Category: Education

MIL-Evening Report: ER Report: A Roundup of Significant Articles on EveningReport.nz for July 10, 2025

ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on July 10, 2025.

How can we stay safe after data breaches? Step 1 is to change the cybersecurity laws
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Andreotta, Lecturer, School of Management and Marketing, Curtin University Moor Studio / Getty Images Last week, Australian airline Qantas announced cyber attackers had accessed personal data about some of its customers. The company later confirmed that 5.7 million customer records were involved. The attackers targeted an

Cyber crime and real-world crime are converging in a dangerous new way – here’s how to stay safe
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jongkil Jay Jeong, Senior Fellow, School of Computing and Information System, The University of Melbourne It starts with a call from someone claiming to be your bank. They know your name. They know your bank. They even know your credit card number. There’s been “unusual activity” on

Labor leads in two Victorian state polls, but Premier Jacinta Allan’s approval tanks
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Labor leads in Victorian state polls by Newspoll and Redbridge, but Premier Jacinta Allan is very unpopular. Two federal polls give Labor big leads and a Tasmanian

Cannabinoid products may reduce total sleep time in adults with insomnia: new study
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Camilla Hoyos, Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Sleep and Chronobiology, Macquarie University Lysenko Andrii/Shutterstock You might have heard cannabis and cannabinoid products can help people sleep. Data shows one of the top reasons people use cannabis is to help them sleep. But there’s a dearth of

Planning a ‘Euro summer’ or cruise? Why another flu shot might save your holiday
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Janetzki, Lecturer in Pharmacy and Pharmacology, University of South Australia DavideAngelini/Shutterstock Are you escaping a southern hemisphere winter by heading off for a “Euro summer”? Maybe you’re planning a cruise through the Mediterranean. Or you’re dreaming of a white Christmas overseas later in the year. Maybe

Melting ice will strengthen the monsoon in northern Australia – but cause drier conditions north of the Equator
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Node Leader in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures, Flinders University Sebnem Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images Almost two-thirds of the world’s population is affected by the monsoon – the annual

Earth’s ‘oldest’ impact crater is much younger than previously thought – new study
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aaron J. Cavosie, Senior Lecturer, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University Outcrops of shocked rocks from the Miralga impact structure. Aaron Cavosie Ever been late because you misread a clock? Sometimes, the “clocks” geologists use to date events can also be misread. Unravelling Earth’s 4.5-billion-year

Where do giant volcanic eruptions come from? New study finds missing link to ‘blobs’ deep within Earth
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicolas Flament, Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow, Environmental Futures, School of Science, University of Wollongong Volcanic eruptions at Earth’s surface have significant consequences. Smaller ones can scare tourists on Mount Etna or disrupt air traffic. Giant, large-scale eruptions can have more serious impacts. One such event

Defence spending is like insurance – how will NZ pay the higher premiums?
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Hickson, Lecturer in Economics and Director, Business Taught Masters Programme, University of Canterbury Getty Images Defence spending is like insurance – you have to pay for it but you hope you never have to use it. And the higher the risk you face, the higher your

The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives shatters the church’s century-long effort to curate its own image
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brenton Griffin, Casual Lecturer and Tutor in History, Indigenous Studies, and Politics, Flinders University Hulu Reality TV series The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives follows a number of social media influencers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who rose to prominence through social media,

We interviewed 205 Australians convicted of murder and manslaughter. Alcohol’s role was alarming
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Li Eriksson, Senior Lecturer, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University We’ve long known there’s a link between alcohol and violence, but when it comes to homicide the stories behind the statistics are harder to grasp. Our study sheds rare light on what actually happens when

Thirsty future: Australia’s green hydrogen targets could require vastly more water than the government hopes
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Madoc Sheehan, Adjunct Associate Professor in Chemical Engineering, James Cook University totajla/Shutterstock Green hydrogen is touted by some as the future – a way for Australia to slowly replace its reliance on fossil fuel exports. The energy-dense gas has the potential to reduce emissions in sectors challenging

Israel’s Rafah camp – ‘humanitarian city’ or crime against humanity?
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shannon Bosch, Associate Professor (Law), Edith Cowan University Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz has announced a controversial plan to move up to 600,000 Palestinians in Gaza into a designated “humanitarian area” on the ruins of the southern city of Rafah. Access to the camp would be through

Ice baths are booming in popularity – but they come with health risks
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Cornell, PhD Candidate in Public Health & Community Medicine, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney Michele Ursi/Getty Images Walk through any trendy suburb and you might find a new “wellness” studio offering ice baths or “contrast therapy” (a sauna and ice bath combo). Scroll social media,

Can’t fill your ADHD script? Here’s why, and what to do while the shortage persists
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Janetzki, Lecturer in Pharmacy and Pharmacology, University of South Australia Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses are rising across Australia. But after finally getting a diagnosis, many people are discovering the medicine they’ve been prescribed isn’t available at the pharmacy. Australia faces a nation-wide shortage of methylphenidate

Medicinal cannabis is big business. But the latest clampdown won’t curb unsafe prescribing
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carmen Lim, NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow, National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research, The University of Queensland Nuva Frames/Shutterstock Australia’s key regulator of health professionals has announced it’s clamping down on unsafe prescribing of medicinal cannabis in the wake of surging patient demand. The Australian Health Practitioner

Are ‘ghost stores’ haunting your social media feed? How to spot and avoid them
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gary Mortimer, Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour, Queensland University of Technology CC BY The offer pops up in your social media feed. The website is professional and the imagery illustrates an Australian coastal region, or chic inner-CBD scene. The brand name indicates this exclusive fashion retailer

NZ Post is the latest company to drop its climate targets – another sign business is struggling to decarbonise
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pii-Tuulia Nikula, Associate Professor, School of Business, Eastern Institute of Technology Getty Images NZ Post committed to cutting its emissions by 32% by 2030 (based on 2018 levels), but recently announced it would abandon its climate target. The company was part of the Science Based Target initiative

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

July 10, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: How can we stay safe after data breaches? Step 1 is to change the cybersecurity laws

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Andreotta, Lecturer, School of Management and Marketing, Curtin University

Moor Studio / Getty Images

Last week, Australian airline Qantas announced cyber attackers had accessed personal data about some of its customers. The company later confirmed that 5.7 million customer records were involved.

The attackers targeted an offshore IT call centre, which enabled them to gain access to a third-party system.

The airline contacted affected customers shortly after the announcement, and sent a follow-up email a week later. The email apologised to customers and informed them attackers had accessed information about customers’ names as well as frequent flyer numbers and tier status.

The email may have felt familiar to Australians impacted by the 2022 Optus Breach or the 2024 Medisecure Hack — a routine apology, an assurance that immediate steps have been taken, and a statement that the company takes seriously the trust placed in it to safeguard personal information.

It’s an adequate response. But it ignores something that might genuinely make customer data safer in the future: stronger cybersecurity laws to prevent these kinds of breaches from happening in the first place.

How should we respond to data breaches?

If your data were involved in the Qantas breach, you might be wondering what to do about it.

The first sensible step might be to find out what personal information was compromised. Next, you might research the potential harm that could come from your name, Qantas Frequent Flyer number, and tier status being accessed.

You may learn about the risks of identity theft, account hijacking, and scams.

After that, you might want to figure out what actions you could take to protect yourself – that is, how to best secure your data. Plenty of websites offer advice along these lines.

If you are a Qantas customer, and received the follow-up email, you may have noticed a section titled “What steps can I take to protect myself?”. This part encourages users to stay alert, use two-factor authentication, stay informed about the latest threats, visit IDCARE’s Learning Centre, and never share passwords or sensitive information (stating that Qantas will never ask for them).

While these are helpful suggestions, they place a significant burden on the customer. They also imply that if our data becomes compromised, we may be partially to blame for not doing more to protect ourselves.

Is this fair or useful? Rather than just trying to protect ourselves after data breaches, we might be better off focusing our attention on why breaches occur and the legislators who make the rules for the companies that hold our data.

Does the law have an unhealthy obsession with data breaches?

It may seem that, to improve cybersecurity laws, we need to pay more attention to Qantas-like data breaches and impose bigger fines on companies when they occur. However, this is not necessarily the best solution.

As US privacy scholars Daniel Solove and Woodrow Hartzog point out in their 2022 book Breached!: “Data privacy law has an obsession with data breaches.”

Ironically, the authors claim, “this obsession has […] been the primary reason why the law has failed to stop the deluge of data breaches. The more obsessed with breaches the law has become, the more the law has failed to deal with them.”

Solove and Hartzog argue that focusing solely on the breaches themselves prevents us from concentrating on prevention.

How effective is Australian cyber security law?

In Australia, recent reforms to the Cyber Security Act 2024 introduced the Cyber Incident Review Board, which can:

make recommendations to government and industry about actions that could be taken to prevent, detect, respond to or minimise the impact of, cyber security incidents of a similar nature in the future.

These reforms are an important step in addressing prevention, and the Cyber Incident Review Board will undoubtedly draw many lessons from the Qantas case when it performs its post-incident review – such as identifying potential weaknesses at the offshore IT call centre.

However, we shouldn’t have to wait until an incident occurs to start thinking about how to protect against breaches. There are also concerns about whether the recommendations it offers will be put into law.

Ideally, we need legislation that focuses on prevention, not just post-incident responses. If we had laws that required companies to conduct audits, provide legally binding safety checks applicable to all relevant stakeholders, and impose penalties for non-compliance with these standards, it would genuinely improve prevention.

Revising our flight path

Our response to the Qantas breach will no doubt follow a familiar pattern: first, we panic! Then we get angry at the company. Next, we attempt to follow privacy advice – at least for a short while – changing a password or two before becoming complacent and then lowering our privacy vigilance. And then the cycle repeats the next time a breach occurs.

We don’t need to accept this eternal pattern, however. If we focus our attention on lawmakers, rather than these immediate responses we are all too familiar with, prevention becomes a possibility.

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

– ref. How can we stay safe after data breaches? Step 1 is to change the cybersecurity laws – https://theconversation.com/how-can-we-stay-safe-after-data-breaches-step-1-is-to-change-the-cybersecurity-laws-260816

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: RI Delegation Welcomes $1.5 Million In TRIO Funds to Help RI College Students Succeed

US Senate News:

Source: United States Senator for Rhode Island Jack Reed

WASHINGTON, DC – As Rhode Island’s Congressional delegation continues working to make college more affordable and protect Pell grants from budget cuts, U.S. Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and U.S. Representatives Seth Magaziner and Gabe Amo today announced $1.5 million in federal funding to support existing college success and completion programs at Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) and Rhode Island College (RIC) through the TRIO Student Support Services (SSS) program. For fiscal year 2025, CCRI will receive $949,145 and RIC will receive $544,728 in TRIO funding.

TRIO is a federal grant program administered by the U.S. Department of Education. TRIO represents the largest federal investment aimed at assisting low-income or first-generation college students or individuals with disabilities to successfully advance through the academic pipeline and navigate academic and financial barriers.

First-generation college students, those who meet low-income qualifications, or those with a disability are eligible to apply for TRIO. In order to help these students navigate college life, the SSS program offers specialized tutoring, along with workshops on issues like financial literacy, leadership development, and finding a career path. The federal program is designed to increase graduation rates and help students transfer from two-year to four-year colleges.

Last year, Congress appropriated $1.2 billion for the program. This year, the Trump Administration is seeking to eliminate federal funding for TRIO programs.

“TRIO helps students not only get on the college track, but succeed once they are on campus. It helps them acclimate to college life and prepares them to overcome key higher education hurdles. Through skills workshops, summer learning, and other support services, this program can be a real lifeline for first-generation college students. It teaches them things like time management, good study habits, and helps set them up for success in the college classroom and beyond. I am proud of the work CCRI and RIC are doing and will continue working to ensure more deserving students have the opportunity to attend college and the resources to afford it,” said U.S. Senator Jack Reed, a member of the Appropriations Committee, who got into a notable back and forth with Education Secretary Linda McMahon over TRIO funding at a recent hearing. Reed had to set the record straight and disabuse the Secretary of Education of the incorrect notion that the federal government has spent over $1 trillion on TRIO programs.

“TRIO programs have opened the door to higher education for many first-generation college students and students facing other obstacles,” said Whitehouse. “This federal funding will support the outstanding work CCRI and RIC do to bring higher education within reach for more Rhode Islanders.”

“Every student deserves a fair shot at college success, and the TRIO Student Support Services program provided at CCRI and RIC help make that possible by providing the mentorship, tools, and support students need to thrive,” said Magaziner. “I will keep fighting to protect federal education funding and expand programs like TRIO that open the doors of opportunity for more Rhode Islanders and strengthen the state’s workforce.”

“Every student deserves the tools to reach their full potential. Today’s federal TRIO grant brings $1.5 million to support first-generation and low-income students at the Community College of Rhode Island and Rhode Island College,” said Congressman Gabe Amo. “But let’s be clear, Trump’s budget proposal to eliminate TRIO funding is a direct threat to these students and the progress we’ve made. I’m fighting in Congress to protect these programs, defend educational opportunity, and ensure that Rhode Islanders aren’t left behind.”

CCRI’s successful TRIO SSS program, known as “Access to Opportunity,” was first launched in 1980 and serves approximately 440 CCRI students annually. Previous graduates have gone on to a variety of careers, including some current full-time and adjunct faculty and staff at CCRI.

Rhode Island College offers its TRIO programs through the Center for Scholar Development. These programs are designed to provide educational pathways in an affirming environment for first-generation scholars.

MIL OSI USA News –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Reed Welcomes $7M Federal Grant for URI Microplastics Research

US Senate News:

Source: United States Senator for Rhode Island Jack Reed

WASHINGTON, DC – Researchers have estimated that the bottom of Narragansett Bay is now covered with a layer of tiny plastic particles, commonly referred to as ‘microplastics,’ that is about 2 inches deep.

While microplastics are found everywhere these days, from products on the shelves to streams across the planet, experts are racing to better understand and inform the public about the impacts that these pollutants have on public health, ecosystems, and the environment.

These scientists include URI associate professor of chemical, biomolecular, and materials engineering, Daniel Roxbury, who is leading a URI research team dedicated to informing local communities about the dangers of microplastics and key steps to take in reducing plastics pollution. Roxbury’s research team was just awarded $7 million in federal research funding through the National Science Foundation (NSF) EPSCoR E-RISE Program.

Senator Reed, a longtime proponent of the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program at NSF, welcomed the funding and thanked URI researchers for helping to increase knowledge about microplastics and better inform local, state, and national mitigation plans for plastics pollution.

“Microplastics are a macro-problem. We need comprehensive, coordinated action to help protect people, communities, and public and environmental health. Researchers at URI have been on the cutting-edge of this kind of discovery,” said Senator Reed, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee who advocates each year for increased NSF research funding and has led efforts to ensure Rhode Island’s eligibility for the EPSCoR program since 2004. “This federal investment in URI’s important research comes at a time when the Trump Administration’s attacks on higher education and federal research funding threatens our understanding of science and the world we live in. But developing a better understanding of microplastics is not a partisan issue – it’s a public health, economic, and environmental imperative. I’m proud of the top-notch work Rhode Island scientists are doing and will continue fighting to support their work with federal research investments.”

EPSCOR is designed to fulfill NSF’s mandate to promote scientific progress nationwide. Through the program, NSF establishes partnerships with government, higher education, and industry that are designed to effect lasting improvements in a state’s or region’s academic research infrastructure, research and development (R&D) capacity, and hence, its national R&D competitiveness.

