Source: European Union 2
The EU has been swift to respond to North Macedonia’s request for help evacuating 15 people with severe burns following a fire in a nightclub in Kocani that killed 59 people and injured 155. Several patients have been taken to Hungary by Luxembourg and Romania is transporting patients to Lithuania.
Source: United Kingdom London Metropolitan Police
A 23-year-old man responsible for the brutal murder of Sean O’Neill has been jailed for life.
Dellan Charles (08.01.2001), of no fixed address, appeared at Kingston Crown Court on Monday, 17 March where he was told he will serve a minimum of 23 years behind bars. He was convicted of murder on Tuesday, 17 December.
On the evening of Thursday, 18 May 2023, following an altercation between two rival groups in Reynolds Road, Hayes, Charles chased and killed Sean in a quiet residential street in broad daylight.
After cornering him, Charles used two knives to stab Sean multiple times. During the trial, the court heard how Charles shouted “die, die, die” during the attack.
In CCTV footage, Charles was pictured calmly leaving the scene after delivering the fatal blows, before making his escape by trespassing through nearby leafy suburban gardens. The jury heard how Charles disposed of a knife at a nearby address, before concocting a calculated plan to flee the area. He then went to ground for just shy of a year.
Over the course of the next ten months, detectives pieced together the course of events alongside an extensive manhunt.
The specialist team of officers then used this evidence and intelligence to capture Charles in Coventry on Wednesday, 27 March 2024, helping secure justice for Sean and his family.
The jury heard how Sean was a funny, kind and sociable person and many people have been deeply affected by his tragic death.
Detective Inspector Kevin Martin, who led the investigation for Specialist Crime South, said:
“Myself and the team once again pay tribute to Sean’s family who, throughout this distressing time, have shown real strength and togetherness.
“Heartbreakingly, nothing will ever bring Sean back, but today, the man responsible for taking him away from his much-loved family has been forced to face the reality of his malicious actions.”
In a statement previously provided by Sean’s family, they added:
“We really appreciate the efforts of the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service in bringing about justice, as well as the support we have received throughout this difficult process.
“Sean will be remembered for his big heart, charming smile and fun-loving personality. He is incredibly loved by us all and we miss him every day.”
ENDS
Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)
HAMILTON, Bermuda, March 17, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Enstar Group Limited (“Enstar”) (Nasdaq: ESGR) today announced the expiration and final results of its previously announced cash tender offer (the “Tender Offer”) for any and all of the outstanding 5.750% Fixed-Rate Reset Junior Subordinated Notes due 2040 issued by Enstar’s wholly owned subsidiary, Enstar Finance LLC, that Enstar guarantees on a junior subordinated basis (the “Notes”).
The Tender Offer expired at 5:00 p.m., New York City time, on March 14, 2025 (the “Expiration Time”). The principal amount of the Notes that was validly tendered and not validly withdrawn in the Tender Offer as of the Expiration Time according to information provided by D.F. King & Co., Inc., the Information and Tender Agent for the Tender Offer, is set forth in the table below. The amount in the table below does not include $737,000 aggregate principal amount of the Notes that remain subject to the guaranteed delivery procedures.
| Title of Notes | CUSIP Number/ISIN |
Principal Amount Outstanding |
Aggregate Principal Amount Tendered |
||||||
| 5.750% Fixed-Rate Reset Junior Subordinated Notes due 2040 | 29360A AA8 / US29360AAA88 | $350,000,000 | $232,560,000 | ||||||
Enstar expects to accept for purchase all Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn prior to the Expiration Time, including Notes delivered in accordance with the guaranteed delivery procedures. Settlement for the Notes validly tendered and not validly withdrawn at or prior to the Expiration Time and accepted for purchase by Enstar is expected to take place on March 19, 2025. Holders of Notes accepted for purchase pursuant to the Tender Offer will receive the previously announced consideration of $1,000 for each $1,000 principal amount of Notes plus accrued and unpaid interest thereon from the last interest payment date to, but not including, the settlement date for the Tender Offer.
The Tender Offer was made pursuant to the Offer to Purchase dated March 10, 2025 and the related Notice of Guaranteed Delivery.
Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Barclays Capital Inc., HSBC Securities (USA) Inc., SMBC Nikko Securities America, Inc. and Truist Securities, Inc. acted as the Dealer Managers for the Tender Offer. D.F. King & Co., Inc. acted as the Information and Tender Agent for the Tender Offer.
THIS PRESS RELEASE IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT AN OFFER OR SOLICITATION TO PURCHASE NOTES. THE TENDER OFFER WAS MADE SOLELY PURSUANT TO THE OFFER DOCUMENTS, WHICH SET FORTH THE COMPLETE TERMS OF THE TENDER OFFER.
About Enstar
Enstar is a NASDAQ-listed leading global insurance group that offers innovative capital release solutions through its network of group companies operating in Bermuda, the United States, the United Kingdom, Liechtenstein, Belgium and Australia. A market leader in completing legacy acquisitions, Enstar has acquired over 120 companies and portfolios since its formation.
Cautionary Statement
This press release contains certain forward-looking statements. These statements include statements regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of Enstar and its management team. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. Important risk factors regarding Enstar can be found under the heading “Risk Factors” in Enstar’s Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024 and are incorporated herein by reference. Furthermore, Enstar undertakes no obligation to update any written or oral forward-looking statements or publicly announce any updates or revisions to any of the forward-looking statements contained herein, to reflect any change in its expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions, circumstances or assumptions underlying such statements, except as required by law.
Contact: Enstar Communications
Telephone: +1 (441) 292-3645
Enstar Group Limited
Translartion. Region: Russians Fedetion –
Source: Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Team “C-Key” (Ekaterina Buryak, Alexandra Leonova, Elizaveta Petrova, Alexey Khimichev, Sofia Tarkhanova, Denis Lebedev, Alexander Katsyuba) and Kirill Pivovarov
The results of the selection round of the student league of the International Engineering Championship “CASE-IN” in the direction of “Architecture, design, construction and housing and public utilities” were summed up at SPbGASU. The defense of case solutions and the award ceremony for the winners took place on March 12.
CASE-IN was created 13 years ago to promote engineering and technical education and to train future highly qualified specialists. The organizers of the championship are the Nadezhnaya Smena Foundation, the Youth Forum of Mining Leaders Non-Commercial Partnership, AstraLogika LLC, and the presidential platform Russia – the Land of Opportunities. The championship is included in the Science of Winning initiative of the Decade of Science and Technology in Russia.
According to Marina Malyutina, Vice-Rector for Youth Policy, SPbGASU has been participating in CASE-IN since 2019. According to Marina Viktorovna, this is a fundamental and important decision for an engineering university. Students show good results, the number of those wishing to participate is growing year after year. In the future, they are offered practice, internship, and employment. Previously, the university participated in the “Engineering Design” competency, and the tasks were not entirely specialized. Now, thanks to the Metropolis company, SPbGASU students have the opportunity to apply the specialized knowledge they receive at the university.
Artem Korolev, director of the Nadezhnaya Smena charity foundation and founder of the CASE-IN International Engineering Championship, shared his plans for the 13th season in a video message: this year, there will be school, student, and special leagues. 280 schools are expected to participate in the school league. More than 220 universities are expected in the student league, 80 of which will host the in-person selection round. A total of 18,500 participants are expected – schoolchildren, students, young professionals, experts, mentors, and curators. The theme of the 13th season is Technological Innovations.
The first deputy general director of the autonomous non-profit organization “Russia – Land of Opportunities” Gennady Guryanov spoke about the successes of the project in a video message: during its existence, the project has united more than 120 thousand schoolchildren, students and young professionals from Russia and neighboring countries. Since 2019, together with the presidential platform “Russia – Land of Opportunities”, the project provides young people with opportunities for personal, professional and career growth.
Eight teams spent 21 days solving a case from Metropolis, the initiator of the direction and strategic partner of the championship. Each team brought together students from different directions. Under the guidance of mentors, future architects, builders, and designers developed a hotel and tourist complex in a natural area. The results of their work were assessed by an expert commission, which included representatives of Metropolis and SPbGASU.
The architectural and design solutions, power supply systems, heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, general requirements (technology, fire safety, energy efficiency, automation systems) were assessed. The speakers’ fluency in professional terminology, their ability to express and justify their opinions, the clarity and understandability of the slide structure, the logicality of their answers to questions, etc. were also taken into account. After the defenses, the experts provided targeted feedback to the teams assigned to them: they highlighted strengths and growth areas, provided comments and advice on improving the solution.
Andrey Surovenkov and Olga Bochkareva
Olga Bochkareva, a member of the expert committee, deputy dean of the Faculty of Economics and Management for academic work, associate professor of the Department of Construction Management, believes that the championship gave students the opportunity to “pump up” their knowledge in practice, to feel that the entire project depends on the joint work. In addition, the competition showed that students of technical specialties need to learn to speak: “Whatever profession students are studying – builder, designer, architect – it is important to be able to “sell” their project. In the modern world, there is no way around it!”
Andrey Surovenkov, a member of the expert committee and head of the architectural design department, believes that the benefit of the championship is that students from different specialties, who most likely did not know each other before, unite into a team. For the curators, this is also a useful experience – they had to set the vector for creating a good project.
Participants of the selection round. Ahead is the expert committee: chief architect of the project OOO Metropolis Alexey Bondarenko, Kirill Pivovarov, chief specialist of the design solutions department Alina Sitova, senior lecturer of the department of heat and gas supply and ventilation of SPbGASU Sergey Kashnikov, deputy director of the educational center of digital competencies of SPbGASU Denis Nizhegorodtsev, associate professor of the department of water use and ecology of SPbGASU Alexander Podporin
Kirill Pivovarov, Chairman of the Expert Commission and Head of the Metropolis Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Department Group, is confident that for the company, the championship is, first and foremost, about attracting new employees. Moreover, employers have the opportunity to evaluate their abilities without an interview or probationary period. For students, this is an opportunity to create. When compiling the assignment, the company was guided by the students’ current capabilities and, at the same time, sought to bring the tasks closer to reality.
“This is a great experience for the guys in terms of applying their skills in practice. The theory they study at the university is superimposed on a real project here, and this will help them in their future work. Many students are great: they have quite serious projects at the level of practicing designers. I would rate the overall level of work as very high,” said member of the expert commission, senior lecturer of the Department of Heat and Gas Supply and Ventilation Sergey Kashnikov.
“I regularly participate in assessing student work at a variety of competitions – both within our university and at other venues. I would like to note that it is precisely such competitions that develop students’ extremely important skills of independent work, including as part of project teams. And it is especially pleasant to see that the level of students’ work is growing from year to year,” said Denis Nizhegorodtsev, a member of the expert commission and deputy director of the Educational Center for Digital Competencies.
Third place went to the YeezyBIM team (mentor – associate professor of the Department of Heat and Gas Supply and Ventilation Viktor Yakovlev). It included Alina Kizchenko (fourth-year bachelor’s degree student of the Faculty of Environmental Engineering and Urban Management, leader/BIM coordinator), Arina Tereshchenko (fourth-year bachelor’s degree student of the Faculty of Architecture, architect), Olga Gavrichenkova (third-year bachelor’s degree student of the Faculty of Environmental Engineering and Urban Management, water use and sanitation engineer), Anna Yarullina (fourth-year bachelor’s degree student of the Faculty of Environmental Engineering and Urban Management, design engineer of internal electrical equipment and lighting), Yaroslav Perevalov (fourth-year bachelor’s degree student of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, designer), Polina Orlova (fourth-year bachelor’s degree student of the Faculty of Environmental Engineering and Urban Management, heating and ventilation engineer).
The second place was won by the team “Bim Bam Boom” (mentor – assistant of the Department of Design of Architectural Environment Dmitry Fleisher). The team consists of Emilia Sukhareva (fourth-year bachelor’s degree student of the Faculty of Architecture, leader/architect), Kirill Besedin (fourth-year bachelor’s degree student of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, designer), Daniil Goncharenko (fourth-year bachelor’s degree student of the Faculty of Environmental Engineering and Urban Management, heating and ventilation engineer), Mikhail Danilchenko (third-year bachelor’s degree student of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, designer), Kirill Ivanov (fourth-year bachelor’s degree student of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, BIM coordinator), Sergey Sergeev (fourth-year bachelor’s degree student of the Faculty of Environmental Engineering and Urban Management, power supply engineer), Dmitry Sidorchuk (fourth-year bachelor’s degree student of the Faculty of Environmental Engineering and Urban Management, water supply and sanitation engineer).
