycling. These efforts align with the mayor’s London-wide strategy to halve food waste by 2030. While these targets are ambitious, their implementation in high-rise boroughs such as Tower Hamlets remains a challenge.

The communal bins overflowing with rubbish and recycling waste in London Borough of Tower Hamlets, April 2024.
I Wei Huang/Shutterstock

For many residents, food waste is both an environmental issue and a logistical nightmare. “We tried compost bins in our building, but rats and foxes loved them more than we did,” laughed Aisha, a resident I interviewed at a community centre in March 2023.

Limited space makes traditional composting methods such as wormeries (small-scale systems where worms break down organic waste into compost) unfeasible. The people I interviewed explained that community-led schemes often struggle due to limited participation in the first place, contamination from improper waste disposal and pest control issues including attracting rats and foxes.

In my work as a sustainability marketing researcher, I’m investigating alternatives and researching how best to maintain sustainable consumer behaviour.

Co-creation – in this case, designing solutions with the residents trying to tackle food waste – is so important, but often overlooked. By talking directly to the people involved, a plan will end up being much more effective because people trust it more and engage with it more willingly.

In 2023, I led a six-month behaviour change research project with East London Garden Society, a community-driven initiative focused on promoting gardening and environmental sustainability in east London. I interviewed 15 Tower Hamlets residents, listened to numerous community meetings and analysed community discussions to uncover the real barriers to food waste reduction.

My findings were clear: residents don’t just want tips – they want a voice.

As 64-year-old Maryam put it: “I really appreciate that you’re taking a resident-first approach, gathering feedback and understanding experiences. That’s how you’ll find what truly works.”

By placing residents at the centre, we can ensure that solutions are built to last. But co-creation alone is not enough – residents need systematic changes, such as better infrastructure.

The role of technology

A 2024 study shows how technology is reshaping the food system from production to consumption. Apps such as Olio help consumers share surplus food and reduce waste.

Some composting machines or food waste processors are compact enough for household kitchens, requiring no garden. Residents can use the resulting compost to grow small plants on their balconies or add it to their green waste bin – this process is made easier by the reduction in volume.

Larger compost machines can turn organic food waste into nutrient-rich soil in just 24 hours, reducing its volume by up to 80% – while these can handle organic waste from multiple high-rise buildings, they need to be installed in a bigger shared community space.

In Tower Hamlets, where space is limited, compact technology offers a convenient solution. But, as we found in our research, it’s not without its challenges.

As Frank, a man who lives on a top-floor flat, explained: “This machine is much quicker than traditional composting, but what about the cost and the electricity it uses?” While smart technologies offer convenience, some Tower Hamlets residents raised concerns about energy consumption and costs – so there is a trade-off between ease and energy efficiency.

Read more:
Most food waste happens at home – new research reveals the best ways to reduce it

Surprisingly, composting technology, often seen as the eco-friendly solution, may be worsening the food waste crisis. As a marketing expert, I spoke directly with many consumers at Tower Hamlets.

One told me that composting makes them feel “less guilty” about throwing out food. When composting serves as a licence to waste, it can increase the amount of food that is discarded.

Making composting easy diverts waste from landfills, but that doesn’t address root causes including simply buying too much food in the first place. To reduce food waste, technology must promote behavioural change such as better meal planning and waste monitoring. Knowing how much food waste they produce, compared to their neighbours, can encourage people to change their behaviour.

So many cities face the same problems, with densely populated communities living in flats without gardens. Without co-creating practical solutions with residents, achieving waste reduction goals will be tough.

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

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

Sayed Elhoushy received funding from the East London Garden Society (£3000) for the Food Waste Pilot Project (#10239808) (Nov 1, 2022 – Feb 28, 2023) and from the SBM Small Grant Fund (£2,500) (Apr 3 – Jul 14, 2023).

– ref. Inner London residents told me their food waste problems – composting definitely isn’t the answer – https://theconversation.com/inner-london-residents-told-me-their-food-waste-problems-composting-definitely-isnt-the-answer-250160

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: How a new wave of fighter jets could transform aerial combat

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Bacci, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Thermofluids Laboratory, University of Oxford

The most advanced fighter jets in the world are known as “fifth generation”. They contain technologies developed in the first part of the 21st century. Examples of fifth generation fighter jets include America’s F-35 Lightning II and F-22 Raptor, China’s Chengdu J-20 and Russia’s Sukhoi SU-57.

Now, however, nations are moving ahead with the sixth generation of combat jets. In the past few months, China has flown its J36 and J50 prototype jets. Meanwhile, the US has selected Boeing to build a new fighter aircraft called the F-47.

As with previous generations, the sixth will incorporate major advances in aircraft design, onboard electronics (avionics) and weapon systems.