Researchers and scientists at URI will use the $7 million federal grant to advance a four year project in partnership with local stakeholders and other colleges and universities, such as Brown University, Roger Williams University, and Rhode Island College, to educate Rhode Islanders about microplastics in the coastal ecosystem and develop better tracking, modeling, and research processes that help identify sources of pollution.

The research project also aims to better understand the impact of microplastics on the livelihoods of Rhode Islanders who work on the Bay or in other local coastal waters.

Last August, Senator Reed joined Save the Bay and top researchers from Roger Williams University and URI to discuss the threat of microplastics and outline steps that households, communities, and elected officials can take to better protect people from the threat of microplastic pollution and preserve access to clean, safe water. Reed and the advocates called for stepped-up research, regulation, and coordinated action around plastic pollution.

MIL OSI USA News –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: Representatives of Chinese and Russian universities discussed new opportunities for cooperation between universities in Sichuan Province and Russia

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian – People’s Republic of China in Russian –

An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.

Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News

BEIJING, July 10 (Xinhua) — A forum on cooperation between universities in Sichuan Province and the Volga Region of Russia was recently held at Sichuan University. Representatives of Chinese and Russian universities held an in-depth exchange of views on academic exchanges, development of specialties and joint educational programs.

Scientific cooperation was the main topic of discussion. Rector of the Kozma Minin Nizhny Novgorod State Pedagogical University /NSPU/ Viktor Sdobnyakov noted China’s impressive achievements in physical chemistry, mechanical engineering, electronics and artificial intelligence, emphasizing the value of the Chinese model of integrating education, science and production. He expressed interest in joint scientific and technical projects with universities and enterprises in Sichuan Province.

Vice-president of Southwest Petroleum University Pei Xiangjun proposed expanding scientific cooperation in the field of carbon neutrality, artificial intelligence and alternative energy through joint research, the establishment of international laboratories and the commercialization of technologies to promote the socio-economic development of the two countries.

There is a positive trend in humanitarian exchanges between universities in Sichuan Province and Russia: 37 Russian students were enrolled in the summer school of the Southwest University of Finance and Economics, over 2,000 Chinese students are studying at Kazan Federal University, and the Mordovian State University named after N.P. Ogarev created the Center for Chinese Language and Culture.

To deepen ties, forum participants proposed creating cultural and educational platforms and building effective mechanisms for cooperation.

Zhang Haidong, deputy secretary of the Sichuan Normal University Party Committee, recommended using “Internet plus education” technologies to exchange educational resources and jointly train specialists. -0-

Please note: This information is raw content obtained directly from the source of the information. It is an accurate report of what the source claims and does not necessarily reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

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MIL OSI Russia News –

July 10, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Cyber crime and real-world crime are converging in a dangerous new way – here’s how to stay safe
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jongkil Jay Jeong, Senior Fellow, School of Computing and Information System, The University of Melbourne

It starts with a call from someone claiming to be your bank. They know your name. They know your bank. They even know your credit card number. There’s been “unusual activity” on your account, they say – and they just sent you a one-time passcode to verify your identity so they can assist.

You read out the code and feel reassured. Moments later, your funds are gone and the bank refuses reimbursement, citing a breach of terms because you voluntarily shared your passcode.

This is not a niche or isolated scam. It’s part of a growing pattern we’re seeing across Australia and beyond: cyber criminals are merging digital and real-world tactics in ways that make these frauds more convincing, harder to stop, and far more damaging.

It starts with stolen data

These scams don’t begin with a phishing email or fake app. They begin with data – your data – stolen in one of countless breaches, such as the latest Qantas incident that exposed the details of up to 5.7 million customers.

Sometimes the personal data has been sold through third-party data brokers. Names, phone numbers, emails, even card details are routinely leaked and traded online.

Once they have this information, scammers get to work. The phone call mimics a real interaction with a bank, perhaps with a spoofed caller ID. Victims are pressured in urgent language to “verify” their identity, often by reading out a one-time passcode that, unbeknownst to them, is authorising a transaction using their own card details.

We refer to this as a “convergence scam” – where online data leaks, psychological manipulation and weak enforcement come together. It’s a sophisticated hybrid of digital theft and physical-world exploitation, and it’s on the rise.

Devastating and personal

These scams are deeply personal and can be financially devastating. But what makes them even more alarming is the system-wide failure surrounding them.

For starters, many credit card fraud insurance policies contain clauses that exclude coverage when the customer “voluntarily” provides account credentials – including one-time passcodes – even if they did so under duress or deception.

One victim we spoke to lost nearly A$6,000 after a scammer posing as their bank prompted them to read out a passcode over the phone. The transaction was verified using that code, and the bank later refused to reimburse the loss.

In a formal response, the bank stated that by voluntarily sharing the one-time passcode, the customer had breached the epayments code, even though they were manipulated into doing so. As a result, the customer was held liable and ineligible for a chargeback.

Law enforcement may not help

Even when the criminals leave a physical trail, follow-up is rare. Law enforcement rarely investigates. In the cases we’ve seen, reports are acknowledged but not pursued. Officers don’t explicitly say the case is too small or not worth the effort, but their inaction suggests it, especially given how resource-intensive most cyber-crime investigations tend to be.

In many instances, particularly when the total loss isn’t deemed significant, victims are simply told to follow up with their bank, based on the assumption they’ll be reimbursed.

In one case we reviewed, stolen card details were used in-store at major Australian retailers such as Woolworths and Coles – indicating that a cloned card had been physically used. These purchases could, in theory, be tracked back to in-store CCTV footage. But no investigation was launched.

This reluctance to act, even when the evidence is tangible, sends a dangerous message: that scammers can operate with near-impunity.

Meanwhile, banks and regulators are slow to update verification systems. One-time passcodes are still widely used, even though scammers now exploit them routinely. There’s little recourse for victims, and minimal accountability for data brokers whose records fuel these scams.

What can we do to protect ourselves?

For individuals, the first line of defence is simple but vital:
- never share a one-time passcode or security code over the phone, even if the caller seems legitimate
- if in doubt, hang up and call the bank directly using the number on your card
- be cautious about where and how you share your personal information, especially online through websites or social media. Only disclose what personally identifiable information you have to.
The true answer is systemic change

Banks and other institutions need to put into place stronger identity verification systems that don’t rely solely on SMS codes. We need greater transparency and regulation of data brokers.

Read more:
70% of Australians don’t feel in control of their data as companies hide behind meaningless privacy terms

Crucially, we also need active enforcement of cyber-enabled fraud, especially when there’s physical evidence, such as in-store purchases and CCTV footage.

Banks should also reassess their policies and procedures on how they communicate with customers. If scam calls closely mimic real ones, it’s time to change the script. More proactive education, clearer warnings, and redesigned verification processes can all help prevent harm.

The real danger of these convergence scams isn’t just financial loss. It’s the erosion of trust: in our banks, in our security systems, and in the institutions meant to protect us.

Once that trust is gone, it’s not easily recovered.

Jongkil Jay Jeong has received prior research funding from the Australian Government’s Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DSRI) and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

Ashish Nanda has received funding from the Australian Government through various research grants, including the Cyber Security CRC and Australia’s Economic Accelerator.

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

– ref. Cyber crime and real-world crime are converging in a dangerous new way – here’s how to stay safe – https://theconversation.com/cyber-crime-and-real-world-crime-are-converging-in-a-dangerous-new-way-heres-how-to-stay-safe-260426
MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –
July 10, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Melting ice will strengthen the monsoon in northern Australia – but cause drier conditions north of the Equator

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Node Leader in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures, Flinders University

Sebnem Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images

Almost two-thirds of the world’s population is affected by the monsoon – the annual arrival of intense rains in areas north and south of the Equator. These drenching rains tend to arrive during each hemisphere’s summer.

The East Asian monsoon north of the equator is the best known and best studied, because it affects the largest land area and the most people. But the southern Indo-Australian monsoon is vitally important to northern Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. To date, it has been studied much less.

To help fill this gap in knowledge, we analysed deep sediment from an unusual lagoon near Darwin in northern Australia. We looked at ancient pollen and chemical isotopes (different versions of the same chemical element) to look about 150,000 years back in time and glimpse changes to the monsoon. When types of pollen change, it tells us the monsoon has changed. Drier conditions favour the emergence of grasslands, while wetter climates favour forests.

Our new research suggests as the world gets hotter, the Indo-Australian monsoon will intensify and northern Australia will get wetter. This finding is consistent with research suggesting the East Asian monsoon could weaken, threatening agriculture and nature in heavily populated countries.

Location of Girraween Lagoon in monsoonal north Australia. Insert shows approximate dominant flows of the East Asian and Indo-Australian summer monsoons.
Corey Bradshaw/Flinders University, CC BY-NC

The past held in a single lagoon

To examine how monsoons change over time, researchers drill sediment cores to track changes in pollen and chemical isotopes. For example, changes in hydrogen isotopes indicate changes in the intensity of the monsoon rain.

The problem is, these cores have to come from long-undisturbed lake sediments, because such places provide a continuous record of change.

To reconstruct past changes in monsoon patterns, undisturbed sediments have to be sampled carefully by extracting a thin “core” from the bottom sediments. Once researchers have this precious core, they can examine the changing proportions of pollen, chemical isotopes and other properties. The deeper you drill the core, the farther back in time you can look.

These exacting requirements are one reason the Indo-Australian monsoon is not as well understood as its northern cousin.

Fortunately, we have found one place which has kept a detailed environmental record over a long period: Girraween Lagoon on the outskirts of Darwin in the Northern Territory.

This lagoon was created after a sinkhole formed more than 200,000 years ago. It has contained permanent water ever since, and is slowly filling with sediment and pollen blown in from the surrounding landscape.

The 18-metre core from Girraween’s sediments gave us a 150,000-year record of environmental change in Australia’s northern savannahs.

It took hard work to extract the core from Girraween Lagoon.

Dipping into the past

If you walk around Girraween Lagoon today, you’ll see a tall and dense tree canopy with a thick grass understory in the wet season. But it hasn’t always been that way.

During the last ice age 20,000–30,000 years ago, the sea level was much lower and the polar ice caps much larger. As a result, the lagoon was more than 300 kilometres from the coast. At that time, the lagoon was surrounded by an open, grassy savannah with fewer, shorter trees.

A schematic showing the depth of the Girraween core and the associated time periods.
Emma Rehn/Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, CC BY-NC

About 115,000 years ago (and again 90,000 years ago), Australia was dotted with gigantic inland “megalakes”. At those times, the lagoon expanded into a large, shallow lake surrounded by lush monsoon forest, with almost no grass.

At times, tree cover changed radically. In fact, over one 3,000-year period, the percentage of tree pollen soared from 15% to 95%. That suggests a sweeping change from grassland to dense forest – meaning a switch from drier to wetter climate at a rate too fast to be explained by changes in Earth’s orbit.

Some of these changes are linked to the shifting distance between coastline and lagoon as well as predictable variation in how much solar energy reaches Earth.

A connection to the North Atlantic

Huge ice sheets covered large areas of the Northern Hemisphere during previous ice ages.

Remarkably, the evidence of their melting at the end of previous ice age was there in the sediment core from Girraween Lagoon.

When glacial ice melts rapidly, huge volumes of fresh water flood into the North Atlantic. These rapid pulses are known as Heinrich events. These pulses can shut down the warm Gulf Stream current up the east coast of North America. As a result, the Northern Hemisphere cools and the Southern Hemisphere warms.

Over the last 150,000 years, there have been 14 of these events. We could see evidence of them in the sediment cores. Every gush of fresh water in the Atlantic triggered higher rainfall over northern Australia because of the buildup of heat in the Southern Hemisphere as the Gulf Stream slowed.

What does this mean for the monsoon?

All this suggests the Indo-Australian monsoon will get more intense as the world gets hotter and more ice melts.

That would mean a wetter northern Australia. It could also bring more rainfall to other Australian regions, and neighbouring countries. At this stage, it’s too uncertain to predict what an intensifying monsoon would do to the southern parts of Australia.

We might already be seeing this shift. Weather records since the 1960s show northern Australia getting steadily wetter, and less rain in Australia’s southeast and southwest.

Trends in total annual rainfall in Australia from 1960 to 2020.
Commonwealth of Australia Bureau of Meteorology, CC BY

What would this mean for people? Australia’s tropical north is not densely populated, which would reduce the human impact of an intensifying monsoon.

But while our research suggests the Indo-Australian monsoon strengthens during Heinrich events, earlier research has shown the East Asian and other Northern Hemisphere monsoons will weaken. Without reliable monsoonal rains, food and water supplies for billions of people could be at risk.

Corey J. A. Bradshaw receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Cassandra Rowe receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Michael Bird receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Melting ice will strengthen the monsoon in northern Australia – but cause drier conditions north of the Equator – https://theconversation.com/melting-ice-will-strengthen-the-monsoon-in-northern-australia-but-cause-drier-conditions-north-of-the-equator-259992

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

July 10, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Melting ice will strengthen the monsoon in northern Australia – but cause drier conditions north of the Equator

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Node Leader in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures, Flinders University

Sebnem Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images

Almost two-thirds of the world’s population is affected by the monsoon – the annual arrival of intense rains in areas north and south of the Equator. These drenching rains tend to arrive during each hemisphere’s summer.

The East Asian monsoon north of the equator is the best known and best studied, because it affects the largest land area and the most people. But the southern Indo-Australian monsoon is vitally important to northern Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. To date, it has been studied much less.

To help fill this gap in knowledge, we analysed deep sediment from an unusual lagoon near Darwin in northern Australia. We looked at ancient pollen and chemical isotopes (different versions of the same chemical element) to look about 150,000 years back in time and glimpse changes to the monsoon. When types of pollen change, it tells us the monsoon has changed. Drier conditions favour the emergence of grasslands, while wetter climates favour forests.

Our new research suggests as the world gets hotter, the Indo-Australian monsoon will intensify and northern Australia will get wetter. This finding is consistent with research suggesting the East Asian monsoon could weaken, threatening agriculture and nature in heavily populated countries.

Location of Girraween Lagoon in monsoonal north Australia. Insert shows approximate dominant flows of the East Asian and Indo-Australian summer monsoons.
Corey Bradshaw/Flinders University, CC BY-NC

The past held in a single lagoon

To examine how monsoons change over time, researchers drill sediment cores to track changes in pollen and chemical isotopes. For example, changes in hydrogen isotopes indicate changes in the intensity of the monsoon rain.

The problem is, these cores have to come from long-undisturbed lake sediments, because such places provide a continuous record of change.

To reconstruct past changes in monsoon patterns, undisturbed sediments have to be sampled carefully by extracting a thin “core” from the bottom sediments. Once researchers have this precious core, they can examine the changing proportions of pollen, chemical isotopes and other properties. The deeper you drill the core, the farther back in time you can look.

These exacting requirements are one reason the Indo-Australian monsoon is not as well understood as its northern cousin.

Fortunately, we have found one place which has kept a detailed environmental record over a long period: Girraween Lagoon on the outskirts of Darwin in the Northern Territory.

This lagoon was created after a sinkhole formed more than 200,000 years ago. It has contained permanent water ever since, and is slowly filling with sediment and pollen blown in from the surrounding landscape.