“The team decided to implement the current principle of nature-likeness as the most suitable for the given topic. It implies minimizing the impact on the environment and using natural factors for the functioning of the facility. The team worked under the leadership of captain Emilia Sukhareva, a talented student studying at the Department of DAS. Kirill Besedin is the most experienced and proactive member of the team. Daniil Goncharenko, having project experience, successfully implemented the general concept of ventilation and heating. Dmitry Sidorchuk, having extensive experience in participating in competitions of this kind, managed to provide the facility with water supply and sewerage networks. Sergey Sergeev, also an experienced team member, was engaged in the design of power supply networks and showed an excellent result. Mikhail Danilchenko gained his first experience of participating in a team on this project, but he coped with the tasks set by the KR very well. Kirill Ivanov provided BIM technologies throughout the project and in all its areas. Well done!” – summed up Dmitry Fleisher.
The first place was awarded to the “C-Key” team (mentor – Deputy Dean for Career Guidance, Associate Professor of the Department of Technosphere Safety Alexander Glukhanov). It included Ekaterina Buryak (third-year specialist student of the Faculty of Construction, chief project engineer), Alexandra Leonova (third-year specialist student of the Faculty of Construction, BIM coordinator), Elizaveta Petrova (third-year undergraduate student of the Faculty of Architecture, architect), Sofia Tarkhanova (third-year specialist student of the Faculty of Construction, designer), Denis Lebedev (third-year specialist student of the Faculty of Construction, designer), Alexey Khimichev (third-year undergraduate student of the Faculty of Architecture, architect), Alexander Katsyuba (third-year undergraduate student of the Faculty of Engineering Ecology and Urban Economy, specialist in engineering networks).
“It was difficult. But we approached the solution comprehensively, followed all the requirements of the technical specifications and achieved the result!” – Ekaterina Buryak is sure.
“This is the first experience of such live interaction with the subject area. I worked with guys from other specialties, it was very interesting. I learned some programs all over again, I learned a lot of new things in these three weeks. The experience is colossal!” – shared Alexander Katsyuba.
“We developed the architectural solutions section together with Elizaveta Petrova. And we want to say that this project was very interesting for us from the point of view of interaction between specialists in related fields. It was interesting to track how architectural issues are connected with issues of utility networks, design solutions, how all issues are resolved in the design system,” said Alexey Khimchev.
The mentor of the winners, Alexander Glukhanov, gave his comment: “The team developed a concept for the development of a tourist cluster on the Black Sea coast. The students created a detailed description of the construction project, took into account the features of the area, the needs of tourists, and the possibilities of using the infrastructure. They created a harmonious arrangement of the park area located in the heart of the territory, the active recreation area and the entrance area, integrated recreation areas and other functional components of the complex. Special attention was paid to the optimal combination of space-planning solutions: they took into account functional, sanitary and hygienic and fire safety requirements.”
The champions and prize winners of the Architecture, Design, Construction and Housing and Utilities category will be invited to an internship at Metropolis with the prospect of further employment. The winning team will take part in the final competition, which will be held in Moscow at the end of May. We wish them good luck!
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Translartion. Region: Russians Fedetion –
Source: State University Higher School of Economics – State University Higher School of Economics –
The All-Russian Karate Competition was held in Odintsovo, Moscow Region, bringing together more than 2,000 participants from 42 regions of the country. A second-year student of the OP “Business management” Higher School of Business HSE Dmitry Konyaev became the winner in the category 18-20 years old, weight up to 65 kg. He managed to get ahead of several dozen athletes representing leading clubs from different regions.
The tournament in Odintsovo is considered one of the most prestigious in karate and attracts the strongest athletes from all over Russia. For many participants, this is an important moment in their sports career, which opens the door to new opportunities and achievements.
“The tournament was quite difficult, especially in comparison with last year,” comments Dmitry Konyaev. “There were no easy opponents at all, I had to get to work from the first fight. The goal was achieved – I met the standard for the title of candidate for master of sports, now we are collecting documents and will wait for the order to assign it.”
The HSE student has been practicing karate since he was six years old: his parents took him to the section closest to his home, and soon he began winning competitions.
“I am very grateful to fate for such a long and interesting path with such plot twists that you can make a movie. I got 90% of the people in my circle thanks to this sport,” the winner shared.
Dmitry noted that he strives to win gold in any competition he participates in. The most successful seasons for the athlete so far were 2018 and 2019, when he managed to win three World Cups – in Croatia, Italy and Cyprus. “Before the pandemic, we traveled very often: Germany, Mexico, Estonia, Latvia. On the domestic stage, I once came in fifth at the Russian Championship and won more than a dozen All-Russian competitions, I lost count a couple of years ago. When I lived in St. Petersburg, I was a member of the city team and was a leader in all age and weight categories in which I participated,” said Dmitry Konyaev.
When choosing a university to enroll in, he immediately decided to move: “The goal was to try myself in another city. I understood that if I moved to the capital, it would be hard without work, and so I looked for a program at a top university, studying in which would allow me to work at the same time. Actually, the choice fell on the educational program “Business Management” at the National Research University Higher School of Economics,” the student explained. He says that preparing for admission was typical for a person who wants to enroll in a prestigious university: “I am generally satisfied with my studies, I have found wonderful people, which I am very happy about. It is known that the best rest is a change of activity, so work, study and sports do not interfere with each other in my life. The main thing is to know why you are doing all this – and to enjoy it.”
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jennifer Mathers, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, Aberystwyth University
Around 73% of Ukrainians now want their country to “restore” its nuclear weapons, according to a recent opinion poll. A majority of Ukrainians (58%) were in favour of Ukraine owning nuclear weapons, even if this meant losing western allies.
This suggests an underlying regret that Ukraine agreed to relinquish the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal as part of the Budapest Memorandum around 30 years ago. This agreement, signed in December 1994, provided security guarantees for Ukraine from the US, the UK and Russia in return for giving up the weapons. Ukraine also agreed it would not acquire nuclear weapons in the future.
The focus on nuclear weapons is intensifying all over Europe. This week the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, called on the US to station its nuclear weapons in his country to deter Russian attacks. He cited Moscow’s decision to deploy nuclear weapons just across the border in Belarus during 2023 as part of his reasoning.
Trump’s apparent weakening commitment to Nato has also prompted the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to suggest that France could extend protection of its own nuclear weapons to its allies.
It’s clear that some Ukrainians now believe that their country would have been less likely to have experienced a Russian invasion if it had held on to its nuclear capacity. Ukrainians now question how much they can rely on other states after the failure of security guarantees that were central to the 1994 agreement.
The pledges by the US, UK and Russia to protect the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine were put to the test in 2014 when Russia invaded and then annexed Crimea and began providing financial and military backing for militia leaders in eastern Ukraine who claimed to lead pro-Russian separatist movements.
Read more:
Are Ukrainians ready for ceasefire and concessions? Here’s what the polls say
The US and UK imposed economic sanctions against Russia and provided training, equipment and non-lethal weapons to the Ukrainian armed forces. But these measures fell well short of ensuring Ukraine’s sovereignty and were insufficient to help Ukraine retake its territory.
Similarly, US and UK support for Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, although valuable and much appreciated by the Ukrainians, has not been enough to allow Kyiv to completely expel Russian troops from Ukrainian territory.
But what if Ukraine had never given up its nuclear weapons? The logic of deterrence suggests that Putin would have not have invaded and attacked a nuclear-armed Ukraine. But the argument that Ukraine should not have surrendered the Soviet nuclear weapons on its territory overlooks the specific circumstances. For while physical components of a nuclear weapons capability – delivery vehicles and nuclear warheads – were within Ukraine’s grasp, the launch codes remained in Moscow, and Russian leaders showed no willingness to relinquish them.
So, Kyiv would have had no control over whether, when or against whom those weapons might have been used. The risk to Ukraine of becoming the target of another state’s nuclear strike would have been considerable, and the Kyiv government would have been unable to do anything to reduce that risk. Retaining nuclear weapons left over from the Soviet period would have probably made Ukrainians less rather than more secure.
Read more:
What is the value of US security guarantees? Here’s what history shows
Ukraine also lacked the economic resources to maintain the nuclear weapons on its territory, or develop them into a credible deterrent force. In exchange for giving up nuclear weapons, Ukraine received much-needed economic assistance from the west.
In the 1990s Ukrainian views were shaped by the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. This had a devastating and lasting impact on the land and the people in that part of Ukraine, highlighting the risks of the nuclear sector. In 1994, when the Budapest Memorandum was being negotiated, only 30% of Ukrainians were in favour of Ukraine possessing nuclear weapons.
Ukraine would face considerable technical challenges in developing nuclear weapons today, both in creating the necessary quantities of fissile material for warheads and manufacturing delivery vehicles.
Kyiv would also need to pay for an expensive nuclear weapons development programme at a time when the Ukrainian economy is struggling to supply its soldiers with conventional weapons and meet the needs of civilians.
And unless Ukraine’s international supporters were on board, Kyiv might face the withdrawal of economic and military aid at a crucial juncture. If Moscow detected any move on Ukraine’s part to develop nuclear weapons, there would be a strong motive for a preemptive Russian strike to put an end to that plan.
But even though it may not be feasible for Ukraine to develop an independent nuclear deterrent in the short term, Kyiv may feel compelled to pursue a nuclear weapons programme unless Ukraine is provided with serious and reliable security guarantees. With the Trump administration apparently ruling out Nato membership for Ukraine, the onus is on the country’s international supporters to come up with an alternative unless they want to see further nuclear proliferation in Europe.
Jennifer Mathers 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. Thirty years ago Ukraine got rid of its nuclear arsenal – now the people regret that decision – https://theconversation.com/thirty-years-ago-ukraine-got-rid-of-its-nuclear-arsenal-now-the-people-regret-that-decision-251733
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Frankie Dytor, Research Fellow, literature, art history and gender studies, University of Exeter
When Bernard Berenson learned that Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa had been stolen from the Louvre Gallery in Paris, the art critic heaved an enormous sigh of relief. Finally, he reflected, he could remove himself once and all from the dangerous influence of the work. “She had simply become an incubus,” he recalled years later, “and I was glad to be rid of her.”
At long last, Berenson had freed himself from the vampiric face of the Mona Lisa.
Today Leonardo’s painting, happily recovered in 1913 for generations of visitors after its theft in 1911, still looms large as perhaps the definitive symbol of Italian Renaissance art.
French president Emmanuel Macron recently announced plans for a project titled Nouvelle Renaissance, which will see the artwork moved to its own exhibition room, relieving pressure on the main gallery space. One of the most visited artworks in the world, Berenson’s pronouncement of the enigmatically smiling figure as a male demon in female human form, sits oddly with her endless appearance on t-shirts and tea-towels.
But looking again at how the myth of the Mona Lisa emerged, I believe that her fame is due not just to the painting’s display of artistic ingenuity – but to the troubling vampirism and gender ambiguity that 19th-century critics saw in Leonardo’s work.
This article is part of Rethinking the Classics. The stories in this series offer insightful new ways to think about and interpret classic books and artworks. This is the canon – with a twist.
Unlike many of his artistic contemporaries, Leonardo’s reputation remained relatively stable following his death in 1519. But praise for his work was, for centuries, caveated with one apparently intractable problem: he seemed a better draughtsman, inventor and scientist than artist proper.
John Ruskin, England’s preeminent mid-Victorian critic, wrote off the Mona Lisa as a total mess. He lamented that the painting’s background was simply “grotesque” being all “blue and unfinished”.
But as the century progressed, the tide began to turn, particularly in France. Writers newly praised the strange feelings that Leonardo’s paintings provoked, interrogating the nervous smiles and ironic stares of their subjects. “You are fascinated and troubled,” the historian Jules Michelet imagined in his monumental book Histoire de France (1855), describing himself in the Louvre moving like hypnotised prey towards the sinister artworks.
The Mona Lisa was being slowly injected with a dose of eerie, haunted beauty. But it wasn’t until 1873, when the Oxford aesthete Walter Pater published his explosive book Studies in the History of the Renaissance that the character of the Mona Lisa took a decisively gothic turn. In it, Pater described her as one of the undead:
She is older than the rocks on which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times and learned the secrets of the grave
“Lady Lisa”, as Pater memorably nicknamed her, turned from an Italian noblewoman into a dangerously deathly femme-fatale. Pater claimed that she carried all of time and history within her body, bearing the world’s experience from “the animalism of Greece” to “the sins of the Borgia”.
The passage caused shockwaves, and a generation of readers were hooked. The poet Richard Le Gallienne recalled in his memoir how his friends were “all going round quoting the famous description”, as wannabe aesthetes endlessly recited, copied and reworked Pater’s lines.
Pater scholar Michael Davis has explained how the book “queered the Renaissance”: he called on his readers to worship at the altar of a strange beauty, demanding that they “burn” with a “hard, gemlike flame” as they did so. Pater’s new reading of Mona Lisa was at the heart of an erotic revolution. The Mona Lisa had become a symbol of a new way of looking and feeling, charged with the aching pain of melancholic beauty.
By the early 20th century, an industry of criticism had developed that took increasingly outrageous stances against the Mona Lisa.
