New research indicates that a natural compound found in the skin of grapes, blueberries and raspberries has the potential to improve female fertility.
The systematic review into resveratrol, which is a polyphenolic compound known for its antiaging, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, is published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
Researchers from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), alongside colleagues from Italy, South Korea and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust, examined all previously published research on resveratrol and female reproductive health.
By collating and reviewing results from 24 in vitro and in vivo studies, involving a total of 9,563 human participants, they found evidence to suggest resveratrol can improve the quantity and quality of egg cells, called oocytes.
Four studies specifically investigated resveratrol in connection with the quantity of matured oocytes. Two of these reported an increase, while two found no significant differences. Additionally, two studies assessed the quality of matured oocytes and both reported an improvement amongst women who took resveratrol.
A possible explanation is that resveratrol reduces oxidative stress, helping to protect mitochondrial DNA from damage and enhance telomerase activity, to reduce cellular aging. Resveratrol also activates the molecule sirtuin 1 (SIRT1), which is typically reduced in aged oocytes, therefore potentially slowing cell aging and extending ovarian lifespan.
The review also found evidence that resveratrol could potentially treat infertility associated with endometriosis, and have positive effects on polycystic ovary syndrome and obesity-related infertility, by inhibiting pathways involved in androgen production and reducing inflammation and oxidative stress.
Crucially, the review found mixed results regarding miscarriage and pregnancy data. Five studies reported on pregnancy rates, with two indicating an increase, two found no difference, and one reporting a decrease amongst those taking resveratrol. The same study that noted a decrease in pregnancy rates also reported an increase in miscarriage rates, while a second study found no difference.
Resveratrol is generally considered safe when consumed in moderate amounts through diet and through supplements, in doses up to five grams a day for a month, although the safety of high-dose supplementation, particularly over long periods, remains unclear.
“Our systematic review on resveratrol and female fertility is a comprehensive overview of all current research, and it highlights the compound’s potential to improve reproductive outcomes and possibly pave the way for new, less invasive treatments, using natural substances.
“However, our findings are based on a number of limitations, including the limited number of human studies, the different parameters of each study and the lack of robust data on dosage and side effects, particularly related to birth defects or foetal abnormalities.
“Therefore, there is a need for further clinical trials, involving human participants, in order to translate these promising results into practical recommendations for women looking to improve their fertility, including guidance on the safe and effective dosage of resveratrol.”
Lee Smith, Professor of Public Health at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and senior author of the paper
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Solaja Mayowa Oludele, Lecturing, Olabisi Onabanjo University
Plastic waste in Nigeria presents a dual challenge: cleaning up environmental pollution, and tapping into its economic potential.
Many countries worldwide face similar challenges. India, for one, has chosen policies that give producers of plastic the responsibility to manage their waste. Rwanda has banned single-use plastic and promoted recycling initiatives led by communities.
These approaches show it’s possible to address plastic waste issues while fostering economic opportunities.
In Nigeria, informal collectors of plastic bottle waste are central to achieving both of these goals. They turn waste into monetary value.
Previous research has highlighted the environmental and economic benefits of collecting plastic bottle waste. There’s been less attention on what shapes perceptions of waste collection as a business, particularly in Nigeria.
This article explores that gap, looking at the socio-cultural, economic and environmental influences on those perceptions.
I am a researcher in the areas of plastic waste management, environmental governance and sustainable development. My work includes studying homes made from recycled plastic bottles in sustainable community-based housing projects.
Here I’ll be drawing from an exploratory survey conducted in the Ijebu area of Ogun State, Nigeria. Using a questionnaire, we surveyed 86 participants who had at least five years of experience in the plastic waste industry.
The study identified factors like education, family size, religion, gender, age, and economic dynamics as relevant to participation in the business of plastic bottle waste collection.
Understanding these influences might help the government to target policies.
Our study found that participants with higher education levels better understood the economic benefits of plastic waste collection as a systematic form of business. The less educated participants viewed waste collection more as a hand-to-mouth way of earning a living.
Education programmes built into waste management campaigns could improve recognition of waste collection as a structured and profitable business opportunity and develop a business-like culture among the collectors.
Parenthood, family size and financial obligations
Family size was a factor affecting perceptions of plastic bottle waste collection as a business. People with large families saw waste collection as a feasible way to provide food, housing, education and other essentials.
However, the association of waste collection with income instability highlights the need to formalise and stabilise the sector. Waste collection must be made into a sustainable and reliable business model.
Religion and cultural norms
Religion and cultural beliefs emerged as influences from our survey. This was evident in the responses of people who followed African traditional religions and Islam.
These respondents viewed waste collection as financially feasible, aligning with religious teachings that emphasise resource management and stewardship. For example, Islamic teachings on israf (avoiding wastefulness) and zakat (charity) promote efficient resource use and economic activities that benefit communities.
Similarly, African traditional religion often emphasises communal responsibility and the sustainable use of resources. These religious principles underscore the cultural acceptance of waste collection as both a practical and a morally guided economic activity.
Other cultural norms, such as the value placed on communal responsibility and cooperation, also influenced attitudes towards waste collection. In communities with a strong tradition of collective action, where unity and mutual support are highly valued, waste collection is often viewed as a collaborative effort.
These cultural norms reinforce the idea that waste collection is not just an individual task, but a collective duty that benefits the entire community.
Gender plays a role in perception and practice in waste collection. Our survey found that male participants were more likely than female participants to perceive this activity as a business.
As constrained as they are by lack of access to resources, women are involved in separating and marketing reusable items. Measures like microfinance could increase women’s engagement and business opportunities.
This would empower women and make waste collection a more inclusive and sustainable business.
Age and desire to be an entrepreneur
Perceptions were influenced by age in our study. Younger individuals, up to 14 years old, viewed plastic bottle waste collection as a gateway to employment. Adults aged 33-38 used their experience to get better returns on the business.
This age-based distinction suggests that different stages of life bring unique motivations and approaches to waste collection.
Policy actions that support entrepreneurship at various life stages can promote long-term engagement in the industry. This will help formalise waste collection as a sustainable and profitable business.
Economic and social factors
Income opportunities affected participants’ experiences more than social factors. Oftentimes, this determined how long they stayed in the business. Those earning more were likelier to reinvest and grow, while lower earnings often led to disengagement or exit. This highlights the importance of financial incentives in shaping waste collection practices.
Social connections also play a role in fostering collaboration. It facilitates teamwork and the exchange of ideas, and creates a sense of shared purpose and collective outcomes among participants.
Strengthening these economic and social bonds can formalise plastic bottle waste collection, making it a more efficient and profitable business.
The study has significant application to Nigeria’s waste management industry. Adding education programmes into waste management programmes will improve people’s business skills.
Well-coordinated intervention strategies can remove cultural and gender-specific barriers. For instance, cooperatives and microfinance may make waste collection more financially appealing.
Strategies can also draw on cultural norms to increase community acceptance of waste collection and make it more inclusive.
Samuel Oludare Awobona, a doctoral student at Osun State University, Osogbo, Nigeria, contributed to this research.
– Nigeria’s plastic bottle collectors turn waste into wealth: survey sheds light on their motivation – https://theconversation.com/nigerias-plastic-bottle-collectors-turn-waste-into-wealth-survey-sheds-light-on-their-motivation-247819
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Zsa-Zsa Temmers Boggenpoel, Academic, Stellenbosch University
South Africa has a new law to govern the expropriation (or compulsory acquisition) of private property by government for public purposes or in the public interest.
The act repeals the apartheid-era Expropriation Act 63 of 1975, and aims to align expropriation law with the constitution. It sets out the procedures, rules and regulations for expropriation. Besides setting out in quite a detailed fashion how expropriations are to take place, the act also provides an outline regarding how compensation is to be determined.
In South Africa’s colonial and apartheid past, land distribution was grossly unequal on the basis of race. The country is still suffering the effects of this. So expropriation of property is a potential tool to reduce land inequality. This has become a matter of increasing urgency. South Africans have expressed impatience with the slow pace of land reform.
Property rights and land reform
There is much debate in the country about the provisions of the new act. The debate is mostly about the extent to which it affects existing private property rights. Some argue the act is unconstitutional. Others welcome it as a necessary step in the right direction.
I’m a professor of law with a keen interest in this area of the law, and recently edited a book on land expropriation in South Africa by leading experts. My view is that an expropriation act that is aligned with the constitution should be welcomed, to enable land reform to work effectively.
Land reform also needs a capable and proactive state that implements the legal framework in such a manner that prioritises expropriation as a mechanism to ensure land reform.
So far, expropriation has not been used effectively to redistribute land more equitably, as part of land reform.
I am not convinced that the act, in its current form, is the silver bullet to effect large-scale land reform – at least not the type of radical land reform that South Africa urgently needs.
Understandably, the act will have a severe impact on property rights. But it still substantially protects landowners affected by expropriation. Only in very limited cases would they not be compensated.
Protections for land owners
The act says that property must not be expropriated arbitrarily or for a purpose other than a public purpose or in the public interest.
Public purpose means by or for the benefit of the public. For example, expropriating property to build roads, schools and hospitals. Public interest is broader and includes the nation’s commitment to land reform.
“Arbitrary” would usually mean without reason or justification.
The act further requires that an expropriating authority – an organ of state or person empowered by the act or any other legislation – must first try to reach an agreement with the owner to acquire the property on reasonable terms before considering expropriation.
This gives some power to a landowner, even though expropriation does not normally require consent. The act also says a specific expropriation must always be authorised by a law.
No compensation?
Section 12 of the act deals with compensation for expropriation. It is arguably the most controversial part of the new legislation. Section 12(1) does not appear to be problematic and is largely the same wording as section 25(3) of the constitution. This part of the property clause sets out what must be taken into account when compensation for expropriation is determined.
Section 12(3) of the act refers to “nil compensation” – when nil rand (monetary) compensation may be paid. There is no explicit reference to nil compensation in the current wording of section 25 of the constitution. It’s a new thing in the Expropriation Act.
However, courts have toyed with the idea that section 25 of the constitution already provides room for a reduction in compensation.
The circumstances in which nil compensation could be granted in terms of the new act are in fact very limited. Section 12(3) leaves the discretion to the expropriating authority to determine when it may be just and equitable to pay nil compensation. However, the act lacks guidelines on how such a discretion must be exercised.
The scope of section 12(3) is also limited in some respects. For one, it is restricted to land. Only where land is expropriated would nil compensation be an option. Therefore, not all forms of property can be expropriated without compensation. The notion of property under section 25(1) of the constitution is generally wide and includes various rights and interests, which are broader than just land. For instance, personal rights, mineral rights and licences are included under the section 25(1) notion of property.
This wide understanding of property is not applicable to section 12(3), which refers to “land” being expropriated.
Section 12(3) is also limited to the expropriation of land “in the public interest”. Nil compensation is therefore envisaged only in the context of expropriation of land undertaken in the public interest, and not also for a public purpose.
Three of the four categories listed in section 12(3), where nil compensation is envisaged, are linked to the way in which the property was being used prior to the expropriation. Land used in a productive manner is therefore not evidently envisaged under section 12(3).
Nil compensation is not necessarily limited to the instances listed. Still, the amount of compensation must – in all instances – be just and equitable.
Novel approach
The act forces South Africans to engage with the idea of nil compensation in a much more direct manner.
The presence of a clause dedicated to nil compensation provides new clarity on when this could apply.
It is hard to determine whether this act will pass constitutional muster without seeing how expropriation under it will work in practice. It remains to be seen whether it will have the far-reaching consequences that many fear, or call for.
– Land seizure and South Africa’s new expropriation law: scholar weighs up the act – https://theconversation.com/land-seizure-and-south-africas-new-expropriation-law-scholar-weighs-up-the-act-244697
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Leonie Fleischmann, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, City St George’s, University of London
Days after taking office, as he issued executive order after executive order to change the political face of America, Donald Trump also turned his attention to the war in Gaza.
His proposal that Gaza should be cleared out and Palestinians should be relocated to other countries such as Egypt and Jordan has been met with outraged disbelief in many quarters. The Arab League has accused him of advocating ethnic cleansing.
But Trump’s statement has met with approval from far-right leaders in Israel. Influential politicians have been advocating for this “solution” for years. These include finance minister and leader of the Religious Zionist party, Bezalel Smotrich and his ideological ally Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Strength) party and former national security minister.
Smotrich responded to Trump’s utterance with the declaration that he aimed to turn the idea into an actionable policy. Ben Gvir, who resigned his ministerial position recently in response to the Israeli acceptance of the latest ceasefire deal, claimed that the evacuation of Gazans was the most “humanitarian answer” to the crisis and the only way to ensure peace and security for both Israelis and Palestinians.
The pair – and their followers in Israel – share an anti-Arab ideology and a messianic belief in the Jewish people’s right to what they call “Greater Israel”. This would be a Jewish state which would also include the West Bank, which they referred to as “Judea and Samaria”, as well as Gaza and part of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
They have repeatedly called for Israel to use the war as an opportunity to reoccupy Gaza.
These leaders enjoy a degree of influence due to the amount of media attention they receive. But it would be a mistake to assume they represent the majority of Israelis.
Data collected in 2024 by the Pew Research Center found that 45% and 41% of Israelis expressed very unfavourable views of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, respectively. In the 2022 elections, as the combined Religious Zionist party, they won just 10.84% of the vote.
Meanwhile, the Israel Democracy Institute found that a majority of Israelis (57.5%) support a comprehensive deal for the release of all the hostages in return for an end to the war in Gaza.
And yet Israel’s ultranationalists have been able to take advantage of the changing political landscape in Israel over the past few decades and the fragile multiparty system to wield disproportionate power over a government that has depended on their support to stay afloat.
Israel’s rightwards shift
During the 1990s, there was significant support in Israeli society for the Oslo peace process towards a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This culminated in the historic handshake between the then Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and the Palestine Liberation Organisation chairman, Yasser Arafat, on the White House lawn in 1993.
While support for the peace process reached a high of 72% in Israel in 1995 when Oslo II was signed, right-wing factions attempted to derail the agreements. Rabin was assassinated in November 1995 by Yigal Amir, an extremist Israeli Jew, who did not want to see the realisation of a Palestinian state.
The collapse of the Camp David talks in 2000, which then prime minister Ehud Barak blamed on Arafat, was followed in short order by the outbreak of the second intifada. The idea that there was “no partner for peace on the Palestinian side” became a mantra for Israeli voters, who looked to those who could guarantee their security.
Benjamin Netanyahu, who had been prime minister from 1996 to 1999, returned to power in 2009, with the image of “Mr Security”.
Netanyahu is now Israel’s longest serving prime minister. His masterful manipulation of the fragile political system in Israel has accounted for his longevity in power.
But it has also enabled a gradual shift towards the most right-wing coalition in Israel’s history. Part of that has been the Religious Zionist camp.
Biblical promise
The Religious Zionists originally formed a small minority of the broader Zionist movement in the years preceding the declaration of the State of Israel. Religious Zionists combine faith and nationalism. Their core belief is that the Jewish people have the God-given right to settle the whole of Greater Israel.
The West Bank in particular, but also the Gaza Strip, were the sites of many key events in biblical times and the home of a number of Israelite kingdoms. In the Bible, God promises this land to the descendants of Abraham – the Jewish people. Religious Zionists have chosen to take this literally.
Having failed to wield power through the parliament in the early days of statehood, the Religious Zionists sought to realise their ideology through extra-parliamentary activity. This meant establishing settlements with a view to change facts on the ground. In the aftermath of the 1967 war, the main focus of settlement building was national security, rather than religious nationalist ideology.
But ideology has always been a key factor for those who live in the settlements in the West Bank today – and those who vow to return to Gaza. The movement has been successful by establishing outposts and settlements in the West Bank and in getting “their people” into government.
The Religious Zionist camp is broad and heterogeneous, and according to recent polls now represents 22% of the Jewish population in Israel. The party’s position in holding the balance of power in the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, since the election in 2022, has enabled them to gradually wield greater influence on Israeli policy both in the West Bank and the war in Gaza.
Meanwhile many of their supporters have formed settler groups, who use violence to destabilise and displace Palestinian families living in the West Bank.
And now the US president has not only backed one of their dearest dreams, to clear Palestinians from Gaza, he has removed the Biden-era sanctions on several of the most aggressive settler groups. So the recent news that Netanyahu will be the first foreign leader to visit the White House next week feels particularly ominous for the fate of the Palestinian people.