But how will the new generation of jets stand out from the previous one? Future combat jets will not see dramatic increases in maximum speed, nor in flight performance. Instead, the true innovations will be in how these systems operate and achieve dominance in aerial combat.

Like the fifth generation, the sixth will be dominated by stealth technology. This helps fighters jets to reduce their chances of being detected by infrared and radar sensors, to the point that when their signatures are eventually picked up, the opponent has no time to act.

Stealth is achieved through particular shapes of airframe (such as diamond shapes) and coatings on the aircraft – called radar absorbing materials. The airframe is the fundamental structural framework of an aircraft, encompassing the fuselage, wings, tail assembly and landing gear.

The diamond-like shapes that already characterise fifth generation jets are likely to remain in the upcoming generation of fighter, but they will evolve.

A common feature we’re likely to see is the reduction or complete removal of vertical tails at the back of the aircraft and their control surfaces. In current aircraft, these tails provide directional stability and control in flight, allowing the aircraft to maintain its course and manoeuvre.

However, sixth generation jets could achieve this control with the help of thrust vectoring – the ability to manipulate the direction of engines and therefore the direction of thrust (the force that moves the jet through the air).

The role of vertical tails could also be partially replaced by devices called fluidic actuators. These apply forces to the the wing by blowing high speed and high pressure air on different parts of it.

F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft. Vertical tails can be seen at the rear of this fifth generation jet.
US Air Force / Paul Holcomb

The removal of the vertical tails would contribute to the fighter’s stealth. The new generation of fighters is also likely to see the use of novel radar absorbing materials with advanced capabilities.

We’ll see the introduction of what are known as adaptive cycle engines on sixth generation fighters. These engines will feature what’s known as a three stream design, which refers to the airstreams blowing through the engine. Current jets have two airstreams: one that passes through the core of the engine, and another that bypasses the core.

The development of a third stream provides an extra source of air flow to increase the engine’s fuel efficiency and performance. This will allow both the capability to cruise efficiently at supersonic speed and deliver a high thrust during combat.

It is likely that China and the US will build two separate fighters with different airframes. One will have a bigger airframe, designed for use in an area like the Pacific Ocean region. Here, the ability to fly further and carry a heavier payload will be key, because of the distances involved. Airframes designed for this region will therefore be larger.

Another fighter jet carrying a smaller airframe will be designed for use in areas such as Europe where agility and manoeuvrability will be more important.

The next wave of jets will have a system in the cockpit that gathers lots of information from other aircraft, ground surveillance stations and satellites. It would then integrate this data to give an enhanced situational awareness to the pilot. This system would also able to actively jam enemy sensors.

Another key feature will be the deployment of unmanned combat aerial vehicles (Ucavs), a form of drone aircraft. The piloted fighter jet would be able to control a variety of Ucavs, ranging from loyal wingmen to cheaper, unpiloted fighter jets that will assist the mission, including protecting the piloted fighter.

This will all be the responsibility of something called the advanced digital cockpit, a software-driven system that will use virtual reality and allow the pilot to effectively become a battle manager. Artificial intelligence (AI) will be a key feature of the support systems for the drones. This will allow them to be controlled with complete autonomy. The pilot will assign the main task – such as, “attack that enemy jet in that sector” – and the system will carry out the mission without any further input.

Another advancement will be the weapon systems, with the adoption of missiles that not only will be capable of travelling at hypersonic speeds, but will also incorporate stealth features. This will further reduce the reaction times of enemy forces. Directed energy weapons systems, such as laser weapons, could potentially appear in later stages, as this technology is under study.

Under America’s sixth generation fighter programme, the US Navy is working on a separate jet called the F/A-XX, complementing the F-47.

The UK, Italy and Japan are also working on a jet project known as the global combat air programme (GCAP). This will replace the Eurofighter Typhoon in service with the UK and Italy and the Mitsubishi F-2 in service with Japan.

Germany, Spain and France are working on a fighter programme called the future combat air system (FCAS). This could supersede Germany and Spain’s Typhoons and France’s Rafale.

The path for sixth generation fighter jets seems to have already been traced, but uncertainties remain. The feasibility of some of the characteristics described and development times and costs are not yet well defined. This interval of time was more than ten years for fifth generation fighter jets – and the sixth is going to be far more complex in terms of requirements and capability.

A new generation of fighter jet is expected to remain on active duty for something like 30 years. But warfare across the world evolves rapidly. It is unclear whether the design requirements we are fixing today remain relevant over the coming years.