The 18-metre core from Girraween’s sediments gave us a 150,000-year record of environmental change in Australia’s northern savannahs.

It took hard work to extract the core from Girraween Lagoon.

Dipping into the past

If you walk around Girraween Lagoon today, you’ll see a tall and dense tree canopy with a thick grass understory in the wet season. But it hasn’t always been that way.

During the last ice age 20,000–30,000 years ago, the sea level was much lower and the polar ice caps much larger. As a result, the lagoon was more than 300 kilometres from the coast. At that time, the lagoon was surrounded by an open, grassy savannah with fewer, shorter trees.

A schematic showing the depth of the Girraween core and the associated time periods.
Emma Rehn/Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, CC BY-NC

About 115,000 years ago (and again 90,000 years ago), Australia was dotted with gigantic inland “megalakes”. At those times, the lagoon expanded into a large, shallow lake surrounded by lush monsoon forest, with almost no grass.

At times, tree cover changed radically. In fact, over one 3,000-year period, the percentage of tree pollen soared from 15% to 95%. That suggests a sweeping change from grassland to dense forest – meaning a switch from drier to wetter climate at a rate too fast to be explained by changes in Earth’s orbit.

Some of these changes are linked to the shifting distance between coastline and lagoon as well as predictable variation in how much solar energy reaches Earth.

A connection to the North Atlantic

Huge ice sheets covered large areas of the Northern Hemisphere during previous ice ages.

Remarkably, the evidence of their melting at the end of previous ice age was there in the sediment core from Girraween Lagoon.

When glacial ice melts rapidly, huge volumes of fresh water flood into the North Atlantic. These rapid pulses are known as Heinrich events. These pulses can shut down the warm Gulf Stream current up the east coast of North America. As a result, the Northern Hemisphere cools and the Southern Hemisphere warms.

Over the last 150,000 years, there have been 14 of these events. We could see evidence of them in the sediment cores. Every gush of fresh water in the Atlantic triggered higher rainfall over northern Australia because of the buildup of heat in the Southern Hemisphere as the Gulf Stream slowed.

What does this mean for the monsoon?

All this suggests the Indo-Australian monsoon will get more intense as the world gets hotter and more ice melts.

That would mean a wetter northern Australia. It could also bring more rainfall to other Australian regions, and neighbouring countries. At this stage, it’s too uncertain to predict what an intensifying monsoon would do to the southern parts of Australia.

We might already be seeing this shift. Weather records since the 1960s show northern Australia getting steadily wetter, and less rain in Australia’s southeast and southwest.

Trends in total annual rainfall in Australia from 1960 to 2020.
Commonwealth of Australia Bureau of Meteorology, CC BY

What would this mean for people? Australia’s tropical north is not densely populated, which would reduce the human impact of an intensifying monsoon.

But while our research suggests the Indo-Australian monsoon strengthens during Heinrich events, earlier research has shown the East Asian and other Northern Hemisphere monsoons will weaken. Without reliable monsoonal rains, food and water supplies for billions of people could be at risk.

Corey J. A. Bradshaw receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Cassandra Rowe receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Michael Bird receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Melting ice will strengthen the monsoon in northern Australia – but cause drier conditions north of the Equator – https://theconversation.com/melting-ice-will-strengthen-the-monsoon-in-northern-australia-but-cause-drier-conditions-north-of-the-equator-259992

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

July 10, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Planning a ‘Euro summer’ or cruise? Why another flu shot might save your holiday

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Janetzki, Lecturer in Pharmacy and Pharmacology, University of South Australia

DavideAngelini/Shutterstock

Are you escaping a southern hemisphere winter by heading off for a “Euro summer”? Maybe you’re planning a cruise through the Mediterranean. Or you’re dreaming of a white Christmas overseas later in the year.

Maybe you’ve already booked your flights and accommodation, locked in your itinerary, and started planning what to pack.

But there may be one more thing to add to your pre-travel checklist – a flu shot.

For some travellers, this may mean a second flu shot this year – one for Australia’s flu season and another to protect them in the northern hemisphere.

Why do I need another flu shot?

Protection from a flu shot doesn’t last all year; it decreases after three to four months.

So if you had your flu shot in April or May, it may no longer offer enough protection by the time you travel in July or later.

Getting a second shot will provide you with optimal protection against the flu while travelling to the northern hemisphere.

That’s why it is now recommended Australians travelling to the northern hemisphere between October and May consider a second flu shot if they’ve already had one earlier this year.

If it’s been three to four months since your first shot, you can consider a second shot.

A second shot should be at least four weeks after the first shot. Ideally, get your second shot at least two weeks before your departure, so your body has time to build up protection.

If you haven’t had a flu shot at all this year, now’s the time. In the year to July 7, there have been more than 167,000 confirmed cases of the flu in Australia.

Who should consider a second flu shot?

Here are some examples where a second flu shot is worth discussing with your doctor or pharmacist.

Cruises are a prime setting for flu outbreaks. There are hundreds or thousands of people sharing confined spaces, such as restaurants and entertainment facilities, for days or weeks at a time. This creates the perfect environment for the flu virus to spread.

Group tours and large events are also high risk. Bus tours, music festivals and cultural events bring together large crowds, often in indoor spaces or via shared transport. This increases your chance of exposure and catching the virus.

Pilgrimages and religious gatherings such as Hajj, Lunar New Year or Ramadan are also high risk, especially for older travellers or those with health conditions. These events can attract millions of international visitors, often in crowded, shared accommodation, where flu and other respiratory viruses can spread rapidly.

People who are over 65 years of age, have medical conditions, such as severe asthma or diabetes, or are on medications that decrease their immune function, are more likely to become severely ill if they catch the flu. So, if you’re travelling during the northern hemisphere’s flu season, a second shot should be strongly considered.

Which flu shot should I get?

Each year, health authorities around the world develop two different flu shots, one for each hemisphere’s flu season. The flu shots can differ, as flu strains change rapidly and different strains may circulate in different regions.

Australians receive the southern hemisphere version around March to May. And
while it’s ideal to have the northern hemisphere flu shot before heading overseas, it’s not available in Australia.

Instead, you can have two shots of the southern hemisphere flu shot – one earlier in the year and a second shot before your trip.

You could wait until you are overseas to get your second shot. But you wouldn’t be protected for two weeks afterwards, and you’d need to navigate an overseas health system while on holiday.

Where can I get a flu shot? How much does it cost?

You can get a flu shot at your local pharmacy, GP clinic, or sometimes via your workplace. Many pharmacies offer walk-in appointments, and the flu shot usually costs around A$25 (including the price of the vaccine and administering it).

If your GP doesn’t bulk bill, you will be charged an out-of-pocket cost for the consultation, and may need to pay the cost of the shot if you don’t qualify for a free one.

The (first) flu shot is free for people who meet certain criteria, such as being 65 and over, pregnant, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and those with certain medical conditions. But you would have to pay for a second shot if you’re travelling.

Specific flu shots are recommended for each person. So speak to your pharmacist or GP to discuss the best option for you.

Your GP or pharmacist will also discuss what to expect after your flu shot. This may include tiredness, fever, muscle aches, and redness or swelling at the injection site. These usually go away within two days. For most people, these symptoms are mild and well-tolerated.

Why bother?

The flu is more than just a sniffle. It can lead to serious illness, cancelled plans and perhaps a hospital stay in a foreign country. Even if you don’t get sick, you could pass the virus to others more vulnerable than yourself.

So before you finish your pre-travel checklist, make sure your flu shots are up to date.

Not getting the shot could be the difference between sipping Aperol spritz on the Amalfi Coast or spending your trip in bed with a fever.

Jack Janetzki works for the University of South Australia, Pharmaceutical Defence Limited and The Barossa Pharmacist in the Mall (Nuriootpa, South Australia). He is a member of Pharmaceutical Defence Limited, the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association, the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, the South Australian Immunisation Program Advisory Group, the Observational Health Data Science Informatics network and the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) Insight Board for pharmacist-led vaccination services.

Wern Chai is employed as a lecturer at the University of South Australia. He is an SME for the Australian Pharmacy Council, a board examiner for the Pharmacy Board of Australia, the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association, Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, the South Australian Immunisation Program Advisory Group and the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) Insight Board for pharmacist-led vaccination services.

– ref. Planning a ‘Euro summer’ or cruise? Why another flu shot might save your holiday – https://theconversation.com/planning-a-euro-summer-or-cruise-why-another-flu-shot-might-save-your-holiday-259888

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

July 10, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Cannabinoid products may reduce total sleep time in adults with insomnia: new study

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Camilla Hoyos, Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Sleep and Chronobiology, Macquarie University

Lysenko Andrii/Shutterstock

You might have heard cannabis and cannabinoid products can help people sleep. Data shows one of the top reasons people use cannabis is to help them sleep.

But there’s a dearth of high-quality research on how medicinal cannabis products actually affect sleep.

To find out more, our research team conducted a small pilot study involving 20 people. We wanted to compare how they slept after using a medicinal cannabis product, compared to a placebo.

The results of the study, published today in the Journal of Sleep Research, surprised us.

We found a single oral dose of a cannabinoid product decreased total sleep time and the time spent in REM sleep (rapid eye movement, which is when we tend to dream). We didn’t observe any change in objective alertness the day after the treatment.

Our study is small and only measured the effect of a single dose, so more research is clearly needed.

But overall, our findings suggest cannabinoids may acutely influence sleep, primarily by suppressing REM sleep, without noticeable next-day impairment.

What we did

All 20 people (16 of whom were female) involved in our study had a clinical diagnosis of insomnia disorder.

This means they reported having challenges falling asleep and/or maintaining sleep and that these disturbances impact day-to-day functioning socially, at work, or in other important areas of life.

The average age of our study participants was about 46 years.

At our lab, the study participants were interviewed by a doctor and had their medical history taken. All participants also underwent an overnight diagnostic sleep study. This was done to confirm their sleeplessness was truly insomnia and not other conditions such as sleep apnoea.

Once the participant was able to start the study, they were asked to sleep for two nights at our lab, with at least one week between those two visits.

On one of their visits, they were given a placebo.

On the other, they were given a single oral dose of a medical-grade cannabis oil containing 10 mg THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the compound responsible for the psychoactive effects of cannabis) and 200 mg CBD (cannabidiol, which does not produce a “high”).

Using a product with a precise, known dose ensures the results are relevant to what doctors in Australia are already prescribing.

The order in which participants received either the treatment or the placebo was randomised, so they didn’t know which one they were taking.

After taking either the treatment or the placebo, they slept at our lab while wearing a special cap with 256 monitors on it. This high-density electroencephalogram or EEG allowed us to record the electrical activity of the brain while the person slept.

The next morning, after they either woke or were woken, they performed a driving simulation test around the time of their normal morning commute.

They also underwent a test that assessed their ability to stay awake in a quiet, dimly lit environment. To track their alertness throughout the day, they repeated this test four times while wearing the high-density EEG cap. This was so we could test their alertness the day after either the treatment or the placebo.

What we found

Our results were not what we expected.

We found the THC/CBD treatment decreased total sleep time by an average of 24.5 minutes. This was largely driven by a significant impact on REM sleep (the phase associated with dreaming), which not only decreased by an average of 33.9 minutes but also took significantly longer for participants to enter. The treatment also offered no benefit in helping participants stay asleep throughout the night.

Perhaps most intriguingly, this objective worsening of sleep wasn’t reflected in the participants’ own perceptions; they reported no change in their subjective sleep quality. This disconnect continued into the next day.

While participants noted feeling slightly more sleepy after the treatment, their objective alertness – measured by their ability to stay awake in a quiet, dimly lit room – was reassuringly unchanged, as was their cognitive and simulated driving performance.

This leads to a crucial question: if a single dose produces these changes, what are the cumulative effects on a person’s sleep after weeks, months, or years of nightly use?

We simply don’t have the answers yet, especially with a medical-grade cannabis product.

A growing body of research

Our findings underscore a significant gap between the widespread public perception of cannabis for sleep and the complex scientific reality. As highlighted by a review we published in the journal Current Psychiatry Reports, the evidence base remains thin.

We reviewed 21 recent studies (published between 2021 and 2024) of cannabinoids being used for insomnia, subjective sleep impairment, obstructive sleep apnoea, rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder, and restless legs syndrome.

We found that, despite its widespread use, there’s not enough research yet to support the use of medical cannabis to treat sleep disorders.

This is why this kind of research is so vital. It provides the first pieces of a much larger puzzle.

To give doctors and patients the clear guidance they need, there is an urgent need for adequately funded, well-designed clinical trials with larger sample sizes and longer treatment durations to truly understand the long-term impacts of medicinal cannabis on sleep and daytime functioning.

Camilla Hoyos is a Research Leader within the Centre for Sleep and Chronobiology at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research. The Woolcock sleep group received funding from Lambert Initiative of Cannabinoid Therapeutics (a philanthropic centre based at The University of Sydney) for this study and for another unpublished trial in the same space. Woolcock sleep group also received funding to be a site on an industry-sponsored clinical trial on a cannabinoids medicine in insomnia. Camilla Hoyos is also a board member of the Australasian Sleep Association. This study described in this article was a collaboration between the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research and Lambert Initiative of Cannabinoid Research.

Anastasia has previously received funding from the Lambert Initiative for Cannabinoid Therapeutics, a philanthropically funded research initiative at the Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney. She has received consulting fees from the Medicinal Cannabis Industry Australia for a commissioned review article and Haleon (a consumer health-care subsidiary of GSK) for non-cannabinoid related work. She is a committee member for the Sleep Health Week Working Party and an expert speaker for the Sleep Health Foundation.

– ref. Cannabinoid products may reduce total sleep time in adults with insomnia: new study – https://theconversation.com/cannabinoid-products-may-reduce-total-sleep-time-in-adults-with-insomnia-new-study-256467

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

July 10, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Cannabinoid products may reduce total sleep time in adults with insomnia: new study

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Camilla Hoyos, Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Sleep and Chronobiology, Macquarie University

Lysenko Andrii/Shutterstock

You might have heard cannabis and cannabinoid products can help people sleep. Data shows one of the top reasons people use cannabis is to help them sleep.

But there’s a dearth of high-quality research on how medicinal cannabis products actually affect sleep.

To find out more, our research team conducted a small pilot study involving 20 people. We wanted to compare how they slept after using a medicinal cannabis product, compared to a placebo.

The results of the study, published today in the Journal of Sleep Research, surprised us.

We found a single oral dose of a cannabinoid product decreased total sleep time and the time spent in REM sleep (rapid eye movement, which is when we tend to dream). We didn’t observe any change in objective alertness the day after the treatment.

Our study is small and only measured the effect of a single dose, so more research is clearly needed.

But overall, our findings suggest cannabinoids may acutely influence sleep, primarily by suppressing REM sleep, without noticeable next-day impairment.

What we did

All 20 people (16 of whom were female) involved in our study had a clinical diagnosis of insomnia disorder.

This means they reported having challenges falling asleep and/or maintaining sleep and that these disturbances impact day-to-day functioning socially, at work, or in other important areas of life.

The average age of our study participants was about 46 years.

At our lab, the study participants were interviewed by a doctor and had their medical history taken. All participants also underwent an overnight diagnostic sleep study. This was done to confirm their sleeplessness was truly insomnia and not other conditions such as sleep apnoea.

Once the participant was able to start the study, they were asked to sleep for two nights at our lab, with at least one week between those two visits.

On one of their visits, they were given a placebo.