Leonie Fleischmann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By James Conroy, Professor of Religious and Philosophical Education and Vice Principal, Internationalisation, University of Glasgow
The recent decision by the Australian government to introduce a ban on social media for under-16s has been received with both praise and condemnation.
Those who approve of the proposal tend to consider that children are being exploited by egregious levels of exposure to this technology. Opponents of the ban argue that it is not proportionate to the potential harms of denying young people appropriate access to what have become integral features of everyday existence.
This somewhat adversarial situation falls prey to the twin perils of fatalism and
disasterism. It characterises the wider conversation about how we engage with the digital world. Here, fatalism signifies a weary resignation and disasterism suggests that we are all going to hell in a handcart. More specifically, these impulses impinge directly on school policy making and practice.
In our Economic and Social Research Council funded research project, Teaching for Digital Citizenship, my colleagues and I have sought to uncover more nuanced accounts of how young people engage with technology by collaborating with them.
The students in our study pointed us away from an adversarial framing of the issue and towards the need to foster more traditional forms of democratic thought. These practices draw on a robust tradition of what’s known as education for citizenship. That is, teaching students how to be active, thoughtful and informed citizens in a democratic society.
Such a robust notion of education for citizenship has been championed by a range of thinkers. Most notably, the British political theorist Bernard Crick in the 1990s and the educational thinker Lawrence Stenhouse in the 1970s. They both offered ideas about educational practices that rely not on the technology, nor on corporations, but on older “analogue” traditions of critical thought and engagement in subjects.
The students in our project expressed anxiety and sometimes guilt that they had spent too much time on their apps. By their own estimation, they were using apps for about eight hours a day. They told us that they were working on self discipline, but struggled to maintain these habits.
Proactively, the students’ response to their own growing awareness of the grip that their apps had over their time was to try to engage in more analogue study activities, such as reading books. But they were concerned to discover that their capacity for reading was limited. Some observed that they found it challenging to read more than five pages.
This is not to suggest that there are only downsides to being immersed in digital life. Many students suggested that there were also huge benefits. For example, they reported that gaming helped them acquire new skills and perspective.
These examples illustrate the ambiguities of social media apps and their effect on those of school age.
Ambiguous effects
In many countries, schools are required to provide remedies for a whole range of social ills – and often in a manner that is of questionable relevance to the purpose of education.
In his Ruskin Speech in 1976, former British prime minister James Callaghan asked whether education should be more aligned with the needs of industry, especially in providing the skills for employment. Since then, education in the UK, as elsewhere, has slowly moved away from how we should live, and towards how we are to make our living.
Today, educators accept that young people, along with the rest of us, will spend their lives entangled in a complex digital world. The task of education should therefore primarily be to act as a productive space in which students can critically reflect upon, and form judgments about that world.
Our research project engaged representatives from a variety of different sectors, including big tech companies, policymakers, teachers and ethicists. We also carried out an extensive survey, which highlighted that online safety and harm prevention should be prioritised within schools.
Our insights underscore the importance of recognising and reinforcing education as a way of reflecting on the way we live – and an opportunity for providing critical distance from the dilemmas of our everyday lives. The ban on social media in Australia, or indeed on any technology, therefore misses a key consideration about the purpose of education.
As has been seen under governments that have restricted the internet, banning technology rather than securing students’ safety may only serve to heighten the allure of that technology. Indeed, in our discussions with the students, they frequently reported their ability to deploy virtual private networks to circumvent their schools’ firewalls.
In November, Australian communications minister, Michelle Rowland, claimed that “there is wide acknowledgment that something must be done in the immediate term to help prevent young teens and children from being exposed to streams of content, unfiltered and infinite”.
I believe that this misunderstands both the problem and the solution. The actual problem is not that the content is “unfiltered and infinite”. It’s that it is highly curated to serve the profit-making objectives of tech corporations, and not the interests of children.
The solution, then, is not to banish the problem but to address it. Education in the digital age needs to be re-imagined as a vibrant way to reflect and critique the ways we live our lives.
James Conroy 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.
The law, passed in 2019 “to affirm the laicity of the State,” restricts certain public sector employees in Québec from wearing religious symbols “while exercising their functions.”
Those challenging Bill 21 have used a variety of legal tools to oppose a law they argue imposes discriminatory treatment, mainly on Muslim women.
Muslim women who wear hijabs, and other visibly religious minorities, have been living with the ongoing effects of the law for more than five years. This includes the inability to be employed as a public-school teacher, government lawyer or judge, despite their expertise and training. For those who were already working in the public service while wearing a religious symbol, the law prohibits them from receiving any promotions or transfers.
When a discriminatory law is enacted, it has implications beyond the legislated text. In Québec, it has promoted the rejection of those who live visibly religious lives through violence on the streets and an insistence that they do not belong to Canadian society.
The exclusionary power of this law has created a culture of discrimination such that Muslim women are prohibited from wearing the clothing of their choice in employment sectors even beyond the parameters of Bill 21.
Bill 21 was enacted with broad popular support in Québec. However, Canadian history is replete with examples of discriminatory laws, from the Indian Act to the Chinese Exclusion Act to the legal orders authorizing Japanese internment camps. Without strict guardrails around how Section 33 can be used, Canadian governments could gain great leeway to create legislation that infringes upon Charter rights.
Typically, a discriminatory law like Bill 21 would never withstand a constitutional challenge since the Canadian and Québec Charters protect religious freedom and the right to equality. However, because the Québec government invoked both override provisions pre-emptively — before a court could decide on the law’s constitutionality — challenging the law has become more difficult.
The Charter’s Section 33 is called the “notwithstanding clause” because it permits federal Parliament or provincial/territorial legislatures to make laws notwithstanding (in other words, despite) certain rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Charter. Essentially, it gives governments the power to override certain constitutional provisions. A Section 33 declaration is valid for five years, after which it ceases to have effect, unless it is renewed, as it was in the case of Bill 21.
Despite the predominant view among legal experts that Bill 21 is discriminatory, and a finding by the Québec Superior Court that it has a cruel and dehumanizing impact on Muslim women, the law continues to stand because courts have interpreted Section 33 to have no substantive limits.
Unwritten constitutional principles
With this case, the Supreme Court of Canada has a critical opportunity to set reasonable parameters around the use of Section 33 that will have important implications for human rights cases in the future.
The notwithstanding clause permits governments to override some of our most cherished Charter rights: religious freedom, equality, rights to life, liberty and security of the person, the right against unreasonable search and seizure, the right against arbitrary arrest and detention, and the right to legal counsel among other rights. Therefore, there must be constitutional constraints on its use.
Section 33 should not be viewed as a bottomless pit where rights and freedoms go to die.
The Canadian Constitution contains an irreducible minimum core of human rights embodied in unwritten constitutional principles that have been recognized multiple times by the Supreme Court of Canada.
The Supreme Court has defined unwritten constitutional principles as norms that “inform and sustain the constitutional text.” The unwritten constitutional principle most relevant to addressing Bill 21 is “respect for or protection of minorities.” The protection of minorities was a key consideration motivating the enactment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and it is a fundamental norm of justice so basic that it must inform the scope of Section 33’s use.
A CBC News report on the Supreme Court of Canada agreeing to hear arguments in a case about Québec’s Bill 21.
‘Blank cheque?’
The unwritten constitutional principle of “respect for minorities” provides a constitutional guardrail against abuse of Section 33, which has been interpreted by judges as a constitutional blank cheque, allowing governments to reduce rights to discretionary entitlements.
Since the notwithstanding clause lives within the Canadian Constitution itself, it must conform to the defining features of the constitutional structure. The use of Section 33 must be consistent with the fundamental “principles that define our society.” For rights to be real and meaningful — to be legal pillars that people can rely on — they must have enduring constitutional protection.
To achieve this, the Supreme Court of Canada needs to draw appropriate boundaries around the use of Section 33. If the notwithstanding clause continues to be viewed as an open licence for governments to pick and choose which rights they respect, one might reasonably question whether Charter rights exist at all.
Natasha Bakht has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She has also advised the National Council of Canadian Muslims and the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund on their research/litigation regarding Bill 21.
Lynda Collins 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.
Plastic waste in Nigeria presents a dual challenge: cleaning up environmental pollution, and tapping into its economic potential.
Many countries worldwide face similar challenges. India, for one, has chosen policies that give producers of plastic the responsibility to manage their waste. Rwanda has banned single-use plastic and promoted recycling initiatives led by communities.
These approaches show it’s possible to address plastic waste issues while fostering economic opportunities.
In Nigeria, informal collectors of plastic bottle waste are central to achieving both of these goals. They turn waste into monetary value.
Previous research has highlighted the environmental and economic benefits of collecting plastic bottle waste. There’s been less attention on what shapes perceptions of waste collection as a business, particularly in Nigeria.
This article explores that gap, looking at the socio-cultural, economic and environmental influences on those perceptions.
I am a researcher in the areas of plastic waste management, environmental governance and sustainable development. My work includes studying homes made from recycled plastic bottles in sustainable community-based housing projects.
Here I’ll be drawing from an exploratory survey conducted in the Ijebu area of Ogun State, Nigeria. Using a questionnaire, we surveyed 86 participants who had at least five years of experience in the plastic waste industry.
The study identified factors like education, family size, religion, gender, age, and economic dynamics as relevant to participation in the business of plastic bottle waste collection.
Understanding these influences might help the government to target policies.
Our study found that participants with higher education levels better understood the economic benefits of plastic waste collection as a systematic form of business. The less educated participants viewed waste collection more as a hand-to-mouth way of earning a living.
Education programmes built into waste management campaigns could improve recognition of waste collection as a structured and profitable business opportunity and develop a business-like culture among the collectors.
Parenthood, family size and financial obligations
Family size was a factor affecting perceptions of plastic bottle waste collection as a business. People with large families saw waste collection as a feasible way to provide food, housing, education and other essentials.
However, the association of waste collection with income instability highlights the need to formalise and stabilise the sector. Waste collection must be made into a sustainable and reliable business model.
Religion and cultural norms
Religion and cultural beliefs emerged as influences from our survey. This was evident in the responses of people who followed African traditional religions and Islam.
These respondents viewed waste collection as financially feasible, aligning with religious teachings that emphasise resource management and stewardship. For example, Islamic teachings on israf (avoiding wastefulness) and zakat (charity) promote efficient resource use and economic activities that benefit communities.
Similarly, African traditional religion often emphasises communal responsibility and the sustainable use of resources. These religious principles underscore the cultural acceptance of waste collection as both a practical and a morally guided economic activity.
Other cultural norms, such as the value placed on communal responsibility and cooperation, also influenced attitudes towards waste collection. In communities with a strong tradition of collective action, where unity and mutual support are highly valued, waste collection is often viewed as a collaborative effort.
These cultural norms reinforce the idea that waste collection is not just an individual task, but a collective duty that benefits the entire community.
Gender plays a role in perception and practice in waste collection. Our survey found that male participants were more likely than female participants to perceive this activity as a business.
As constrained as they are by lack of access to resources, women are involved in separating and marketing reusable items. Measures like microfinance could increase women’s engagement and business opportunities.
This would empower women and make waste collection a more inclusive and sustainable business.
Age and desire to be an entrepreneur
Perceptions were influenced by age in our study. Younger individuals, up to 14 years old, viewed plastic bottle waste collection as a gateway to employment. Adults aged 33-38 used their experience to get better returns on the business.
This age-based distinction suggests that different stages of life bring unique motivations and approaches to waste collection.
Policy actions that support entrepreneurship at various life stages can promote long-term engagement in the industry. This will help formalise waste collection as a sustainable and profitable business.
Economic and social factors
Income opportunities affected participants’ experiences more than social factors. Oftentimes, this determined how long they stayed in the business. Those earning more were likelier to reinvest and grow, while lower earnings often led to disengagement or exit. This highlights the importance of financial incentives in shaping waste collection practices.
Social connections also play a role in fostering collaboration. It facilitates teamwork and the exchange of ideas, and creates a sense of shared purpose and collective outcomes among participants.
Strengthening these economic and social bonds can formalise plastic bottle waste collection, making it a more efficient and profitable business.
The study has significant application to Nigeria’s waste management industry. Adding education programmes into waste management programmes will improve people’s business skills.
Well-coordinated intervention strategies can remove cultural and gender-specific barriers. For instance, cooperatives and microfinance may make waste collection more financially appealing.
Strategies can also draw on cultural norms to increase community acceptance of waste collection and make it more inclusive.
Samuel Oludare Awobona, a doctoral student at Osun State University, Osogbo, Nigeria, contributed to this research.
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.
South Africa has a new law to govern the expropriation (or compulsory acquisition) of private property by government for public purposes or in the public interest.
The act repeals the apartheid-era Expropriation Act 63 of 1975, and aims to align expropriation law with the constitution. It sets out the procedures, rules and regulations for expropriation. Besides setting out in quite a detailed fashion how expropriations are to take place, the act also provides an outline regarding how compensation is to be determined.
In South Africa’s colonial and apartheid past, land distribution was grossly unequal on the basis of race. The country is still suffering the effects of this. So expropriation of property is a potential tool to reduce land inequality. This has become a matter of increasing urgency. South Africans have expressed impatience with the slow pace of land reform.
Property rights and land reform
There is much debate in the country about the provisions of the new act. The debate is mostly about the extent to which it affects existing private property rights. Some argue the act is unconstitutional. Others welcome it as a necessary step in the right direction.
I’m a professor of law with a keen interest in this area of the law, and recently edited a book on land expropriation in South Africa by leading experts. My view is that an expropriation act that is aligned with the constitution should be welcomed, to enable land reform to work effectively.
Land reform also needs a capable and proactive state that implements the legal framework in such a manner that prioritises expropriation as a mechanism to ensure land reform.
So far, expropriation has not been used effectively to redistribute land more equitably, as part of land reform.
I am not convinced that the act, in its current form, is the silver bullet to effect large-scale land reform – at least not the type of radical land reform that South Africa urgently needs.
Understandably, the act will have a severe impact on property rights. But it still substantially protects landowners affected by expropriation. Only in very limited cases would they not be compensated.
Protections for land owners
The act says that property must not be expropriated arbitrarily or for a purpose other than a public purpose or in the public interest.
Public purpose means by or for the benefit of the public. For example, expropriating property to build roads, schools and hospitals. Public interest is broader and includes the nation’s commitment to land reform.
“Arbitrary” would usually mean without reason or justification.
The act further requires that an expropriating authority – an organ of state or person empowered by the act or any other legislation – must first try to reach an agreement with the owner to acquire the property on reasonable terms before considering expropriation.
This gives some power to a landowner, even though expropriation does not normally require consent. The act also says a specific expropriation must always be authorised by a law.
No compensation?
Section 12 of the act deals with compensation for expropriation. It is arguably the most controversial part of the new legislation. Section 12(1) does not appear to be problematic and is largely the same wording as section 25(3) of the constitution. This part of the property clause sets out what must be taken into account when compensation for expropriation is determined.
Section 12(3) of the act refers to “nil compensation” – when nil rand (monetary) compensation may be paid. There is no explicit reference to nil compensation in the current wording of section 25 of the constitution. It’s a new thing in the Expropriation Act.
However, courts have toyed with the idea that section 25 of the constitution already provides room for a reduction in compensation.
The circumstances in which nil compensation could be granted in terms of the new act are in fact very limited. Section 12(3) leaves the discretion to the expropriating authority to determine when it may be just and equitable to pay nil compensation. However, the act lacks guidelines on how such a discretion must be exercised.
The scope of section 12(3) is also limited in some respects. For one, it is restricted to land. Only where land is expropriated would nil compensation be an option. Therefore, not all forms of property can be expropriated without compensation. The notion of property under section 25(1) of the constitution is generally wide and includes various rights and interests, which are broader than just land. For instance, personal rights, mineral rights and licences are included under the section 25(1) notion of property.
This wide understanding of property is not applicable to section 12(3), which refers to “land” being expropriated.
Section 12(3) is also limited to the expropriation of land “in the public interest”. Nil compensation is therefore envisaged only in the context of expropriation of land undertaken in the public interest, and not also for a public purpose.
Three of the four categories listed in section 12(3), where nil compensation is envisaged, are linked to the way in which the property was being used prior to the expropriation. Land used in a productive manner is therefore not evidently envisaged under section 12(3).