David Bacci is affiliated with Cranfeild Defence & Security (CRanfield University) – Visiting Research Fellow

– ref. How a new wave of fighter jets could transform aerial combat – https://theconversation.com/how-a-new-wave-of-fighter-jets-could-transform-aerial-combat-252949

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: The lore of ‘lore’ – how fandoms created an online phenomenon from an Old English word
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kate McNicholas Smith, Lecturer in Television Theory, University of Westminster

steved_np3/Shutterstock

The term “lore” has, well, a whole lot of lore. Now essential online slang, the word can be traced back to Old English, where it referred primarily to learning, as in the act of teaching or being taught.

Over time, lore came to be associated with more informal knowledge, passed on through word of mouth. The term “folklore,” the “lore of the people”, was coined by the British writer William J. Thoms in 1846. As a result, lore largely slipped out of common usage. By 2024, however, it had made the shortlist for the Oxford word of the year (the title was taken by “brainrot”).

So, how did “lore” come to hold such contemporary relevance? And what does it mean today? The answer can be found, at least in part, in fandom, where “lore” is used to refer to the body of knowledge that exists around a person, fictional universe or character.

Fandom has long facilitated deep dives into media in which fans analyse, discuss and track their favourite storylines and character arcs. This has been particularly true of the science fiction and fantasy genres, due to their complex and expansive narrative universes.

No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.

Read more from Quarter Life:
In 1969, science fiction fan and writer Bjo Trimble self-published the first edition of Star Trek Concordance. It was an unofficial reference book for the television series featuring timelines, plot summaries, character biographies and more – information that might now be described as Star Trek lore.

Since then, fans of Star Trek and countless other television shows have continued to create zines, write fan fiction, organise conventions and develop vast and ongoing archives of fan-works. Through such practices, fans develop what media expert Henry Jenkins has described as collective intelligence, as each fan contributes small parts of knowledge to a whole – or, to the lore.

Fandom has, of course, come a long way since the early days of Star Trek. Fan activities have now moved online, where their reach and visibility has significantly increased. Television has changed too, shifting towards the narrative complexity and innovation made possible, in part, by the active engagements of fandoms.

Where fandom was once a niche (and often derided) activity, in recent years fan culture has gone mainstream. From direct communication between fans and producers to the creative possibilities of transmedia storytelling (where productions circulate official content across platforms in ways that echo fan-ish expansions of narrative worlds) media is increasingly inviting audiences to participate in the investigating, cataloguing and circulating of lore.

Pop lore – from K-pop to Gaylor Swift

A powerful example of lore inspiring transmedia storytelling can be found in K-pop.
Well known South Korean bands engage with their fans not only through their music, but also with “concepts” (themes that span styling, music and other media) and ever-expanding storytelling universes.

Take, for example, mega-boyband BTS’s meta narrative of the Bangtan Universe. It’s a fictional alternate universe which spans music videos, webtoons (digital comics), short films, mobile games, books and more. This kind of cross-platform storytelling encourages BTS fans to piece together the “lore” of the respective universe.

Storytelling is also central to the popularity of singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, described by Teen Vogue as “the queen of easter eggs”. These hidden messages and inter-textual references can be found in the star’s lyrics, videos, fashion, interviews and even manicures, and produce an expansive archive of Swift lore.

A subsection of Swift lore is known as Gaylor – where fans collate “evidence” that they believe shows that Swift is queer. It is, in part, an example of the expansive possibilities of fandom for queer audiences. But it also speaks to the ethical tensions of fandom and parasocial relationships, as fan-created lore can develop into [invasive expectations](https://www.them.us/story/taylor-swift-end-of-gaylorism](https://www.them.us/story/taylor-swift-end-of-gaylorism) of celebrities.

Dropping lore on TikTok

As digital media has grown to become part of our daily lives, “lore” has grown too. Today it goes beyond fictional universes and celebrities to also include everyday people and their online stories.

YouTube first invited users to “broadcast yourself” in 2005, and opportunities to do so have only expanded since then, notably with the rise of TikTok.

Read more:
YouTube was born from a failed dating site – 20 years on, the world’s biggest video platform faces new challenges

On TikTok, some users tell stories about their lives and experiences, or their “lore”. In these short videos, lore is “dropped” (revealed) about notable events, defining experiences, relationships (such as ex-lore) and family stories (such as dad lore).

These playful retellings remake real life through narrative conventions of heroism, romance and comic misadventure, while other videos offer ironic commentary on lore-dropping itself.

There is at once authenticity, performance and play here. Stories are, in part, ephemeral, as lore comes and goes in the fast-paced flow of digital content. Circulating via hashtags, however, stories are connected, responded to and remade, facilitating digital intimacies.

The circulation of lore is, at once, user generated and algorithmically curated. In the context of what researchers have described as the datalogical turn (where big data and adaptive algorithms become increasingly central to shaping and understanding society) and the rise of affective capitalism (in which feelings, desires and experiences are capitalised on for economic gain), personal lore also becomes valuable data to be commodified.