Stories circulated about virtuous mothers who refused to allow reproductions of the work to enter their home. Sigmund Freud reworked Pater’s interpretation of the Mona Lisa’s “unfathomable smile” to evidence his theory of Leonardo’s homosexuality, claiming that the Mona Lisa’s smile was in fact a painting of his dead mother’s smile. Pater’s passage, as the Irish writer W. B. Yeats summarised, had taken on a “revolutionary importance” and with it the Mona Lisa changed from a minor work to an icon of a decadent generation.
As part of the Rethinking the Classics series, we’re asking our experts to recommend a book or artwork that tackles similar themes to the canonical work in question, but isn’t (yet) considered a classic itself. Here is Frankie Dytor’s suggestion:
The lesbian poet couple Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, published the poem La Gioconda (the Italian name for the Mona Lisa) under the pseudonym “Michael Field” in 1892:
Historic, side-long, implicating eyes;
A smile of velvet’s lustre on the cheek;
Calm lips the smile leads upward; hand that lies
Glowing and soft, the patience in its rest
Of cruelty that waits and does not seek
For prey; a dusky forehead and a breast
Where twilight touches ripeness amorously:
Behind her, crystal rocks, a sea and skies
Of evanescent blue on cloud and creek;
Landscape that shines suppressive of its zest
For those vicissitudes by which men die.
The poets frequently turned to historical subjects and artworks to explore queer and same-sex desire. Here, they show themselves to be the disciples of Pater’s cult of beauty, openly incorporating his stress on the “cruelty” that surrounds the “historic” features of the figure.
But they also go beyond Pater, revelling in the desire that saturates the work, such as the twilight touching the Mona Lisa’s breast “amorously”.
Frankie Dytor receives funding from The British Academy.
– ref. The Mona Lisa is a vampire – https://theconversation.com/the-mona-lisa-is-a-vampire-249987
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Iván Alfonso, Assistant researcher, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST)
Software is ubiquitous, powering almost every aspect of our lives. The computerised systems in your car alone incorporate tens of millions of lines of code. The increasing digital transformation of our society means that demand for more and better software is likely to continue into the future.
The dilemma is that there are not enough human programmers to build all this
software. This means that more and more of the software you use every day is built with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI).
Software developers are already very familiar with tools such as GitHub Copilot, a kind of ChatGPT for programmers. It works something like a smart autocomplete tool to increase the productivity of human programmers.
But we are now witnessing a more radical revolution, where AI “agents” are poised to carry out many types of development tasks on behalf of human programmers. Agents are programs that use AI to perform tasks and achieve specific objectives for a human user. AI agents can learn and make decisions with some level of autonomy, though they are still under human supervision – for now.
We predict that in a near future, many software apps will be entirely built by AI agents. “Agentic” systems are communities of AI agents cooperating together, each one specialised in solving a specific type of task. With an agentic system, you can
generate a software application from a plain English description of what you would like the application to do.
This has potential positive impacts. Agentic systems could empower users without software programming skills to build or adapt software to their needs. There are also potential negatives consequences. Agents are far from perfect and they can easily generate code that is vulnerable to attacks, is not efficient or is biased against certain communities.
For example, an agent building recruitment software might favour male over female candidates because of biases in the data used to train, or improve, the software. Therefore, we need to put mechanisms in place to minimise such risks, as required by AI regulations such as the EU’s AI Act.
Researchers are addressing this challenge first by intensively testing the LLMs (Large Language Models) that are at the core of any agent. An LLM is an AI system trained on massive amounts of data. Agents rely on their internal LLM to predict and generate the best response to a user request.
By evaluating all major LLMs against a number of concerns such as accuracy, security vulnerabilities and biases, software developers can choose the best LLM for an AI agent. This would depend on the specific tasks that the agent would be involved in.
This helps ensure a certain amount of ethical behaviour in the agents. But how can we be sure they understand and follow our instructions? Our solution is to start from the blueprints (the designs) of the software to be built.
Broadly speaking, it’s possible to understand blueprints of a house even if you’re not an architect. Similarly, if we make a blueprint for software as easy to understand as possible, users without advanced software development skills should be able to grasp the concepts and how to make changes to it.
From the user’s initial description, the AI agent or agents would propose a detailed blueprint of a potential solution and explain it to the user in plain English. The user could then validate it or request improvements. Only after the final validation would the software application be automatically generated from the blueprint.
This way of building software is known as low-code or no-code development, as most of the code (all of it for some applications) is generated by the computer from the blueprints, instead of being hand written by a human from scratch. Our open source BESSER platform helps you build applications in this way.
As the science fiction author Arthur C Clarke once observed: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And soon enough, this magic will be part of our daily lives. We just need to be careful that the magic doesn’t turn into sorcery with the potential to disrupt, rather than improve.
We, and many other researchers, are working to put guardrails (mechanisms for preventing potential harms) on the behaviour of AI agents to keep them in check. This would help transform every citizen into a capable developer with the power to autonomously build the ideal software solutions for their companies or other aspects of their lives.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. Software is increasingly being built by AI – so it’s vital to know if it can be trusted – https://theconversation.com/software-is-increasingly-being-built-by-ai-so-its-vital-to-know-if-it-can-be-trusted-251728
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
UK secures over 2,000 tonnes of fishing opportunities through annual negotiations with the Faroe Islands, valued at £5 million
The UK fishing industry will receive over 2,000 tonnes of fishing opportunities in Faroese waters, following annual negotiations with the Faroe Islands for 2025, the UK government has announced today (17 March). Based on historical prices, those are valued at £5 million to the UK.
The agreement secures UK fishermen 880 tonnes of cod and haddock, 575 tonnes of saithe, as well as redfish, blue ling and ling, flatfish and other species in Faroese waters.
The agreement also reconfirms the UK and Faroese commitments to scientific cooperation and to establish a new joint Compliance Forum, which will allow the parties to share good practice on monitoring, control and surveillance.
The deal follows the conclusion of negotiations with the EU, Norway and other coastal States at the end of 2024. In total, this brings fishing opportunities secured for the UK fleet in 2025 in the main negotiating forums to 750,000, worth up £960m based on historic landing prices.
Fisheries Minister Daniel Zeichner said:
I’m pleased the UK has reached an agreement with the Faroe Islands that will allow UK fishing vessels to take advantage of valuable fishing opportunities in 2025.
This agreement concludes the UK’s fisheries negotiations for 2025 and will see our fleet ready to take advantage of the quotas secured through these key negotiating forums. This government will always stand up for the British fishing industry, supporting our coastal communities through a sustainable and economically successful fishing sector.
The UK negotiates annually with the Faroese Government under the UK-Faroe Islands fisheries framework agreement on potential exchanges of quota and broader fisheries management measures.
The agreement highlights both parties’ continued commitment to manage fisheries sustainably and support the long-term viability of stocks.
Throughout the negotiations, the UK Government worked closely with the devolved administrations to ensure that all fishing communities across the UK will benefit from the agreement.
Published 17 March 2025
Source: US State of Georgia
Atlanta, GA – Governor Brian P. Kemp today announced the following appointments: the Honorable Judge Nichole Carswell to the Mountain Circuit Superior Court, filling the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Chan Caudell; the Honorable Judge Carlton “Hobbie” Jones III to the Mountain Circuit Superior Court, filling the vacancy created by the passing of Judge Rusty Smith; James “Jay” Crowe, Jr. to be State Court Judge for Worth County, filling the vacancy created by the appointment of Judge Ralph Powell to the Superior Court of the Tifton Judicial Circuit; and Ryan English as the Solicitor General of Houston County, filling the vacancy created by the appointment of Judge Amy Smith to the Superior Court of the Houston Judicial Circuit.
Judge B. Nichole Carswell currently serves as the juvenile court judge of the Mountain Judicial Circuit and the presiding judge of the Mountain Judicial Circuit Family Dependency Treatment Court. Before being appointed as the first full time juvenile court judge of the circuit in 2017, she was a partner at McClure, Ramsay, Dickerson & Escoe, LLP in Toccoa, where her practice encompassed family law, adoptions, real estate law, probate, appellate law, and general litigation.
In addition to her position as the juvenile court judge for the Mountain Judicial Circuit, Judge Carswell has served as a superior court judge pro temp and as the presiding judge for the Rabun County Felony Drug Court. She also serves as a part-time adjunct professor at Truett McConnell University. Judge Carswell is a member of the State Bar of Georgia and the Mountain Judicial Circuit Bar Association. She received her bachelor’s degree from Middle Tennessee State University and her J.D. from the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University. Judge Carswell resides in Habersham County with her husband and two children.
Judge Carlton “Hobie” Jones III is currently the probate judge in Rabun County, where he has served since his election in 2020. At various times in his 39 year career, he has also served as a municipal judge, a state court judge (by special appointment), and a magistrate judge. Judge Jones started his career in 1986 as an associate attorney at Glover and Davis, P.A. in Newnan and Peachtree City, Georgia. He practiced law in the Fayette County, Coweta County, and South Fulton area until 2015, when he returned to his native Rabun County. During that time, he maintained an active litigation practice with an emphasis on personal injury, domestic relations, and estate disputes. He is also a trained mediator.
Judge Jones attended the University of Georgia Terry College of Business and is a proud graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law. Judge Jones and his wife, Jill, have 5 adult children and live in Clayton, Georgia.
James “Jay” E. Crowe, Jr. currently serves as solicitor general for the Worth County State Court, solicitor for the City of Sylvester, and has a general law practice, Jay Crowe, Attorney At Law, LLC. Crowe is active in his local community, serving as chairman of the Worth County EDA, director on the Board of Directors for the Sylvester Kiwanis Club, and a Worth County Building Authority Board member. He has served as the past chairman of the Chamber of Commerce for Worth County and as past president of the Sylvester Kiwanis Club. Crowe is on the Executive Board for the Georgia Solicitor General’s Association and is also a member of the Georgia Economic Developers Association.
Crowe graduated with honors from Mercer University with bachelor’s degrees in English, History, and Anthropology and received his law degree from Mercer University’s Walter F. George School of Law. He lives in Sylvester, Georgia. He is married to Meredith Cobb Crowe, with whom he has two children, William and Anna Leigh.
Ryan W. English is an assistant district attorney with the Houston County District Attorney’s Office, currently assigned to the Narcotics Division. English has served as an assistant district attorney for the last nine years, working in both the Houston Judicial Circuit and the Oconee Judicial Circuit as well as serving as the solicitor for Pulaski County Probate Court. Prior to working as a prosecutor, he was in private practice in Houston County with the law firm of Walker, Hulbert, Gray, & Moore, LLP and also worked as an assistant public defender in the Atlantic Judicial Circuit. English is an accomplished trial attorney who has been successful in securing convictions in criminal cases, including offenses of murder, aggravated assault, trafficking in controlled substances, and racketeering (RICO). English is active in the community and currently serves the State Bar of Georgia on the Board of Governors, representing the Houston Judicial Circuit.
English is a 2008 magna cum laude graduate of Georgia Southern University with a B.A. in history and anthropology He received his J.D. in 2012 from the Walter F. George School of Law at Mercer University. English and his wife, Cara, have one daughter, Amelia, and live in Perry. They are faithful members of First Baptist Perry.
Source: US State of Georgia
ATLANTA – Governor Brian P. Kemp has declared a statewide State of Emergency, effective at noon today, in preparation for the severe and potentially damaging weather front moving into Georgia late this evening and early tomorrow morning. The State of Emergency executive order authorizes the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency (GEMA/HS) to activate the State Operations Center (SOC) and mobilize any needed resources to address potential impacts. Crews will also be on standby to respond to damage and power outages. The State of Emergency will expire at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, March 18.
“This storm will hit at the worst possible time, as people are heading to or already in bed. Before they retire for the evening, I’m urging everyone to be prepared ahead of time and to remain weather aware as long as this system is in the state,” said Governor Brian Kemp. “Given the uncertainty of this storm and the fact it will move through Georgia overnight, individuals and families should prepare now and make plans to stay safe. Just as we’ve made all necessary preparations on the state level ahead of the system’s arrival, Georgians should get ready now and not wait until the storm is already here.”
Among other provisions, the State of Emergency order prohibits price gouging. Access the full State of Emergency Executive Order here.
Current Weather Forecast:
A significant severe weather event is expected across the Southeast this weekend, with a powerful line of storms moving into Georgia late Saturday night through Sunday morning. The main threats will be tornadoes and damaging winds with large hail also possible.
While some strong thunderstorms are possible during the day on Saturday, the main window for severe weather will begin late Saturday night in northern and western Georgia. Supercells and a broken line of storms will shift eastward overnight and should move out of Metro Atlanta by sunrise on Sunday. The main window for severe weather in eastern and much of southern Georgia will be after sunrise on Sunday.
Significant severe weather will be possible anywhere in Georgia Saturday night and Sunday morning. Given the late-night expected arrival of the system, ensure you have multiple ways to receive severe weather warnings and review your tornado safety plans beforehand. Continue to monitor updates from your local National Weather Service office and reliable media outlets through the duration of this event.