On the other, they were given a single oral dose of a medical-grade cannabis oil containing 10 mg THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the compound responsible for the psychoactive effects of cannabis) and 200 mg CBD (cannabidiol, which does not produce a “high”).

Using a product with a precise, known dose ensures the results are relevant to what doctors in Australia are already prescribing.

The order in which participants received either the treatment or the placebo was randomised, so they didn’t know which one they were taking.

After taking either the treatment or the placebo, they slept at our lab while wearing a special cap with 256 monitors on it. This high-density electroencephalogram or EEG allowed us to record the electrical activity of the brain while the person slept.

The next morning, after they either woke or were woken, they performed a driving simulation test around the time of their normal morning commute.

They also underwent a test that assessed their ability to stay awake in a quiet, dimly lit environment. To track their alertness throughout the day, they repeated this test four times while wearing the high-density EEG cap. This was so we could test their alertness the day after either the treatment or the placebo.

What we found

Our results were not what we expected.

We found the THC/CBD treatment decreased total sleep time by an average of 24.5 minutes. This was largely driven by a significant impact on REM sleep (the phase associated with dreaming), which not only decreased by an average of 33.9 minutes but also took significantly longer for participants to enter. The treatment also offered no benefit in helping participants stay asleep throughout the night.

Perhaps most intriguingly, this objective worsening of sleep wasn’t reflected in the participants’ own perceptions; they reported no change in their subjective sleep quality. This disconnect continued into the next day.

While participants noted feeling slightly more sleepy after the treatment, their objective alertness – measured by their ability to stay awake in a quiet, dimly lit room – was reassuringly unchanged, as was their cognitive and simulated driving performance.

This leads to a crucial question: if a single dose produces these changes, what are the cumulative effects on a person’s sleep after weeks, months, or years of nightly use?

We simply don’t have the answers yet, especially with a medical-grade cannabis product.

A growing body of research

Our findings underscore a significant gap between the widespread public perception of cannabis for sleep and the complex scientific reality. As highlighted by a review we published in the journal Current Psychiatry Reports, the evidence base remains thin.

We reviewed 21 recent studies (published between 2021 and 2024) of cannabinoids being used for insomnia, subjective sleep impairment, obstructive sleep apnoea, rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder, and restless legs syndrome.

We found that, despite its widespread use, there’s not enough research yet to support the use of medical cannabis to treat sleep disorders.

This is why this kind of research is so vital. It provides the first pieces of a much larger puzzle.

To give doctors and patients the clear guidance they need, there is an urgent need for adequately funded, well-designed clinical trials with larger sample sizes and longer treatment durations to truly understand the long-term impacts of medicinal cannabis on sleep and daytime functioning.

Camilla Hoyos is a Research Leader within the Centre for Sleep and Chronobiology at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research. The Woolcock sleep group received funding from Lambert Initiative of Cannabinoid Therapeutics (a philanthropic centre based at The University of Sydney) for this study and for another unpublished trial in the same space. Woolcock sleep group also received funding to be a site on an industry-sponsored clinical trial on a cannabinoids medicine in insomnia. Camilla Hoyos is also a board member of the Australasian Sleep Association. This study described in this article was a collaboration between the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research and Lambert Initiative of Cannabinoid Research.

Anastasia has previously received funding from the Lambert Initiative for Cannabinoid Therapeutics, a philanthropically funded research initiative at the Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney. She has received consulting fees from the Medicinal Cannabis Industry Australia for a commissioned review article and Haleon (a consumer health-care subsidiary of GSK) for non-cannabinoid related work. She is a committee member for the Sleep Health Week Working Party and an expert speaker for the Sleep Health Foundation.

– ref. Cannabinoid products may reduce total sleep time in adults with insomnia: new study – https://theconversation.com/cannabinoid-products-may-reduce-total-sleep-time-in-adults-with-insomnia-new-study-256467

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

July 10, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Labor leads in two Victorian state polls, but Premier Jacinta Allan’s approval tanks

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

Labor leads in Victorian state polls by Newspoll and Redbridge, but Premier Jacinta Allan is very unpopular. Two federal polls give Labor big leads and a Tasmanian poll suggests Tasmanians would support Labor seeking to form a government with the Greens and independents.

The next Victorian state election will be held in November 2026. The first Newspoll since the 2022 election was conducted June 23–30, but no sample size was given. It gave Labor a 53–47 lead (55.0–45.0 to Labor at the last election). Primary votes were 35% Labor, 35% Coalition, 12% Greens and 18% for all Others.

Despite the clear Labor lead on voting intentions, Labor Premier Jacinta Allan’s net approval was a dismal -31, with 61% dissatisfied and 30% satisfied. Liberal leader Brad Battin led Allan as preferred premier by 41–36. Battin had a net approval of -5.

Just 25% said Labor deserved to be re-elected, while 59% said it was time to give someone else a go. But by 60–40, voters were not confident the Coalition was ready to govern.

The Poll Bludger said that by 59–32, voters supported the Suburban Rail Loop, but they were worried rather than confident by huge margins on four policy areas: state debt (78% worried, 13% confident), law and order (76–20), hospitals (71–25) and housing (78–16).

A Victorian Redbridge poll for The Herald Sun, conducted June 19–30 from a sample of 1,183, gave Labor a 51.5–48.5 lead, a 2.5-point gain for Labor since the last Victorian Redbridge poll in April. Primary votes were 38% Coalition (down three), 33% Labor (up four), 14% Greens (up one) and 15% for all Others (down two).

By 55–27, voters did not think the Allan government had the right focus and priorities. But by 45–26, they did not think Battin and the Coalition had done enough to deserve to win the next election.

Labor has held government in Victoria since they won the 2014 election, and for all but one term (2010–14) since they won the 1999 election. By November 2026, Labor will have governed for the last 12 years and 23 of the last 27 years. It’s reasonable to expect an “it’s time” factor at the next election.

It’s plausible that federal Labor’s surprise landslide at the May 3 election has assisted Labor at other levels of government. Normally a government with a premier at -31 net approval would be way behind on voting intentions.

The Coalition will hope that any boost for state Labor from the federal election will be temporary. There’s still a long time until the next state election, so Labor could fall back as voters focus more on state politics.

Another possible explanation for Labor’s lead despite a very unpopular premier is the infighting within the Liberals over the fallout between John Pesutto and Moira Deeming.

Redbridge and DemosAU federal polls have big Labor leads

A national Redbridge poll, conducted in late June from a sample of 4,036, was reported by The Financial Review. Labor led by 55.5–44.5, almost unchanged from the election result (55.2–44.8 to Labor). Primary votes were 37% Labor, 31% Coalition, 11% Greens and 21% for all Others. One Nation is likely to have made up a high proportion of Others, otherwise Labor’s two-party lead would be higher.

This poll gave Labor a 68–32 lead with those aged 18–34 and a 57–43 lead with those aged 35–49. With those aged 50–64, there was a 50–50 tie, while the Coalition led by 55–45 with those aged 65 and older. The Greens’ primary vote was 24% with the youngest demographic, but just 2% with the oldest.

A national DemosAU poll, conducted July 5–6 from a sample of 1,199, gave Labor a 59–41 lead, from primary votes of 36% Labor, 26% Coalition, 14% Greens, 9% One Nation and 15% for all Others. Education breakdowns had Labor winning by 55–45 with school-educated people, 61–39 with those with a TAFE education and 59–41 with the university educated.

After their landslide re-election, Labor is getting a second honeymoon in the polls. One Nation was overstated at the election, but perhaps their increase from 6.4% then reflects dissatisfaction on the right with Sussan Ley’s leadership of the Liberals.

YouGov Tasmanian poll on hung parliament options

The Tasmanian state election will be held on July 19, only 16 months after the previous election in March 2024. Tasmania uses a proportional system for its lower house elections, and polls suggest another hung parliament is likely. A YouGov poll, conducted June 12–16 from a sample of 842 for The Australia Institute, was reported by The Tasmanian Times on Wednesday.

Voting intentions were not released, but results of questions were released on whether Labor or the Liberals should seek to form a government with the Greens and independents if they were not elected in their own right.

For Labor, by 55–31 voters agreed they should seek to form such a government, including 61–25 agree with Labor voters. For the Liberals, by 48–37 voters agreed they should try to form such a government, but Liberal voters disagreed by 46–45.

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

– ref. Labor leads in two Victorian state polls, but Premier Jacinta Allan’s approval tanks – https://theconversation.com/labor-leads-in-two-victorian-state-polls-but-premier-jacinta-allans-approval-tanks-260553

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI China: China’s Chang’e-6 sheds first light on evolution history of moon’s far side

Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News

A series of research findings by Chinese scientists on the samples collected by the Chang’e-6 mission from the moon’s far side have unveiled the volcanic activity, ancient magnetic field, water content and geochemical characteristics of the moon mantle, shedding the first light on the evolutionary history of its dark side.

Four studies by the research teams from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG), the National Astronomical Observatories, both under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Nanjing University, and other institutions were published in the latest issue of Nature.

This photo taken on July 9, 2025 shows a press conference held by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing, capital of China. (Xinhua/Jin Liwang)

As the moon’s revolution cycle is the same as its rotation cycle, the same side always faces Earth. The other face, most of which cannot be seen from Earth, is called the far, or dark, side of the moon. This term doesn’t refer to visible darkness, but rather the mystery shrouding the moon’s largely unexplored terrain.

The moon’s near and far sides exhibit significant differences in morphology, composition, crustal thickness and magmatic activities. However, the mechanisms behind these disparities remain unresolved, representing a key issue in lunar science. Previously, scientific understanding of the far side relied primarily on remote sensing studies, scientists say.

In 2024, Chang’e-6 made history by bringing 1,935.3 grams of lunar far-side samples back to Earth. These samples were collected from the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) Basin, the largest, deepest and oldest basin on the moon, which provided a rare opportunity to clarify the compositional differences between the near and far sides and to unravel the long-standing mystery of their asymmetry.

“The SPA Basin is one of the moon’s three major tectonic units, measuring approximately 2,500 kilometers in diameter. The energy from the impact that formed this crater is estimated to be 1 trillion times greater than that of an atomic bomb explosion. Yet, the exact influence of such a massive collision on the moon’s evolution has remained an unsolved mystery,” Wu Fuyuan, an academician of CAS and a leading researcher with the IGG, said at a CAS press conference on Wednesday.

The four papers published in Nature systematically reveal, for the first time, the effects of this colossal impact, which is the core highlight of these findings, said Wu.

Over the past year, Chinese scientists have achieved multiple pioneering breakthroughs through the study of the Chang’e-6 samples.

They found the evidence of volcanic activity on the moon’s far side approximately 4.2 billion and 2.8 billion years ago, indicating such activity had persisted for at least 1.4 billion years.

For the first time, scientists obtained the ancient magnetic field information from the far side of the moon, revealing a possible rebound in the moon’s magnetic field intensity around 2.8 billion years ago. This discovery indicates the presence of fluctuations in the driven power of the lunar dynamo.

Scientists have found that the water content in the lunar far-side mantle is significantly lower than that of the near side, indicating a significant difference in water distribution between the two hemispheres.

“We found that the mantle source of basalt from the SPA basin is extremely depleted in incompatible elements, which are commonly used to reveal the geological processes that rocks have undergone,” said Yang Wei, a researcher with IGG.

This depletion could mean either the original lunar mantle was very low in the incompatible elements, or the massive impact event melted the rocks and carried these elements away. This discovery underscores the profound influence of large impacts on the evolution of the moon’s deep interior, Yang said.

“The new discovery marks humanity’s first direct access to key evidence of the deep interior material properties on the far side of the moon. It provides us with unique information to understand how the moon’s early interior became layered, cooled and evolved, representing a crucial step toward unraveling the mystery behind the dramatic differences between the lunar near and far sides,” said Li Chunlai, a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories of CAS and deputy chief designer of the Chang’e-6 mission.

Additionally, Chinese scientists have made other discoveries. They unveiled the physical, mineralogical and geochemical characteristics of the Chang’e-6 lunar samples.

Meanwhile, Chinese scientists precisely determined for the first time that the SPA Basin formed 4.25 billion years ago, providing humanity with a more accurate anchor point for studying the history of large-scale impacts in the early solar system.

Mahesh Anand, a professor at the Open University in the UK, said, “We have had samples from the moon for over 50 years, samples collected by the Apollo and Luna missions. And we have many lunar meteorites.”

“But there are lots of new findings that are coming out based on the work that has been done on Chang’e-6 samples that are actually turning many of the well established hypotheses and theories in the field of lunar science upside down, necessitating reexamination of many of those theories,” Anand said.

He Hongping, vice president of CAS, said that upon receiving the Chang’e-6 lunar samples, CAS has placed high priority on related research efforts, and has yielded a series of high-level research achievements.

Guan Feng, director of the Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center of the China National Space Administration, expressed the hope that the comprehensive development of space science, space technology and space applications will be further promoted, urging more scientists to make use of the extraterrestrial samples and scientific data obtained from China’s lunar and deep space exploration missions to achieve more results and make more discoveries.

Previously, Chinese scientists analyzed the samples collected by the Chang’e-5 mission from the moon’s near side, and found evidence of young volcanic activity dating back just 2 billion years, extending the moon’s volcanic timeline by 1 billion years. This discovery was hailed by international peers as changing humanity’s understanding of lunar evolution.

The success of China’s lunar exploration program is a prime example of the deep integration between science and engineering, said Li of the National Astronomical Observatories.

MIL OSI China News –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI New Zealand: BusinessNZ – Relevant skills in short supply

Source: BusinessNZ

Legislation aimed at improving NZ’s vocational education and training system needs to focus on delivering the right skills needed for business and employment growth, BusinessNZ says.

BusinessNZ says New Zealand’s new vocational education system should not be dominated by polytechnics to the detriment of work-based training and should focus on delivering better-skilled graduates who are more likely to get a job.

BusinessNZ’s submission to the Education & Workforce Select Committee on the Education and Training (Vocational Education and Training System) Amendment Bill says many of the skills that people currently get trained in are not the skills needed by business, and this is holding back graduates from successfully gaining employment – an industry-led, government-enabled vocational system for setting standards is required, to allow for more relevant, up-to-date skills to be taught.

The Bill also allows for a training levy to be imposed on businesses, however BusinessNZ says its members strongly oppose this provision, as they believe the system first requires significant improvement to achieve the business and employment outcomes required from vocational training.