Nil compensation is not necessarily limited to the instances listed. Still, the amount of compensation must – in all instances – be just and equitable.
Novel approach
The act forces South Africans to engage with the idea of nil compensation in a much more direct manner.
The presence of a clause dedicated to nil compensation provides new clarity on when this could apply.
It is hard to determine whether this act will pass constitutional muster without seeing how expropriation under it will work in practice. It remains to be seen whether it will have the far-reaching consequences that many fear, or call for.
Zsa-Zsa Temmers Boggenpoel 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.
Air pollution might protect against the most dangerous type of skin cancer, melanoma, a new study finds. However, it’s crucial to approach these results with caution and consider the broader context of air pollution’s effects on human health.
At first glance, the study’s conclusion is surprising. It showed that higher levels of particulate matter (PM), so-called PM10 and PM2.5 with the numbers 10 and 2.5 referring to the size of the actual air pollutant, may have a protective effect against melanoma.
The researchers found that increased exposure to these air pollutants was associated with a decreased risk of developing melanoma. It’s important, though, to understand the limitations of this study and why we shouldn’t rush to embrace air pollution as a potential shield against skin cancer.
One of the main issues with this study is its observational design which can only show associations, not prove causation. This means that while there might be a link between higher particulate matter levels and lower melanoma risk, we can’t say for certain that air pollution is directly causing this effect.
It was also undertaken in one area of Italy, and there weren’t many participants compared to other studies of this type. While it’s possible that higher PM levels might block out exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation, the primary environmental risk factor for melanoma, this doesn’t mean that air pollution is good for our health overall.
It’s crucial to emphasise that air pollution is extremely harmful to human health in numerous ways. Particulate matter, especially the fine particles (PM2.5), can penetrate deep into our lungs and even enter our bloodstream. This exposure has been linked to a wide range of serious health problems, including respiratory diseases.
Air pollution can cause or exacerbate conditions like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer. Exposure to particulate matter increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular problems. Additionally, a lot of recent research has shown links between air pollution and cognitive decline, dementia, and other neurologicaldisorders.
The list is very long here and air pollution has even been associated with low birth weight, preterm birth and other adversepregnancyoutcomes. In fact, long-term exposure to air pollution is estimated to cause millions of premature deathsworldwide each year, even at lower amounts of PM.
While this study focused on melanoma, air pollution has been linked to increased risk of other types of skin problems, including premature ageing, hyperpigmentation (a skin condition that causes patches of skin to darken) and exacerbation of dermatological conditions like atopic dermatitis and psoriasis.
It’s also worth noting that the potential reduction in UV exposure due to air pollution doesn’t make it a safe or desirable alternative to proper sun protection. There are much healthier ways to protect ourselves from harmful UV radiation, such as using sunscreen, wearing protective clothing and seeking shade during peak sunlight hours. Prevention is, after all, better than treatment or a cure.
Risks far outweigh the benefits
Although this study provides an interesting perspective on the complex relationship between environmental factors and melanoma risk, it should not be interpreted as evidence that air pollution is beneficial for our health. To the researchers’ credit, they do mention some of the limitations and issues with their own work in the paper.
The potential slight reduction in melanoma risk, if confirmed by further research in larger studies and in other locations, would be far outweighed by the numerous and severe health risks associated with exposure to air.
It’s important that we all continue to advocate for cleaner air and support policies that reduce air pollution. The overall benefits of clean air for our health, the environment and quality of life are immense and well established. At the same time, we should maintain good sun protection habits to reduce our risk of skin cancer, including melanoma.
Future research may help us better understand the complex interactions between environmental factors and cancer risk, but for now, the message is clear: clean air is crucial for our health, and there are no shortcuts when it comes to protecting ourselves from both air pollution and UV radiation.
Justin Stebbing 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.
The nave of Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire is, until February 26 2025, home to three monumental ambassadors from the sea, sculpted by artist Tessa Campbell Fraser.
In Campbell Fraser’s immersive art installation, three sculpted sperm whales (the largest of the toothed whales), hang from the cathedral ceiling. Toothed whales have teeth instead of the keratinous baleen that blue whales and others use to feed on tiny animals, such as krill. Sperm whales, which feed mainly on squid, are the largest predators alive today.
Their ecology is strange, but impressive. They are socially sophisticated, massive-brained, far-wandering, deep-diving and loud. Sperm whale clicks are the loudest biologically produced sound ever recorded.
Whales use these strange vocalisations to echolocate as they hunt for prey and to communicate to each other. In this installation, Campbell Fraser has creatively employed sperm whale clicks to vibrate paint on the banners that hang alongside the whales in the cathedral, serving as a visual representation of sperm whale “codas”. These repetitive patterns of clicks, lasting a few seconds, have intrigued researchers since they were first recorded off North Carolina, US, in the 1950s.
We now know that groups of sperm whales are organised into “vocal clans” based on unique coda repertoires. These whale call signatures have probably been learned culturally, but scientists are yet to understand what they mean.
The three whale sculptures (which are between three and five metres long) are made, in part, from “ghost gear” – this is abandoned, lost, and discarded fishing gear, collected at sea by British charity Ghost Fishing UK. Floating ghost gear, which includes fishing nets, can kill or entangle marine life such as whales.
At the opening of the exhibition, Campbell Fraser recounted reports of stranded sperm whales whose stomachs were filled with plastic debris. One sperm whale that was found dead in Pas-de-Calais, France, had 25kg of debris, including nets and rope, in its stomach.
These three sperm whales are on exhibition until 26 February 2025. The University of Southampton., CC BY-NC-ND
Using netting in these sculptures represents, on one level, the increasing effects of humans on the ocean and whales. On another level, it hints at the long entanglement between human history and whales. Our spiritual, cultural and intellectual links with whales are represented through rich intersections of art and science.
One famous literary example is the 1851 novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville, which artfully weaved descriptions of whale biology with the human story of pre-industrial whaling. This theme is also explored by our colleague Philip Hoare in his book Leviathan (2009).
Unfortunately, people have negative effects on the oceans. The consequences of pollution, overfishing and climate change are widespread and increasing. Even in the furthest corners of the sea, whales may encounter humans or be affected by our influence, through climate change, noise and plastic pollution.
Our research has shown how whale foraging areas in the remote western Antarctic peninsula overlap with an increasing fishery for Antarctic krill which now requires urgent and careful management to ensure its sustainability for people and whales.
Through an unprecedented compilation of over 1,000 tracks from eight whale species globally, we have produced a world-first map of “whale superhighways” – the blue corridors whales use as they migrate across oceans. This map also highlights how these extensive migrations expose whales to a mosaic of threats at various scales. As a result, protecting whales requires coordinated effort at local and global scales.
The art of acoustics
Of course, scale is a key consideration in the design of cathedrals. Winchester is a particularly fine example – at 170m, it is the longest medieval cathedral in the world.
On February 6, four composer-performers from the University of Southampton’s department of music will perform a specially commissioned, site-specific piece called Echolocations. The music will approach this intersection of art and scientific research from another angle, in part by responding to the expansive acoustics of the cathedral.
Vocalist Liz Gre and pianist Ben Oliver, with live electronics performed by Pablo Galaz and Drew Crawford, will work with this acoustic to evoke the vast aquatic distances across which whales communicate. And inspired by the ghost netting in Fraser Campbell’s sculptures, the music will address the threat that ongoing human activities are having on marine ecosystems via noise pollution.
We are polluting the oceans with plastic and sonic garbage. It sometimes seems we will be incapable of action until whale song ends up a digitally rendered collective memory.
But this performance inspires the same qualities of imagination that enable us to conceive of building the gothic medieval wonder of the cathedral’s nave, conquer oceans to build global trade networks, mine the ocean floor and use machine learning to understand whale song. This level of imagination will be vital in creating a new set of sustainable relations with the rest of the planet.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Ryan Reisinger receives funding from WWF and the UK Government through Darwin Plus.
Drew Crawford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Steve Schifferes, Honorary Research Fellow, City Political Economy Research Centre, City St George’s, University of London
After six months of talking down the economy and warning of tough times ahead, the UK chancellor Rachel Reeves has changed her tune. She is now much more optimistic about Britain’s economic prospects and has announced a raft of measures including major pension reforms designed to unlock cash to boost growth and productivity.
But Labour’s political problem is that none of her plans will have an immediate impact on the UK’s anaemic growth rate – the economy has virtually flatlined for the last six months. From day one Reeves has put growth at the centre of her plans, and a lack of it will mean tough choices in the spring, when she must spell out government spending plans for the next three years.
The government is focusing on a wide range of “supply side” reforms, including unleashing pension funds to invest in Britain, as well as relaxing the planning system and building infrastructure – many of which have an uncanny resemblance to measures once proposed by former prime minister Liz Truss.
At the heart of these plans is a big increase in investment in infrastructure to boost productivity – things like roads, public transport and technology – where Britain lags behind its major rivals.
But there’s a big catch. The independent spending watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), estimates that it will take years – or even decades – for infrastructure projects to transform the British economy, with only a 0.1% boost in growth in the near term for every additional 1% on public investment.
Without other measures that have a more immediate impact, the political risk to Labour is that its pledge to make everyone better off may feel hollow to voters.
The challenges are particularly acute for big transport projects, as the debacle of HS2 illustrates. Even with changes to the planning system, work on expanding Heathrow airport is unlikely to start before 2030. And major projects like the Lower Thames crossing between Kent and Essex and the Sizewell C nuclear reactor in Suffolk have been in the planning stage for nearly 20 years.
Electricity supply is another crucial area, with the need for more renewable energy and an expansion of the grid. This will now need to be financed largely by private capital as the government has scaled back its “green new deal”.
So how exactly will all these big plans be financed? The government is hoping to unleash additional investment from the UK pension fund industry, by changing the rules to allow defined benefit (sometimes called final salary) schemes with surpluses to invest more widely.
Although there is currently £160 billion available in these schemes, this could change if interest rates fall. It is also not clear how attractive such UK infrastructure investment would even be. Many projects, such as in privatised industries like water and electricity, will at least partly be funded by increased charges to consumers.
The government’s own spending plans to increase public investment are relatively modest. These plans bring government capital spending (which allows for borrowing under the fiscal rules) just slightly above the historic average.
Planning reform could also prove problematic. Although the government is changing some of the rules, especially in relation to housebuilding, planning decisions will be still made by local authorities. In many cases these will face strong local opposition, potentially delaying decisions.
This points to the larger political problem for the government. The changes will not eliminate the tension between the government’s growth and environmental objectives, with the latter potentially a crucial issue in many of the marginal seats won by Labour in the last election.
Heathrow expansion will put the government’s climate targets in serious jeopardy. Dinendra Haria/Shutterstock
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has described the need to pull out the “weeds” of regulation as vital to growth plans. He has already sacked the head of the key regulatory agency, the Competition and Markets Authority. But allowing more consolidation of British industry could create monopolies, which tend to raise prices, increase profits and neglect investment.
There are even greater concerns over possible deregulation of the financial sector, which could abolish many of the safeguards established after the global financial crisis in 2008.
What’s missing?
The government is much less clear on what it is going to do about the supply of skilled labour than the availability of capital. Shortages of skilled workers could limit progress on these big infrastructure projects if workers are also needed to build housing.
Government plans for boosting skills training, and the funding for further and higher education, are still works in progress. Meanwhile, limits on immigration will reduce the number of skilled construction workers. And the details of the government’s plan to boost the labour force by getting more people on disability benefit back to work have yet to be spelled out.
As Labour sets out its long-term growth plan, dark clouds are looming. In particular, in global terms the British economy is one of the most dependent on international trade and investment. But most of its trade is with its two largest trading partners – the EU and the USA.
Growing protectionism in the US, coupled with a lack of access to EU markets caused by Brexit, could have a significant effect on Britain’s growth. The UK economy is projected by the IMF to grow by just 1.6% this year, which is still weak by historic standards.
It may be of little consolation to the public if this is higher than in France and Germany. Reeves may well find that’s simply not enough to satisfy the expectations of voters.
Steve Schifferes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Phil Tomlinson, Professor of Industrial Strategy, Co-Director Centre for Governance, Regulation and Industrial Strategy (CGR&IS), University of Bath
The UK chancellor Rachel Reeves says the Labour government will go “further and faster” to kick-start the British economy. Economic growth – to raise living standards and fund public services – is apparently a core mission of this government.
Yet since the general election last July, this growth has proved elusive.
In fairness, the UK economy been pretty stagnant for a long time. And as Reeves sometimes mentions, she arguably inherited the worst set of economic circumstances since 1974.
So after a difficult first six months in office, the chancellor’s big speech on January 29 was an opportunity for a major economic reset. And there were some signs of encouragement.
She reaffirmed, for example, a commitment to reforming the UK’s antiquated planning laws for residential and commercial building. And there was a big emphasis on public investment, which is to rise to 2.6% of GDP over this parliament, compared to the previous government’s plans of 1.9%.
Airport expansion at Heathrow (and to a lesser extent, Luton and Gatwick) aims to enhance global connectivity and increase trade and investment, especially with emerging economies.
They may also widen the UK’s regional inequalities, drawing more investment and economic activity to the south-east. The same goes for the notion of building Europe’s “Silicon Valley” between Oxford and Cambridge.
That said, some other regions may benefit from announcements which included a £28 million investment in Cornish Metals (for materials for solar panels and wind turbines), and £63 million for advanced fuels which should bring more high-skilled jobs to areas like Teesside. There were also plans for housing and commercial redevelopment around Old Trafford in Manchester.
Some of these projects will form part of the government’s new industrial strategy, which is expected in the spring.
Red tape restrictions
One word to look out for when that strategy is unveiled is “Brexit”, which continues to act as a drag on the UK’s growth. Yet in her speech, while Reeves used the “growth” word more than 50 times, she mentioned Brexit just once.
It deserves much more attention. For investment in the UK has been lacklustre since the 2016 referendum, and research shows that post-Brexit red tape has hampered exports, especially for smaller firms. Overall, the UK’s exports of goods are down by 9% since 2020, while similar economies have seen their exports rise by 1%.
The chancellor has previously suggested a Brexit “reset”, and there may be a future a deal to ease some Brexit agri-food trade barriers. Reeves has also floated the possibility of the UK joining a “Pan-Euro” customs zone.
Other moves which might help UK manufacturing include a bill that would allow the government to keep pace with new EU product safety regulations, and anything else which avoids new administrative costs for businesses.
Yet despite the government perhaps adopting a more conciliatory tone with the EU, there are frustrations with the UK’s “red lines”, such as a refusal to agree to a scheme which would make it easier for young EU citizens to travel, work and study in the UK, and for young UK nationals to do the same in EU member states.
Execution
And while the chancellor’s speech highlighted the government’s long-term ambitions for growth, there was little to address current weaknesses quickly.
For despite a change to Labour’s self-imposed fiscal rules last autumnn, the government still faces significant public borrowing constraints. This will restrict the amount of investment required to fundamentally transform public infrastructure, without major private sector support.
And planning reforms, infrastructure projects, and new trade deals all take time and face political, legal and logistical hurdles. This will also delay growth.
Labour’s ambitions for a more pro-growth, pro-business agenda mark a positive shift, at least in tone. But actual, visible, tangible growth depends on execution. This in turn depends on private sector money, overcoming bureaucratic hurdles, and cutting the Brexit red-tape that continues to hamper trade with the EU.
Without effective action across the board, including immediate fiscal stimulus, the chancellor’s words may begin to sound a little hollow if the mission for growth soon starts to look like mission impossible.
Phil Tomlinson receives funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for Made Smarter Innovation: Centre for People-Led Digitalisation.
David Bailey receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council’s UK in a Changing Europe Programme.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Susan Appe, Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy, University at Albany, State University of New York
The U.S. Agency for International Development distributes a lot of foreign aid through local partners in other countries.J. David Ake/Getty Images
President Donald Trump suspended most U.S. foreign aid on Jan. 20, 2025, the day he took office for the second time. The next day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a stop-work order that for 90 days halted foreign aid funding disbursements by agencies like USAID.
A week later, dozens of senior USAID officials were put on leave after the Trump administration reportedly accused them of trying to “circumvent” the aid freeze. The Office of Management and Budget is now pausing and evaluating all foreign aid to see whether it adheres to the Trump administration’s policies and priorities.