As part of the Office of the Governor, the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency collaborates with local, state and federal governments in partnership with private sector and non-governmental organizations to protect life and property against man-made and natural emergencies. GEMA/HS’s Ready Georgia website and preparedness campaign provides Georgians with the knowledge needed to effectively prepare for disasters. Go to gema.georgia.gov/plan-prepare/ready-georgia for information on developing a custom emergency plan and Ready kit.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Emmanuel Ojo, Associate Professor, University of the Witwatersrand
Global crises have shaped our world over the past two decades, affecting education systems everywhere. Higher education researcher Emmanuel Ojo has studied the impact of these disruptions on educational opportunities, particularly in southern Africa.
He looked at 5,511 peer-reviewed articles published between 2000 and 2024 to explore what the research suggests about making education systems more resilient. Here, he answers some questions about his review.
In my review I drew up a table documenting how multiple crises have disrupted education systems worldwide.
The cycle began with the 2000-2002 dot-com bubble collapse, which reduced education funding and slowed technological integration. This was followed by the 2001 terrorist attacks, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak (2002-2004), Iraq War (2003-2011), Indian Ocean tsunami (2004), and Hurricane Katrina (2005). The Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 2000, global food crisis (2007-2008), financial crisis (2007-2008), and European debt crisis (2010-2012) continued this pattern of disruption.
More recently, the Ebola epidemic, COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia-Ukraine war have destabilised education systems. Meanwhile, the ongoing climate crisis creates challenges, particularly in southern Africa where environmental vulnerability is high.
Education has consistently been among the hardest-hit sectors globally. According to Unesco, the COVID pandemic alone affected more than 1.6 billion students worldwide.
But the impact is not distributed equally.
My research shows crises have put vulnerable populations at a further disadvantage through school closures, funding diversions, infrastructure destruction and student displacement. Quality and access decline most sharply for marginalised communities. Costs rise and mobility is restricted. Food insecurity during crises reduces attendance among the poorest students.
In southern Africa, the Covid-19 disruption highlighted existing divides. Privileged students continued learning online. Those in rural and informal settlements were completely cut off from education.
Climate change compounds these inequalities. Unicef highlights that climate disasters have a disproportionate impact on schooling for millions in low-income countries, where adaptive infrastructure is limited.
What’s at stake for southern Africa is the region’s development potential and social cohesion. The widening of educational divides threatens to create a generation with unequal opportunities and capabilities.
My review focused on the 16 countries of the Southern African Development Community, revealing what makes them vulnerable to crisis impacts.
Southern Africa’s geographic exposure to climate disasters combines with pre-existing economic inequalities. The region’s digital divide became starkly visible during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some students were excluded from learning by limited connectivity and unreliable electricity.
The region’s systems also rely on external funding. The Trump administration’s sudden foreign aid freeze was a shock to South Africa’s higher education sector. It has affected public health initiatives and university research programmes.
Research representation itself is unequal. Within the region, South African researchers dominate and other nations make only limited contributions. This creates blind spots in understanding context-specific challenges and solutions.
Each successive crisis deepens educational divides, making recovery increasingly difficult and costly. Weaker education systems make the region less able to respond to other development challenges, too.
One striking finding from my review was the surge in educational research after the Covid-19 pandemic began – from 229 studies in 2019 to nearly double that in 2020, with continued rapid growth thereafter. This indicates growing recognition that education systems must be redesigned to withstand future disruptions, not merely recover from current ones.
Research points to a number of ways to do this:
Strategic investment in educational infrastructure, particularly digital technologies, to ensure learning continuity.
Equipping educators with skills to adapt teaching methods during emergencies.
Innovative, context-appropriate teaching approaches that empower communities.
Integration of indigenous knowledge systems into curricula, enhancing relevance, adaptability and community ownership.
Interdisciplinary and cross-national research collaborations.
Protection of education budgets, recognising education’s role in crisis recovery and long-term stability.
Community engagement in education, ensuring interventions are culturally appropriate and widely accepted.
In my view, African philanthropists have a duty to provide the independent financial base that education systems need to withstand external funding fluctuations.
The economic and social costs of failing to build resilient education systems are profound and long-lasting. Each educational disruption creates negative effects that extend far beyond the crisis period.
When students miss critical learning periods, it reduces their chances in life. The World Bank estimates that learning losses from the Covid-19 pandemic alone could result in up to US$17 trillion in lost lifetime earnings for affected students globally.
Social costs are equally severe. Educational disruptions increase dropout rates, child marriage, early pregnancy, and youth unemployment. These outcomes create broader societal challenges that require costly interventions across multiple sectors.
Spending on educational resilience avoids those costs.
The question isn’t whether southern African nations can afford to invest in educational resilience, but whether they can afford not to.
The choices made today will determine whether education systems merely survive crises or make society better. Evidence-based policies and regional cooperation are essential for building education systems that can fulfil Southern Africa’s human potential.
– Global crises have hit education hard: 24 years of research offers a way forward for southern Africa
– https://theconversation.com/global-crises-have-hit-education-hard-24-years-of-research-offers-a-way-forward-for-southern-africa-251833
Source: World Health Organisation
The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) is hereby transmitting the report of the third meeting of the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) Emergency Committee (Committee) regarding the upsurge of mpox 2024, held on Tuesday, 25 February 2025, from 12:00 to 17:00 CET.
Concurring with the advice unanimously expressed by the Committee during the meeting, the WHO Director-General determined that the upsurge of mpox 2024 continues to meet the criteria of a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) and, accordingly, on 27 February 2025, issued temporary recommendations to States Parties.
The WHO Director-General expresses his most sincere gratitude to the Chair, Members, and Advisors of the Committee.
Sixteen (16) Members of, and two Advisors to, the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) Emergency Committee (Committee) were convened by teleconference, via Zoom, on Tuesday, 25 February 2025, from 12:00 to 17:00 CET. Fourteen (14) of the 16 Committee Members, and one of the two Advisors to the Committee participated in the meeting.
On behalf of the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Deputy Director-General welcomed Members of and Advisors to the Committee, as well as Government Officials designated to present their views to the Committee on behalf of the ten invited States Parties – Burundi, Canada, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Nepal, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Uganda, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (United Kingdom).
In his opening remarks, the WHO Deputy Director-General recalled that, on 14 August 2024, the upsurge of mpox was determined to constitute a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). He noted that, over the three years from 1 January 2022 through 31 January 2025, almost 130 000 confirmed cases of mpox, including over 280 deaths, were reported to WHO from 130 countries and territories in all six WHO Regions, including seven countries and territories that had reported their first mpox cases since the previous meeting of the Committee on 22 November 2024. The WHO African Region, where some States Parties are continuing to experience sustained community transmission, accounts for 61% of the cases and 72% of the deaths reported globally over the past 12 months.
The WHO Deputy Director-General highlighted that, since the last meeting of the Committee, the epidemiological situation continues to be volatile. Despite observed improvements pertaining to several aspects of the response – emergency coordination, surveillance, laboratory diagnostics, empowerment of communities, furthering equitable access to medical countermeasures and tools – several critical challenges had emerged, including: (a) rising geopolitical instability in the DRC due to escalating conflict affecting mpox response operations resulting in temporary pauses in operation, relocation of staff and restricted access to affected populations; (b) concurrent health emergencies requiring States Parties and partners to respond (e.g. Sudan virus disease outbreak in Uganda); and (c) uncertainties related to the pause in financial support from the United States of America (United States) occurring in the broader landscape of declining foreign assistance. To date, globally, one-third of the funds supporting the response to mpox had been pledged by the United States. Without sufficient funds, the ability of States Parties, WHO and partners to maintain, sustain, and expand the response to mpox would be compromised.
The Representative of the Office of Legal Counsel then briefed the Members and Advisors on their roles and responsibilities and identified the mandate of the Committee under the relevant articles of the IHR. The Ethics Officer from the Department of Compliance, Risk Management, and Ethics provided the Members and Advisors with an overview of the WHO Declaration of Interests process. The Members and Advisors were made aware of their individual responsibility to disclose to WHO, in a timely manner, any interests of a personal, professional, financial, intellectual or commercial nature that may give rise to a perceived or actual conflict of interest. They were additionally reminded of their duty to maintain the confidentiality of the meeting discussions and the work of the Committee. Each Member and Advisor was surveyed, with no conflicts of interest identified.
The meeting was handed over to the Chair who introduced the objectives of the meeting, which were to provide views to the WHO Director-General on whether the event continues to constitute a PHEIC, and if so, to provide views on the potential proposed temporary recommendations.
The WHO Secretariat presented an overview of the global epidemiological situation of mpox, including all circulating clades of monkeypox virus (MPXV). Outside the WHO African Region, cases of mpox reported to WHO are associated with the spread of MPXV clade IIb, with a decline in the number of cases reported in recent months. In the WHO African Region, amid the circulation of multiple MPXV clades, the still growing number of cases reported monthly is driven by the spread of MPXV clade Ib. Since the Committee last met, on 22 November 2024, exported travel-related cases of confirmed MPXV clade Ib infection have been detected in eight additional countries outside the WHO African Region.
The WHO Secretariat then focused on the three countries reporting most cases of MPXV clade Ib since January 2024 – the DRC (over 15 000 cases, including cases in areas where MPXV clade Ia is circulating); Burundi (over 3000 cases, with a sustained decrease reported weekly and a geographic shift to the administrative capital Gitega since the Committee last met); and Uganda (nearly 3000 cases, with an exponential increase in and around the capital Kampala since the Committee last met). Notwithstanding changes in the case definition of mpox cases, uneven surveillance coverage (including due to the conflict in the eastern provinces of the country), and limited laboratory testing capacity in the DRC introducing some challenges in the interpretation of data , the number of mpox cases reported weekly is plateauing and the geographic distribution of cases, in all provinces in the country, remained very similar to the situation presented at the previous meeting of the Committee. Mathematical modelling work suggests that, since the PHEIC was determined in mid-August 2024 in the DRC, the transmission rate has decreased in certain health zones of the North Kivu and South Kivu Provinces, as well as in some health zones of the capital Kinshasa where vaccination efforts are underway.
The spread of MPXV clade Ia and Ib, in North Kivu, South Kivu, and Kinshasa Provinces of the DRC, as well as in Burundi and Uganda, appears to have started among adults, including through sexual networks involving commercial sex workers and their clients, disproportionately affecting the 20–39 years age group. Since then, in North Kivu and South Kivu Provinces of the DRC, more age group became affected reflecting community transmission through close contact, including household, whereas, in the capital Kinshasa, the spread has remained within the adult population. In Burundi and Uganda, the age distribution of mpox cases shows a bimodal pattern, with high incidence observed among young adults and younger children. This pattern reflects both ongoing sexual transmission and close contact transmission in household settings. The strikingly high proportion of cases among younger children (0-9 age group) observed in Burundi is possibly attributable to transmission occurring within health care facilities settings.
In addition to the three aforementioned countries, community transmission of MPXV clade Ib is also observed in Kenya, Rwanda, and Zambia, while travel-related imported cases have been reported both, by countries in the WHO African Region (Angola, Zimbabwe, with cases in Tanzania being under investigation), and by 14 countries in the five remaining WHO Regions. Most travel-related imported cases are male and, in instances where limited secondary transmission in the country of importation has occurred, a few children have been infected through household contact, including child-to-child transmission on one occasion. The five imported cases with sole travel history to the United Arab Emirates may signal wider mpox transmission in that country.
Mortality associated with the different MPXV clades in the WHO African Region, and notwithstanding the limitation of surveillance and laboratory diagnostics in the DRC, clade Ia accounts for the majority of fatal cases (1345), corresponding to an average case fatality rate (CFR%) of 2.5-3%, being highest in children under 1 year of age (4–5%). The CFR attributed with clade Ib infection remains very low at around 0.2%, and similar to the that attributed to clade IIb, with recorded deaths associated with specific risk factors such as uncontrolled HIV and other comorbidities.
The WHO Secretariat also noted an increase in mpox cases reported in West African countries since the PHEIC was determined in mid-August 2024, including the first cases of mpox, due to MPXV clade IIa, reported by Sierra Leone.
The WHO Secretariat presented the assessed risk by MPXV clades and further expressed in terms of overall public health risk where any given clade/s is/are circulating, as: Clade Ib – high public health risk in the DRC and neighbouring countries; Clade Ia – moderate public health risk in the DRC; Clade II – moderate public health risk in Nigeria and countries of West and Central Africa where mpox is endemic; and lade IIb – moderate public health risk globally.
The WHO Secretariat subsequently provided an update on response actions taken together with States Parties and partners since the Committee last met. In addition to the overview provided by the WHO Deputy Director-General, and in the epidemiological overview, the WHO Secretariat provided details on progress and challenges focusing on the aspects of the response outlined below.