MIL OSI New Zealand News –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Hagerty Announces Staff Additions, Trump Admin Appointments

US Senate News:

Source: United States Senator for Tennessee Bill Hagerty
WASHINGTON—Today, United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) announced 6 additions to his staff in Tennessee and Washington, D.C. Hagerty’s team continues to be fully operational and serving the great state of Tennessee.
Brian McCormack will soon assume the role of Chief of Staff. McCormack is currently serving as the Chief of Staff for the National Security Council at the White House. Previously, he served at the White House Office of Management and Budget responsible for nearly a dozen agencies and as the Chief of Staff at the Department of Energy. The current Chief of Staff, Adam Telle, was nominated in March by President Trump to serve as the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works where he will oversee the Corps of Engineers.
“I’m glad to have someone of Brian’s caliber and experience to lead this exceptional team. He brings a set of highly-relevant perspectives to the role where the paramount focus is to serve the people of Tennessee and the interests of our nation,” said Senator Bill Hagerty. “Brian’s background and relationships within the Trump Administration will support my objective of making the federal government work for the American people.”
“I’m thankful for the many years of service Adam has put in leading our team from day one in the Senate, which has helped me build a strong foundation for success here in the U.S. Senate going forward,” said Senator Bill Hagerty. “I’m so proud of the opportunity he’s been given to once again serve as an outstanding member of President Trump’s administration, and his management of the Corps of Engineers will bring the responses we’ve seen in my Senate office to bear on an organization central to Tennessee and our nation.”
Robert Donachie is now serving as Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications. Donachie served as Vice President of a Washington, DC-based public relations and literary agency. He spent several years working in the House of Representatives. He also served as the White House correspondent for The Washington Examiner and as a political reporter for The Daily Caller. Donachie has appeared on Fox News Channel, nationally syndicated radio programs, and provided commentary for The New York Times, POLITICO, Newsweek, The Hill, and other outlets.
Tiffany Delgado recently joined as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, replacing Jim Durrett. Delgado served as Senior Vice President of a Washington, DC-based marketing agency specializing in custom targeted voter contact, fundraising and issue advocacy programs, where she was recognized with the Rising Star Award from Campaigns and Elections. Previously she worked at the National Republican Senatorial Committee as the Director of Direct Response. Tiffany holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia, and is currently pursuing her MBA from Georgetown University.
Michael Sullivan will become Senior Advisor to Senator Hagerty, where he will continue to be involved in state operations while also providing strategic advice on the Senator’s larger operation, leveraging Sullivan’s experience to benefit Hagerty’s broader mandate.
Alec Richardson will become the State Director for Senator Hagerty. Currently, he serves as Senior Advisor to Governor Bill Lee and Director of External Affairs at the State of Tennessee. In this role, Richardson is responsible for overseeing strategic operations, managing federal relations, and advising on key legislative issues. He formerly served as Deputy Chief of Staff and Personal Aide to the Governor. He resides in Nashville with his wife and their one-year-old son.
Kalleigh Ahern is now serving as Press & Digital Assistant in the office of U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty. Prior to joining the Senate, she worked as a Public Relations and Communications Intern at a national PR agency, where she contributed to strategic campaign planning, media monitoring and cross-sector client research. Ahern also gained firsthand experience in federal outreach and constituent services while working in her home congressional district in Tennessee. She graduated summa cum laude from The University of Alabama with a focus in public relations and political science.
Serving in the Trump Administration
Adam Telle has been advanced out of the Armed Services Committee and Environment and Public Works Committee to lead the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works. Telle has served as Hagerty’s Chief of Staff over the last four years and will continue to serve Hagerty while his nomination is pending before the Senate. Telle served during the first Trump Administration as the White House’s Senate lead in its Office of Legislative Affairs. Prior to that role, Telle served as the top staff member on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Homeland Security and as the top policy advisor to the late Senator Thad Cochran. Telle holds degrees in computer science and journalism from Mississippi State University.
Jim Durrett is now the Deputy Chief of Staff to the Vice President and Deputy Assistant to the President. Previously, he served as Deputy Chief of Operations for Senator Hagerty. Durrett is a native of Clarksville, Tennessee.
Luke Pettit has been advanced out of the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Institutions. Pettit has served as Senator Hagerty’s Senior Policy Advisor and will continue to serve Hagerty while his nomination is pending before the Senate. Previously, he worked at the Senate Banking Committee, Bridgewater Associates, and the Federal Reserve. Luke holds a B.A from the University of Pennsylvania, and graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Johns Hopkins University.
Jonathan Greenstein is nominated to be Deputy Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Finance. Previously, he served as Senator Hagerty’s Senior Policy Advisor. Greenstein is a graduate of Harvard Business School and Yale Law School.
Daniel Zimmerman has been confirmed to be the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. Zimmerman previously served in a Congressional Executive Fellowship in the office of Senator Hagerty. He previously has held many roles in the agency realm, and holds both a bachelor’s degree from Asbury University and a master’s degree from the Patterson School of Diplomacy at the University of Kentucky.
Julia Hahn is serving as the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department for the Office of Public Affairs. Hahn joins the Department after serving as Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications for Senator Hagerty. Prior to the Senate, Hahn served in the first Trump White House over all four years, most recently as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy White House Communications Director. Before that, she served as Special Assistant to the President and Director of Rapid Response and Surrogate Operations. Hahn has also worked in media as the Executive Producer of The Laura Ingraham Show and a reporter at Breitbart News. She also worked on Capitol Hill as Press Secretary to former Congressman Dave Brat. Hahn graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA in Philosophy.
Clark Milner is serving as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor for Policy, focusing primarily on domestic policy. Milner formerly served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Chief Counsel to Senator Bill Hagerty. Milner previously served as Deputy Counsel to Governor Bill Lee.
Natalie McIntyre currently serves as a Special Assistant to the President for the Office of Legislative Affairs where she handles the Healthcare, Education, Labor, Banking, and Agriculture portfolio. Previously, she was Senator Hagerty’s Legislative Director overseeing the legislative team and managing the Health, Education, Labor, Pension, and Veterans portfolio. Prior to her role in Hagerty’s office, she was part of the legislative office at OMB where she managed the Senate offices. She also served as a Senior Policy Advisor and White House liaison at ONDCP.
Jason Hoffman is currently the Executive Secretary at the White House Office of Management and Budget. Hoffman formerly served as a Policy Advisor for Senator Hagerty, focusing on homeland security and judiciary issues. Previously, he worked at the Office of Management and Budget during President Trump’s first term and as a Legislative Assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives.Nels Nordquist is serving as Deputy Assistant to the President for International Economic Policy and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council. Nordquist was Senior Fellow for Economic Policy in the office of Senator Hagerty. In addition, his prior service includes as Staff Director for the National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee. From 2018-2021, Nordquist worked in the National Security Council and National Economic Council, first as Director for Trade & Investment and later as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for International Economic Policy. Nordquist graduated from Stanford and earned an MBA from the University of Virginia.
Joel Rayburn is the Trump Administration’s nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. He is a historian, former diplomat, and retired military officer who previously served as special advisor for Middle East affairs in the office of Senator Hagerty. Rayburn is currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. In the first Trump Administration, he served as a senior director on the National Security Council staff and, from July 2018 to January 2021, as the U.S. special envoy for Syria. Before joining the State Department, Rayburn served 26 years as a US Army officer and co-authored the Army’s official history of the Iraq War. He holds an MA in history from Texas A&M University and an MS in strategic studies from the National War College.
Kevin Kim serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He previously worked as a National Security Fellow for Senator Hagerty. Kim was also the Senior Advisor to the Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control Marshall Billingslea as part of the U.S. delegation to the 2020 U.S.-Russia arms control negotiations. From 2018 to 2020, he served as the Chief of Staff to the Special Representative for North Korea and the Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun and worked closely with then-U.S. Ambassador to Japan Hagerty as he participated in various rounds of U.S.-DPRK nuclear negotiations. Kim received a BA from the Johns Hopkins University, MA from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and is currently pursuing a Doctorate in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
Daniel Tirosh now serves on the National Security Council. Tirosh previously served as Deputy National Security Advisor and Counsel for Senator Hagerty. He holds a bachelor’s degree from University of California, Santa Cruz, and graduated from Stanford Law School.
Walton Stivender Mears has taken on a new role as scheduler for Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner. Mears joined HUD earlier this year after serving as Director of Scheduling for Senator Hagerty. She previously handled scheduling and assisted the chief of staff for Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) and as a Staff Assistant for Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL). Mears is a graduate of Auburn University.
J. Cal Mitchell is serving as Special Advisor for the Office of Legislative Affairs at the U.S. Department of Treasury. He joins the Treasury Department after serving as Personal Aide to Senator Hagerty. Mitchell is a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College.
Nick Checker, a former national security fellow for Senator Hagerty, currently serves as Deputy Executive Secretary on the National Security Council. In that role, Checker provides senior-level review of NSC products for substance, policy relevance, and appropriateness for the President and senior White House officials. Checker has spent the last decade prior to his service on Senator Hagerty’s staff at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a military analyst covering conflicts in the greater Middle East. Most recently, Checker worked in CIA’s office of Congressional Affairs, where he supported the confirmation process for Director John Ratcliffe. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history and political science from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s degree in Security Studies from Georgetown University.
Nicholas Elliot is the Confidential Assistant and Policy Advisor to the President’s Council of Advisors on Digital Assets. Previously, Elliot worked on Senator Hagerty’s 2020 campaign team and spent nearly four years working for Senator Hagerty on the Senator’s financial services and banking portfolio, where he advanced the Senator’s work on the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Elliot is a graduate of Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business where he received a BS in Business Administration with a major in Finance and a minor in Mandarin.
Taylor Asher serves as Senior Policy Advisor to Chairman Paul Atkins. From April 2023 to January 2025, Asher served as Policy Advisor and Confidential Assistant to Commissioner Uyeda. Prior to his time at the SEC, Asher was Personal Aide to Senator Hagerty. His tenure in public service began with Congresswoman Julia Letlow’s Office, where he served as Staff Assistant and Intern Manager. Asher is currently pursuing a Master of Economics at George Mason University. He holds a Master of Finance with an Energy Specialization as well as a Bachelor of Science in Management from Tulane University. He is originally from Nashville, Tennessee.
Cole Bornefeld will be serving as Director of Correspondence for the Office of the Vice President. He previously served as a Legislative Aide to Hagerty, assisting in the Judiciary, Homeland Security, Commerce, and Rules portfolio. Bornefeld previously served as a Legislative Correspondent, Staff Assistant, and Intern in Senator Hagerty’s office. He graduated from Western Kentucky University with a bachelor’s degree in political science and public relations.

MIL OSI USA News –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Murphy, Blumenthal Support Legislation to Fund Community Violence Intervention
US Senate News:
Source: United States Senator for Connecticut – Chris Murphy

July 09, 2025
WASHINGTON–U.S. Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) co-sponsored the Break the Cycle of Violence Act, legislation that would create a new Office of Community Violence Intervention (CVI) and a new grant program within the Department of Health and Human Services to award $5 billion in grants to community-based, nonprofit organizations and eligible units of local government to create or support evidence-based and prevention programs to interrupt cycles of violence. U.S. Representative Steven Horsford (D-Nev.-04) introduced companion legislation in the House.

“Community violence intervention programs work – we’ve seen proof of that in Connecticut and in cities across the country. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act made a historic $250 million investment in these programs, helping lead to the largest two-year drop in gun violence rates in our country’s history. This legislation doubles down on that investment and makes sure we keep putting federal dollars behind evidence-based strategies that save lives and make communities safe,” said Murphy.

“The gun violence epidemic requires tested and true community-centered solutions to break tragic cycles of violence. Here in Connecticut, dozens of organizations are saving lives through community violence intervention programs, but they do so with severely limited resources. While the Trump Administration slashes the life-saving grants these organizations depend on, our Break the Cycle of Violence Act makes investments that will save lives and make our communities safer,” said Blumenthal.

Murphy’s past support for robust community-based violence intervention programs includes his Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), which provided millions in grants to community-based nonprofits that directly provided counseling and support to at-risk youth, and families traumatized by gun violence. On day one of his presidency, President Trump shut down the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention responsible for coordinating efforts across the federal government and working with states and local governments to identify available resources for impacted communities. On April 30^th, the Department of Education (ED) notified grant recipients of the School-Based Mental Health Services (SBMH) and Mental Health Service Professional (MHSP) Grant Programs, which BSCA funded, that their funding would not be continued after this fiscal year.

The Break the Cycle of Violence Act provisions include:

$5 billion investment in anti-violence programs to create and support violence interruption and crisis management initiatives.

$1.5 billion investment in workforce training and job opportunities, including improved youth employment and training activities, paid work experience for school aged youth, and partnerships with community-based organizations to serve youth in high-crime and high-poverty areas.

An Office of Community Violence Intervention at HHS to implement evidence-based violence reduction initiatives.

A Community Violence Intervention Advisory Committee to ensure people with expertise in community violence intervention have a voice in CVI policies.

A National Community Violence Response Center to provide technical assistance for implementing community violence intervention and prevention programs.

The bill is endorsed by Community Justice, Sandy Hook Promise, Giffords Gun Violence Prevention & Advocacy, and Everytown for Gun Safety.

The Break the Cycle of Violence Act is cosponsored by U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

To read the full text of the bill, click here.
MIL OSI USA News –
July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Murphy, Blumenthal Support Legislation to Fund Community Violence Intervention

US Senate News:

Source: United States Senator for Connecticut – Chris Murphy

July 09, 2025

WASHINGTON–U.S. Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) co-sponsored the Break the Cycle of Violence Act, legislation that would create a new Office of Community Violence Intervention (CVI) and a new grant program within the Department of Health and Human Services to award $5 billion in grants to community-based, nonprofit organizations and eligible units of local government to create or support evidence-based and prevention programs to interrupt cycles of violence. U.S. Representative Steven Horsford (D-Nev.-04) introduced companion legislation in the House.
“Community violence intervention programs work – we’ve seen proof of that in Connecticut and in cities across the country. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act made a historic $250 million investment in these programs, helping lead to the largest two-year drop in gun violence rates in our country’s history. This legislation doubles down on that investment and makes sure we keep putting federal dollars behind evidence-based strategies that save lives and make communities safe,” said Murphy.
“The gun violence epidemic requires tested and true community-centered solutions to break tragic cycles of violence. Here in Connecticut, dozens of organizations are saving lives through community violence intervention programs, but they do so with severely limited resources. While the Trump Administration slashes the life-saving grants these organizations depend on, our Break the Cycle of Violence Act makes investments that will save lives and make our communities safer,” said Blumenthal.
Murphy’s past support for robust community-based violence intervention programs includes his Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), which provided millions in grants to community-based nonprofits that directly provided counseling and support to at-risk youth, and families traumatized by gun violence. On day one of his presidency, President Trump shut down the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention responsible for coordinating efforts across the federal government and working with states and local governments to identify available resources for impacted communities. On April 30th, the Department of Education (ED) notified grant recipients of the School-Based Mental Health Services (SBMH) and Mental Health Service Professional (MHSP) Grant Programs, which BSCA funded, that their funding would not be continued after this fiscal year.
The Break the Cycle of Violence Act provisions include:
$5 billion investment in anti-violence programs to create and support violence interruption and crisis management initiatives.
$1.5 billion investment in workforce training and job opportunities, including improved youth employment and training activities, paid work experience for school aged youth, and partnerships with community-based organizations to serve youth in high-crime and high-poverty areas.
An Office of Community Violence Intervention at HHS to implement evidence-based violence reduction initiatives.
A Community Violence Intervention Advisory Committee to ensure people with expertise in community violence intervention have a voice in CVI policies.
A National Community Violence Response Center to provide technical assistance for implementing community violence intervention and prevention programs.
The bill is endorsed by Community Justice, Sandy Hook Promise, Giffords Gun Violence Prevention & Advocacy, and Everytown for Gun Safety.
The Break the Cycle of Violence Act is cosponsored by U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
To read the full text of the bill, click here.