Lore then, is an old word with a distinctly contemporary iteration. It’s representative of the ever-expanding convergences of digital media, identity and intimacy.

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

– ref. The lore of ‘lore’ – how fandoms created an online phenomenon from an Old English word – https://theconversation.com/the-lore-of-lore-how-fandoms-created-an-online-phenomenon-from-an-old-english-word-252577
MIL OSI – Global Reports –
April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Margot Robbie’s Wuthering Heights dress is inaccurate, but not because it’s white – an expert explains

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Danielle Mariann Dove, Surrey Future Fellow and Lecturer in English Literature, University of Surrey

The tiered ‘polonaise’ style dress would have been popular with women like Cathy Earnshaw during the period the book was set. Wikimedia, CC BY

The upcoming Wuthering Heights adaptation by Saltburn director Emerald Fennell has courted controversy since it was first announced, with Fennell’s choice of leading lady and man drawing internet critics.

Playing tragic heroine Catherine Earnshaw is the 34-year-old blonde Margot Robbie, and as tortured Heathcliff will be fellow Aussie, the 27-year-old Jacob Elordi. If you’re familiar with Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel then you know the ages, vibes and looks are just off.

Now online fans of the book are aghast in response to a series of leaked photographs of Margot Robbie wearing an elaborate white wedding gown.

Some were quick to point out the historical inaccuracy of the wedding gown, while others argued that “the tradition of a white wedding dress wouldn’t have come around until after the story took place”.

But is that really true? And what would Catherine Earnshaw have actually worn on her wedding day in the late-18th century?

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Most 18th-century brides would have probably worn their Sunday best on their wedding day. This was their finest day dress in the current fashion.

While it may have been an expensive dress, it wouldn’t necessarily have been a purpose-made wedding gown – unless the bride was very wealthy. Significantly, and unlike most wedding dresses today, the gown would also have been worn again on other social occasions.

Brontë tells us nothing about Cathy’s wedding clothes and very little about Cathy and Edgar Linton’s wedding day, which takes place in 1783. However, as the bride of a wealthy landowner she would likely have chosen to have a wedding gown specially made for the occasion in rich silk or satin.

The dress would have been a testament to her new family’s social standing. It would likely have featured a tightly fitted bodice with a low, round neckline characteristic of the period, a sash, and close-fitting, three-quarter length sleeves with a frill.

The wide skirts would have been open to reveal a longer petticoat underneath, or they might have been looped up with ribbons to form three layers in the popular “polonaise” style of the day.

By contrast, the wedding dress that Margot Robbie has been pictured wearing is much more reminiscent of the silhouette in vogue in 1840.

In fact, it appears to take direct inspiration from Queen Victoria’s wedding gown which she wore to marry Albert in February of that year – almost six decades after Cathy’s fictional wedding takes place. Like Queen Victoria’s wedding gown, Robbie’s features a similar off-the-shoulder neckline, short, puffed sleeves and a deep V-shaped bodice.

A white dress?

Queen Victoria is often credited with having started the trend for wearing a white wedding dress. But while she certainly helped to popularise the white gown in the 1840s, she was by no means the sole originator of the tradition. Women were married wearing white long before she chose to do so and they continued to marry wearing dresses of other colours long after.

In 1875, for example, the magazine Beeton’s Young Englishwoman advised one of its readers who wrote in asking for bridal fashion advice, that a grey wedding dress of “Japanese silk would be pretty”, and suggested a silk gown of “pale blue or pale mauve” which “would be useful afterwards”.

Contrary to popular belief that white wedding dresses were not in vogue until the Victorian period, white and silver were in fact the preferred colours for wedding gowns in the 18th century.

The preference for a white or silver wedding dress over a coloured gown can be seen in Oliver Goldsmith’s 1768 comedy play, The Good Natur’d Man, when Garnet, a lady’s maid, tells the soon-to-be married Olivia: “I wish you could take the white and silver [gown] to be married in. It’s the worst luck in the world, in anything but white.”

The historical inaccuracy of Robbie’s Wuthering Heights wedding dress stems not from its colour, then, but primarily from its problematic silhouette.

Of course, historical accuracy is not necessarily the end goal for film directors. Rather, Robbie’s anachronistic wedding gown appears to exemplify a broader trend in historical drama (think Bridgerton) towards a kind of strategic inaccuracy, in which producers and costume designers prioritise experimentation over strict fidelity to period detail.

For all we know, Fennell might have decided to set the adaptation around the time of the novel’s publication rather than its original late-18th and early-19th century setting. Even more intriguingly, she might be using the wedding dress to signal the adaptation’s more modern inflections.