I’m a scholar of foreign aid who researches what happens to the U.S. government’s local partners in the countries receiving this assistance when funding flows are interrupted. Most of these partners are local nonprofits that build schools, vaccinate children, respond to emergencies and provide other key goods and services. These organizations often rely on foreign funding.
Nearly all of the other aid programs remained on hold as of Jan. 29, 2025.
Many development professionals criticized the freeze, highlighting the disruption it will cause in many countries. A senior USAID official issued an anonymous statement calling it “reckless.”
Of the $35 billion to $40 billion in aid that USAID distributes annually, $22 billion is delivered through grants and contracts with international organizations to implement programs. These can be further subcontracted to local partners in recipient countries.
When this aid is frozen, scaled back or cut off altogether, these local partners scramble to fill in the gaps.
The start of Marco Rubio’s tenure as U.S. secretary of state was marked by chaos and confusion regarding foreign aid flows. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
How local nonprofits respond and adapt
While sudden disruptions to foreign aid are always destabilizing, research shows that aid flows have fluctuated since 1960, growing more volatile over the years. My research partners and I have found that these disruptions harm local service providers, although many of them manage to carry on their work.
Over the years, I have conducted hundreds of interviews with international nongovernmental organizations and these nonprofits’ local partners across Latin America, Africa and Asia about their services and funding sources. I study the strategies those development and humanitarian assistance groups follow when aid gets halted. These four are the most common.
1. Shift to national or local government funding
In many cases, national and local governments end up supporting groups that previously relied on foreign aid, filling the void.
An educational program spearheaded by a local Ecuadorian nonprofit, Desarrollo y Autogestión, called Accelerated Basic Cycle is one example. This program targets young people who have been out of school for more than three years. It allows them to finish elementary school – known as the “basic cycle” in Ecuador – in one year to then enter high school. First supported in part by funding from foreign governments, it transitioned to being fully funded by Ecuador’s government and then became an official government program run by the country’s ministry of education.
2. Earn income
Local nonprofits can also earn income by charging fees for their services or selling goods, which allows them to fulfill their missions while generating some much-needed cash.
For example, SEND Ghana is a development organization that has promoted good governance and equality in Ghana since its founding in 1998. In 2009, SEND Ghana created a for-profit subsidiary called SENDFiNGO that administers microfinance programs and credit unions. That subsidiary now helps fund SEND Ghana’s work.
Still, complex tax systems and the lack of incentives for giving in many countries that receive foreign aid are persistent challenges. Some governments have stepped in. India’s corporate social responsibility law, enacted in 2014, boosted charitable incentives. For example, it requires 2% of corporate profits to go to social initiatives in India.
4. Obtain support from diaspora communities
Diasporas are people who live outside of their countries of origin, or where their families came from, but maintain strong ties to places they consider to be their homeland.
Local nonprofits around the globe are leveraging diaspora communities’ desire to contribute to economic development in their countries of origin. In Colombia, for example, Fundación Carla Cristina, a nongovernmental organization, runs nursery schools and provides meals to low-income children.
Trump’s stop-work order coincided with a resurgence of a localization push that’s currently influencing foreign aid from many countries.
With localization, nations providing foreign aid seek to increase the role of local authorities and organizations in development and humanitarian assistance. USAID has been a leading proponent of localization.
I believe that the abruptness of the stop-work order is likely to disrupt many development projects. These projects include support to Ukrainian aid groups that provide emergency humanitarian assistance and projects serving meals to children who don’t get enough to eat.
To be sure, sometimes there are good reasons for aid to be halted. But when that happens, sound and responsible donor exit strategies are essential to avoid the loss of important local services.
Susan Appe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The national award-winning Derby City Lab will soon have a new home in the redeveloped Derby Market Hall, following an announcement made at Marketing Derby’s Annual Business Event.
The new move will see the City Lab continue its role as a hub for community engagement and innovation from the Market Hall which is due to open in spring this year after undergoing a major transformation.
Derby City Lab was created in 2022 and was based in St James’s St at the heart of the city’s regeneration frontline and in 2024, it moved to a new location in the Derbion shopping centre.
The Lab is a hub for engaging the community in better understanding the evolution of the city. Visitors can find out about how the city centre is changing, explore the City Living Room which showcases Derby’s 300-year history of innovation, and view a range of exhibitions focused on ideas to regenerate Derby, including the University of Derby’s futuristic Derby Urban Sustainable Transition (DUST) vision.
Nadine Peatfield, Leader of Derby City Council, said:
Derby City Lab has been integral in helping citizens and stakeholders to understand and shape the city centre’s transformation. I’m delighted to see that it will be moving into Derby Market Hall. It is central to our regeneration plans – reimagining our city centre with culture at its heart and making a better-connected, sustainable city for the future.
Derby City Lab will continue to provide a space where residents and visitors can learn more about the city centre’s ongoing regeneration and share their views on future plans. We are committed to engaging with residents in innovative ways and the Lab plays a big part in that. I am so excited for the opening of Derby Market Hall and am thrilled to welcome Derby City Lab to their new home.
John Forkin, Managing Director of Marketing Derby said:
The Derby City Lab is a unique innovation in the UK – a genuine attempt to engage local people in the shaping of their city. Last week, we welcomed our 15,000th visitor and are excited to become part of the rediscovery of the wonderful Derby Market Hall.
Derby Market Hall redevelopment is a £31.5m project part funded with £9.43m from the Government’s Future High Street Fund (FHSF). It is in the second phase of the transformation, focusing on refurbishing the interior and developing the public space outside at Osnabruck Square.
Located at the heart of the city centre, linking Derbion and St Peter’s Quarter with the Cathedral Quarter and Becketwell, the new Market Hall will play a key role in widening the diversity of the city centre and will generate £3.64m for the local economy every year.
Based on concepts in Shanghai and Amsterdam, the Derby City Lab is an initiative of Marketing Derby, the Queen’s Award-winning inward investment agency for Derby together with partners including Clowes Developments, the Derbion, Lathams, the University of Derby and Derby City Council. The Lab won the Estates Gazette award as the Best Public-Private Partnership in the UK.
The Swedish Government is presenting its largest military support package to Ukraine to date, valued at SEK 13.5 billion. This package will also strengthen Ukraine’s long-range capability. Sweden aims to donate about 1 billion SEK towards making Ukraine able to produce long-distance missiles and drones. It also includes a doubling of the previous 16 donated Combat Boat 90s (CB 90) and anti-tank weapons, as well as investments to support Ukraine’s defence industry.
With this eighteenth support package, Sweden has provided a total of SEK 61.9 billion in military support to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began nearly three years ago.
The package is divided into eight components, the largest of which consists of various procurements of new materiel – primarily from the Swedish and other European defence industries – for the purpose of donation to Ukraine.
The package, worth SEK 13.5 billion in total, contains the following components:
Procurement for donations worth approximately SEK 5.9 billion. – This means that the Defence Materiel Administration, tasked by the Government, procures equipment from the Swedish and foreign defence industries to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Financial donations worth approximately SEK 2.8 billion. – This means that Sweden is supporting Ukraine through donations to various funds for procurement of military equipment and ammunition, e.g. through capability coalitions. Another example is procurement cooperation between Sweden and Denmark. Sweden aims to donate 1 billion SEK towards Ukrainian production of long-range missiles and long-distance drones.
Donations of materiel from the Swedish Armed Forces, with corresponding replacement purchases, valued at approximately SEK 3.3 billion. This includes: – 146 trucks; – 16 Combat Boat 90s; (A doubling from the previous 16 donated CB 90s) – 23 weapon stations for marine use; – 1 million units of 12.7 mm ammunition; – 1 500 TOW anti-tank missiles; – 200 anti-tank weapons, including training materiel; – infantry equipment for individual soldiers and unit equipment; and – chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) personal protective equipment.
Services via the Swedish Defence Research Agency and Swedish Defence University, valued at approximately SEK 180 million. – The Defence Research Agency will continue its efforts to develop a corresponding agency in Ukraine. – The Defence University is tasked with implementing an education programme for Ukrainian pupils in Ukraine.
Training valued at SEK 650 million. – Funding to the Swedish Armed Forces’ support to a number of training initiatives throughout 2025, such as Interflex, which conducts basic training for Ukrainian soldiers.
Supply solutions valued at SEK 400 million. – This includes various types of maintenance measures for the Swedish materiel that has been donated.
More about the eighteenth support package
Sweden’s military support to Ukraine is always based on Ukraine’s needs and priorities. Ongoing bilateral communication and multilateral collaboration in the capability coalitions provide this knowledge.
The ability to support Ukraine with newly produced materiel that can be delivered quickly is a significant tool to supplement donations of materiel from the Swedish Armed Forces war organisation. At the same time as Ukrainian units receive the materiel that they need, Ukrainian, Swedish and European supply security is also strengthened.
Source: Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Konstantin Kolodin
On February 3, candidate of architecture, artist, sculptor, associate professor of the department of architectural environment design at SPbGASU, head of the architectural workshop Konstantin Kolodin will open his personal exhibition at our university.
The exhibition is only a small part of his works. It is impossible to display all the results of almost half a century of creativity within the framework of one exhibition. But what is presented will allow visitors to get acquainted with the unique style of the author, the various facets of his talent, to feel his worldview and, at the same time, to look at familiar things with different eyes.
We talk with the master about his works, about creativity, which has long since crossed the borders of Russia and found recognition in the USA, Israel, and England.
– Konstantin Ivanovich, how did it all begin?
– I was born in Buryatia. My creative biography began in childhood. In the fifth grade I organized a puppet theater, wrote scripts myself, made puppet characters with my friends, glued decorations, involved classmates in productions. We went on tour with performances to neighboring villages. We hired a man with a horse…
A year later, we won the regional amateur art competition with “Koshkin Dom”. The second place went to the choir of the Kamensk Asbestos-Cement Plant! And this was a strong team under the leadership of qualified specialists, and the plant did not skimp on costumes and musical instruments. We were awarded a two-week excursion to Moscow.
In the seventh grade, when we were already living with our parents in Biysk, I completed my first concept: I made an architectural model for the reconstruction of the city block where our school was located. It all started when a chemistry teacher who often held theme nights approached me. For them, I drew huge posters with various chemical reactions on the school stage. She asked if I could come up with an idea for the reconstruction of our block. I answered: “I can!”, and I already saw what it could be like. Soon the project was presented at an exhibition of the best school works in the city community center, attracted attention and caused surprise among visitors.
– Did this determine your choice of profession?
– I don’t think so. I wanted to go to VGIK and become a director-animator. In my senior year, I sent a letter there, inquiring about the admission rules. They told me that I needed at least a year of experience as an assistant director. There was only one theater in our city. I went there and with youthful maximalism asked: “Can you hire me as an assistant director?” They told me that I first needed to graduate from the institute and get a diploma…
I have always drawn and made sculptures, so I decided to enroll in the architecture department of the Novosibirsk Civil Engineering Institute. I arrived with a backpack full of sculptures. It turned out that the application period had ended. They still asked me to show my works to a commission of specialists from all departments. When I took them out of my backpack, they asked me to leave the office. I heard a heated discussion outside the door. Then the deputy dean came out and told me something. Then he gave me a sharpened pencil, paper and allowed me to join the applicants who were preparing for exams in the drawing room…
– Time to think about future work?
– My studies coincided with the years of stagnation. It turned out that studying wasn’t very interesting: the emphasis was on the architecture of typical buildings. And if you imagine that you’ll have to do this all your life, it even became scary.
Shortly before the diploma defense, a delegation from the Tomsk Civil Engineering Institute came to us to select specialists for the architectural design department from among the graduates.
I was offered to go to work as a teacher. I had to answer that I had no desire to work in typical architecture. But if they help me open a sculpture studio at the institute, then I will go!
I arrived at the appointed time. I was told that there was a lecture tomorrow. How so? A lecture on sculpture? It turned out that no: it was a lecture on the subject “Introduction to the Specialty”.
Now I can’t even remember what I was telling, I just remember how I drew the Colosseum in section and perspective on the board. The students later said that they liked this lecture with explanations in the drawings…
The sculpture department was never opened. Architectural activity began.
At 22, I became the head of the workshop. In 1982, the first graduation took place, almost all of my graduates entered graduate school. Many teach, now even their children come to me.
– Can this time be called a period of new creative successes?
– Quite. Even during my architectural pre-graduation practice, I met artists and showed them my sculpture works. And I was quite surprised when I was invited to participate in an art exhibition. The exhibition committee recommended taking all my works and organizing a personal exhibition in the hall of the State Art Gallery of Novosibirsk. My hall was next to the halls that contained works by Roerich, Kuindzhi, and Repin.
It made a strong impression on me. It was scary, but also nice that my works were honored with such high attention from the organizers and appreciation of the visitors.
– Tell us about your first memorable projects.
– The first project was a Komsomol assignment. I was asked to design a ski base. And, strangely enough, it was built.
The next project also found me. It was the “Project of a village for three thousand residents for the Anzhersky chemical and pharmaceutical plant” in the Kemerovo region.
Many of my conceptual projects were initially perceived ambiguously. For example, “Reconstruction of the central part of the city of Tomsk with the construction of an inhabited bridge along both banks of the Tom River” raised the question: are there really bridges along rivers?
But it is a wonderful idea to harmoniously integrate new buildings into the urban development, which will allow to develop empty spaces, to create new symbols of the old city. In these bridges-buildings, according to the concept, there are offices, shops, restaurants, concert halls, museums, hotels. In the structure of the bridges we have integrated eco-friendly transport with free travel for passengers.
– Do you propose this idea in St. Petersburg?
– It really suits St. Petersburg. In 1990, I won a competition and was invited to the design institute “Lengrazhdanproekt” to the position of chief architect of projects in Leningrad.
Later he became deputy head of the administration for architecture and urban development of Zelenogorsk, and headed the program “Resort zone “Karelian Isthmus”” – now this is the Resort District of St. Petersburg.
An idea came to mind to develop St. Petersburg in the north-west direction with the creation of a ring road around the city. With a concept drawn on a regular sheet of paper, I came to the Committee on Urban Development and Architecture and heard: “This is not Moscow, no one will build a ring road!”
Then, regarding the development of the concept, I turned to Valery Nefedov, who was the dean of the architecture faculty at the time. He suggested bringing the issue up for discussion at the department of urban development. The department unanimously voted against the concept.
Soon I received a call from MArchI, saying that the department where I studied was being closed because it had not passed certification, and they asked me to help “pull it up” to the required level.
I agreed to transfer to the position of associate professor. The rector of MARCHI asked me: “Will you help?” I answered that I would help. “What do you want in return?” I said: “An architectural studio for students, where I would teach according to my program.” “Why do you need that?” “I want to carry out a city reconstruction project.” “Which one?” “St. Petersburg!” “Design Paris, just don’t touch Moscow!”
The department became the best after two years. I was promoted to professor. We were invited to the international exhibition “300 Years of St. Petersburg: Russia Open to the World” with the works we had done on St. Petersburg. We called the project “St. Petersburg 300 – St. Petersburg 400”. Our exhibits were appreciated by Patriarch Alexy, deputies who came to the exhibition, the city’s chief architect and Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, who was in charge of the city at the time. We visited Moscow and Berlin with the concept. The project traveled to various exhibitions for six months.
Time shows that initially misunderstood ideas are later realized. For example, the Lakhta Center was built not far from the place indicated in my concept, and the ring road is almost the same as in our concept. The Western High-Speed Diameter was also present in our model.
Our conceptual project “Street of Peace” seemed like a strange fantasy to everyone, but today a similar concept is being implemented in Saudi Arabia.
– How do you manage to stay ahead of your time?
– People often ask me: why do I do such projects? I don’t know. I just do it, and I like it. I explain it as a gift sent from above and accept it as a mission that must be fulfilled.
The list of awards, exhibitions and prizes can go on and on, but every project is dear to me.
There are still a lot of ideas, as before, but I understand that there is less and less time left.
I would be glad to open a studio if such an opportunity were provided. I am often asked, where do you store the exhibits? The question is absolutely correct. It is not always possible to preserve something valuable. It would be good if our university museum would deal with these issues.
Imagine: decades will pass, other generations will be here, and what we once did will be visible, studied, learned from, ideas picked up or improved. This is important for the common history.
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.
Navigating grad school can feel daunting and challenging at times but having someone who can guide you and who knows how you feel is a key element to ensuring success.