MIL OSI USA News –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Murphy, Blumenthal Support Legislation to Fund Community Violence Intervention
US Senate News:
Source: United States Senator for Connecticut – Chris Murphy

July 09, 2025
WASHINGTON–U.S. Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) co-sponsored the Break the Cycle of Violence Act, legislation that would create a new Office of Community Violence Intervention (CVI) and a new grant program within the Department of Health and Human Services to award $5 billion in grants to community-based, nonprofit organizations and eligible units of local government to create or support evidence-based and prevention programs to interrupt cycles of violence. U.S. Representative Steven Horsford (D-Nev.-04) introduced companion legislation in the House.

“Community violence intervention programs work – we’ve seen proof of that in Connecticut and in cities across the country. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act made a historic $250 million investment in these programs, helping lead to the largest two-year drop in gun violence rates in our country’s history. This legislation doubles down on that investment and makes sure we keep putting federal dollars behind evidence-based strategies that save lives and make communities safe,” said Murphy.

“The gun violence epidemic requires tested and true community-centered solutions to break tragic cycles of violence. Here in Connecticut, dozens of organizations are saving lives through community violence intervention programs, but they do so with severely limited resources. While the Trump Administration slashes the life-saving grants these organizations depend on, our Break the Cycle of Violence Act makes investments that will save lives and make our communities safer,” said Blumenthal.

Murphy’s past support for robust community-based violence intervention programs includes his Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), which provided millions in grants to community-based nonprofits that directly provided counseling and support to at-risk youth, and families traumatized by gun violence. On day one of his presidency, President Trump shut down the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention responsible for coordinating efforts across the federal government and working with states and local governments to identify available resources for impacted communities. On April 30^th, the Department of Education (ED) notified grant recipients of the School-Based Mental Health Services (SBMH) and Mental Health Service Professional (MHSP) Grant Programs, which BSCA funded, that their funding would not be continued after this fiscal year.

The Break the Cycle of Violence Act provisions include:

$5 billion investment in anti-violence programs to create and support violence interruption and crisis management initiatives.

$1.5 billion investment in workforce training and job opportunities, including improved youth employment and training activities, paid work experience for school aged youth, and partnerships with community-based organizations to serve youth in high-crime and high-poverty areas.

An Office of Community Violence Intervention at HHS to implement evidence-based violence reduction initiatives.

A Community Violence Intervention Advisory Committee to ensure people with expertise in community violence intervention have a voice in CVI policies.

A National Community Violence Response Center to provide technical assistance for implementing community violence intervention and prevention programs.

The bill is endorsed by Community Justice, Sandy Hook Promise, Giffords Gun Violence Prevention & Advocacy, and Everytown for Gun Safety.

The Break the Cycle of Violence Act is cosponsored by U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

To read the full text of the bill, click here.
MIL OSI USA News –
July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Hickenlooper, Bennet, DeGette, Pettersen, Crow, Neguse Demand Answers on $70 Million in Stalled Funding for Colorado Schools

US Senate News:

Source: United States Senator John Hickenlooper – Colorado

Trump administration recently withheld $7 billion from schools nationwide

WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senators John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet along with Representatives Diana DeGette, Brittany Pettersen, Jason Crow, and Joe Neguse called on Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to address the Department of Education’s decision to withhold $70 million in federal funding for Colorado schools.

“School Districts and after-school programs across our state rightfully understood they would receive these mandatory funds after they were authorized by Congress,” wrote the lawmakers. “Announcing funding delays just over a month before the school year starts has forced Colorado school districts and after-school programs into an unnecessary, last minute scramble to ensure students and parents have the support they need for a successful year.”

The frozen Title II, III, and IV federal funding supports elementary and secondary teacher training and professional development, family engagement programs, and initiatives that create safer school environments for all students.

School districts had already built their budgets around these grants. The Department of Education froze the funding days before school districts expected to receive the funding.

The text of the letter is available HERE and below.

Dear Secretary McMahon:

We write today in response to the Department of Education’s (the Department) decision to continue to withhold Title II, III, and IV federal funds. School districts throughout Colorado are depending on these funds to deliver critical services to students across the state. The delay and uncertainty around the distribution of this funding have made it incredibly difficult for school districts to plan and hire staff for the next school year.

As you are aware, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act provides $29 billion in mandatory funding for various programs and activities that support students, teachers, and communities. Titles II, III, and IV, among other activities, provide funding to support elementary and secondary teacher retention and professional development, family engagement programs, and initiatives that create safer school environments for all students. This funding, which is less than .5% of the overall federal budget, supports programs in Colorado that reduce chronic absenteeism in schools, help districts hire teachers, and fund afterschool programs. This money is appropriated by Congress for these purposes and was signed into law by President Trump in March as part of the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025.

While we understand that the Department is still reviewing this funding, the unpredictability has already caused disruptions for school districts. School Districts and after-school programs across our state rightfully understood they would receive these mandatory funds after they were authorized by Congress. Announcing funding delays just over a month before the school year starts has forced Colorado school districts and after-school programs into an unnecessary, last minute scramble to ensure students and parents have the support they need for a successful year.

To that end, please provide clarity to our offices on when the Department will provide Colorado schools with their full funding disbursement by July 18, 2025. In your response, please confirm that these funds will be fully dispersed before the 2025-2026 school year begins.

Our education system must ensure that every American student has the opportunity to thrive in our classrooms, and we stand ready to work with you to achieve this goal.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter. We look forward to hearing the Department’s response.

MIL OSI USA News –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI: Hola Prime Unveils ‘Hola Prime Futures’ with Industry-First 1-Hour Withdrawals, Expands Forex Offering with MT4 Integration

Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

NEW YORK, NY, July 09, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — In a move poised to redefine the contours of modern proprietary trading, Hola Prime, an emerging leader in the prop trading industry, has announced two major developments: the launch of Hola Prime Futures, the world’s first 1 hour withdrawals futures prop trading firm; and the strategic expansion of its forex vertical through the integration of MetaTrader 4 (MT4) – the world’s most widely adopted retail trading platform.

These initiatives are not just product additions – they signal Hola Prime’s commitment to building a prop trading ecosystem that is faster, fairer, and far more accessible than the industry status quo.

Hola Prime Futures: World’s First 1-Hour Withdrawal Futures Prop Trading Firm

Futures trading, once considered the preserve of institutional desks and seasoned speculators, is now witnessing a strong surge in interest from independent traders looking to diversify beyond forex and crypto. But with this shift has come a growing list of frustrations: multi-step evaluations, unclear rules, delayed withdrawals, and outdated platforms that deter rather than empower.

Hola Prime Futures seeks to turn that narrative on its head.

“Futures prop trading has been shaped by legacy systems that serve firms more than traders,” said Somesh Kapuria, CEO of Hola Prime. “We’re rewriting that logic. With Hola Prime Futures, we’ve stripped the experience down to its most essential elements: 1 Rule. 1 Target. 1-Step Challenge. 1-on-1 Mentorship. And 1-Hour Withdrawals. It’s simple by design and powerful by intent.”

At the core of Hola Prime Futures is a radically simplified access model: traders can choose between a 1-Step Challenge or a Direct Account, both offering access to funding levels of up to $150,000. There are no daily loss limits, no unclear or complex rules, and no hidden fine print – a stark departure from the layered complexity typical of most futures prop firms.

Yet it’s the withdrawal speed that truly sets Hola Prime apart. Backed by its strong and comprehensive 10-point payout system, Hola Prime Futures enables verified withdrawals within 60 minutes – an industry first in futures trading.

“Most prop firms still operate on outdated withdrawal cycles – three days, five days, even two weeks,” said Sumedha Sharma, CFO of Hola Prime. “But when a trader qualifies, they’ve done the work. Our system recognizes that in real time. We’ve eliminated unnecessary approvals, automate what can be automated, and built the tech to support one promise: You withdraw in one hour. Every time.”

In addition to this, Hola Prime Futures offers Project X – a trading platform designed with simplicity and strong risk management at its core. Traders can access instruments listed on CME, COMEX, NYMEX, and CBOT, all from one intuitive interface.

Furthermore, Hola Prime Futures also provides Quantower and R Trader Pro (Rithmic feed being compatible with multiple other platforms), allowing traders to work in the environment that best suits their strategy and comfort.

MT4 Integration: Strengthening the Forex Domain

While futures take center stage, Hola Prime hasn’t taken its foot off the gas in the forex segment. In fact, the firm’s forex vertical is receiving a major upgrade with the integration of MetaTrader 4 (MT4) – a move that underscores Hola Prime’s dual-asset vision and long-term trader support strategy. They already have MT5 in place. This marks the addition of both MT4 and MT5 along with 3 other trading platforms- Ctrader, DX Trade, and Match Trade. So, Hola Prime now offers a whopping 5 trading platforms for its forex traders.

“MT4 is a global standard for a reason,” said Kapuria. “It’s reliable, intuitive, and deeply compatible with the way traders operate – from algorithmic strategies to custom indicators. Bringing MT4 into our forex vertical wasn’t a tactical move; it was a strategic necessity.”

This complements the firm’s broader commitment to accessibility, performance, and infrastructure reliability across asset classes.

“We don’t believe in one-size-fits-all,” added Sharma. “Forex traders need different tools and timelines than futures traders. Our ecosystem is now robust enough to serve both – without compromise.”

Education and Mentorship

Supporting both launches is the firm’s educational initiative, Hola Prime TV – an original content platform offering live trading sessions, expert market breakdowns, and 1-on-1 mentorship from industry experts. Unlike traditional prop firms, which often outsource trader education or rely on generic resources, Hola Prime has made coaching a direct part of its offering.

“Traders today want more than capital – they want guidance, community, and real conversations about risk and resilience,” said Himanshu Chandel, Marketing Director at Hola Prime. He added, “Hola Prime TV is built around that ethos. It’s not about showing off trades. It’s about showing what it takes to last.”

The Vision Ahead

Hola Prime’s dual expansion – into 1-hour withdrawal futures prop model and platform-enhanced forex reflects a larger ambition: to be not just a prop firm, but a trader-first institution that defines the next generation of global trading.

“Our goal isn’t to be the biggest,” Kapuria concluded. “It’s to be the most trusted. A place where traders know the rules, own their path and get rewarded without delay. We’re building what every trader deserves: a fair shot.”

Hola Prime Futures and MT4 for Forex are both live. The future of trading isn’t just faster – it’s finally in the trader’s favor.

Social Links

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holaprime_global/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtVEJa1Ml132Be7tnk-DjeQ

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hola-prime/?viewAsMember=true

X: https://x.com/HolaPrimeGlobal

Discord: https://discord.gg/TJ7TcHPXBf

Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/HolaPrime/

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/HolaPrime/

Medium: https://medium.com/@social_46267

Media Contact

Company: Hola Prime

Contact: Media Team

Email: marketing@holaprime.com

Website: https://holaprime.com/

The MIL Network –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI Submissions: Australia – Household spending uptick in June, but consumers remain cautious – CBA

Source: Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA)

A lift in household spending is expected for the remainder of 2025, however a slower interest rate cutting cycle could dampen this recovery.

https://youtu.be/UP9AxIqN2VY

The CommBank Household Spending Insights (HSI) Index rose for the third month in a row in June, up 0.3 per cent following gains of 0.4 per cent in April and May.

Eight of the twelve HSI categories recorded spending growth for the month, led by Utilities (+2.9 per cent), Education (+1.1 per cent) and Communications & Digital (+1.0 per cent). The timing of the energy rebates has made the utilities category choppy, while the release of Nintendo Switch 2 likely supported sales in the Communications & Digital category.

Three categories saw a fall in the month, led lower by Hospitality (-0.8 per cent), Motor Vehicle (-0.1 per cent) and Recreation (-0.1 per cent). These categories all performed relatively well in May and again show the fickle nature of consumer spending at present.

“Household spending is starting to show signs of consistency month-on-month and should continue to pick up this year as consumers begin to loosen their purse strings. This recovery is taking longer than expected to occur, but there are green shoots emerging. The annual growth rate has picked up, but the recovery is not yet assured. Spending around sales events and new items show consumers are still deliberate on their spending decisions,” said CBA Senior Economist, Belinda Allen.

“At the same time there remains a clear preference to save and pay down debt. Recent data from CBA showed that just 10 per cent of eligible home loan customers chose to reduce their mortgage direct debit payments following the May interest rate cut. This follows a similar trend after the February rate cut when around 10 per cent of eligible customers had adjusted repayments at the same point in time – eventually rising to 14 percent before the May RBA decision.”

Taking the whole of June quarter together, the HSI lifted by 1.4 per cent, just a little above the 1.2 per cent recorded in the March quarter, but still below the 1.6 per cent recorded in the December quarter of 2024.

“The RBA’s decision to hold rates at 3.85 per cent in July was unexpected, but we anticipate the RBA to cut the cash rate in August by 25 basis points, with November the most likely option for a follow up rate cut. While we still anticipate a pickup in household spending in 2025, a slower rate cutting cycle could soften this recovery over the remainder of the year.”

In June, homeowners without a mortgage saw the weakest yearly spending growth per capita at 3.5 per cent, continuing the trend from May. Homeowners with a mortgage saw a shift higher in spending in June, with gains over the past year now tracking at 5.2 per cent. Meanwhile renters saw a lift to 4.2 per cent.

“Homeowners with a mortgage have reduced spending on transport, hospitality, and food and beverage goods over the past year but lower interest rates are expected to boost disposable income in the coming months. Renters continues to spend more following an increase in April and May,” commented Ms Allen.

NSW recorded the strongest household spending growth in June of the states and territories, rising 0.7 per cent. Over the past year, NSW has outperformed nationally, up 8.4 per cent in a change at the top of the state leaderboard. Meanwhile Queensland has grown 7.3 per cent, recovering well from ex-tropical cyclone Alfred in March, when the state posted the softest growth of all states at just 0.2 per cent.

MIL OSI – Submitted News –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI Submissions: Technology – Moldova’s Virtual IT Park Attracts Global Attention with Record Growth and €1 Billion Revenue Target – MITP

Source: Moldova Innovation Technology Park (MITP)

Chisinau, Moldova, July 9th,2025 – Moldova Innovation Technology Park (MITP), the first fully virtual IT park in Europe and a key pillar of Moldova’s innovation ecosystem, continues to break records and transform the country’s economic landscape.

In 2025, MITP expects its resident companies to generate over €1 billion in revenue, representing a 30% increase compared to 2024 and reaffirming the IT sector as a major engine of Moldova’s economic growth.

Launched in 2018 by the Government of Moldova, MITP has rapidly evolved into a gateway to Eastern Europe’s emerging tech scene. Today, it unites over 2,370 resident companies from 43 countries, including new entrants from the United States, Germany, the UK, Italy, Ukraine, France, and many others. In 2024 alone, 533 new companies joined — the highest annual growth since the park’s creation.

“The regional geopolitical context has played a decisive role. In 2021, MITP hosted only three Ukrainian companies. By 2024, this number had surged more than fourteen-fold due to strategic relocations caused by the war. Meanwhile, the number of Romanian-owned companies nearly doubled over the past three years, influenced in part by recent tax changes affecting Romania’s IT sector,”

— said Marina Bzovîi, Administrator of MITP.

Beyond the IT sector, Moldova is undergoing a structural economic transformation, marked by a decisive shift from goods-based production to a service-driven growth model. In 2025, the country recorded three historic milestones in services exports:

$626 million USD in Q1 alone — a record high for the first quarter
$2.8 billion USD annually — an all-time maximum
Services now represent 44.5% of total exports, the highest share in Moldova’s history

IT services lead this growth, totaling $686 million USD, followed by transportation services ($561 million), and business support services ($279 million). Education and health services are also on a strong upward trajectory. As a result, Moldova now enjoys a $900 million USD trade surplus in services, helping offset deficits in goods and positioning the country as a dynamic, services-driven economy.