The coordination of emergency operations by the WHO Secretariat was readjusted – including based on action reviews and leveraging the comparative advantages of WHO, State Parties, and partners –prioritizing a flexible, agile, and delivery-focused response. However, while decentralized field operations have intensified, such shifts take time, particularly in specific settings in the DRC and amid changes in geopolitical partnerships. The operational decentralization continues to emphasize increased laboratory diagnostic support, increased dissemination of standards and guidance to deliver safe clinical care, and empowering communities to enhance their efforts to protect themselves from risks associated with mpox.
Additionally, through the Access and Allocation Mechanism (AAM), WHO and partners (Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance (Gavi), and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)) are continuing coordinated and multifaceted efforts to prioritize access to and roll out mpox vaccines in an equitable manner.
With the WHO Mpox global strategic preparedness and response plan, September 2024-February 2025 (SPRP) reaching the end of its initial timeframe, and considering the response strategy it outlines as still fit for purpose, the WHO Secretariat is planning to release an extension of the plan in the coming weeks.
In September 2024, the WHO Secretariat launched an appeal for US$ 87.4 million to support mpox response efforts WHO appeal: mpox public health emergency 2024 with US$ 65.5 million raised by the time of this meeting. The contribution from the United States had accounted for 33% of the funds raised, of which US$ 7.5 million is currently inaccessible due to the freeze of funds from the United States. As part of planning for the extension of the SPRP, the WHO Secretariat is conducting a review of available resources to address priority needs and mitigate potential future gaps in the delivery of the response. While the above-mentioned freeze is expected to primarily impact operations in Burundi, the Central African Republic, the DRC, the Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda, broader challenges are anticipated for the second and third quarters of 2025. Given the evolving epidemiological situation and challenges noted above, the reduction in predictable and flexible funding throughout 2025 will put at risk the progress of the mpox response to date.
Representatives of Burundi, the DRC, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Uganda updated the Committee on the mpox epidemiological situation in their countries and their current control and response efforts, needs and challenges, including those related to the freeze of the funds from the United States. The use of mpox vaccine is contemplated in the response plans of the DRC, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. In Burundi, following action review, community-based interventions that are being strengthened in areas experiencing high incident of mpox include risk communication and awareness raising.
Members of, and the Advisor to, the Committee then engaged in questions and answers, revolving around the issues and challenges enumerated below, with the presenters from States Parties and the WHO Secretariat, as well as with representatives of States Parties invited to submit a written statement to the Committee ahead of the meeting – Canada, China, Nepal, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.
Funding – The Committee reiterated the importance of efforts to mobilize domestic financial resources to support mpox response activities. Burundi and the DRC indicated the funds allocated to the response by their respective Governments, also providing details of specific activities supported. The DRC indicated that, at present, the freeze of the funds from the United States is impacting the transportation of clinical specimens and laboratory diagnostics, with a decline in the testing rate, and that the Government is exploring solutions with other partners. The WHO Secretariat added that alternative funding sources are being explored with non-traditional donors.
Age distribution of mpox cases – The WHO Secretariat indicated that (a) there are studies ongoing to determine the secondary attack rate by age group and type of exposure; (b) at least in Burundi, there is no evidence of large outbreaks in settings where children are congregating and, hence, supporting evidence of child-to-child transmission; and (c) in the South Kivu Proving of the DRC, it remains unknown the extent to which transmission to children is occurring beyond the household setting.
Impact of vaccination on transmission – The DRC indicated that, at present, there is no information about whether the use of the limited amount of mpox vaccine available is being effective in interrupting mpox transmission.
The DRC – The DRC indicated that, due to insecurity and to decrease in laboratory testing rate, any apparent decrease of the number of reported mpox cases may represent an artifact and should be interpreted with caution. The WHO Secretariat highlighted that, being mpox a relatively mild illness, the rate of underreporting is unknown and that the trends of mpox surveillance data are critical to monitor the evolution of the situation. With respect to detection of a new MPXV clade Ia lineage in Kinshasa, the WHO Secretariat indicated that the strain, similarly to clade Ib, has increased human-to-human transmission potential.
Uganda – Uganda elaborated on the shift of the dynamics of mpox transmission from lower to higher income groups. The initial spread of MPXV clade Ib initiated long-distance truck drivers, it continued in fishing communities, and then within commercial sex networks in the capital Kampala. The fact that more affluent individuals are now affected poses a public health risk both, nationally and internationally. Therefore, the use of mpox vaccine is focused among sex workers in Kampala.
Nigeria – Nigeria indicated that, in the context of the mpox response, the human health and animal health sectors are working very closely and that, despite the numerous research initiatives, to date, there is no evidence of animal involvement in sustaining the mpox outbreak in the human population. Nigeria, with a population of 200 million persons, indicated that 20 000 doses of mpox vaccine have been used in the country, targeting health care workers, female sex workers, and men who have sex with men.
The United Arab Emirates – Considering that, in five instances, travel-related imported cases of MPXV clade Ib infection had sole travel history to the United Arab Emirates, the representative of the country (a) indicated that the National IHR Focal Point reported to WHO the first case of MPXV clade Ib infection; (b) briefly described the surveillance, laboratory diagnostic, case management, and risk communication approaches in place; (c) indicated that mpox vaccine is available to health care workers and as a post-exposure measure; and (d) recalled that the country is bilaterally supporting the response efforts of some African countries.
The United Kingdom – The United Kingdom (a) described the detection, investigation, and clinical and public health management of the travel-related imported mpox cases; and (b) highlighted that the countries of origin of the imported cases are systematically informed about the occurrences.
Following the session open to invited States Parties, the Committee reconvened in a closed session to examine the questions in relation to whether the event constitutes a PHEIC or not, and if so, to consider the temporary recommendations drafted by the WHO Secretariat in accordance with IHR provisions.
The Chair reminded the Committee Members of their mandate and recalled that a PHEIC is defined in the IHR as an “extraordinary event, which constitutes a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease, and potentially requires a coordinated international response”.
The overarching considerations underpinning the advice of the Committee are (a) the insecurity in the eastern provinces and in the capital of the DRC – the State Party epicenter of the MPXV clade Ib outbreak –, hampering mpox response field operations and with the potential to morph into a larger scale humanitarian response; (b) the freeze of funding by the United States both, of specific mpox response activities as well as of other, directly or indirectly related, aid interventions; and (c) the continuing detection of travel-related imported mpox cases in States Parties within and outside the WHO African Region.
On that basis, the Committee considered that:
The event is “extraordinary” because of (a) the persistent, if not increasing, challenges in gauging the actual magnitude and trend of the MPXV clade Ib outbreak, especially in the DRC. This is thwarting the ability to assess progress, if any, towards controlling the spread of mpox and to adjust response interventions. The Committee’s reading is that, overall, the epidemiological situation is worryingly similar to that observed in November 2024; (b) the unfolding dynamics of MPXV clade Ib transmission, resulting in the shift in age groups affected and, hence, posing challenges in timely targeting response interventions; (c) the co-circulation and the risk of mutations of MPXV clades in the context of sustained community transmission; and (d) the possibility of change in the severity of disease resulting from food insecurity and interruption in the delivery of HIV-related care due to the freeze of aid.
The event “constitutes a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease” because of (a) the doubling of the number of States Parties having detected travel-related imported cases of MPXV clade Ib infection since the Committee last met, both in the WHO African Region and in all five other WHO Regions; (b) the possible influx of refugees from the eastern provinces of the DRC into neighbouring countries.
The event “requires a coordinated international response” because of the needs (a) to mobilize, and optimize the use, of financial and other resources to sustain response efforts, at the required level, in the medium term, following the freeze of funding by the United States; and (b) to continue facilitating and increasing equitable access to mpox vaccines and diagnostics.
Anticipating the possibility that the WHO Director-General may determine that the event continues to constitute a PHEIC, the Committee had received a proposed set of revised temporary recommendations ahead of the meeting. This reflected the proposal to extend most of the temporary recommendations issued on 27 November 2024. The Committee indicated that it would be giving them further consideration with a view to share its advice in that regard with the WHO Director-General as soon as possible. In such a way, should the WHO Director-General determine that the event continues to constitute a PHEIC, he could proceed, without delay, with issuing such communication together with a prospective revised set of temporary recommendations.
The Committee agreed to finalize the report of its third meeting during the week of 3 March 2025.
The Committee reiterated its concern regarding the continuing spread of MPXV in and beyond Africa, considering global geopolitical developments, the humanitarian situation in the DRC, as well as the foreseeable options and opportunities to secure sustainable funding to support response efforts. The Committee considered that the determination by the WHO Director-General that the upsurge of mpox still constitutes a PHEIC would be warranted. However, the Committee cautioned about the possible unintended consequences of determining an event to constitute a PHEIC for extended periods of time, since this could undermine the global public health alert function intrinsic to such a determination and reduce the leverage of a PHEIC in boosting domestic and international response efforts for future events. To that effect, the Committee reiterated the need to elaborate on considerations, related to the three criteria defining a PHEIC, that would inform its future advice to the WHO Director-General as to the termination of this PHEIC.
The Incident Manager for mpox at WHO headquarters, on behalf of the WHO Deputy Director-General, expressed his gratitude to the Committee’s Officers, its Members and Advisor and closed the meeting.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Omano Edigheji, Associate Professor of Practice, University of Johannesburg
Nigeria has abundant human and natural resources but remains mired in underdevelopment. There are high levels of poverty, corruption, unemployment and inequality. The country is currently witnessing a rise in ethnic militias and terrorism, adding to the threats posed by armed herdsmen’s deadly clashes with rural communities over land.
The nation suffers from poor economic management and a political leadership that has failed to promote structural transformation of the economy and politics.
I am a political scientist with research specialisation in the political economy of development. In my view, Nigeria’s social, economic and political crises stem from the absence of a grouping of people who put the country’s interests first. I call this grouping a developmentalist coalition.
I argue that for Nigeria to realise its potential and forge a prosperous shared future, like-minded individuals motivated by the ideology of development nationalism must come together in a coalition.
Development nationalism refers to the commitment to advancing one’s country and ensuring its prosperity. This includes enhancing the capabilities of its people so they can reach their potential and contribute to national progress. Individuals like this put loyalty to their country above other identities or considerations.
This coalition must focus on enhancing the nation’s productive capacity and uplifting the well-being of its citizens. Together, they can break the cycle of underdevelopment and achieve lasting progress.
And this can be measured through the creation of a predictable governance structure characterised by the rule of law and the provision of essential public goods to citizens.
Read more: Book review: Nigeria has democracy but not development. How to fix it
Developmentalist coalitions shape political and economic affairs in most developed nations. In China, Malaysia, Mauritius, South Korea, Singapore and other countries that have tried to catch up with advanced nations, developmental nationalism has played a significant role.
In some cases, a developmentalist elite creates its own political party. An example of this is the People’s Action Party founded by Singapore’s first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, and his colleagues. The Labour Party in Norway, a coalition mostly of workers and farmers, is another example.
In other instances, members of this elite join different political parties. When developmentalists are the dominant political elite, any party in power ensures that it upholds standards that reflect the core principles upon which the country is founded.
Developmental elites articulate values that define and bind their nations. They provide moral and political leadership, as Nelson Mandela did in South Africa.
Most of these elites want to have inclusive economic and political institutions that help them achieve their development objectives.
Since Nigeria became independent from Britain in 1960, most of those who have overseen the country’s political and economic landscape have not acted in a nationalistic or patriotic manner.
Instead, they have followed their self-interest and exploited the Nigerian state for personal gain.
As a result, the economy remains undiversified, with a small and declining manufacturing sector, thereby missing out on the potential for job creation.
Successive administrations in the last 26 years have allocated less funding to the education sector than the 26% of the national budget recommended by Unesco.
The political elite have not built an economy that will create decent jobs for the youth. Also, they have fostered an education system that produces graduates who do not have the skills to start enterprises.
Most young Nigerians are engaged in the informal sector, with its associated problems: unstable jobs, hazardous working conditions, and a lack of decent wages. Most youths are underemployed and in low value-added economic activities. This means Nigeria is missing out on the potential benefits of its youthful population.
About 70% of Nigeria’s population of over 200 million are under 30 years old, and 41% are younger than 15.
Political leaders have failed to create an environment that allows them to achieve their full potential.
In Nigeria, the issue is not the lack of individuals focused on development. These people exist across all segments of the Nigerian society, including government. The real problem is that they haven’t formed a coalition.
As a result, they cannot act collectively and cohesively to invest in Nigeria’s greatest asset: its people; and to promote industrialisation.
Now is the time to form the developmentalist coalition to change the governance and development trajectory of the country.
Read more: Is Nigeria in danger of a coup? What the country should do to avoid one – political analyst
In Nigeria, a broad-based coalition of developmentalist elites needs to be led by individuals with a clear vision for development and national cohesion.
Members of this coalition could establish a political party to contest elections, gain political power, and use their positions in government to develop the nation.