The Graduate School at UConn is committed to providing this support, and to help meet these goals, they created the Network for Enriched Mentorship, or NEM. Now in its second year of operation, the current cohort includes more than 70 faculty and staff members paired with over 85 students, says Associate Dean of the Graduate School and Department of Sociology Professor Mary Bernstein. NEM is aimed at providing support to students, but a key element is that it is also aimed at training mentors.
“We are trying to create mechanisms, techniques, skills, and tools to have our faculty be as excellent as they can be, as far as their mentoring and advising with an eye to our minoritized populations, knowing that if we can make things better for this population, then it will make things better for everybody,” says Bernstein.
NEM pairs mentors with experience in navigating the obstacles of graduate school with mentees in need of support. As part of The Graduate School’s commitment to graduate student success, Associate Professor in the Department of Animal Science Mary Anne Amalaradjou and Neag School of Education Assistant Professor Chen Chen joined The Graduate School team serving as the program’s first two faculty affiliates for inclusive excellence. They have been instrumental in improving mentorship across campus, which included the creation of a mentor guide, a forthcoming mentee guide, and learning from other programs to help tailor the NEM program. In the new cycle, Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Sustainability, Community, and Urban Studies (GSCU) Peter Chen is a new NEM program director, taking over from C. Chen.
“We look for faculty and staff from across all colleges and units to serve as mentors. We had students from different units and the other campuses who wanted to have that mentoring experience,” says Amalaradjou.
Potential mentees and mentors submit applications, and if chosen, they are paired based on various aspects, like interests, background, or other similarities,
“We purposefully match students with mentors outside of their program because this is not meant to be career advice, it is meant to be another way to provide students with support or help navigating obstacles that they encounter in their departments,” says Bernstein.
The program provides guidance on how to get the conversation started between newly matched mentors and mentees to help establish the enduring relationships that are so beneficial for graduate student success.
“Particularly for a Ph.D. student, their advisor is one of the most important and influential relationships for that student, and it’s even more significant for a student that is perhaps first-gen in graduate school, or who comes from some other type of minoritized background,” says Assistant Dean of The Graduate School Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Affairs Karen Bresciano. “We want to do our best to help faculty have the skills needed to be the best advisors and help students be the best mentees possible.”
Bresciano says a third goal of the program is to help address what is called the “hidden curriculum,” which is the knowledge about higher education that a student with family members who have already navigated the process can impart, but if you are a first-generation student, you have to learn firsthand.
Amalaradjou says that one of the NEM events they planned included support services from around campus, including Student Health and Wellness, the Ombuds Office, and the Center for International Students and Scholars, to ensure that mentees and mentors are aware of what is available.
“UConn is a big place, and we wanted to create a safe space where everyone had the opportunity to ask questions in person,” says Amalaradjou.
Evidence of NEM’s success is seen in the program’s exit survey for the first cohort, says Amalaradjou, where mentees spoke highly of the program, and mentors expressed gratitude at being able to support students. Peter Chen recalls a story he heard from one of the mentees during the most recent event in December. The mentee was struggling and his NEM mentor invited him to their family’s Thanksgiving celebration.
“That student was going through a very difficult time, academically and financially, and he really enjoyed this experience and appreciated the program.”
The program provides a space to create a sense of community. In December, all students were invited to the “NEM Happy Hour,” where they had the opportunity to meet other mentees, enjoy food, chat, and play trivia games. The event was well attended despite the cold evening after a snowy day.
“They were sharing their experiences about using the resources on campus and sharing conversations. It was a good downtime for the students before the semester ended. They were asking when the next event will be. We hope to have another one towards the end of the spring semester,” says Chen.
Beyond the physical gathering, a Slack group has been established to keep the NEM students connected across distances.
The NEM program is also a great way to hone mentoring skills since mentor training is now mandatory for new faculty at UConn.
“Mentorship is not taught, and it is very much like parenting,” says Bernstein. “You’re not really taught what works and what doesn’t, and what works for you may not work for somebody else. There are fundamental skills and ways you can align expectations to improve the mentoring experience, both for faculty and for graduate students.”
To recognize this important work, at the end of the program, the grad school sends out a letter to all mentors that is also shared with their department head and the Dean as a way of recording the commitment of time outside of other responsibilities.
“It’s important to support mentorship, which must be a university-wide commitment. It has to be acknowledged because much of faculty service isn’t rewarded or acknowledged,” says Bernstein. “There is a personal reward, but people are struggling to balance their research and their teaching and their other service obligations. We need to figure out how to improve that as a university, and we believe that this is a really important first step.”
NEM is a valuable resource in addition to others offered by The Graduate School, including a series called Grad Chat to bring together members of the graduate community to support one another with a focus on identity-based groups, says Bresciano, who spoke about a recent Grad Chat event:
“It was a feel-good event. I left feeling very encouraged that this is meeting the needs of our students. They want to be supported, to support one another, to learn from one another, and they want to meet each other and people outside of their departments. They like the idea of these conversations being open to the graduate population, focusing on different topics.”
Director of Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Support, Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Affairs Kimberly Curry mentions another new resource that was created to respond to student feedback.
“I’m a newer member of The Graduate School, and I’m learning about what we offer through The Graduate School,” Curry says. “One of those resources is the Timely Topics series for graduate students, which started last fall, and the feedback has been outstanding. We’ve talked about issues like managing or working with your advisor, how to have difficult conversations, and other topics that are pertinent to the graduate population. That’s a resource that students are plugging into and really feeling supported and heard.”
Simply knowing that such resources are available can be helpful for students, says Bernstein:
“Fostering these connections and relationships helps everyone be successful. It’s clear that our graduate students are looking for ways to connect with each other, with other faculty, and anybody who can be a point of connection for them at the university. Even just knowing that such a program exists can make someone feel not quite so alone. As a queer person who’s also first gen, I would have benefited tremendously from such a program. It would have been really nice to have someone along the give me some guidance.”
NEM is always in search of new mentors. If you want to become a mentor, please visit theNetwork for Enriched Mentorshipwebsite to learn more.
Editor’s Note:Julia Oas prepared the followingresearch brief (unabridged version)with the Center for Education Policy Analysis, Research, and Evaluation (CEPARE). The full brief examines public school staffing trends in Connecticut schoolsfor administrators, general education teachers, and special education teachers between 2010-11 and 2022-23. Below is an executive summary.
Connecticut public school districts devote considerable effort to staffing their schools. This requires meeting the needs of changing student populations, adjusting to district- and school-level requirements, and adapting to widespread socially and economically impactful events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Districts must weigh complex factors in staffing decisions, considering skills and qualifications of each administrator, teacher, and staff member. At a more basic level, the number of personnel filling staff positions can greatly impact school districts’ quality and capabilities.
The number of personnel filling staff positions can greatly impact school districts’ quality and capabilities. — Julia Oas
This brief identifies Connecticut statewide trends between 2010-11 and 2022-23 in three educator categories: administrators, general education teachers, and special education teachers. The analysis demonstrates how many educators in each staffing category are being lost or added to overall state levels in the past 13 school years. This brief does not examine the specific certification categories of educators and their associated trends; for this information see a recent PDF report published on the state of Connecticut’s website.
Findings indicate administrator levels have risen in Connecticut public school districts, with the number of central district administrators increasing more than school administrators in the 13 years examined. General education teacher levels have dropped, though in recent years some districts seem to have devoted efforts to hiring more general education teachers. Districts in the state have increased the number of special education teachers employed, while in recent years, Connecticut Alliance school districts (33 of Connecticut’s lowest-performing school districts with at least 1,000 students) demonstrate relatively higher increases in special education teachers employed than other districts in the state. Overall, Alliance districts seem to experience notable staffing differences from all other public school districts in the state, which may significantly affect the needs of their schools and students, though these staffing decisions and funding allocations should be examined alongside these overall staffing trends.
While further analysis is needed to fully understand why staffing levels have shifted in Connecticut school districts, and how these changes affect school districts and their students, low student enrollment offers one explanation. Student enrollment has been decreasing throughout the state over the 13 years examined, with only slight increases in students enrolled following a major loss of students after the onset of the COVID-19. Shifting student enrollment trends raise questions about the relative needs of Connecticut school districts, and in particular, the implications of teacher and administrator staffing levels within the state’s current context. Reasons behind Connecticut school districts’ average growth, decline, or stagnant staffing levels remain to be fully uncovered.
CEPARE produces high-quality research, evaluation, and policy analysis that informs leaders and policymakers on a range of pressing issues, with a particular focus on enhancing social justice and equity across p-20 educational settings in Connecticut and beyond. Learn more about CEPARE, or access the PDF version of this rapid research brief (including all references and appendices), at cepare.uconn.edu.
Julia Oas
is a doctoral student in the Research Methods, Measurement and Evaluation program at UConn’s Neag School of Education. She works to bridge gaps between research, school practice, and education policy, emphasizing the reformative change required to achieve equitable and empowering school experiences for all children. Her research interests include research methods attuned to the needs of under-resourced school settings and causal inference within the field of education. In particular, she is motivated to study education policies and practices that improve the capacity of teachers to employ anti-racist, inclusive, and emotionally supportive pedagogies. Prior to her time at UConn, Oas taught for over five years in K-8 public schools as a classroom teacher and a math interventionist. She holds a BA in elementary education and sociology from the College of William and Mary, and an MS Ed. in education policy from the University of Pennsylvania.
There are a lot of factors to consider when you’re trying to build a personal brand.
What are your strengths and weaknesses?
How will you market your brand and engage with your potential audience or customers?
How can you best position yourself for success?
For students who are just starting out on their entrepreneurial journey, connecting with mentors who have built their own personal brands – experiencing the ups and downs, the highs and lows – and who are excited to share what they’ve learned along the way can make all the difference.
But finding the right mentor isn’t always easy, and students often don’t quite know how to get started.
How do you initiate these kinds of conversations?
And what are the questions that you should ask?
‘Students Are Trying to Imagine Themselves After They Graduate’
Learning how to network is a skill, according to Julie Gehring, director of mentorship and student development at UConn’s Werth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and that skill is part of what she teaches students who sign up for NetWerx – a signature program at the Werth Institute that pairs students with alumni mentors to help cultivate those essential networking and entrepreneurial skills.
“If you learn how to network first, then you can learn how to build a relationship with somebody that leads to mentorship,” says Gehring.
Since its inception more than five years ago, NetWerx has operated with the goal of helping interested students build an entrepreneurial mindset through skills like communication, self-reliance, and adaptability. The program has worked by recruiting both current undergraduate students – typically those in their first and second years – who apply to take part and then matching them with alumni volunteers who are less than 15 years out from their own time at UConn.
For the students who are motivated, they can really get a tremendous amount out of this, because when you get out in the work world, and you’re sending your resume out into the universe without having any connection with anybody, it’s really, really hard — Heidi Bailey
“NetWerx welcomes any student interested in expanding their network and exploring ideas, even if they aren’t directly focused on starting a business,” Gehring explains. “We help students develop valuable entrepreneurial skills—like problem-solving, collaboration, and communication—that are essential for success in any field. Many of our alumni mentors, in fact, apply these skills within their organizations as ‘intrapreneurs.’”
“Students are trying to imagine themselves after they graduate,” says Heidi Bailey, an instructor-in-residence with the UConn School of Business who teaches courses on marketing and personal brand management. “NetWerx provides students with an incredible opportunity to build a relationship with a UConn alumnus who can share career tips, such as how they got started in their career, what success looks like in their field of interest, and who else they can work with in their industry.”
A Strategic Plan for Making an Impact
Alumni mentors come from a variety of backgrounds – everything from fintech to fashion, project management to health care, marketing to engineering – and commit to meet virtually with their mentees a least two to three times. They’re given orientation and training on how to be effective mentors before they’re paired with students an matching process that’s now bolstered by the use of PeopleGrove, a platform that helps students and alumni engage with each other.
It’s been an undeniable success. NetWerx has matched hundreds of UConn student mentees with alumni mentors who have engaged with its ecosystem, with many of those connections leading to lasting relationships and some even producing employment opportunities post-graduation.
Last year alone, more than 450 students took part in NetWerx, connecting with about 200 alumni mentors.
But with that success has come a need for the program itself to continue to innovate.
“The question for us was: How can we create even more of an impact?” Gehring explains. “So, we worked on a strategic plan.”
(Adobe Stock)
And part of that plan led to NetWerx’s latest initiative: Bringing mentorship directly to students in the classroom by partnering with faculty, like Bailey, who embrace an entrepreneurial mindset.
“Julie reached out to me, and told me about NetWerx, and I thought it would be a good program for this personal brand management class,” Bailey says. “Spring 2024 was the first time we taught it in Storrs. I made NetWerx part of the participation grade –the students just had to connect two times with their mentor once they got matched, and then write a reflection about what they got out of the experience.”
Bailey utilized NetWerx for the first time that spring, and then again this past fall. About 80 students – half business majors and half from a variety of other disciplines – took part over the two semesters.
Gehring and her team visited the classes twice each semester to help guide the students through developing questions for their mentoring sessions, teaching them how to make the most of their time before meeting their alumni mentors.
“NetWerx’s initial strategy focused on integrating with courses and learning communities that had a connection to entrepreneurship, either through direct curriculum ties or by emphasizing entrepreneurial skill development,” say Gehring. “This included courses, like Heidi’s personal branding class, and learning communities, like EcoHouse with Thomas Hayes, as well as first-year experience (FYE) courses, such as Next Gen with Heather Parker. By aligning with these programs, NetWerx is able to tap into existing student interest in related topics and seamlessly introduce the benefits of mentorship within a familiar academic context.”
Open Conversations About Hard Topics
The NetWerx PeopleGrove platform then enabled the students in the class to connect with a mentor who had similar interests, and allowed Gehring and Bailey to see how those connections were going.
The response from her students was largely positive, Bailey says.
Some reported having open conversations about sometimes difficult topics, like salaries and promotions. Some were encouraged by their mentors to streamline their personal goals, to build new creative content that they hadn’t considered before – or to change gears completely.
By collaborating with us, faculty can seamlessly incorporate mentorship into their courses or learning communities. — Julie Gehring
For example, one student who’d been interested in a career in the U.S. Foreign Service learned it might actually not be the right path for them after meeting with an alumni mentor who had taken the same path.
Gaining that real-world perspective is what mentoring in general, and what NetWerx specifically, is all about, says Gehring.
“If you’re a finance major, you can talk to somebody that’s in a finance background,” she says. “And maybe that student says, you know what? I’ve gotten some perspective, and that’s not where I want to be. And so, when they figure out what they don’t want, they can continue to use our platform to find out what they do want. Let’s go talk to somebody that’s in psychology, let’s go talk to somebody in engineering, because we’ve got so many mentors who are willing to help and to take those calls.”
Opportunities That Can Change Lives
NetWerx continues to also operate as a program open to any student of any discipline, regardless of their course selections, who is interested in expanding their network or exploring an idea. The Werth Institute is holding open office hours three days a week this spring where undergraduates can drop in, learn more, and sign up.
But the program is hoping to partner with more faculty to help reach students who might otherwise not know about or consider taking part in a program like NetWerx.
From a faculty perspective, Bailey notes, successfully incorporating NetWerx into a course means building it in as a core component of the class that the faculty themselves are invested in.
“NetWerx is actively seeking partnerships with faculty who embed entrepreneurial skills into their courses to connect first and second-year students with alumni mentors,” adds Gehring. “From a co-curricular standpoint, we understand the significant time commitment involved in curriculum planning and instruction, which is why NetWerx aims to simplify the integration of mentorship into the classroom. By collaborating with us, faculty can seamlessly incorporate mentorship into their courses or learning communities. This partnership eliminates the burden of managing the screening of mentors, the matching process, and ongoing support of the mentor-mentee relationship, allowing instructors to focus on teaching while providing students with valuable mentorship experiences and expanded networks.”
And making that successful integration into the classroom, Bailey says, can be “life-changing” for the students who take full advantage of the opportunity.
“For the students who are motivated, they can really get a tremendous amount out of this, because when you get out in the work world, and you’re sending your resume out into the universe without having any connection with anybody, it’s really, really hard,” Bailey says. “You have to have people inside who can then connect you with others.
“For just about any class, there are enough alumni who are engaged in that discipline, who would be willing to connect either one-on-one or even come into the class and speak – I think it’s extremely valuable to get that inside perspective and to have the potential to stay in touch.”
January is National Mentoring Month – for more information, visitmentoring.org.