“Moldova’s economic model is undergoing a profound transformation — from a traditional, goods-based economy to one driven by high-value services and digital innovation. The extraordinary growth of MITP is a testament to our unwavering commitment to building a future-ready, service-oriented economy that creates skilled jobs and attracts global investors. As we accelerate our digital transformation and promote smart regulation, Moldova is emerging as a competitive, innovation-led destination in the heart of Europe.”

— Doina Nistor, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Digitalization and Economic Development of the Republic of Moldova

MITP is home to pioneering companies that have chosen Moldova as the ideal place to innovate and grow. For example, Parkopedia, founded by Eugene Tsyrklevich, began as a small operation and now provides smart parking solutions for global automotive giants such as BMW, Audi, and Toyota — all developed from Moldova, thanks to MITP’s supportive environment. Meanwhile, Argus AI, co-founded by neurosurgeon Alexandru Andrusca and AI expert Vladimir Verbulski, has created an advanced virtual reality system for neurosurgical planning, making such technology more accessible worldwide. These success stories showcase Moldova’s emergence as an unexpected but highly attractive home for cutting-edge tech and ambitious entrepreneurs.

The economic impact of MITP is substantial: in 2024, resident companies contributed over €78 million to Moldova’s public budget, four times more than in 2017. About half of this amount comes from businesses established after the park’s launch, highlighting MITP’s role as a catalyst for job creation, investment attraction, and Moldova’s growing digital competitiveness.

About Moldova Innovation Technology Park (MITP)

Launched in early 2018 by the Government of Moldova, MITP is an innovative, fully virtual IT park designed to strengthen Moldova’s technology ecosystem and enhance its regional competitiveness. The park offers a unique 7% single tax system, simplified immigration procedures (including an IT Visa program), reduced bureaucratic barriers, and the possibility of a fully virtual presence.

MITP serves as a central access point to the most attractive incentives and services in the IT sector. Its multi-stakeholder governance model and fully virtual structure make it a one-of-a-kind success story in Europe. The park’s mission is to act as a catalyst for IT investments by promoting flexible government policies, fostering an environment for ICT innovation, and driving Moldova’s economic digital transformation.

Created for a 20-year period, MITP now unites over 2,370 resident companies from 43 countries, positioning Moldova as a rising tech destination on the global map.

MIL OSI – Submitted News –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI New Zealand: Universities – Economists moot bold income tax plan – UoA

Source: University of Auckland (UoA)

What if your income tax didn’t go to the government but into your own savings account? A bold proposal makes the case.

New Zealand’s ageing population and ballooning welfare and health costs are piling pressure on the public purse.

In response, former Minister of Finance Sir Roger Douglas and University of Auckland economics professor Robert MacCulloch are reimagining their ambitious 2016 proposal to overhaul the country’s tax, health and welfare systems by shifting income taxation to mandatory savings.

In their research article, the pair argue that income tax on earnings up to $60,000 should be redirected into individual savings accounts. These accounts would fund each person’s healthcare, pension and risk cover, replacing much of the current public system with private provision.

By 2060, 26 percent of New Zealanders will be over 65, up from 16 percent in 2021, which will intensify the strain on superannuation and healthcare.

“We need to change the way we’re doing things so government costs can be reduced, quality of outcomes increased, and the plight of low earners, who are most vulnerable to public cuts, improved,” say Douglas and MacCulloch in their paper How to change the welfare state from a taxation to a savings-based model.

The economists attempt a politically feasible plan that maintains total welfare funding from both public and private sources, while opening up more choice and competition in the supply of healthcare services.

“We need to adjust the tax system so the vast majority of New Zealanders of working age can provide for themselves,” says MacCulloch. “The first step is to build mandatory savings accounts for health, pensions and risk cover via the transfer into them of current taxes paid on income up to $60,000.”

According to their model, an individual could save around $21,000 annually: $9,450 into a health account, $7,350 for superannuation, and $4,200 for risk cover.

A drop in corporate taxes would help fund employer contributions, and the government would retain sufficient tax revenues so it could act as ‘insurer of last resort’, paying for people who can’t meet their welfare costs out of their savings accounts.

“Our savings-not-taxation reform offers scope for efficiency gains in healthcare. It does so by opening up choice for individuals,” says MacCulloch.

“Rather than the government dictating where to go, people can choose their preferred public or private supplier.”

The researchers point to Singapore, which employs mandatory savings accounts and has one of the highest-quality healthcare systems in the world, yet spent 5.6 percent of its GDP on healthcare in 2021 (including both public and private sectors), compared to New Zealand’s 10.1 percent.

“Our reform keeps the pension but would raise the retirement age gradually from 65 to 70 years old over a 20-year period,” says MacCulloch.

The authors would do away with fee subsidies and interest-free loans for tertiary students from well-off families. Instead, a means test would see only students from low-income, low-capital families receive aid.

They would scrap grants to the movie industry, winter energy subsidies to wealthy households, favourable tax treatment for owners of rental housing, and allowances to sectors such as forestry, fishing, and bloodstock.

The money saved from these changes would be directed towards helping low earners build savings and cover the welfare needs of those who are chronically unwell.

“Perhaps more than any other feature of our reform, it’s the ‘miracle of compound interest’ that governments like New Zealand’s are not taking proper advantage of,” says MacCulloch. “If we can do this, it’ll help our financial situation.”

MacCulloch notes that the proposal isn’t without flaws, but says bold change and ideas are needed, and fast, if Aotearoa New Zealand is to create a resilient economy in the face of an ageing population.

MIL OSI New Zealand News –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Donalds Announces April Town Hall In Estero
Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Byron Donalds (R-FL)

Donalds Announces April Town Hall In Estero

Washington, April 11, 2025
WASHINGTON – Congressman Byron Donalds (R-FL) has released the following information announcing an in-person Town Hall event in Estero, Florida.

Congressman Donalds is hosting this Town Hall to offer the residents of Florida’s 19^th Congressional District an update on legislative matters occurring on Capitol Hill. Town Hall attendees will propose questions, share concerns, and learn of ways that legislation on Capitol Hill impacts the greater Southwest Florida community, the Sunshine State, and the nation.

Pre-registration tickets are available exclusively for voting constituents of Florida’s 19th Congressional District.

For those unable to attend the Town Hall event in person, all constituents of Florida’s 19^th Congressional District are invited to tune-in to virtual broadcasts of the event, which will be found on the Congressman’s official social media accounts.

WHO:
- Congressman Byron Donalds (FL-19)
- Voting constituents of Florida’s 19^th Congressional District
WHERE:
- Estero High School, 21900 River Ranch Rd, Estero, FL 33928
WHEN:
- April 21, 2025
- Arrival time for pre-registered, verified FL-19 Voters: 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM
- General admission for verified FL-19 Voters: 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
- Event begins: 6:30 PM
HOW:

###
MIL OSI USA News –
July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI United Kingdom: New action to tackle illegal and exploitative children’s homes
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

Press release

New action to tackle illegal and exploitative children’s homes

Up to 200 places will be created for vulnerable children in council-run high-quality children’s homes with £53 million
The most vulnerable children in society will be better protected from unsafe, illegal children’s homes thanks to over £53 million investment from the government to create 200 new placements in high-quality council-run homes through its Plan for Change.

For the first time, the government has specifically targeted funding at children who have such complex needs that they are at risk of, or have been, deprived of their liberty.

Children in these situations need extra support from social workers and care teams to stop them running away from home and from harming themselves and others.

The new homes will break down barriers to opportunity by providing support for these young people’s complex behaviour and mental health needs in safe and stable environments. A substantial shortage of placements to meet these young people’s needs over recent years has seen them being placed into accommodation that is operating illegally by not registering with Ofsted.

Data from the Children’s Commissioner shows this also comes at an eye-watering cost to councils, who spend an estimated £440 million a year on unregistered placements. Over 30 placements were costing over £1 million each – and this in a world where private providers sometimes siphon off over 20% of placement costs for private profit.

One teenager with both SEND and mental health needs told the commissioner they had been living in a caravan for two months, at a cost of £75,000, out of her council area.

Today’s announcement builds on measures already announced in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to give Ofsted stronger powers to impose fines on illegal homes and new powers for the Secretary of State to cap provider profits if excessive profiteering is not brought under control.

Minister for Children and Families Janet Daby said:

The children’s social care system has faced years of drift and neglect, leading to a vicious cycle of late intervention and children falling through the cracks.

One of the worst symptoms of this is when some of the most vulnerable young people in society are shunted from pillar to post – traumatised by shameful illegal homes, while some private companies rack up ludicrous profits.

Through our Plan for Change and our Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, this government is enabling every child to achieve and thrive by investing in the places children need, cracking down on profiteering with new laws, and rebuilding family support services so parents and carers get the help they need to keep their children happy and safe in loving homes.

It comes as part of ambitious reform to rebalance the children’s social care system away from crisis intervention and towards earlier help to keep children safe, with over £2 billion investment over the course of this parliament.

Green shoots are already being seen as an evaluation published today of areas that tested the government’s early intervention reforms show evidence of improved collaboration between agencies leading to more consistent support for families.

Funding for preventative services has already been doubled this year compared to last year from £250 million to £500 million, so that every family who needs support receives it to stop issues getting worse, with the guidance of a dedicated family help worker.

The government committed to continuing the £500m funding each year until 2028-29 at the Spending Review alongside a further increase of at least £300 million over the coming two years.

Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said:

My work as Children’s Commissioner has shown there are too many children who need brilliant care who have instead ended up in illegal – and terrible – accommodation. Instead of receiving care and support, they are side-lined, ignored and left waiting while services fail to take responsibility for these children.

This funding, and the social care provisions of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, is an opportunity to bring that to an end. It will increase the number of loving, safe homes for this group of children – whose needs are often urgent and complex – and must provide loving, therapeutic, joined-up care to help these children flourish.

Chief Executive at Action for Children Paul Carberry said:

It’s vital that children and young people with complex needs receive specialist, therapeutic care in a stable environment. Over recent years, too many children have been placed in unregulated, unsuitable accommodation due to the critical shortage of placements in the system, with sometimes devastating consequences on their health, safety, and wellbeing.

Without the right support, their needs can escalate, and placements can break down.

We wholeheartedly welcome this investment, which will ensure more children with complex needs get the care and support they deserve.

Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, new laws are being brought in to increase the transparency of private providers over their finances, with a backstop provision to introduce a profit cap if providers don’t voluntarily bring an end to exploitative practices.

The department has also brought together an expert ‘market intervention advisory group’, which is working on the details of how the financial oversight and transparency schemes will work in practice to make as quick as possible progress to tackle profiteering, as well as how to bring in more voluntary providers.

Schemes are being considered to encourage charities and ethical investors to open children’s homes, including through innovative funding mechanisms like social financing.

DfE media enquiries

Central newsdesk – for journalists 020 7783 8300

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Published 10 July 2025
MIL OSI United Kingdom –
July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI Banking: Reasoning reimagined: Introducing Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning
Source: Microsoft

Headline: Reasoning reimagined: Introducing Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning

Unlock faster, efficient reasoning with Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning—optimized for edge, mobile, and real-time applications.

State of the art architecture redefines speed for reasoning models

Microsoft is excited to unveil a new edition to the Phi model family: Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning. Purpose-built for scenarios where compute, memory, and latency are tightly constrained, this new model is engineered to bring advanced reasoning capabilities to edge devices, mobile applications, and other resource-constrained environments. This new model follows Phi-4-mini, but is built on a new hybrid architecture, that achieves up to 10 times higher throughput and a 2 to 3 times average reduction in latency, enabling significantly faster inference without sacrificing reasoning performance. Ready to power real world solutions that demand efficiency and flexibility, Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning is available on Azure AI Foundry, NVIDIA API Catalog, and Hugging Face today.

Azure AI Foundry

Create without boundaries—Azure AI Foundry has everything you need to design, customize, and manage AI applications and agents

Efficiency without compromise

Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning balances math reasoning ability with efficiency, making it potentially suitable for educational applications, real-time logic-based applications, and more.

Similar to its predecessor, Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning is a 3.8 billion parameter open model optimized for advanced math reasoning. It supports a 64K token context length and is fine-tuned on high-quality synthetic data to deliver reliable, logic-intensive performance deployment.

What’s new?

At the core of Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning is the newly introduced decoder-hybrid-decoder architecture, SambaY, whose central innovation is the Gated Memory Unit (GMU), a simple yet effective mechanism for sharing representations between layers. The architecture includes a self-decoder that combines Mamba (a State Space Model) and Sliding Window Attention (SWA), along with a single layer of full attention. The architecture also involves a cross-decoder that interleaves expensive cross-attention layers with the new, efficient GMUs. This new architecture with GMU modules drastically improves decoding efficiency, boosts long-context retrieval performance and enables the architecture to deliver exceptional performance across a wide range of tasks.

Key benefits of the SambaY architecture include:
- Enhanced decoding efficiency.
- Preserves linear prefiling time complexity.
- Increased scalability and enhanced long context performance.
- Up to 10 times higher throughput.
Our decoder-hybrid-decoder architecture taking Samba [RLL+25] as the self-decoder. Gated Memory Units (GMUs) are interleaved with the cross-attention layers in the cross-decoder to reduce the decoding computation complexity. As in YOCO [SDZ+24], the full attention layer only computes the KV cache during the prefilling with the self-decoder, leading to linear computation complexity for the prefill stage.

Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning benchmarks

Like all models in the Phi family, Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning is deployable on a single GPU, making it accessible for a broad range of use cases. However, what sets it apart is its architectural advantage. This new model achieves significantly lower latency and higher throughput compared to Phi-4-mini-reasoning, particularly in long-context generation and latency-sensitive reasoning tasks.

This makes Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning a compelling option for developers and enterprises looking to deploy intelligent systems that require fast, scalable, and efficient reasoning—whether on premises or on-device.

The top plot shows inference latency as a function of generation length, while the bottom plot illustrates how inference latency varies with throughput. Both experiments were conducted using the vLLM inference framework on a single A100-80GB GPU with tensor parallelism (TP) set to 1.

A more accurate evaluation was used where Pass@1 accuracy is averaged over 64 samples for AIME24/25 and 8 samples for Math500 and GPQA Diamond. In this graph, Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning outperforms Phi-4-mini-reasoning and is better than models twice its size.

What are the potential use cases?

Thanks to its reduced latency, improved throughput, and focus on math reasoning, the model is ideal for:
- Adaptive learning platforms, where real-time feedback loops are essential.
- On-device reasoning assistants, such as mobile study aids or edge-based logic agents.
- Interactive tutoring systems that dynamically adjust content difficulty based on a learner’s performance.
Its strength in math and structured reasoning makes it especially valuable for education technology, lightweight simulations, and automated assessment tools that require reliable logic inference with fast response times.

Developers are encouraged to connect with peers and Microsoft engineers through the Microsoft Developer Discord community to ask questions, share feedback, and explore real-world use cases together.

Microsoft’s commitment to trustworthy AI

Organizations across industries are leveraging Azure AI and Microsoft 365 Copilot capabilities to drive growth, increase productivity, and create value-added experiences.