Robbie’s wedding dress and cathedral-length veil wouldn’t look out of place at a contemporary wedding. Basque, or drop waist, wedding dresses dominated New York bridal fashion week in October 2024 and are poised to become a major trend in 2025 having been adopted by celebrities such as actor Millie Bobby Brown and podcaster Alex Cooper. Perhaps Fennell’s Cathy is just extremely fashion forward.

Danielle Mariann Dove 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. Margot Robbie’s Wuthering Heights dress is inaccurate, but not because it’s white – an expert explains – https://theconversation.com/margot-robbies-wuthering-heights-dress-is-inaccurate-but-not-because-its-white-an-expert-explains-253461

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Dundee University: 700 staff cuts will pile further crisis upon institution

Source: Scottish Greens

31 Mar 2025 Education

Dundee’s staff and students deserve much better.

More in Education

The announcement that Dundee University will be axing 700 jobs – over a fifth of its workforce – will pile further crisis on the institution while betraying staff and students, says Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman.

This follows reports that, in a letter to a Holyrood committee, interim principal Professor Shane O’Neill confirmed that around 700 roles will be affected.

This month Ms Chapman was elected as the new Rector of the University, supported by students who back her calls for greater transparency and accountability at the institution. She will take up this voluntary role from 1 August 2025.

Ms Chapman said:

“This is even worse than many of us expected. It is a shocking act of vandalism that will pile further crisis on the institution.

“The sense of betrayal will be felt by staff and students all across the campus and beyond. And of course, this number doesn’t reflect the over 200 vacancies that currently exist and won’t be filled.

“The university has been brought to the brink by years of mismanagement, incompetence and poor decisions from a senior management team that has failed to listen or to engage with those around them.

“The crisis has exposed a total lack of transparency and accountability. If these cuts are allowed to go ahead they will deal a crushing blow to the campus and to the university’s reputation.

“I stand with the workers, trade unions and students who make Dundee University the great institution it is. They deserve dignity, security, and real long term solutions, not even more pain and instability.”

MIL OSI United Kingdom –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: The results of the founding conference of the International Movement for Financial Security have been summed up

Translartion. Region: Russians Fedetion –

Source: State University Higher School of Economics – State University Higher School of Economics –

On March 27, a conference was held in a hybrid format at the Higher School of Economics to finalize the work on establishing the International Movement for Financial Security. During the meeting, the regulations and roadmap were adopted and the presidium was elected.

The conference was hosted by Vice-Rector of the National Research University Higher School of Economics Vyacheslav Bashev and Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Director of the International Network Institute in the Sphere of AML/CFT. They moderated the meeting from Moscow, and Nikita Anisimov, Rector of the Higher School of Economics, delivered a welcoming speech from the capital of the People’s Republic of China.

Yuri Chikhanchin, Director of Rosfinmonitoring and Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the movement, opened the conference from Kazakhstan, noting the importance of joint work to protect young people from modern threats, including involvement in illegal activities as dropouts, and also emphasizing the need to create a “forge of personnel” for national anti-money laundering systems.

Participants were connected from three countries: the Russian Federation, the Republic of Kazakhstan and the People’s Republic of China, which confirms the international status of the movement, as noted by Vyacheslav Bashev. Today, the organization already covers 36 participating countries.

Natalia Parshkova, the curator of the International Movement for Financial Security from the Government of the Russian Federation, presented candidates for the presidium for election. Deputy Director General of the International Training and Methodological Center for Financial Monitoring (ITMCFM) Irina Shilina presented a draft regulation, which the conference participants reviewed and unanimously adopted as the main regulatory document.

Ivan Uvarov, Director General of the MUMCFM, presented a draft roadmap, according to which it is planned to implement subsequent steps to develop the movement. Ambassadors from among students and postgraduates also spoke: Ekaterina Bazarova from Russia, Ngetobai Masangar Rongar from the Republic of Chad, and from Kazakhstan – Sagyn Ismetilla and Temirlan Tuleyev. The students actively support the organization, make their proposals and ideas for its further expansion and development.

Acting Director of the Center for Digital Educational Platforms of PJSC Promsvyazbank Maxim Lobanov presented information on the operation of the main technological resource — the digital platform “Sodruzhestvo”. The report presented the scale of the platform, its capabilities and content, as well as plans for its development.

In conclusion, Yuri Chikhanchin said a few words: “Let the Financial Security Movement not stop at the numbers achieved and grow with new countries and participants. Now we have the “Commonwealth” – a platform that allows us to be close to each other even from different corners of the world. The proposals that were voiced today only indicate that all participants are interested in actively promoting new ideas and development projects.”

Summing up, Vladimir Ovchinnikov offered everyone who wanted to register on the platform and join the organization.

Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

MIL OSI Russia News –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Ciscomani Ranked Most Effective Lawmaker from Arizona in the 118th Congress

Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Juan Ciscomani (Arizona)

“I was sent to Congress by my constituents to deliver common sense, lasting results for the people of Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, and that is exactly what I’m doing.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Congressman Juan Ciscomani was one of the most effective members of the House of Representatives during his first term in the 118th Congress, according to new report by the nonpartisan Center for Effective Lawmaking (CEL).

The two-term congressman from Tucson was the most effective member of Arizona’s Congressional delegation, the 15th most effective lawmaker in the House, and ranked third amongst Freshman Representatives “Exceeding Expectations”.

“It’s about getting the job done,” said Ciscomani, who serves on the House Appropriations and House Veterans’ Affairs committees. “I was sent to Congress by my constituents to deliver common sense, lasting results for the people of Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, and that is exactly what I’m doing. Being recognized as one of the most effective lawmakers in the House during my freshman term is an honor and a reflection of that mission.”

The Center for Effective Lawmaking is a joint partnership between the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy in the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University. In announcing the report on March 27, Vanderbilt noted that the most effective lawmakers “were able to find ways to get their initiatives passed into law despite deep political disruptions in 2023 and 2024, and despite widespread public perception of gridlock in the nation’s Capitol.”

Ciscomani credited a “don’t take no for an answer” approach as the key to his ability to advance policy proposals that work for the residents of southeastern Arizona.

Whether it’s pushing legislation to secure the border, support our veterans, safeguard Arizona’s water, or protecting our seniors, I don’t take no for an answer,” he continued. “I am proud of what my office and I were able to accomplish for our constituents in my first term, and I am keeping my foot on the pedal to do even more for our district in my second term.”

CEL ranks every member of Congress based on 15 metrics, including how far their bill made it in the legislative process and how substantive the bill is.

According to CEL, Ciscomani introduced 24 pieces of substantive legislation. Moreover, six of Ciscomani’s bills passed the House of Representative and two bills were signed into law. He was most effective on issues related to defense, the budget, energy, public safety, and border security.

Background:

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MIL OSI USA News –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Elisapie’s Juno-winning album: Promoting Inuktitut through music

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Richard Compton, Professor, Department of Linguistics, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

Singer Elisapie’s fourth album, Inuktitut, was nominated for adult alternative album of the year and album of the year at the 2025 Juno Awards, and won best adult alternative album at the Juno Awards Gala, March 29.

The album features covers of 10 pop and classic rock songs, including the Rolling Stones’s “Wild Horses” and Metallica’s “The Unforgiven,” re-imagined in Inuktitut. Inuktitut is the first language of 33,790 Inuit in Canada, according to the 2021 Census.

Elisapie’s nomination offers a good opportunity to reflect on the situation of Inuktitut and how creative work, including music, helps promote it.

Our work touches on the inter-generational transmission of Inuktitut. We share perspectives as a Qallunaaq (non-Inuk) linguist (Richard) and as an Inuk school teacher (Sarah) in Nunavik, with Sarah’s personal experiences in the community highlighted.

Together, we have co-taught courses for Inuit teachers in Puvirnituq and Ivujivik. We are also both affiliated with a research group focused on Indigenous education based at Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue.

Elisapie’s ‘Isumagijunnaitaungituq’ (The Unforgiven)

Music in Inuktitut

Sarah notes that:

I was amazed that [Elisapie] could make the long words in Inuktitut fit with the rhythm of the music; she did it so precisely. It took me back to the 1980s, when I was growing up. It would have been nice if songs like these had been interpreted back then. It’s been a long time coming, but it shows that nothing is impossible. The songs sound so natural in Inuktitut.

On the day we talked about this story, Sarah remembered:

I was at the Snow Festival yesterday [in Puvirnituq], and some of the teenagers knew all the words to her songs and were singing along. We didn’t have that when I was growing up.

She remembers first seeing Elisapie sing in the early 1990s at one of the first snow festivals in Puvirnituq.

Elisapie’s album has also sparked interest outside of Canada, with stories in such venues as Rolling Stone, Vogue and Le Monde.

Beyond how Elisapie beautifully interprets the songs, creative choices like using throat singing on the first track, “Isumagijunnaitaungituq (The Unforgiven),” and stunning music videos showcasing life in the North brings the language to a wider audience.

The album’s cover art features the word Inuktitut, ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ, in syllabics — a writing system originally use for Cree and adapted to Inuktitut, where the individual symbols represent consonants and the way they point represents vowels.