Party members must be disciplined and subordinate their personal ambitions to those of the party and the national interests. The party must not become an empire of powerful individuals: instead, its organs must be allowed to function.
Establishing this coalition is the way to end Nigeria’s endemic corruption and build a robust manufacturing sector and a thriving digital economy.
It also needs to promote agro-allied industry, investment in infrastructure, job creation and poverty reduction.
This coalition should aim to transform Nigeria’s democracy into a system where political parties and elected representatives genuinely serve the people.
– Rescuing Nigeria: how to break the cycle of decline and bring progress
– https://theconversation.com/rescuing-nigeria-how-to-break-the-cycle-of-decline-and-bring-progress-251639
Source: Channel Islands – Jersey
The Government is inviting Islanders to give their feedback on proposed changes to the Termination of Pregnancy Law. The Minister for Health and Social Services has made a commitment to lodge the proposed law changes before the end of 2025.
Feedback from the termination of pregnancy consultation in 2023, has helped to shape the proposals set out in this consultation. Islanders are encouraged to complete the online survey at gov.je/consultations. The consultation will be open until Monday 14 April.
Assistant Minister for Health and Social Services, Deputy Andy Howell, said: “We want to make sure our legislation reflects societal values, meets the needs of women, and adapts to changes in medical practice. We are committed to considering all feedback and aim to have a clear and fit-for-purpose legal framework that takes account of changes in medical practice.”
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Emmanuel Ojo, Associate Professor, University of the Witwatersrand
Global crises have shaped our world over the past two decades, affecting education systems everywhere. Higher education researcher Emmanuel Ojo has studied the impact of these disruptions on educational opportunities, particularly in southern Africa.
He looked at 5,511 peer-reviewed articles published between 2000 and 2024 to explore what the research suggests about making education systems more resilient. Here, he answers some questions about his review.
In my review I drew up a table documenting how multiple crises have disrupted education systems worldwide.
The cycle began with the 2000-2002 dot-com bubble collapse, which reduced education funding and slowed technological integration. This was followed by the 2001 terrorist attacks, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak (2002-2004), Iraq War (2003-2011), Indian Ocean tsunami (2004), and Hurricane Katrina (2005). The Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 2000, global food crisis (2007-2008), financial crisis (2007-2008), and European debt crisis (2010-2012) continued this pattern of disruption.
More recently, the Ebola epidemic, COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia-Ukraine war have destabilised education systems. Meanwhile, the ongoing climate crisis creates challenges, particularly in southern Africa where environmental vulnerability is high.
Education has consistently been among the hardest-hit sectors globally. According to Unesco, the COVID pandemic alone affected more than 1.6 billion students worldwide.
But the impact is not distributed equally.
My research shows crises have put vulnerable populations at a further disadvantage through school closures, funding diversions, infrastructure destruction and student displacement. Quality and access decline most sharply for marginalised communities. Costs rise and mobility is restricted. Food insecurity during crises reduces attendance among the poorest students.
In southern Africa, the Covid-19 disruption highlighted existing divides. Privileged students continued learning online. Those in rural and informal settlements were completely cut off from education.
Climate change compounds these inequalities. Unicef highlights that climate disasters have a disproportionate impact on schooling for millions in low-income countries, where adaptive infrastructure is limited.
What’s at stake for southern Africa is the region’s development potential and social cohesion. The widening of educational divides threatens to create a generation with unequal opportunities and capabilities.
My review focused on the 16 countries of the Southern African Development Community, revealing what makes them vulnerable to crisis impacts.
Southern Africa’s geographic exposure to climate disasters combines with pre-existing economic inequalities. The region’s digital divide became starkly visible during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some students were excluded from learning by limited connectivity and unreliable electricity.
The region’s systems also rely on external funding. The Trump administration’s sudden foreign aid freeze was a shock to South Africa’s higher education sector. It has affected public health initiatives and university research programmes.
Research representation itself is unequal. Within the region, South African researchers dominate and other nations make only limited contributions. This creates blind spots in understanding context-specific challenges and solutions.
Each successive crisis deepens educational divides, making recovery increasingly difficult and costly. Weaker education systems make the region less able to respond to other development challenges, too.
One striking finding from my review was the surge in educational research after the Covid-19 pandemic began – from 229 studies in 2019 to nearly double that in 2020, with continued rapid growth thereafter. This indicates growing recognition that education systems must be redesigned to withstand future disruptions, not merely recover from current ones.
Research points to a number of ways to do this:
Strategic investment in educational infrastructure, particularly digital technologies, to ensure learning continuity.
Equipping educators with skills to adapt teaching methods during emergencies.
Innovative, context-appropriate teaching approaches that empower communities.
Integration of indigenous knowledge systems into curricula, enhancing relevance, adaptability and community ownership.
Interdisciplinary and cross-national research collaborations.
Protection of education budgets, recognising education’s role in crisis recovery and long-term stability.
Community engagement in education, ensuring interventions are culturally appropriate and widely accepted.
In my view, African philanthropists have a duty to provide the independent financial base that education systems need to withstand external funding fluctuations.
The economic and social costs of failing to build resilient education systems are profound and long-lasting. Each educational disruption creates negative effects that extend far beyond the crisis period.
When students miss critical learning periods, it reduces their chances in life. The World Bank estimates that learning losses from the Covid-19 pandemic alone could result in up to US$17 trillion in lost lifetime earnings for affected students globally.
Social costs are equally severe. Educational disruptions increase dropout rates, child marriage, early pregnancy, and youth unemployment. These outcomes create broader societal challenges that require costly interventions across multiple sectors.
Spending on educational resilience avoids those costs.
The question isn’t whether southern African nations can afford to invest in educational resilience, but whether they can afford not to.
The choices made today will determine whether education systems merely survive crises or make society better. Evidence-based policies and regional cooperation are essential for building education systems that can fulfil Southern Africa’s human potential.
Emmanuel Ojo receives funding from National Research Foundation (NRF).
– ref. Global crises have hit education hard: 24 years of research offers a way forward for southern Africa – https://theconversation.com/global-crises-have-hit-education-hard-24-years-of-research-offers-a-way-forward-for-southern-africa-251833
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Omano Edigheji, Associate Professor of Practice, University of Johannesburg
Nigeria has abundant human and natural resources but remains mired in underdevelopment. There are high levels of poverty, corruption, unemployment and inequality. The country is currently witnessing a rise in ethnic militias and terrorism, adding to the threats posed by armed herdsmen’s deadly clashes with rural communities over land.
The nation suffers from poor economic management and a political leadership that has failed to promote structural transformation of the economy and politics.
I am a political scientist with research specialisation in the political economy of development. In my view, Nigeria’s social, economic and political crises stem from the absence of a grouping of people who put the country’s interests first. I call this grouping a developmentalist coalition.
I argue that for Nigeria to realise its potential and forge a prosperous shared future, like-minded individuals motivated by the ideology of development nationalism must come together in a coalition.
Development nationalism refers to the commitment to advancing one’s country and ensuring its prosperity. This includes enhancing the capabilities of its people so they can reach their potential and contribute to national progress. Individuals like this put loyalty to their country above other identities or considerations.
This coalition must focus on enhancing the nation’s productive capacity and uplifting the well-being of its citizens. Together, they can break the cycle of underdevelopment and achieve lasting progress.
And this can be measured through the creation of a predictable governance structure characterised by the rule of law and the provision of essential public goods to citizens.
Read more:
Book review: Nigeria has democracy but not development. How to fix it
Developmentalist coalitions shape political and economic affairs in most developed nations. In China, Malaysia, Mauritius, South Korea, Singapore and other countries that have tried to catch up with advanced nations, developmental nationalism has played a significant role.
In some cases, a developmentalist elite creates its own political party. An example of this is the People’s Action Party founded by Singapore’s first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, and his colleagues. The Labour Party in Norway, a coalition mostly of workers and farmers, is another example.
In other instances, members of this elite join different political parties. When developmentalists are the dominant political elite, any party in power ensures that it upholds standards that reflect the core principles upon which the country is founded.
Developmental elites articulate values that define and bind their nations. They provide moral and political leadership, as Nelson Mandela did in South Africa.
Most of these elites want to have inclusive economic and political institutions that help them achieve their development objectives.
Since Nigeria became independent from Britain in 1960, most of those who have overseen the country’s political and economic landscape have not acted in a nationalistic or patriotic manner.
Instead, they have followed their self-interest and exploited the Nigerian state for personal gain.
As a result, the economy remains undiversified, with a small and declining manufacturing sector, thereby missing out on the potential for job creation.
Successive administrations in the last 26 years have allocated less funding to the education sector than the 26% of the national budget recommended by Unesco.
The political elite have not built an economy that will create decent jobs for the youth. Also, they have fostered an education system that produces graduates who do not have the skills to start enterprises.
Most young Nigerians are engaged in the informal sector, with its associated problems: unstable jobs, hazardous working conditions, and a lack of decent wages. Most youths are underemployed and in low value-added economic activities. This means Nigeria is missing out on the potential benefits of its youthful population.
About 70% of Nigeria’s population of over 200 million are under 30 years old, and 41% are younger than 15.
Political leaders have failed to create an environment that allows them to achieve their full potential.
In Nigeria, the issue is not the lack of individuals focused on development. These people exist across all segments of the Nigerian society, including government. The real problem is that they haven’t formed a coalition.
As a result, they cannot act collectively and cohesively to invest in Nigeria’s greatest asset: its people; and to promote industrialisation.
Now is the time to form the developmentalist coalition to change the governance and development trajectory of the country.
Read more:
Is Nigeria in danger of a coup? What the country should do to avoid one – political analyst
In Nigeria, a broad-based coalition of developmentalist elites needs to be led by individuals with a clear vision for development and national cohesion.
Members of this coalition could establish a political party to contest elections, gain political power, and use their positions in government to develop the nation.
Party members must be disciplined and subordinate their personal ambitions to those of the party and the national interests. The party must not become an empire of powerful individuals: instead, its organs must be allowed to function.
Establishing this coalition is the way to end Nigeria’s endemic corruption and build a robust manufacturing sector and a thriving digital economy.
It also needs to promote agro-allied industry, investment in infrastructure, job creation and poverty reduction.
This coalition should aim to transform Nigeria’s democracy into a system where political parties and elected representatives genuinely serve the people.
Omano Edigheji receives funding from organisation
Research Grant from The Ford Foundation
– ref. Rescuing Nigeria: how to break the cycle of decline and bring progress – https://theconversation.com/rescuing-nigeria-how-to-break-the-cycle-of-decline-and-bring-progress-251639
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Margie Burns, Lecturer of English, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Most readers hear “pride and prejudice” and immediately think of Jane Austen’s most famous novel, that salty-sweet confection of romance and irony with a fairy-tale ending.
Few people, however, know the history of the phrase “pride and prejudice,” which I explore in my new book, “Jane Austen, Abolitionist: The Loaded History of the Phrase ‘Pride and Prejudice.’”
Like most Austen fans and scholars, I had read and loved her novels for years without learning much about the history of the title, which Austen chose after scrapping the original one, “First Impressions.”
By the 20th century, “pride and prejudice” became solely associated with Austen’s 1813 novel.
The phrase, which has religious origins, appeared in hundreds of works before Austen was born. From Britain it traveled to America, and from religious tomes it expanded to secular works. It even became a hallmark of abolitionist writing.
While 2025 marks Austen’s 250th birthday, the phrase “pride and prejudice” first appeared more than 400 years ago, in religious writings by English Protestants. As the daughter, sister, cousin and granddaughter of Church of England ministers, Austen was certainly aware of the tradition.
If ministers wanted to reproach their parishioners or their opponents, they attributed criticism of their sermons to “pride and prejudice” – as coming from people too arrogant and narrow-minded to entertain their words in good faith.
While the usage began in the Church of England, other denominations, even radical ones, soon adopted it: “Pride and prejudice” appears in the writings of Nonconformists, Anabaptists, Quakers, Dissenters and other representatives of “Schism, Faction and Sedition,” as one anonymous writer called them.
One early takeaway is that, amid fervent religious conflicts, various denominations similarly used “pride and prejudice” as a criticism.
The unnamed minister himself complained that, owing to “the Pride and Prejudice of mens Spirits, the prevailing Interests of some Factions and Parties, the greatest part of the Nation are miserably wanting in their Duty.”
At the same time, the phrase could be invoked to support religious toleration and in pleas for inclusiveness.
“When all Pride and Prejudice, all Interests and Designs, being submitted to the Honour of God, and the Discharge of our Duty,” an anonymous clergyman wrote in 1734, “the Holy Scriptures shall again triumph over the vain Traditions of Men; and Religion no longer take its Denomination from little Sects and Factions.”
In the 18th century, advances in publishing led to an explosion of secular writing. For the first time, regular people could buy books about history, politics and philosophy. These popular texts spread the phrase “pride and prejudice” to even more distant shores.