We’re committed to helping organizations use and build AI that is trustworthy, meaning it is secure, private, and safe. We bring best practices and learnings from decades of researching and building AI products at scale to provide industry-leading commitments and capabilities that span our three pillars of security, privacy, and safety. Trustworthy AI is only possible when you combine our commitments, such as our Secure Future Initiative and our responsible AI principles, with our product capabilities to unlock AI transformation with confidence.

Phi models are developed in accordance with Microsoft AI principles: accountability, transparency, fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, and inclusiveness. 

The Phi model family, including Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning, employs a robust safety post-training strategy that integrates Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT), Direct Preference Optimization (DPO), and Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). These techniques are applied using a combination of open-source and proprietary datasets, with a strong emphasis on ensuring helpfulness, minimizing harmful outputs, and addressing a broad range of safety categories. Developers are encouraged to apply responsible AI best practices tailored to their specific use cases and cultural contexts.

Read the model card to learn more about any risk and mitigation strategies.

Learn more about the new model

Create with Azure AI Foundry
MIL OSI Global Banks –
July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI Submissions: Australia – NAIDOC Week – Refugees feel welcomed by Indigenous communities – study

Source: AMES

Refugees settling in Australia feel welcomed by Indigenous communities and believe it is important to respect and learn about first nations’ culture, according to a new survey.

More than half (63 per cent) of respondents said that felt welcomed by Indigenous communities and that it was important to be welcoming to Indigenous Australians, while just 13 per cent said it was not important.

The findings are part of a survey of refugees who have settled in regional Australia, conducted by migrant and refugee settlement agency AMES Australia and the University of Wollongong.

The interim results of the ‘Settling Well’ survey found refugees in the regions feel welcome and safe, and value the peaceful environment regional communities provide in raising children.

The study is a five-year longitudinal comparative assessment of the impacts of refugee settlement in regional Australia.

The study surveyed refugee and established communities in Nhilll, Mildura, Albury-Wodonga, Cowra-Orange, Rockhampton and Townsville.

Mildura based former refugee Jules Kangeta said it was important to respect Indigenous culture.

“I find welcome to country ceremonies very moving. You can see an ancient culture at work and the local Indigenous community are telling us we are welcome,” Mr Kangeta said.

“It is a very generous gesture that shows love and shows that these are good people. The ceremonies are important because the give authority and agency to newcomers, like me, to this country.

“It is important that Indigenous communities are recognised and have a say in the country that was originally theirs,” Mr Kangeta said.

AMES Australia CEO Cath Scarth said refugee and Indigenous communities had many things in common and natural affinity.

“Many people from both communities can, at times, feel marginalised and can struggle to find their places in mainstream society. So, it’s not surprising there is a level of empathy between them,” she said.

The study also found refugees were finding employment opportunities and affordable housing in the regions.

It found refugees valued the lack of congestion in regional Australia and they most planned to stay.

But it also identified issues with a lack of service provision and educational opportunities.

It asked refugees how they felt about life in rural Australia in terms of economic, cultural and social outcomes as well as access to opportunity and health and wellbeing.

The study surveyed 324 people from 25 countries. Most of the participants were from the Democratic republic of Congo, Burma, the Central African Republic, Afghanistan and Bhutan.

“Overall, people feel safe and peaceful in regional Australia. They felt welcomed by, but also a little isolated from, communities mostly because of language barriers,” the report said.

“They like the lack of congestion, and they see regional communities as better places to raise kids because they see them as safer from bad influences. But this also comes with less educational opportunities.

“Many people have been able to buy houses, that would have been out of reach in the cities. And employment opportunities are generally good,” the report said.

Asked if they planned to stay in regional Australia, 75 per cent said they planned to stay long term and just 5 per cent said they did not.

The study found refugees were mostly satisfied with the support they received on settling into new communities.

“We found that individuals – settlement workers, volunteers and community members – were important in helping people to settle,” the report said.

The study also found services in the regions were less accessible that in cities.

“In some communities we found a lack of things like dental services, refugee mental health and immigration lawyers,” the report said.

“We also found that younger adults were missing out on schooling and further educational opportunities.”

The study also identified a lack of English language tuition in secondary settlement locations, where mainstream settlement services are not available.

The study’s preliminary recommendations included: flexible settlement core funding to respond to needs that arise; reassessment of needs after initial settlement, and flexible delivery of English language classes tailored to different aspirations and locations.

MIL OSI – Submitted News –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI Australia: Tracking insect and bug health in a heartbeat from a digital camera

Source:

10 July 2025

In a world-first pilot study, researchers from the University of South Australia (UniSA) have used video footage of insects to extract their heart rates without touching or disturbing them.

The innovation, published in the Archives of Insect Biochemistry and Physiology, could transform how scientists monitor the health and stress levels of arthropods, that account for more than 80% of animal species.

Taking footage from smartphones, social media videos and digital cameras, the researchers used sophisticated signal processing methods to monitor the heart activity of ants, bees, caterpillars, spiders, grasshoppers and stick insects.

Unlike mammals, arthropods have an open circulatory system in which blood fills the body cavity, bathing the internal organs and tissues. Their heart is located on the top (dorsal) side of their body in the abdomen.

Led by UniSA PhD candidate Danyi Wang and her supervisor Professor Javaan Chahl, the study demonstrates that subtle body movements captured on standard digital or smartphone cameras can be analysed to reveal accurate and detailed cardiac activity in a range of insect species.

Unlike traditional methods that require physical contact or immobilisation, this technique allows insects to remain free, without disrupting their natural behaviour.

“Insects are vital to our ecosystems, and understanding their physiological responses to environmental change is essential,” Wang says.

“Existing methods to measure insect’ vital signs are invasive, however. Our method preserves their natural behaviour while providing accurate insights into their heart activity.”

The extracted heart rates closely matched the physiological ranges recorded via traditional techniques, validating the system’s accuracy.

Senior author Prof Javaan Chahl says the system successfully captured heart rates across multiple insect species, detecting physiological differences influenced by factors such as wing morphology and temperature.

“From ants with heart rates of around 50 beats per minute, to bees reaching 119bpm, our results consistently aligned with established reference values,” Prof Chahl says.

“What’s exciting is that this was all achieved without attaching sensors or disturbing the insects in any way.”

One of the most impressive validations came from caterpillar recordings, where the team compared their video-derived cardiac signals to data from infrared contact sensors in previous studies. The shapes and frequencies were almost identical.

The study also revealed interesting inter-species variations. For example, spider heart rates varied significantly, reflecting differences between species rather than activity levels, since all subjects were at rest during filming.

Advanced image processing techniques, including motion tracking algorithms and magnification, were applied to detect tiny movements associated with heartbeats. These signals were analysed using spectral filtering and transformed into frequency data to isolate the heart rate.

According to Prof Chahl, the study marks an important step forward in insect research.

“Non-invasive cardiac monitoring offers tremendous potential; not just for studying insect health, but also for understanding environmental stressors, pesticide effects, or even the wellbeing of social insects like ants and bees, where heart signals can provide insights into colony health and behaviour.”

His team has previously used a similar technique with digital cameras to remotely extract cardiac signals in humans and wildlife.

The researchers hope to test the system in the field and refine it by using machine learning to improve the accuracy across different body types and light conditions.

“With more refinement, this could become a cost effective and valuable tool in the ecological research toolkit,” says Wang. “It gives us the ability to listen to the hearts of the smallest creatures without harming them.”

‘Extracting Cardiac Activity for Arthropods Using Digital Cameras: Insights from a Pilot Study’ is published in the Archives of Insect Biochemistry and Physiology. DOI: 10.1002/arch.70076

A video demonstrating the experiment is available at: redback_final.mp4 – Google Drive

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Research contact for interview: Professor Javaan Chahl E: javaan.chahl@unisa.edu.au

Media contact: Candy Gibson M: +61 434 605 142 E: candy.gibson@unisa.edu.au

MIL OSI News –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Murray Sounds Alarm Over RFK Jr. Postponing U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Meeting, Threat to Coverage of Preventive Care

US Senate News:

Source: United States Senator for Washington State Patty Murray

ICYMI: Senator Murray, Former ACIP Member from WA State Raise Alarm Over Purge of Entire CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee

ICYMI: Murray Calls for Kennedy to Reinstate Fired ACIP Members or Delay Meeting Until New Members Appropriately Vetted

Washington, D.C. – Today, Senator Patty Murray, a senior member and former chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, released the following statement regarding the postponement of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) meeting that was scheduled to take place tomorrow. USPSTF is an independent advisory panel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The USPSTF is made up of 16 unpaid, volunteer members serving four-year terms. USPSTF is supported by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) staff, but that agency has lost roughly half of their support staff due to President Trump and Secretary Kennedy’s mass firings across HHS.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Kennedy v. Braidwood Management, Inc. on June 27^th ruled that USPSTF members are “inferior officers” consistent with the Appointments Clause to the Constitution, therefore affirming their authority to determine coverage of preventive services. The Affordable Care Act Democrats passed gave USPSTF recommendations the force of law for the first time—ensuring that mammograms, colonoscopies, and screenings for depression, osteoporosis, lung cancer, and other recommended preventive care would be covered by insurance at no cost to patients.

“The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is essential to ensuring cancer screenings and other lifesaving preventive services are covered by insurance at no cost to patients—and the abrupt postponement of tomorrow’s task force meeting should set off alarm bells for everyone worried about what our conspiracy-promoting Health Secretary is up to next. I’m concerned Secretary Kennedy may be taking the first steps to dismantle the Preventive Services Task Force and attack its mission and commitment to scientific evidence, just like he has done at the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee and across our nation’s public health agencies.

“The Preventive Services Task Force is made up of independent national experts in preventive medicine and primary care—they are volunteers who serve the public interest. In no world should experts be replaced with unqualified anti-science cronies of RFK Jr. who will make preventive health care more expensive and harder to get over baseless conspiracy theories or debunked disinformation.

“I implore every one of my colleagues who believes Americans should be able to get lifesaving preventive care without worrying about cost to speak out now, and to my Republican colleagues: pick up the phone and tell Secretary Kennedy to keep his hands off preventive care.”

Senator Murray forcefully opposed RFK Jr.’s nomination to lead HHS and has been a leading voice in the Senate pushing back against his systematic dismantling of our nation’s premiere public health agency, from the unprecedented mass firing of qualified HHS employees and the closure of critical regional offices, to Secretary Kennedy’s purge of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Last month, Senator Murray called on Secretary Kennedy to reinstate the fired ACIP members and held a press call with Washington state-based Dr. Helen Chu, one of the 17 ACIP members abruptly fired by Secretary Kennedy without cause.

Senator Murray has sent countless oversight letters and hosted numerous press conferences and events to lay out how the administration’s reckless gutting of HHS is risking Americans’ health and safety and will set our country back decades—and lift up the voices of HHS employees who were fired for no reason and through no fault of their own.

MIL OSI USA News –

July 10, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Cityland: Congressman Goldman Outlines Solutions to Lack of Public Trust in Government

Source: US Congressman Dan Goldman (NY-10)

New York, NY – In June, Congressman Dan Goldman delivered the keynote speech at the New York Law School’s 199th CityLaw Breakfast, titled: “Democracy on the Brink: Corruption and the Public Trust.” In his keynote, Goldman outlined the damage being done by rampant public corruption to public confidence in government and the social contract. Goldman then outlined a pathway forward that ranged from changes in broader civic culture to specific legislative items.

Read coverage of the keynote from CityLand here and below, read Goldman’s remarks as prepared here, and watch Goldman’s full speech here.

CityLand: Congressman Goldman Outlines Solutions to Lack of Public Trust in Government

By Ili Pecullan

July 8, 2025

According to Congressman Dan Goldman, a second-term Democrat representing New York’s 10th Congressional District, the fundamental principles of American democracy are being tested like never before. But even as he identifies abuses of power by President Donald Trump and the self-inflicted fraying of checks and balances thanks to decisions by Republicans who have the majority in both houses of Congress and decisions by the conservative-led Supreme Court, Goldman also sees bipartisan problems that shake public trust in government. And he is calling for action to reverse worsening trends while planning to rewrite the public corruption rulebook.

On June 17, Goldman appeared at New York Law School, where he was the featured speaker for the school’s 199th CityLaw Breakfast hosted by its Center for New York City and State Law. Goldman’s speech, which was followed by a brief audience Q&A, was titled, “Democracy on the Brink: Corruption and the Public Trust.”

Goldman is a former federal prosecutor as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York and served as the lead counsel in the first impeachment of President Donald Trump, which revolved around his efforts to leverage aid to Ukraine for his personal political purposes. His district includes Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, and was newly drawn in the post-Census redistricting process earlier this decade.

In his talk, Goldman outlined many ways in which he sees Trump abusing his power and not being held to account by Republicans in Congress or the Supreme Court, but also several other examples of both Democrats and Republicans betraying the public trust. He provided a series of recommendations for legislative action Congress could take to prevent corruption across the three branches of the federal government and down through other levels as well, and explained how he is working to advance solutions.

Goldman cited, for example, Trump accepting a luxury jet from the royal family of Qatar without the consent of Congress and selling VIP White House tours to the top buyers of his cryptocurrency to advance his own financial interests. According to Goldman, Trump’s actions in this term and his prior one are both cause and effect of the public’s growing assumption that all politicians are corrupt, the broader loss of trust in government, Republicans’ failure to hold their own accountable, and both parties’ failure to fix the system.

“When those in power use their position to enrich themselves, to favor their allies, or to punish their enemies, that social contract begins to dissolve, and that broken trust is in my view what has paved the way for the resurrection of the current president of the White House,” Goldman said.

During his speech, Goldman expressed shock and dismay over ways in which the Legislature and Supreme Court have reduced their own power to allow Trump to have more. He also referenced recent corruption cases involving Democrats, like former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, who was convicted on public corruption charges, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted on public corruption charges that were then dismissed at the Trump administration’s behest in a widely criticized deal.

Among Goldman’s suggested solutions to the practices that have put U.S. democracy in a precarious state are changes in broader civic culture to specific legislative items. He stressed the need for a “renewed commitment to ethical government from candidates,” including holding themselves and members of their own party to a higher standard. For example, members of Congress should not buy individual stocks and should provide full transparency into their campaign finances, helping voters see that politicians are in office to advance the interests of their constituents, not their own personal gain. These actions, which Congress should work to make required by law, he said, would increase public trust in elected officials and provide new checks on their behavior. He referenced putting his own vast investment portfolio into a blind trust upon taking office in 2023.

“We can no longer trust that our elected officials, especially our president, will view the plain language of the Constitution as binding,” Goldman said, pointing to the need for new laws. Congress must pass legislation to clearly codify elements of the Constitution that prevent corruption, such as the Hatch Act and the Emoluments Clause, he said. Additionally, Goldman said, “I believe we must draft legislation to codify the independence of the Department of Justice from personal influence by the President.”

Goldman also said he is in the process of rewriting federal public corruption laws, in order to ensure that all politicians have a “clear and uniform understanding of what is and is not official corruption.” Not only is there a lack of clarity in the current public corruption laws, he said, but the Supreme Court has also narrowed the reach of federal corruption laws through several rulings. These changes, which he indicated he will propose in the near future, would not only help restore more balance of power in the federal government, he said, but show voters that they can better trust candidates, elected officials, and government.

Goldman closed his speech by also addressing the important role that voters play in preventing government corruption and holding politicians accountable. “We can, we must, we will do better,” he said. “History is watching us.”

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MIL OSI USA News –

July 10, 2025