NetWerx is always recruiting – both student mentees and alumni mentors – and individuals interested in getting involved, as well as faculty interested in learning how NetWerx might fit in with their course design, are encouraged to contact Julie Gehring atjulie.gehring@uconn.eduor Ian Bender atian.bender@uconn.edu.
For more information about all of the entrepreneurial opportunities available through the Werth Institute, visitwerth.institute.uconn.edu.
PALM BEACH, Fla., Jan. 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — FN Media GroupNews Commentary – Due to the expanding consumption of illicit drugs & alcohol across the globe the Drug Screening market is poised to grow substantially in the coming years. Drug abuse and alcohol consumption are growing worldwide. According to the World Drug Report 2023, in 2021, 1 in every 17 people aged 15–64 in the world had used a drug in the past 12 months. The number of users grew from 240 million in 2011 to 296 million in 2021 or 5.8% of the global population aged 15-64. This is a 23% increase, partly due to population growth. Other drugs like Cannabis the second most used drug, with an estimated 219 million users i.e. 4.3% of the global adult population in 2021. In 2021, according to the US Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 13,384 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, i.e. a 14% rise from last year. A report from MarketsAndMarkets projected that: “The global drug screening market, valued at US$7.7 billion in 2023, is forecasted to grow at a robust CAGR of 16.6%, reaching US$9.1 billion in 2024 and an impressive US$19.5 billion by 2029.North America dominates the drug screening market. This market is projected to reach USD 9.3 billion by 2029, at a CAGR of 16.4% during the forecast period. The expanding consumption of illicit drugs & alcohol will advance raise the development of drug screening products & services on the road, thereby driving the overall market growth.” Active companies in news today include: Intelligent Bio Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ: INBS), Cardio Diagnostics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDIO), bioAffinity Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIAF), Trinity Biotech plc (NASDAQ: TRIB), SOBR Safe, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOBR).
The MarketsAndMarkets report said: “The growth of the drug screening market is driven by the growing drug & alcohol consumption and the enforcement of stringent laws mandating drug & alcohol testing. Rising regulatory approvals for new product & service launches would offer lucrative growth opportunities for market players in the coming years. The APAC market is projected to register the highest growth in the forecast period due to growing illicit consumption of drugs, the developing healthcare infrastructure, and the rising adoption of stringent regulatory guidelines for drug testing.”
Intelligent Bio Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ: INBS)Adds Quantum TM to 400+ Account Portfolio Utilizing Breakthrough Fingerprint Drug Testing– Intelligent Bio Solutions Inc. (“INBS” or the “Company”), a medical technology company delivering intelligent, rapid, non-invasive testing solutions, announced that Quantum Traffic Management (“Quantum TM”), a leading UK-based traffic management provider, has adopted INBS’ Intelligent Fingerprinting Drug Testing Solution across its 10 nationwide sites to increase workplace testing efficiency and safety.
With over 30 years of industry experience, Quantum TM operates across the utilities, highways, rail, local authority, and events sectors. Previously, Quantum TM relied on saliva and urine testing through external occupational health providers; however, the delays and inefficiencies associated with these methods prompted the company to explore a quicker and more hygienic alternative. INBS’ fingerprint sweat-based system enables Quantum TM to conduct on-the-spot drug screening in-house, facilitating rapid decision-making and improved operational efficiency.
“The Intelligent Fingerprinting Drug Testing Solution provides us with greater control when it comes to drug testing. Having previously faced delays with our former saliva and urine drug testing methods, we needed to find an effective solution that we could manage in-house and increase our testing productivity,” said Scott Powell, Managing Director at Quantum TM. “Intelligent Bio Solutions’ technology enables us to do this, and we have already improved our testing efficiency with rapid, non-invasive screening.” CONTINUED…Read this entire press release for INBS at:https://ibs.inc/news-and-media/
In Additional News This Week, Intelligent Bio Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ: INBS)Partners with IVY Diagnostics to Expand in Europe’s $3.6 Billion Drug Screening Market and in Middle Eastern Regions– Intelligent Bio Solutions Inc. also announced the strengthening of its foothold throughout Europe and the Middle East through its partnership with IVY Diagnostics Srl (“IVY Diagnostics”). As a key distributor, IVY Diagnostics is playing an integral role in expanding the adoption of INBS’ Intelligent Fingerprinting Drug Testing Solution across Europe and the Middle East, with a particular focus on drug rehabilitation and law enforcement applications.
According to Grand View Research, the European and Middle Eastern drug screening markets are projected to grow significantly by 2030, with Europe expected to reach $3.6 billion and the Middle East and Africa $432.7 million. This growing demand emphasizes the strategic importance of INBS’ partnership with IVY Diagnostics.
IVY Diagnostics, a well-known consulting and distribution company within the diagnostics, life sciences and pharmaceutical sectors, has collaborated with another Italian distributor to secure a tender to provide INBS’ drug screening technology for drug rehabilitation programs across Italy. The solution offers a non-invasive, rapid, and hygienic method for drug screening, which has been well received by rehabilitation centers aiming to enhance their testing protocols. In addition to its success in rehabilitation services, INBS’ drug screening system is currently undergoing a trial with the local police force in Turin. The trial aims to explore the effectiveness of fingerprint-based drug testing in roadside screening initiatives, offering a more efficient, less invasive alternative to the traditional methods currently used.
As the demand for drug screening solutions rises across Europe and the Middle East, INBS’ collaboration with IVY Diagnostics positions the Company to effectively capture new opportunities. IVY Diagnostics serves as INBS’ primary contact in Europe, leveraging its extensive network of distributors and expertise in identifying and vetting new partners across key regions, including Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, and Scandinavia. The collaboration extends to the Middle East, targeting markets such as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. CONTINUED…Read this entire press release for INBS at:https://ibs.inc/news-and-media/
In other developments in the markets of note:
Cardio Diagnostics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDIO) recently announced that the Company’s PrecisionCHD and Epi+Gen CHD tests have received final pricing determinations from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Following the preliminary pricing determination made by CMS in August 2024, CMS finalized the ‘gapfill’ pricing determination for both PrecisionCHD and Epi+Gen CHD. This decision will be effective for claims with dates of service on or after January 1, 2025, and will allow Medicare contractors to determine pricing for PrecisionCHD and Epi+Gen CHD based on actual cost data from Cardio Diagnostics. The Medicare contractors will report to CMS preliminary gapfill pricing for calendar year 2025 by April 1, 2025.
“Receiving this final determination is a crucial step for our innovative solutions to help improve the risk assessment, diagnosis, management and monitoring of coronary heart disease (CHD) for Medicare patients,” said Meesha Dogan, Ph.D., CEO and Co-Founder of Cardio Diagnostics. “This milestone brings us closer to addressing the significant unmet needs in cardiovascular care for the Medicare population, enabling clinicians to better personalize treatment strategies and ultimately improve patient outcomes.”
bioAffinity Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIAF) recently announced that the Australian Patent Office (IP Australia), has accepted bioAffinity’s patent application for the method of predicting the likelihood of lung cancer used by the CyPath® Lung diagnostic test for early-stage lung cancer.
The Australian patent application, titled “Detection of Early-Stage Lung Cancer in Sputum Using Automated Flow Cytometry and Machine Learning,” will be an important addition to bioAffinity Technologies’ patent portfolio, which includes 17 awarded U.S. and foreign patents and 38 pending patent applications related to its diagnostic platform and cancer treatment therapeutics. Once issued, the Australian patent will expire in 2042 and will be the second awarded for the CyPath® Lung flow cytometry test as a stand-alone assay for the detection of lung cancer.
Trinity Biotech plc (NASDAQ: TRIB) recently announced compelling results from its latest pre-pivotal clinical trial for its next-generation continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) system. The pre-pivotal clinical trial, which included 30 diabetic participants—primarily individuals with Type 1 diabetes—represents a significant milestone in Trinity’s mission to deliver affordable, high-performance CGM technology.
Trinity Biotech’s redesigned ergonomic modular device features a reusable applicator and a rechargeable wearable transmitter that eliminates costly disposable components while delivering a seamless user experience. By using more durable, reusable components, enabled by Trinity’s proprietary self-inserting sensor technology, the Trinity CGM is designed to deliver care at a significantly lower cost than today’s two largest manufacturers. By addressing affordability—a key barrier to adoption of this life changing technology —Trinity’s innovative approach has the potential to bring CGM technology to millions of individuals who have been priced out of the market. This disruptive design not only expands access but also redefines sustainability in the CGM space, further differentiating Trinity’s solution from current market leaders.
SOBR Safe, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOBR) recently announced the new release of SOBRsure™, a revolutionary wristband device designed to detect the presence of alcohol in individuals, supporting sobriety and empowering recovery. Available to purchase today, SOBRsure introduces an enhanced app experience and a new, sleekly-designed wristband that uses advanced transdermal technology to detect alcohol through the skin. This innovative device serves as a powerful monitoring and accountability tool for families, businesses and individuals alike.
“We believe that SOBRsure is not just a technological breakthrough; it’s a lifeline to those navigating alcohol use disorder (AUD) and the path to sobriety,” said David Gandini, CEO of SOBRsafe. “With SOBRsure, we provide an accountability tool that not only supports individuals on their sobriety journey but also offers peace of mind to their families and employers.”
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At Samsung, our citizenship mission is “Together for Tomorrow! Enabling People,” and we are committed to empowering future generations to harness technology for good. During the 2023–2024 school year, this mission came to life in Newberry, South Carolina, where Newberry High School earned the title of South Carolina State Winner in our Samsung Solve for Tomorrow national STEM competition, winning a $12,000 Samsung technology prize package for their school.
Samsung Solve for Tomorrow challenges public school students in grades 6–12 to apply STEM (science, technology, engineering & math) to address local community issues, and Newberry High School’s Career Lab students, led by special education teacher Heather Alexander, more than met that challenge. Their innovative project—a pollinator garden and compost system—not only tackled sustainability but also demonstrated the power of STEM to drive community change and inspire career exploration.
Oxford residents are invited to join a celebration marking the successful completion of the Clean Heat Streets project in Rose Hill.
The innovative Clean Heat Streets project aimed to support Rose Hill and Iffley households in transitioning from polluting gas boilers to energy-saving, sustainable heat pumps.
Unlike traditional boilers that burn gas to produce heat, heat pumps use electricity to extract heat from the air outside, providing an efficient and sustainable alternative.
With buildings accounting for around 60% of Oxford’s carbon emissions—25% of which come from homes—retrofitting measures like heat pumps are key for reducing emissions.
Key Outcomes
Over two years, the Clean Heat Streets project installed 31 heat pumps in Rose Hill homes, saving an estimated 43,400kg of carbon dioxide per year. The project also tested the feasibility of installing multiple heat pumps in the same neighborhood without overloading the local electricity network.
Residents were offered discounted heat pumps and personalised support throughout the installation process, making the switch easier and more affordable.
Insights and lessons from the Clean Heat Streets project will be used by the Council to inform its future approach to retrofit across the city.
About the event
The event, which will take place at Rose Hill Community Centre on Friday 31 January, will celebrate the achievements of the project, as well as a chance to discuss the lessons learned and the next steps. There will be talks, discussion, an opportunity to visit a heat pump at a Clean Heat Street installee’s home, as well as stalls, food and fun and games.
The event will consist of two sessions:
First Session (2:15 pm – 4:10pm) This session will welcome Oxford residents, heat pump professionals, academics, and representatives from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero together with representatives from Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County council. It will include talks from the project team about the project and key learnings, followed by a Q&A session.
Home tours (4:15 pm – 5:00 pm) Participants will have the opportunity to visit homes in Rose Hill where heat pumps have been installed through the project.
Second Session (5:15 pm – 8:00 pm) This session is for residents and will include talks from the Clean Heat Streets team outlining the next steps for the project in Oxford, as well as a meal, and interactive workshop where visitors can explore and share their thoughts on energy-saving strategies and heat pumps. The event will end with a home energy quiz.
More information about the event can be found on Eventbrite.
About Clean Heat Streets
The Clean Heat Streets project is a consortium consisting of Samsung, Oxford City Council, University of Oxford, Oxford Brookes University, Oxfordshire County Council, Rose Hill and Iffley Low Carbon, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN), GenGame, Passiv UK, and Alto Energy.
The project is funded by the Heat Pump Ready Funding Programme delivered by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. The Heat Pump Ready Programme makes up part of the BEIS’ £1 billion Net Zero Innovation portfolio, which aims to promote the uptake of clean energy technologies until 2040.
Comment
“I am delighted that we are holding this event to mark the end of the successful Clean Heat Streets project. I want to thank all our partners who helped to make this project a success, and the 31 households in Rose Hill who worked with us to explore this new approach to heat pump installations. We will be continuing to explore how we can support residents across the city with adopting this technology.”
Councillor Anna Railton, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Zero Carbon Oxford, Oxford City Council
“My boiler was getting old and needed replacing. I’m very happy with my heat pump. It keeps the house warm and the water hot, even through the cold winter.” Trevor Williams, Clean Heat Streets participant, who lives on Spencer Crescent
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
9th Asian Winter Games to be held in Harbin on Feb. 7
Updated: January 30, 2025 21:40Xinhua
This aerial photo taken on Jan. 27, 2025 shows Heilongjiang Ice Events Training Center Multifunctional Hall in Harbin, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. The 9th Asian Winter Games will take place in Harbin, capital of northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province from Feb. 7 to 14, 2025. The Games will feature six sports, 11 disciplines and 64 events. The ice events will be held in Harbin, using the existing venues from the 1996 Asian Winter Games, while the snow events will be in Yabuli, 193 km from Harbin. The regional games will be staged in China for the third time, following Harbin in 1996 and Changchun, capital city of Jilin Province, in 2007. [Photo/Xinhua]This aerial photo taken on Jan. 27, 2025 shows Heilongjiang Ice Events Training Center Speed Skating Oval in Harbin, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. [Photo/Xinhua]This aerial photo taken on Jan. 16, 2025 shows Yabuli Ski Resort in Yabuli, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. [Photo/Xinhua]This aerial photo taken on Jan. 26, 2025 shows the night view of the Harbin Ice-Snow World in Harbin, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. [Photo/Xinhua]This aerial photo taken on Jan. 21, 2025 shows Harbin Pingfang District Curling Arena in Harbin, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. [Photo/Xinhua]This aerial photo taken on Jan. 16, 2025 shows Slopestyle Stadium and Big Air Stadium at the Yabuli Ski Resort in Yabuli, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. [Photo/Xinhua]This aerial photo taken on Jan. 16, 2025 shows Biathlon Gymnasium at the Yabuli Ski Resort in Yabuli, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. [Photo/Xinhua]This aerial photo taken on Jan. 27, 2025 shows Harbin Sport University Student Skating Rink in Harbin, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. [Photo/Xinhua]This aerial photo taken on Jan. 27, 2025 shows the Athletes’ Village for the ice sports competitions, the Main Press Center and Harbin International Conference, Exhibition and Sports Center, the venue for the opening and closing ceremonies, in Harbin, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. [Photo/Xinhua]This aerial photo taken on Jan. 27, 2025 shows Harbin Ice Hockey Arena in Harbin, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. [Photo/Xinhua]
US president Donald Trump is surrounded by a new cohort of politicians and officials. While one of his campaign promises was to overthrow the “corrupt elites” he accuses of flooding the American political arena, his second term in office has elevated elites chosen, above all, for their political loyalty to him. Does his second term open the door to elites who can operate without concern for justice and truth?
An article by William Genieys, CNRS Research Director at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE) at Sciences Po, and Mohammad-Saïd Darviche, Senior Lecturer at the University of Montpellier, originally published by our partner The Conversation.
The media’s focus on Trump’s comments on making Canada the 51st US state and annexing Greenland and billionaire Elon Musk’s support for some far-right parties in Europe has obscured the ambitious programme to transform the federal government that the new political elite intends to implement.
In the wake of Trump’s inauguration on January 20, the Republican elites most loyal to the MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) leader, who staunchly oppose Democratic elites and their policies, are operating amid their party’s control over the executive and legislative branches (at least until the midterm elections in 2026), a conservative-dominated Supreme Court that includes three Trump-appointed justices, and a federal judiciary that shifted right during his first term.
However, the political project of the Trumpist camp consists less of challenging elitism in general than attacking a specific elite: one particular to liberal democracies.
Castigating democratic elitism
Typical anti-elite political propaganda, along the lines of “I speak for you, the people, against the elites who betray and deceive you,” claims that a populist leader would be able to exercise power for and on behalf of the people without the mediation of an elite disconnected from their needs.