Elisapie’s ‘Taimangalimaaq’ (Time After Time)

Diversity of the Inuit language

The word Inuktitut itself means “like the Inuit,” and is the name for part of a wider language continuum spoken across the North American Arctic. This language continuum includes Iñupiaq in Alaska, Uummarmiutun, Sallirmiutun and Inuinnaqtun in the Western Canadian Arctic, Inuktitut in the Eastern Arctic, Inuttut in Labrador and Kalaallisut in Greenland.

This abundance of names reflects a diversity of varieties, each with their own pronunciations and differences in grammar and vocabulary stretching across Inuit Nunangat, the Inuit homeland.

Speakers in each community look to their Elders as models of how the language should be spoken. While this multiplicity of dialects poses challenges for translation and creating teaching materials, each variety marks local identity and links generations.

This diversity also fascinates linguists, as each variety attests to a different way of organizing the unconscious rules of grammar in the human mind.

For instance, Inuktitut has a rich system of tense markers on verbs, signalling events that just happened, happened earlier today, before today or long ago. Inuinnaqtun, to the west, lacks most of these tense markers, but instead allows more complex combinations of sounds.

A role model for youth

Sarah stresses the importance of Elisapie’s music for the language:

It’s so impressive that people like Elisapie are doing such amazing things with the language. She grew up around the same time as me and when I was in school there were so few teaching materials in Inuktitut, and we focused more on speaking than reading and writing. Even if her main goal might not have been to promote the language, she’s doing it, because kids listen to her. More teenagers are willing to sing in Inuktitut now because they have role models like her and Beatrice Deer.

Deer is an Inuk and Mohawk musician from Quaqtaq, Nunavik, who also sings in Inuktitut, as well as English and French.

Indigenous language education rights

In Canada, all levels of government have failed to provide adequate access to education in Indigenous languages, even in regions where Indigenous Peoples form the majority.

In Nunavik, where Elisapie is from, 90 per cent of the population (12,590 out of 14,050) identifies as Inuit and 87 per cent (12,245 out of 14,050) report Inuktitut as their first language. And yet Inuktitut is only the primary language of instruction up until Grade 3.

About promoting Inuktitut, Sarah says:

We’re lucky that in most of the villages in Nunavik, the language is still strong. But it’s still concerning that some people have started speaking in English to their kids. What we really need to promote it is to have school in Inuktitut from kindergarten to the end of high school [secondary 5 in Québec]. That’s why a group of Inuit teachers, including me, visited Greenland to learn more about their education system. They’ve had schools in their language for almost 200 years. We just started in the ‘50s.

While bilingualism may bring economic benefits, the lack of support for Indigenous languages often results in a situation where bilingualism robs children of the chance to fully develop in their first language.

Right to education in Indigenous language

In addition to violating Indigenous Peoples’ inherent right to get an education in their language (see the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples), current education policies also go against recommendations of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

UNESCO recommends that Indigenous minority languages be taught as the primary language in school for the first six to eight years, as this has been shown to contribute to children’s well-being and self-esteem.

Unfortunately, Canada’s official language laws continue to place the two colonial languages of English and French above Indigenous languages, particularly in education funding.

Read more:
Ancestral languages are essential to Indigenous identities in Canada

New challenges have also emerged for maintaining and extending the domains in which Inuktitut is used. Once cut off from high-speed internet, new satellite technology has brought access to more Inuit communities, along with new economic opportunities.

However, this connectivity also brings an avalanche of English content, from viral videos and streaming platforms to social networks and mobile games.

Vital for promoting Inuktitut

It is in this changing linguistic and media landscape where Inuktitut language and cultural production, like Elisapie’s album, are vital for promoting Inuktitut.

Children and teenagers need content that speaks to them — things they see as new, fun, cool and representing their generation. This includes music, comic books, novels, video games and even Hockey Night in Canada in Inuktitut.

So whether Elisapie’s music is being played in community radio stations, featured in an episode of CBC’s North of North or streamed as a music video on social media, it serves the added role of taking up a little more space for Inuktitut in people’s daily lives.

This is an updated version of a story originally published on March 28, 2025. It clarifies Elisapie was nominated for two awards and won best adult alternative.

Richard Compton receives funding in the form of research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Transmission and Knowledge of the Inuit Language.

Sarah Angiyou 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. Elisapie’s Juno-winning album: Promoting Inuktitut through music – https://theconversation.com/elisapies-juno-winning-album-promoting-inuktitut-through-music-251774

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

April 1, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Governments must ensure caregivers have support to keep doing their vital work

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Heather Aldersey, Professor and Canada Research Chair (Disability Inclusive Development), Queen’s University, Ontario

People with disabilities and their families often have an even greater need for support over time, especially if a disability is progressive or family members experience their own health challenges. (Shutterstock)

April 1 marks National Caregivers Day in Canada. The day is meant to recognize the carers who provide vital care and support to those in need.