One fan was American founding father Thomas Paine.
In his 47-page pamphlet “Common Sense,” Paine argued that kings could not be trusted to protect democracy: “laying aside all national pride and prejudice in favour of modes and forms, the plain truth is, that it is wholly owing to the constitution of the people, and not to the constitution of the government[,] that the crown is not as repressive in England as in Turkey.”
Others included Daniel Defoe, author of “Robinson Crusoe.” In his 1708 essay “Review of the State of the British Nation,” Defoe satirically exhorted the public to vote Tory rather than electing men of sense, to “dispell the Poisons” that “Sloth, Envy, Pride and Prejudice may have contracted, and bring the Blood of the Party into a true circulation.”
After the philosophers, the historians and the political commentators came the novelists. And among the novelists, female writers were especially important. My annotated list in “Jane Austen, Abolitionist” includes more than a dozen female writers using the phrase between 1758 and 1812, the year Austen finished revising “Pride and Prejudice.”
Among them was Frances Burney. Scholars have often attributed Austen’s famous title to Burney, who used the phrase “pride and prejudice” in her novel “Cecilia.”
But Burney was not alone. Female novelists who used the expression before Austen included Charlotte Lennox, sisters Harriet and Sophia Lee, Charlotte Turner Smith, Mrs. Colpoys, Anne Seymour Damer and mother and daughter Susannah and Elizabeth Gunning, who jointly authored their novel “The Heir Apparent.”
As the critique embodied in the phrase progressed beyond religious and partisan conflict, it became increasingly used in the context of ethics and social reform.
My most striking discovery in this research is the long-standing association of the phrase “pride and prejudice” with abolitionism, the movement to eradicate enslavement and the slave trade.
The leaders of transnational antislavery organizations used it at their conventions and in the books and periodicals they published. In 1843, 30 years after the publication of Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” British Quaker Thomas Clarkson wrote to the General Antislavery Convention, which was meeting in London.
He exhorted the faithful to repudiate slavery “at once and forever” if there were any among them “whose eyes may be so far blinded, or their consciences so far seared by interest or ignorance, pride or prejudice, as still to sanction or uphold this unjust and sinful system.”
He even used the phrase twice. Acknowledging that some violent abolitionists had aroused reaction, he warned his audience that “this state of feeling arises as much from pride and prejudice on the one hand, as from indiscretion or impropriety on the other.”
At the funeral for abolitionist John Brown, the minister prayed over his body, “Oh, God, cause the oppressed to go free; break any yoke, and prostrate the pride and prejudice that dare to lift themselves up.”
Use of the phrase did not end with Emancipation or the end of the U.S. Civil War.
In fact, it was one of Frederick Douglass’ favorite phrases. On Oct. 22, 1883, in his “Address at Lincoln Hall,” Douglass excoriated the Supreme Court’s decision rendering the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional.
As was typical of Douglass, the speech ranged beyond racial inequities: “Color prejudice is not the only prejudice against which a Republic like ours should guard. The spirit of caste is malignant and dangerous everywhere. There is the prejudice of the rich against the poor, the pride and prejudice of the idle dandy against the hard-handed workingman.”
Early on in “Pride and Prejudice,” the conceited Caroline Bingley snipes that Elizabeth Bennet shows “an abominable sort of conceited independence.” Later, the snobbish Lady Catherine accuses Bennet of being “headstrong.” But near the ending, Mr. Darcy tells Bennet that he loves her for “the liveliness” of her “mind.”
In this respect, Bennet reflects a quality that all of Austen’s heroines possess. While they try to adhere to standards of courtesy and respect, none are guilty of saying only what the leading man wants to hear.
Given that Austen chose her title to honor the phrase and its history, it is ironic that her own fame ended up drowning out the abolitionist associations of “pride and prejudice” after the Civil War.
If there is any work of fiction that successfully makes self-sufficiency, independent thinking and open-mindedness look good – and makes sycophants, rigidity and hysterical devotion to rank and status look bad – it is “Pride and Prejudice.”
Yet the lasting popularity of Austen’s novel demonstrates that the ethics contained in the phrase continue to resonate today, even if its context has been lost.
Margie Burns does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. From pulpits to protest, the surprising history of the phrase ‘pride and prejudice’ – https://theconversation.com/from-pulpits-to-protest-the-surprising-history-of-the-phrase-pride-and-prejudice-249836
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Paul Bierman, Fellow of the Gund Institute for Environment, Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Science, University of Vermont
US Army/Pictorial Parade/Archive Photos/Getty Images
In 1957, Hollywood released “The Deadly Mantis,” a B-grade monster movie starring a praying mantis of nightmare proportions. Its premise: Melting Arctic ice has released a very hungry, million-year-old megabug, and scientists and the U.S. military will have to stop it.
The rampaging insect menaces America’s Arctic military outposts, part of a critical line of national defense, before heading south and meeting its end in New York City.
Yes, it’s over-the-top fiction, but the movie holds some truth about the U.S. military’s concerns then and now about the Arctic’s stability and its role in national security.
In the late 1940s, Arctic temperatures were warming and the Cold War was heating up. The U.S. military had grown increasingly nervous about a Soviet invasion across the Arctic. It built bases and a line of radar stations. The movie used actual military footage of these polar outposts.
But officials wondered: What if sodden snow and vanishing ice stalled American men and machines and weakened these northern defenses?
In response to those concerns, the military created the Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment, a research center dedicated to the science and engineering of all things frozen: glacier runways, the behavior of ice, the physics of snow and the climates of the past.
It was the beginning of the military’s understanding that climate change couldn’t be ignored.
As I was writing “When the Ice is Gone,” my recent book about Greenland, climate science and the U.S. military, I read government documents from the 1950s and 1960s showing how the Pentagon poured support into climate and cold-region research to boost the national defense.
Initially, military planners recognized threats to their own ability to protect the nation. Over time, the U.S. military would come to see climate change as both a threat in itself and a threat multiplier for national security.
The military’s snow and ice engineering in the 1950s made it possible for convoys of tracked vehicles to routinely cross Greenland’s ice sheet, while planes landed and took off from ice and snow runways.
In 1953, the Army even built a pair of secret surveillance sites inside the ice sheet, both equipped with Air Force radar units looking 24/7 for Soviet missiles and aircraft, but also with weather stations to understand the Arctic climate system.
The Army drilled the world’s first deep ice core from a base it built within the Greenland ice sheet, Camp Century. Its goal: to understand how climate had changed in the past so they would know how it might change in the future.
The military wasn’t shy about its climate change research successes. The Army’s chief ice scientist, Dr. Henri Bader, spoke on the Voice of America. He promoted ice coring as a way to investigate climates of the past, provide a new understanding of weather, and understand past climatic patterns to gauge and predict the one we are living in today – all strategically important.
In the 1970s, painstaking laboratory work on the Camp Century ice core extracted minuscule amounts of ancient air trapped in tiny bubbles in the ice. Analyses of that gas revealed that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were lower for tens of thousands of years before the industrial revolution. After 1850, carbon dioxide levels crept up slowly at first and then rapidly accelerated. It was direct evidence that people’s actions, including burning coal and oil, were changing the composition of the atmosphere.
Since 1850, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have spiked and global temperatures have warmed by more than 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.3 Celsius). The past 10 years have been the hottest since recordkeeping began, with 2024 now holding the record. Climate change is now affecting the entire Earth – but most especially the Arctic, which is warming several times faster than the rest of the planet.
For decades, military leaders have been discussing climate change as a threat and a threat multiplier that could worsen instability and mass migration in already fragile regions of the world.
Climate change can fuel storms, wildfires and rising seas that threaten important military bases. It puts personnel at risk in rising heat and melts sea ice, creating new national security concerns in the Arctic. Climate change can also contribute to instability and conflict when water and food shortages trigger increasing competition for resources, internal and cross-border tensions, or mass migrations.
The military understands that these threats can’t be ignored. As Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro told a conference in September 2024: “Climate resilience is force resilience.”
Consider Naval Station Norfolk. It’s the largest military port facility in the world and sits just above sea level on Virginia’s Atlantic coast. Sea level there rose more than 1.5 feet in the last century, and it’s on track to rise that much again by 2050 as glaciers around the world melt and warming ocean water expands.
High tides already cause delays in repair work, and major storms and their storm surges have damaged expensive equipment. The Navy has built sea walls and worked to restore coastal dunes and marshlands to protect its Virginia properties, but the risks continue to increase.
Planning for the future, the Navy incorporates scientists’ projections of sea level rise and increasing hurricane strength to design more resilient facilities. By adapting to climate change, the U.S. Navy will avoid the fate of another famous marine power: the Norse, forced to abandon their flooded Greenland settlements when sea level there rose about 600 years ago.
As the impacts of climate change grow in both frequency and magnitude, the costs of inaction are increasing. Most economists agree that it’s cheaper to act now than deal with the consequences. Yet, in the past 20 years, the political discourse around addressing the cause and effects of climate change has become increasingly politicized and partisan, stymieing effective action.
In my view, the military’s approach to problem-solving and threat reduction provides a model for civil society to address climate change in two ways: reducing carbon emissions and adapting to inevitable climate change impacts.
The U.S. military emits more planet warming carbon than Sweden and spent more than US$2 billion on energy in 2021. It accounts for more than 70% of energy used by the federal government.
In that context, its embrace of alternative energy, including solar generation, microgrids and wind power, makes economic and environmental sense. The U.S. military is moving away from fossil fuels, not because of any political agenda, but because of the cost-savings, increased reliability and energy independence the alternatives provide.
As sea ice melts and Arctic temperatures rise, the polar region has again become a strategic priority. Russia and China are expanding Arctic shipping routes and eyeing critical mineral deposits as they become accessible. The military knows climate change affects national security, which is why it continues to take steps to address the threats a changing climate presents.
Paul Bierman receives funding from the US National Science Foundation, this work in part supported by grant EAR-2114629.
– ref. The US military has cared about climate change since the dawn of the Cold War – for good reason – https://theconversation.com/the-us-military-has-cared-about-climate-change-since-the-dawn-of-the-cold-war-for-good-reason-246333
Source: Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe – OSCE
Headline: Free and independent media are vital for strong democracies and our common security, OSCE leaders say
VIENNA, 17 March 2025 – Independent media are essential in providing factual, unbiased reporting that counters propaganda, promotes informed public debate and ensures accountability, OSCE leaders said at the opening of a two-day conference to discuss the role of media in conflict and humanitarian crises against the background of international law today.
Organized by the 2025 Finnish OSCE Chairpersonship, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media (RFoM) and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the event brings together OSCE participating States, international organizations, civil society, and the media. Almost 250 participants from across the OSCE region will focus on the importance of free and independent media for strengthening democracy as well as achieving sustainable and collective security.
Ambassador Vesa Häkkinen, Finland’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE and Chair of the Permanent Council, emphasized that the media and journalists not only documents possible violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law but also contributes to accountability, often at great personal risk. “We must also be ready to respond to the challenges in this fast-evolving media and information landscape. Building societal resilience through media and digital literacy is essential for strengthening security and providing an effective response to disinformation.”
During humanitarian crises and armed conflict, journalists are at the forefront, delivering essential information directly from the ground and contributing to accountability efforts. By upholding journalistic integrity and amplifying diverse perspectives, they act as a safeguard against information disorder, contribute to conflict resolution and peacebuilding. However, despite legal safeguards designed to protect them, journalists continue to be harassed, tortured, imprisoned and even killed for doing their jobs.
“I urge all participating States to follow up on their commitments to uphold international humanitarian and human rights law and OSCE commitments, so as to ensure that no journalist is targeted, silenced or killed for doing their job, also in war zones,” said OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Jan Braathu. “The safety of journalists is the safety of our democratic values, and I will continue to stand firm in defence of both.”
The OSCE has long recognised that free media and the protection of journalists are integral elements of comprehensive security. International humanitarian law, or the law of war, stipulates that journalists covering armed conflicts are recognised as civilians, and this protects them from deliberate attacks as they are not combatants.
“As we witness violations of international law continuing to take place in the heart of our region, the work of free and independent media is more important than ever,” said ODIHR Deputy Director Tea Jaliashvilli. “By keeping the public informed of developments on the ground, the media supports the documentation of violations of international humanitarian and international human rights law and therefore makes a vital contribution to ensuring perpetrators are held accountable for their crimes.”
The fundamental role of the free flow of information has been emphasised by the OSCE participating States since the organisation’s inception, and states have affirmed their commitment to create an environment in which journalists can work freely and without fear. States have also committed to “respect and ensure respect for general international humanitarian law” and stated that “those who violate international humanitarian law are held personally accountable.”
Supplementary Human Dimension Meetings are a platform for the OSCE’s participating States and OSCE institutions, as well as international organizations and civil society, to exchange views and good practices in order to find common solutions for the challenges facing societies across the OSCE region. Today’s discussion is the first SHDM of 2025, with two more planned for this year.