Political theorist John Higley sees behind this form of anti-elite discourse an association between so-called “forceful leaders” and “leonine elites” (who take advantage of the former and their political success): a phenomenon that threatens the future of Western democracies.
Since the Second World War, there has been a consensus in US politics on the idea of democratic elitism. According to this principle, elitist mediation is inevitable in mass democracies and must be based on two criteria: respect for the results of elections (which must be free and competitive); and the relative autonomy of political institutions.
The challenge to this consensus has been growing since the 1990s with the increased polarization of American politics. It gained new momentum during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, which was marked by anti-elite rhetoric from both Republicans and Democrats (such as senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren). At the heart of some of their diatribes was an aversion to “the Establishment” on the east and west coasts of the United States, where many prestigious financial, political and academic institutions are based, and the conspiracy notion of the “deep state”.
Trump’s populism from above: a revolt of the elites
The idea that democracy could be betrayed by “the revolt of the elites”, put forward by the US historian Christopher Lasch (1932-1994), is not new. For the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, it is a particular feature of contemporary populism, which comes “from above.” Indeed, if the 20th century was the era of the “revolt of the masses”, the 21st century, according to Appadurai, “is characterized by the ‘revolt of the elites’.” This would explain the rise of populist autocracies (such as those currently led by Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Narendra Modi in India, and formerly led by Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil), but also the election successes of populist leaders in consolidated democracies (including those of Trump in the US, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, for example).
As Appadurai explains, the success of Trumpian populism, which represents a revolt by ordinary Americans against the elites, casts a veil over the fact that, following Trump’s victory in November, “it is a new elite that has ousted from power the despised Democratic elite that had occupied the White House for nearly four years.”
The aim of this “alter elite” is to replace the “regular” Democrat elites, but also the moderate Republicans, by deeply discrediting their values (such as liberalism and so-called “wokeism”) and their supposedly corrupt political practices. As a result, this populism “from above” carried out by the President’s supporters constitutes an alternative elite configuration, the effects of which on American democratic life could be more significant than those observed during Trump’s first term.
Beyond the idea of a ‘Muskoligarchy’
The idea that we are witnessing the formation of a “Muskoligarchy” –in other words, an economic elite (including tech barons such as Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Andreessen) rallying around the figurehead of Elon Musk, whom Trump asked to lead what the president has called a “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) –is seductive. It perfectly combines the vision of an alliance between a “conspiratorial, coherent, conscious” ruling class and an oligarchy made up of the “ultra-rich”. For the Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf, it is even a sign of the development of “pluto-populism”. (It is also worth noting that former president Joe Biden, in his farewell speech, referred to “an oligarchy… of extreme wealth” and “the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex.”)
However, some observers are cautious about the advent of a “Muskoligarchy.” They point to the sociological eclecticism of the new Trumpian elite, whose facade of unity is held together above all by a political loyalty, for the time being unfailing, to the MAGA leader. The fact remains, however, that the various factions of this new “anti-elite” elite are converging around a common agenda: to rid the federal government of the supposed stranglehold of Democratic “insiders.”
An ‘anti-elite’ elite against the ‘deep state’
In his presidential inauguration speech in 1981, Ronald Reagan said: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” The anti-elitism of the Trump elite is inspired by this diagnosis, and defends a simple political programme: rid democracy of the “deep state.”
This conspiracy theory has been taken to the extreme by Kash Patel, the candidate being considered to head the FBI. In his book, Government Gangsters, a veritable manifesto against the federal administration, the former lawyer writes about the need to resort to “purges” in order to bring elite Democrats to justice. He lists around 60 people, including Biden, ex-secretary of state Hillary Clinton and ex-vice president Kamala Harris.
The appointment of Russell Vought as head of the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, a person who is known for having sought to obstruct the transition to the Biden Administration in 2021, also highlights the hard turn that the Trump administration is likely to take.
Reshaping the state around political loyalty
To “deconstruct the administrative state”, the “anti-elite” elites are relying on Project 2025, a 900-plus page programme report that the conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation, which published it, says was produced by “more than 400 scholars and policy experts.” According to former Project 2025 director Paul Dans, “never before has the entire movement… banded together to construct a comprehensive plan” for this purpose. On this basis, the “anti-elite” elite want to impose loyalty to Project 2025 on federal civil servants.
But this idea is not new. At the end of his first term, Trump issued an executive order facilitating the dismissal of statutory federal civil servants occupying “policy-related positions” and considered to be “disloyal”. The decree was rescinded by president Biden, but Trump on his first day back in office signed an executive order that seeks to void Biden’s rescindment. As President, Trump is also able to allocate senior positions within the federal administration to his supporters.
The “anti-elite” elite not only want to reduce the size of the state, as was the case under Reagan’s “neoliberalism”, but to deconstruct and rebuild it in their own image. Their real aim is a more lasting victory: the transformation of democratic elitism into populist elitism.
Today’s blog post is a Congress.gov interview with Lindsay Gibmeyer, a bill clerk at the United States Senate.
1. Describe your background
I grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, so close geographically, but in stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of the city. I attended the University of Texas at Dallas and later, missing Maryland’s famous blue crabs, finished my undergraduate studies at the University of Maryland College Park. My first job on the Hill was in the Senate Bill Clerk’s office as an assistant bill clerk. Coming from a background in social science research, I was all about data and had very limited legislative process knowledge. Luckily, I landed in one of the best spots possible to hit the ground running with a front-row seat to the legislative process. I really owe all of my success to my fellow colleagues who are wonderful resources with a wealth of institutional knowledge.
2. How would you describe your job to other people?
I have heard this role described as the nervous system of the Senate. We are part of the non-partisan team who have a hand in all legislative material from the Senate and messaging between the houses. Nearly everything travels through our office at one point or another and is processed and made available to the public the next day via the Congressional Record and Congress.gov.
3. What is your role in the development of Congress.gov?
Soon after I began my Senate career, the transition from Thomas.gov and LIS was beginning to move forward. There were concerns with representing our data in an accurate manner and combining two sites—one user-friendly public-facing and one more centered around Congressional needs—was not an easy task. The Bill Clerk’s office was asked to provide testing and functionality feedback, from a “power user” point of view, a fancy way of saying we use and depend on Congress.gov a lot! My role in the project was to provide feedback specifically from our office’s point of view and help shape how our data is presented to the public. I was really excited about this project because of my previous data management background, and I found it familiar to review how the data was carried via XML files. I was also available to help explain how we process floor actions and data entry. Together with a lot of great collaboration with our Library of Congress and LIS partners, we have the present-day, multi-audience Congress.gov.
4. What is your favorite feature of Congress.gov?
I really like one of the newer features of Congress.gov where the Congressional Record links to the legislation. As a daily user, it is nice to quickly access the online record via the All Actions tab and pull up either the floor action or the text of the measure. This is especially useful for staff or the public to find the full text of legislation or amendments the day after submission.
5. What is the most interesting fact you’ve learned about the legislative process while working for Congress?
As the Bill Clerk, I think one of the most interesting facts about the legislative process is the many paths a bill can take before it becomes law. Bills can be referred to a committee, or fast-tracked through various paths for quicker floor consideration—which can sometimes take the agreement of all 100 members—not an easy feat! We have recently reached record highs in the number of introduced bills in the Senate at 5400 + and counting and that is not including House bills. A very small percentage of those measures become law. At last count, there were 224 public laws during the 118th Congress.
6. What’s something most of your co-workers do not know about you?
Not a well-kept secret—my family is obsessed with Golden Retrievers! Here are our three rescue Goldens (Alexander, Hamilton, and Rosie).
Lindsay’s rescued golden retrievers: Alexander, Hamilton, and Rosie. Picture courtesy of Lindsay Gibmeyer.
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Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Zsa-Zsa Temmers Boggenpoel, Academic, Stellenbosch University
South Africa has a new law to govern the expropriation (or compulsory acquisition) of private property by government for public purposes or in the public interest.
The act repeals the apartheid-era Expropriation Act 63 of 1975, and aims to align expropriation law with the constitution. It sets out the procedures, rules and regulations for expropriation. Besides setting out in quite a detailed fashion how expropriations are to take place, the act also provides an outline regarding how compensation is to be determined.
In South Africa’s colonial and apartheid past, land distribution was grossly unequal on the basis of race. The country is still suffering the effects of this. So expropriation of property is a potential tool to reduce land inequality. This has become a matter of increasing urgency. South Africans have expressed impatience with the slow pace of land reform.
Property rights and land reform
There is much debate in the country about the provisions of the new act. The debate is mostly about the extent to which it affects existing private property rights. Some argue the act is unconstitutional. Others welcome it as a necessary step in the right direction.
I’m a professor of law with a keen interest in this area of the law, and recently edited a book on land expropriation in South Africa by leading experts. My view is that an expropriation act that is aligned with the constitution should be welcomed, to enable land reform to work effectively.
Land reform also needs a capable and proactive state that implements the legal framework in such a manner that prioritises expropriation as a mechanism to ensure land reform.
So far, expropriation has not been used effectively to redistribute land more equitably, as part of land reform.
I am not convinced that the act, in its current form, is the silver bullet to effect large-scale land reform – at least not the type of radical land reform that South Africa urgently needs.
Understandably, the act will have a severe impact on property rights. But it still substantially protects landowners affected by expropriation. Only in very limited cases would they not be compensated.
Protections for land owners
The act says that property must not be expropriated arbitrarily or for a purpose other than a public purpose or in the public interest.
Public purpose means by or for the benefit of the public. For example, expropriating property to build roads, schools and hospitals. Public interest is broader and includes the nation’s commitment to land reform.
“Arbitrary” would usually mean without reason or justification.
The act further requires that an expropriating authority – an organ of state or person empowered by the act or any other legislation – must first try to reach an agreement with the owner to acquire the property on reasonable terms before considering expropriation.
This gives some power to a landowner, even though expropriation does not normally require consent. The act also says a specific expropriation must always be authorised by a law.
No compensation?
Section 12 of the act deals with compensation for expropriation. It is arguably the most controversial part of the new legislation. Section 12(1) does not appear to be problematic and is largely the same wording as section 25(3) of the constitution. This part of the property clause sets out what must be taken into account when compensation for expropriation is determined.
Section 12(3) of the act refers to “nil compensation” – when nil rand (monetary) compensation may be paid. There is no explicit reference to nil compensation in the current wording of section 25 of the constitution. It’s a new thing in the Expropriation Act.
However, courts have toyed with the idea that section 25 of the constitution already provides room for a reduction in compensation.
The circumstances in which nil compensation could be granted in terms of the new act are in fact very limited. Section 12(3) leaves the discretion to the expropriating authority to determine when it may be just and equitable to pay nil compensation. However, the act lacks guidelines on how such a discretion must be exercised.
The scope of section 12(3) is also limited in some respects. For one, it is restricted to land. Only where land is expropriated would nil compensation be an option. Therefore, not all forms of property can be expropriated without compensation. The notion of property under section 25(1) of the constitution is generally wide and includes various rights and interests, which are broader than just land. For instance, personal rights, mineral rights and licences are included under the section 25(1) notion of property.
This wide understanding of property is not applicable to section 12(3), which refers to “land” being expropriated.
Section 12(3) is also limited to the expropriation of land “in the public interest”. Nil compensation is therefore envisaged only in the context of expropriation of land undertaken in the public interest, and not also for a public purpose.
Three of the four categories listed in section 12(3), where nil compensation is envisaged, are linked to the way in which the property was being used prior to the expropriation. Land used in a productive manner is therefore not evidently envisaged under section 12(3).
Nil compensation is not necessarily limited to the instances listed. Still, the amount of compensation must – in all instances – be just and equitable.
Novel approach
The act forces South Africans to engage with the idea of nil compensation in a much more direct manner.
The presence of a clause dedicated to nil compensation provides new clarity on when this could apply.
It is hard to determine whether this act will pass constitutional muster without seeing how expropriation under it will work in practice. It remains to be seen whether it will have the far-reaching consequences that many fear, or call for.
– Land seizure and South Africa’s new expropriation bill: scholar weighs up the new act – https://theconversation.com/land-seizure-and-south-africas-new-expropriation-bill-scholar-weighs-up-the-new-act-244697
Three days before his presidential inauguration, Donald Trump launched a meme coin, a type of cryptocurrency whose value is buoyed by social media and internet culture, rather than any sort of functionality or intrinsic value.
Referencing the coin in a news conference on Jan. 21, 2025, a reporter asked Trump if he intended to continue selling products that benefited him personally while being president.
“You made a lot of money [on $Trump], sir,” he told Trump, who seemed oblivious to its meteoric rise in value.
“How much?” Trump asked.
“Several billion dollars, it seems like, in the last couple days.”
Donald Trump is asked about the successful launch of his new meme coin.
While it’s true that Trump stands to benefit handsomely from the meme coin and his other crypto ventures, the claims of Trump himself earning billions off it are overblown.
Funny money or filch?
Meme coins became popular in 2013 with the launch of Dogecoin, which its creators intended as a joke, spoofing the many other seemingly useless cryptocurrencies that were popping up at the time. It was never supposed to be a popular investment. The creators even attempted to make it as undesirable as possible to ensure it wouldn’t.
Twelve years later, it remains in the top 10 cryptocurrencies and has inspired thousands of other meme coins to launch.
In 2025, it’s cheaper and easier than ever to launch and trade these tokens.
For example, all it takes to create a new coin on the website Pump.fun is a name, ticker symbol, description, image and the equivalent of roughly US$5 worth of cryptocurrency.
Moonshot, the crypto exchange that Trump’s meme coin website routes interested buyers to, allows users to sign up in as little as 10 minutes. They’re then able to purchase the Trump coin and a slew of other meme coins.
The vast majority of meme coins launched are dubious. Many are outright scams. For instance, in August 2024 the Instagram account of McDonald’s was hacked to advertise a meme coin named $Grimace in a nod to the fast-food chain’s purple mascot. After artificially inflating the price of the coin, the creators cashed out close to $700,000.
There are countless other scam coins that fly under the radar using the same dynamic: generate hype, pump the price and dump on investors.
Looking under the hood
So how much might Trump and his associates actually benefit from his new meme coin and, more broadly, the “free-for-all” attitude his administration is taking toward the crypto industry?
I study the gray area between participation and exploitation in crypto markets, and I dug deeper into the Trump meme coin.
One way to assess whether a meme coin offering is a scam is to look at its “tokenomics” – that is, the predetermined number of units of its supply, how that supply is distributed and how much of it the creator gets to keep. The higher the percentage of the supply allocated to the creators, the more they can sell for profit. As media studies scholar Lana Swartz points out, creator tokens were originally intended for developers to crowdfund their startups. But with meme coins – which typically don’t claim to build anything – they exist to enrich their creators and, potentially, fund continued marketing of the coin.
Unlike Dogecoin, which took a “fair launch” approach – meaning that its creators didn’t allocate a portion of the initial coins to themselves before allowing others to trade it – the majority of Trump tokens are allocated to its creators on a three-year-long distribution schedule.
In fact, 80% of the coin supply will be distributed to the coin’s creators over the course of three years. In other words, the tokenomics of the Trump meme coin are set up so that its creators can slowly sell off their large supply without drastically manipulating its price. Rather than quickly pulling the rug from under investors’ feet, they can do it slowly.
None of this is hidden information – the tokenomics of the Trump meme coin are featured prominently on the coin’s website.
Notably, none of the people behind the coin will begin receiving portions of the supply until March 2025. The amount of profit they can reap will be based on future prices. At the time of this writing, the Trump meme coin was down roughly 60% from its peak.
Who are these creators anyway? The various layers of limited liability companies behind the project, listed in fine print on the $Trump meme website, obscure which individuals stand to benefit.
Presuming Trump is one of these creators, the president technically doesn’t have an allotment of the supply to cash out – not until March, at least.
So, no, Trump didn’t make billions from the coin. But he still stands to potentially vacuum up millions of dollars from unwitting investors. Judging by the spike in crypto exchange downloads over the weekend of the Trump coin’s launch, it attracted many new, and likely novice, speculators. Coins like this, which can significantly devalue in a matter of hours, can be distressing introductions to the world of investing.
This isn’t the first time Trump has tried to make a killing on crypto, either. He’s already brought in millions off the sales of five nonfungible token launches – which are essentially digital trading cards – since 2022.