We all need care and support to navigate challenges in life. Help can come from formal support (paid professionals and government programs), and from natural support networks (family, friends and neighbours).

People with disabilities and their families often have an even greater need for support over time, especially if a disability is progressive or family members experience their own health challenges due to aging.

The Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence (CCCE) released its National Caregiving Strategy on Feb. 18, stating that caregiving is the next frontier in Canadian public policy. As the CCCE’s executive director, Liv Mendelsohn, said: “Millions of Canadians are navigating caregiving with minimal support, and it’s simply unacceptable.”

This article’s co-author, Donna Thomson, is a caregiver, author and educator. She is the mother of two grown children, one who has severe cerebral palsy and medical complexity. Thomson also helped care for her mother who lived with dementia until she passed away in the summer of 2018 at the age of 96.

Family caregivers often need support themselves in order to keep working both inside and outside of the home. Parents of adult children with developmental disabilities in Canada are hardly ever asked: “What do you do for your son or daughter that paid helpers cannot?” Even less often, that question might be followed by: “Wow, that’s a lot. Would you like some support to continue doing those things?”

With a federal election on the horizon, Canadians can call on their governments to improve support for caregivers.
(Shutterstock)

Importance of natural caregivers

Our research recognizes that both formal and informal supports are essential in enabling people with disabilities and their families to live their best lives. We want to understand how individuals, families, organizations and communities can best come together to get people with disabilities and their families the types of supports they need and want, when they need and want them.

Over the course of our research, we conducted a document and literature review, alongside interviews and focus groups with people with disabilities, family members and formal disability support providers. We identified that family or friend caregivers often support a person they care for with a sense of love and commitment to a depth that is rare in formal support relationships.

Unbound by professional obligations, safety standards or employer/funder priorities, these natural supporters can often be vocal advocates for the best interests of those they are supporting.

However, sometimes finding and sustaining natural support in the community doesn’t come easily for people with disabilities and their families. In those instances, organizations and facilitators (formal supports), can help broker the creation and maintenance of natural support networks.

Community organizations offering formal supports and supporting the creation and maintenance of natural supports can sometimes be beholden to funder obligations. This can limit the flexibility and adaptability required to best meet the needs of those they support.

Additionally, organizations are often constrained by safety considerations, aversion to risk or the challenges posed by overly bureaucratic systems. Sometimes, this can mean the support provided to a person or family does not directly respond to what the individual or family needs. Even more frustrating is that waiting times can be so long to access formal supports that identified needs or priorities change in the meantime.

Sometimes, finding and sustaining natural support in the community doesn’t come easily for people with disabilities and their families.
(Shutterstock)

CCCE’s caregiving strategy

The CCCE strategy is a recognition that care work makes all other work possible. It echoes our research findings that both paid and unpaid caregivers need financial support as well as targeted programs and services.

The strategy calls upon the Canadian government to make caregiving a priority while ensuring a sustainable care provider workforce.

Supports are also a provincial issue. For example, in Ontario, the Ministry for Children, Community and Social Services has published a framework that offers a long-term vision for transforming developmental services so people with developmental disabilities fully participate in their communities and are supported to live their lives.

Care and support can also be a gender issue, given that in Canada and around the world the majority of both formal and informal support is being provided by women and girls.

Missing perspectives

Our research also highlighted a notable gap in the research landscape. Research on natural support in Canada is often not explicit about or does not incorporate understandings of natural support from the perspectives of Indigenous, Black, rural, LGBTQ+ and other marginalized groups.

People belonging to these groups may have their own needs and experiences that relate to navigating natural and formal support systems in Canada. Future-focused research agendas into natural supports, such as those proposed in the CCCE strategy’s recommendations, must intentionally seek to understand support and care experiences from these perspectives.

At the Global Disability Summit taking place this week in Berlin from April 2-3, we will join voices from around the world to call on national leaders and decision-makers to ensure disability policies translate into tangible actions and inclusive practices.

Our research shows the deep, important impact of federal and provincial policy and funding both for formal and natural supports to flourish. With a federal election on the horizon, Canadians can call on their governments to improve support for caregivers, ensure support systems are in place and flexible enough to respond to individual and family needs, and enable natural support networks to flourish.

This is important, because the care we give to each other, regardless of age or ability, is what will sustain us as families.

This article was co-authored by Donna Thomson, a caregiver, author and educator.

Heather Aldersey receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Universities Canada, and the Mastercard Foundation.

– ref. Governments must ensure caregivers have support to keep doing their vital work – https://theconversation.com/governments-must-ensure-caregivers-have-support-to-keep-doing-their-vital-work-249829

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

April 1, 2025