Have fun!
The final words in Trump’s meme coin announcement on his social media platform Truth Social sum up his administration’s attitude toward the crypto industry over the next four years: “Have fun!”
In a recent Fox Business interview, Sacks was asked if he thought Trump’s meme coin was a conflict of interest. He said no, suggesting that the coins should be thought of as “collectibles” akin to “a baseball card or a stamp.”
David Sacks, Donald Trump’s crypto czar, sees little issue with Trump’s crypto investments.
Notably, the $Trump website also refers to the tokens as “cards” and “memes,” rather than coins. This could be an attempt to skirt legal trouble: It frames them as tokens of mere amusement rather than serious investment vehicles with expectations of profit.
Nonetheless, several members of Congress have already called for a probe into the Trump meme coin.
No matter how you define $Trump, one thing remains clear: The structure of the coin is set up to siphon money out of retail investors for at least the next three years. Sure, ordinary speculators can still profit off it, so long as its value remains propped up. That’s basically a gamble.
Maximilian Brichta 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.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Alexandra Moore, Professor of Human Rights in Literary and Cultural Studies, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Sailing ships are a common feature of Moath al-Alwi’s art.Moath al-Alwi, 2016, CC BY-SA
When Moath al-Alwi left Guantánamo Bay for resettlement in Oman, accompanying him on his journey was a cache of artwork he created during more than two decades of detention.
Al-Alwi was detainee number “028” – an indication that he was one of the first to arrive at the U.S. military prison off Cuba after it opened in January 2002. His departure from the detention center on Jan. 6, 2025, along with 10 fellow inmates, was part of an effort to reduce the prison’s population before the end of President Joe Biden’s term.
For al-Alwi, it meant freedom not only for himself, but also for his artwork. While not all detainees shared his passion, creating art was not an uncommon pursuit inside Guantánamo – indeed it has been a feature, formally and informally, of the detention center since its opening more than 20 years ago.
As editors of the recently published book “The Guantánamo Artwork and Testimony of Moath al-Alwi: Deaf Walls Speak,” we found that art-making in Guantánamo was more than self-expression; it became a testament to detainees’ emotions and experiences and influenced relationships inside the detention center. Examining the art offers unique ways of understanding conditions inside the facility.
Art from tea bags and toilet paper
Detained without charge or trial for 23 years, al-Alwi was first cleared for release in December 2021. Due to unstable conditions in his home country of Yemen, however, his transfer was subject to finding another country for resettlement. Scheduled for release in early October 2023, he and 10 other Yemeni detainees were further delayed when the Biden administration canceled the flight due to concerns over the political climate after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
Sabri Mohammad Ibrahim Al Qurashi depicted Lady Liberty with a cage at her base. Sabri Mohammad Ibrahim Al Qurashi, CC BY-SA
During his detention, al-Alwi suffered abuse and ill treatment, including forced feedings. Making art was a way for him, and others, to survive and assert their humanity, he said. Along with fellow former detainees Sabri al-Qurashi, Ahmed Rabbani, Muhammad Ansi and Khalid Qasim, among others, al-Alwi became an accomplished artist while being held. His work was featured in several art shows and in a New York Times opinion documentary short
During the detention center’s early years, these men used whatever materials were at hand to create artwork – the edge of a tea bag to write on toilet paper, an apple stem to imprint floral and geometric patterns and poems onto Styrofoam cups, which the authorities would destroy after each meal.
In 2010, the Obama administration began offering art classes at Guantánamo in an attempt to show the world they were treating prisoners humanely and helping them occupy their time.
However, those attending were given only rudimentary supplies. And they were subjected to invasive body searches to and from class and initially shackled to the floor, with one hand chained to the table, throughout each session. Furthermore, the subject matter for their art was restricted – detainees were forbidden from representing certain aspects of their detention, and all artwork was subject to approval and risked being destroyed.
Despite this, many detainees participated in the classes for camaraderie and the opportunity to engage in some form of creative expression.
Those who have been transferred from Guantánamo describe the art as a way to express their appreciation for culture, the natural world and their families while imprisoned by a regime that consistently characterized them as violent and inhuman.
The Statue of Liberty became a frequent motif Guantánamo artists deployed to communicate the betrayal of U.S. laws and ideals. Often, Lady Liberty was depicted in distress – drowning, shackled or hooded. For Sabri al-Qurashi, the symbol of freedom under duress represented his own condition when he painted it. “I am in prison, not free, and without any rights,” he told us.
Sabri Mohammad Ibrahim Al Qurashi painting of the Statue of Liberty. Sabri Mohammad Ibrahim Al Qurashi, 2012, CC BY-SA
Other times, the artwork responded directly to the men’s day-to-day conditions of confinement.
One of al-Alwi’s early pieces was a model of a three-dimensional window. Approximately 40 x 55 inches, the window was filled in with images carefully torn from nature and travel magazines, and layered to create depth, so that it appeared to look out on an island with a house with palm and coconut trees made from twisted pieces of rope and soap.
Al-Alwi was initially allowed to keep it in his windowless cell, and fellow detainees and guards would visit to “look out” the window.
But, as far as we know, it was eventually lost or destroyed in a prison raid.
Art as representation and respite
In another example of how artwork can be an expression of what former detainees call their “brotherhood,” Khalid Qasim, who was imprisoned at the age of 23 and held for more than two decades before being transferred alongside al-Alwi, mixed coffee grounds and coarse sand to create a series of nine textured, evocative paintings to memorialize each of the nine men who died while held at Guantánamo.
Especially in periods when camp rules allowed detainees to create artwork in their cells, the artists’ use of prison detritus and found objects made the artwork more than simply a depiction of what the men lacked, desired or imagined. Artwork helped create an alternative forum for the men’s experiences, especially for those artists who, along with the vast majority of Guantánamo’s 779 detainees, never faced charge or trial.
The pieces served as symbols and metaphors of the detainees’ experiences. For example, al-Alwi describes his 2015 large model ship, The Ark, as fighting against the waves of an imagined, threatening sea. In creating it, he wrote, “I felt I was rescuing myself.”
Moath al-Alwi used found items to create his model ships. Moath al-Alwi, 2017, CC BY-SA
Constructed out of the materials of his imprisonment, the work also points to the conditions of his daily life in Guantánamo. Made from the strands of mops, unraveled prayer cap and T-shirt threads, bottle caps, bits of sponges and cardboard from meal packaging, al-Alwi’s ships – he went on to create at least seven – reveal both his artistic ingenuity and his circumstances.
Guantánamo artists talk about the artwork as being imprisoned like them and subjected to the same restrictions and seemingly arbitrary processes of approval or disappearance.
The transfer to Oman of al-Alwi and his artwork releases both from those processes. It also creates an opportunity to inform the public about what Guantánamo meant to those who were held there, and to the 15 men who remain.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Elana Redfield, Federal Policy Director at the Williams Institute, University of California, Los Angeles
President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 23, 2025.AP Photo/Ben Curtis
Amid a flurry of executive orders affecting transgender Americans, the Trump administration ordered restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors. Calling it “a stain on our Nation’s history,” the Jan. 28, 2025, order seeks to “end” this form of treatment for Americans under 19 years old.
The Conversation U.S. interviewed Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute, an independent research center at the UCLA School of Law dedicated to studying sexual orientation and gender identity law. She describes the aims of the executive order, how much weight it carries, and how it should be understood in the broader context of legal battles over access to gender-affirming care.
What’s the scope of the executive order?
Twenty-six states have already restricted gender-affirming care for minors or banned it outright. So the order seeks to extend restrictions to the rest of the country using the weight of the executive branch.
However, it’s not a national ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Instead, it’s directing federal agencies to regulate and restrict this form of care.
That being said, federal agencies have a tremendous impact on American life. Trans kids rely on publicly funded health insurance programs such as Medicaid and TRICARE, which is administered to the children of active duty service members via the Department of Defense. And a big part of the executive order is directing the federal agencies that administer these programs to review their own policies to ensure that they are not supporting gender-affirming care for minors.
So what we’re really seeing is the federal government trying to erect barriers to kids accessing this care.
Does the executive branch have the authority to unilaterally ban federal funding of certain medical treatments?
The answer is a little mixed. A president might be able to suspend or put a temporary pause on funding a particular type of treatment or service. But the actual parameters of a program – and how agencies should implement them – are determined by Congress and, to some extent, by the courts.
Ultimately, the president can only take actions in ways that are designated by the Constitution, or through some specific power that Congress has granted to the executive branch. I don’t see that authority granted for a lot of what’s contained in this executive order. But many of these directives will probably be litigated in court, where the president will likely argue that he has the power to direct agencies to do all they can to put a halt to gender-affirming care for minors.
Do private health insurers fall outside the scope of this executive order?
On the surface, yes. But it’s easy to see how directives from the executive branch can touch broader components of the country’s health care system, including private hospitals and private health insurance.
For example, Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act is a nondiscrimination provision. It says there can be no sex discrimination when it comes to approving health care treatments. This has been interpreted to mean that health insurance plans receiving federal funding cannot deny a policyholder gender-affirming care. However, this interpretation has been blocked by a federal court.
The question of whether this definition of sex discrimination encompasses gender identity is currently playing out in the courts. For example, there’s a pending U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors. Should the Supreme Court determine that Tennessee is able to ban gender-affirming care for minors, it’s possible to see how this could impact private health insurance coverage for gender-affirming care.
Transgender rights supporters and opponents rally outside of the U.S. Supreme Court as the high court hears arguments in a case about Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming care for minors on Dec. 4, 2024. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
What else stood out to you from the executive order?
The executive order directs the Department of Justice to discourage doctors and hospitals from administering gender-affirming care to minors, characterizing it as genital mutilation, which is a heinous-sounding offense. Even though this is an inaccurate comparison, it could have a chilling effect even in states where this form of care is legal.
The order also contains a provision that asks Congress to extend the statute of limitations for gender-affirming care, so that someone who received gender-affirming care as a minor and decides they’re not happy with it decades later can sue their doctor. Some states have already extended the statute of limitations to 30 years for gender-affirming care.
Again, this could have a chilling effect in states where the care is legal. What doctor or hospital would want to expose themselves to this risk?
Of course, these two elements constitute directives from the executive branch, but we don’t know how they’ll be enforced. They do reveal, however, some of the ways in which the administration plans to direct its efforts.
Before Roe v. Wade was overturned, federal funding of elective abortion had been restricted for decades under the Hyde Amendment. You can’t receive coverage for an abortion under a Medicaid plan, for example. Do you see this executive order as Trump trying to simply enact – via fiat, of course – his own version of the Hyde Amendment, but instead applied to gender-affirming care for minors?
I think there’s a key difference between the two. The Hyde Amendment, which has been repeatedly reenacted by Congress, prohibits federal funding of abortion care, but it doesn’t prohibit states from allowing or permitting abortion. It’s always operated as a sort of compromise: It says providers can’t use federal funding for an abortion, but they can use their own funding to administer abortions – and oh, by the way, they can still receive federal funding for other health services.
This executive order, on the other hand, takes a much more uncompromising position: It tells agency heads to stop directing any and all federal funds to institutions that research or provide gender-affirming care.
Again, it’s important to remember that executive orders aren’t established policy. They’re simply directing agencies to craft certain policies and encouraging lawmakers to enact legislation.
So far, much of the legislation restricting gender-affirming care – whether it’s at the state level or in the executive branch – has centered on minors, or individuals under 19. Are there any threats to gender-affirming care for adults?
Only one state, Florida, has enacted a law that specifically regulates gender-affirming care for adults. That law basically sets some compliance standards and restricts who can prescribe the care. Florida also banned the use of state funds for gender-affirming care for everyone, adults and children. So that means, for example, those who are incarcerated in state prisons can’t receive gender-affirming care.
Florida isn’t the only state that has enacted a state funding ban. Depending on your insurance, this could mean you’re forced to pay out of pocket for your procedures and treatment, which can be prohibitively expensive.
What are you going to be watching for in the coming weeks?
I’m sure someone’s going to sue to challenge the order. The problem, though, is that an executive order is an expression of policy ideas. You need something to actually happen before lawyers and activists can react to it. So I’ll be tracking federal agencies to see how they specifically try to enact some of these directives.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
This executive order contains language that characterizes the science around gender-affirming care as junk science. It’s repeatedly described as chemical and surgical mutilation, or as maiming and sterilizing kids. There’s talk of rapid-onset gender dysphoria, which has been discredited.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By John W. Daily, Research Professor in Thermo Fluid Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder
The wind and terrain can quickly change how a fire, like this one near Los Angeles in January 2025, behaves.AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez
As wind-driven wildfires spread through the Los Angeles area in January 2025, fire-spotting technology and computer models were helping firefighters understand the rapidly changing environment they were facing.
That technology has evolved over the years, yet some techniques are very similar to those used over 100 years ago.
I have spent several decades studying combustion, including wildfire behavior and the technology used to track fires and predict where wildfires might turn. Here’s a quick tour of the key technologies used today.
Spotting fires faster
First, the fire must be discovered.
Often wildfires are reported by people seeing smoke. That hasn’t changed, but other ways fires are spotted have evolved.
In the early part of the 20th century, the newly established U.S. Forest Service built fire lookout towers around the country. The towers were topped by cabins with windows on all four walls and provided living space for the fire lookouts. The system was motivated by the Great Fire of 1910 that burned 3 million acres in Washington, Idaho and Montana and killed 87 people.
Before satellites, fire crews watched for smoke from fire towers across the national forests. K. D. Swan, U.S. Forest Service
Today, cameras watch over many high-risk areas. California has more than 1,100 cameras watching for signs of smoke. Artificial intelligence systems continuously analyze the images to provide data for firefighters to quickly respond. AI is a way to train a computer program to recognize repetitive patterns: smoke plumes in the case of fire.
Once a fire is spotted, one immediate task for firefighting teams is to estimate how the fire is going to behave so they can deploy their limited firefighting resources most effectively.
Fire managers have seen many fires and have a sense of the risks their regions face. Today, they also have computer simulations that combine data about the terrain, the materials burning and the weather to help predict how a fire is likely to spread.
Fuel models
Fuel models are based on the ecosystem involved, using fire history and laboratory testing. In Southern California, for example, much of the wildland fuel is chaparral, a type of shrubland with dense, rocky soil and highly flammable plants in a Mediterranean climate. Chaparral is one of the fastest-burning fuel types, and fires can spread quickly in that terrain.
For human-made structures, things are a bit more complex. The materials a house is made of – if it has wood siding, for example – and the environment around it, such as how close it is to trees or wooden fences, play an important role in how likely it is to burn and how it burns.
How scientists study fire behavior in a lab.
Weather and terrain
Terrain is also important because it influences local winds and because fire tends to run faster uphill than down. Terrain data is well known thanks to satellite imagery and can easily be incorporated into computer codes.
Weather plays another critical role in fire behavior. Fires need oxygen to burn, and the windier it is, the more oxygen is available to the fire. High winds also tend to generate embers from burning vegetation that can be blown up to 5 miles in the highest winds, starting spot fires that can quickly spread.
Today, large computer simulations can forecast the weather. There are global models that cover the entire Earth and local models that cover smaller areas but with better resolution that provides greater detail.
Both provide real-time data on the weather for creating fire behavior simulations.
Modeling how flames spread
Flame-spread models can then estimate the likely movement of a fire.
Scientists build these models by studying past fires and conducting laboratory experiments, combined with mathematical models that incorporate the physics of fire. With local terrain, fuel and real-time weather information, these simulations can help fire managers predict a fire’s likely behavior.
Examples of how computer modeling can forecast a fire’s spread. American Physical Society.
Advanced modeling can account for fuel details such as ground-level plant growth and tree canopies, including amount of cover, tree height and tree density. These models can estimate when a fire will reach the tree canopy and how that will affect the fire’s spread.
Forecasting helps, but wind can change fast
All these tools are made available to firefighters in computer applications and can help fire crews as they respond to wildfires.
However, wind can rapidly change speed or direction, and new fires can start in unexpected places, meaning fire managers know they have to be prepared for many possible outcomes – not just the likely outcomes they see on their computer screens.
Ultimately, during a fire, firefighting strategy is based on human judgment informed by experience, as well as science and technology.
John W. Daily receives funding from the Department of Defense for wildland fire research. He is affiliated with the Combustion Institute and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is a Fellow of both organizations.