Source: Switzerland – Department of Home Affairs
On 17 March 2025, Federal Councillor Elisabeth Baume-Schneider opened the fifth conference in Bern on the protection and promotion of national minorities in Switzerland. The event provided a platform for exchange between Swiss authorities, the Council of Europe, minority and non-governmental organisations plus the scientific community. The main focus was on embedding Italian and Romansh more deeply in everyday life, protecting the itinerant lifestyle of the Swiss Yenish and Sinti as well as stronger measures against racism and intolerance in education.
Source: United Kingdom London Metropolitan Police
An officer is due to appear in court after being charged with three sex offences.
PC Nick Whitcombe, attached to the South West Command Unit, was charged on Thursday, 13 February with one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault.
He is due to appear before Uxbridge Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday, 18 March.
The incidents reportedly took place on Tuesday, 9 April 2024 while he was off-duty. The victims, two women, have been supported throughout.
PC Whitcombe was arrested on the same day and immediately suspended.
The Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards is aware.
Source: Anglia Ruskin University
By Timothy Hearn, Anglia Ruskin University
During Ramadan, Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset. This unique rhythm often leads to changes in sleeping patterns. With nights shortened and days filled with fasting, many Muslims find themselves battling fatigue and a dip in alertness – and a well-timed nap may provide a much needed boost.
Recently published research on athletes fasting during Ramadan has demonstrated that even a 40-minute nap taken after a strenuous evening session can significantly improve physical and cognitive performance. And, in studies with soccer players, those who napped showed better performance in short-distance shuttle runs and attention tests than those who skipped the nap.
So, why can naps have such a transformative effect on our energy levels?
Naps work by giving the brain and body a chance to reset. When you’re awake for long stretches – especially under the stress of altered meal times and reduced nighttime sleep – the brain accumulates sleep pressure.
A nap, especially in the early afternoon when many experience a natural dip in alertness, can relieve that pressure and enhance mood, reaction time, and even physical endurance. One 2024 study, for instance, showed that a 40-minute nap not only reduced feelings of sleepiness but also improved performance in tasks that require focus and quick thinking. While a 2025 study of female athletes found that both 40-minute and even 90-minute naps could enhance physical performance and mood after a night of sleep restriction.
But it’s not all good news for habitual nappers. Although longer naps sometimes show even greater benefits, they may also lead to temporary grogginess – a phenomenon known as sleep inertia – which can counteract the positive effects if not managed properly.
But there’s evidence that exposure to bright light and face washing could help nappers combat sleep inertia. For some, though, this grogginess can linger long enough to affect productivity, mood, and overall performance.
When it comes to nap duration and timing, the key is to find the “sweet spot”. Short naps – lasting around 20 to 30 minutes – can improve alertness without causing sleep inertia. On the other hand, longer naps, such as those lasting 40 minutes or more, have been shown to boost both mental and physical performance but must be scheduled carefully to avoid interfering with nighttime sleep.
During Ramadan, when the body is already adapting to a shifted sleep schedule, a carefully timed nap might be especially beneficial. It can serve as a counterbalance to the reduced sleep quality and quantity that sometimes accompany fasting. However, if taken too late in the day, a nap might delay the onset of your regular sleep cycle, leading to disrupted sleep patterns.
But, when taken at the right time, napping can be a valuable tool for enhancing alertness, mood, and even physical performance – benefits that are particularly relevant during periods of fasting like Ramadan.
Ultimately, the decision to adopt a daily nap should be guided by your personal lifestyle, sleep quality, and overall health goals. For many, a well-timed, moderate-length nap is not only a healthy habit, but also a strategic advantage in managing daily challenges – whether you’re fasting during Ramadan or simply trying to make the most of a hectic day.
Timothy Hearn, Senior Lecturer in Bioinformatics, Anglia Ruskin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The opinions expressed in VIEWPOINT articles are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARU.
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Source: Agenzia Fides – MIL OSI
Monday, 17 March 2025
Cuamm
Beira (Agenzia Fides) – “Since its founding in 1995, the Catholic University of Mozambique (UCM) has responded to educational challenges with seriousness and innovation, with the firm desire to educate citizens of integrity,” said the Rector, Fr. Filipe Sungo. “We seek not only well-prepared and qualified professionals in their field, but also leaders committed to the common good.”Three decades of history have enabled the UCM to realize an educational project that today stands out at the national level for its academic rigor, innovation, internationalization, and, last but not least, its human value. This is affirmed by the medical aid organization “Doctors with Africa Cuamm,” which carries out numerous initiatives in collaboration with the university and was represented at the opening event of the academic year on Friday, March 14, in Beira by its director, Don Dante Carraro, accompanied by Professor Alberto Mantovani, internationally renowned immunologist and scientific director of “Humanitas,” as well as other priests and supporters from the Diocese of Padua.”An institution closely linked to the community,” is how Don Dante defines the UCM, emphasizing that science, research and expertise must not forget to serve the poorest and most vulnerable. “The future begins right here, where knowledge is built and shared,” said Professor Mantovani, who has been a visiting professor in Beira several times over the years.”The university is certainly a place where science is cultivated with seriousness, but it is also a place where hearts and minds are formed not only for academic excellence but also for generous service to humanity,” said Bishop Claudio Dalla Zuanna of Beira, who attended the ceremony, echoing the words of Pope Francis. “The university must not be a self-contained ivory tower, but must be able to listen to society, accept challenges, and provide answers.”The UCM is now the country’s second university campus, located about 1,500 km from the capital, Maputo. A few years after its founding, the Faculty of Medicine of the Catholic University of Mozambique was opened, not least at the urging of “Doctors with Africa Cuamm” and thanks to decades of collaboration between the aid organization and the city’s health authorities. Since the first courses in anatomy, surgery, and internal medicine, launched by CUAMM physicians in 2004, the commitment to the UCM Medical School has never stopped, but has actually grown over time. On August 25, 2007, the first aspiring doctors graduated in Beira. “A historic date for the entire country,” as the university’s rector, Father Alberto Ferreira, called it. They were the first students to be trained outside the capital, Maputo, in the north-central part of the country, where there was barely one doctor per 100,000 inhabitants (see Fides, 8/10/2009). (AP) (Agenzia Fides, 17/3/2025)
Cuamm
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Source: Agenzia Fides – MIL OSI
Abuja (Agenzia Fides) – The seminarian who was kidnapped along with a priest on March 3 in southern Nigeria (see Fides, 5/3/2025) has been murdered, while the priest was released. According to the Diocese of Auchi, “Fr. Philip Ekweli was released by the kidnappers on Thursday, 13th of March, 2025 close to Amughe village, a few kilometres from Okpekpe town, North Ibie in Etsako East LGA of Edo State.””Unfortunately, however, the 21-year-old major seminarian, Andrew Peter, who was kidnapped along with Fr Ekweli, was gruesomely murdered by the abductors,” the statement added, signed by Fr. Peter Egielewa, Director of the Diocesan Media Relations Office. Father Ekweli and seminarian Andrew were kidnapped from the rectory of St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Iviukhua-Agenebode, Etsako East County, Edo State, at approximately 9:30 p.m. on March 3, when armed men entered both the rectory and the church. The two were taken to nearby forests.The diocese appeals to security forces to protect the people of Edo State from the ongoing kidnappings: “The Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Auchi, Most Rev. Dr. Gabriel Dunia, expresses gratitude to all for the prayers and moral support received while Fr Ekweli and the Seminarian were held in captivity. He calls on the government at all levels and the security agencies to stop the deteriorating security situation in Edo North in particular and other parts of Edo State, which has now become a safe haven for kidnappers, who can operate with impunity, while the people feel helpless and abandoned.” “People are not safe on the roads, in their farms and even in their homes. This is unacceptable when there are elected officials whose duty it is to protect the people. The bishop is grateful to the Edo State Government for their sincere efforts in seeing the victims rescued, but expresses dissatisfaction with the response of the police in particular in the rescue efforts, urging them to put in place better measures to rescue kidnapped victims rather than leave the entire rescue efforts solely in the hands of family, friends and acquaintances of kidnapped victims.”Father Egielewa recalls that “in the past decade, six of its priests had been kidnapped and tortured before release, three were attacked but escaped, and two—Fr. Christopher Odia and Seminarian Andrew Peter—were murdered.” “May the souls of Seminarian Andrew Peter, Fr Christopher Odia and all those killed by kidnappers in Nigeria through the mercy of God rest in peace,” the statement concludes. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides, 17/3/2025)
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Source: Agenzia Fides – MIL OSI
photo: www.ucanews.com
Banmaw (Agenzia Fides) – The Cathedral of Banmaw, a town in the state of Kachin, in Myanmar, was destroyed by fire on Sunday 16 March, on the eve of the feast of St Patrick, the Saint to whom it is dedicated.The Cathedral was allegedly set on fire during operations conducted in the area by soldiers of the SAC (State Administration Council), the military junta that currently holds power in Myanmar.The fire, according to testimonies sent to Fides, broke out at 4 in the afternoon on Sunday, 16th March. The priest’s house, the three-storey building that houses the diocesan offices and the high school had already been set on fire on 26 February.The diocese of Banmaw, established in 2006 and led by Bishop Raymond Sumlut Gam, borders China to the east and covers a largely mountainous area of 10,741 square kilometres. Before the current conflict situation it was inhabited by a civilian population of more than 407,000 (with more than 27,000 baptized Catholics), belonging to different ethnic groups. (PA/FB) (Agenzia Fides, 17/3/2025)
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Source: Agenzia Fides – MIL OSI
Shanghai (Agenzia Fides) – “Since the visible temple has been rebuilt, we must now also make the interior temple of our heart more spiritually alive”. This is the exhortation addressed by Joseph Shen Bin, Bishop of the diocese of Shanghai to the baptized Catholics of his diocese on the occasion of the reconsecration and inauguration of two churches dedicated to Saint Joseph in view of the solemnity dedicated to the Holy Spouse of the Virgin Mary and putative father of Jesus, on March 19.On Sunday, March 16, the second Sunday of Lent, Bishop Shen Bin consecrated the church in Tianma, Songjiang district. At the liturgy attended by more than a thousand people, Bishop Shen Bin also conferred the sacrament of Confirmation to more than two hundred adults. During his homily, Shen Bin also thanked all the priests, nuns and lay people of the parish for their dedication and commitment in supporting the restoration of the church, and also the civil authorities for their logistical support. “May this temple of God’s grace,” the Bishop hoped, “be a welcoming house of faith for all, so that we can walk together towards holiness under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”The fervent devotion to Saint Joseph, Patron Saint of China, has been handed down among Chinese Catholics from generation to generation, and is revived every year in March, the month dedicated to the Saint. In China, many churches, ecclesiastical structures, seminaries, national and diocesan religious congregations, charitable institutions (orphanages, homes for the elderly) and schools are dedicated to Saint Joseph. Chinese shrines dedicated to the Saint welcome pilgrims and devotees from all parts of China and abroad.On Saturday, March 15, Bishop Joseph Shen Bin had already presided over the consecration of another church in Beitaowan, in the Baoshan district, also dedicated to Saint Joseph. On that occasion, thirty diocesan priests concelebrated Mass in front of more than 300 faithful, and the sacrament of Confirmation was administered to 17 parishioners.The Beitaowan church in the Baoshan district was built in 1650 during the Qing dynasty, and rebuilt around 1875. A primary school attached to the church was built in 1949. On March 10, 1989, it was restored and reopened to the faithful, becoming the first Catholic church to be reopened for worship in the Baoshan district.The Tianma church, in the Songjiang district, was built in 1850. A hospital run by the Canossian nuns was also attached to the church. It was reopened for worship on 16 December 1989. Today, a public hospital stands on the site of the former hospital. (NZ) (Agenzia Fides, 17/3/2025)
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Source: US Global Legal Monitor
This month, the Law Library of Congress released Pre-1901 Legal Documents of New Spain/Mexico, a digital collection featuring approximately 300 items documenting the legal history of colonial Spanish America. The items date from the 16th to the 19th centuries and cover modern-day Mexico as well as the historical jurisdiction of New Spain, including territories that have since become part of the United States. Most items are from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Examples of titles of interest to students of U.S. history may include Ordinances, by Major-General Andrew Jackson, governor of the provinces of the Floridas… or Ynstrucciones y reglamentos de Yndias, which is a bound collection of documents relating to the Spanish colonies and features early colonial documents from California and Puerto Rico, among others. Yet another title contains a copy of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), which led to the creation of several present-day western U.S. states and recognized the Rio Grande as the southern boundary between the United States and Mexico.
Older items of historical legal significance include the Cedulario de Puga, a compilation of royal provisions, degrees, instructions, and other legal texts published in Mexico in the 16th century by one of the earliest printers in Mexico, Pedro Ocharte. Another rare item, the Speculum Coniugiorum, is one of the earliest legal texts published in the Americas. It served as a handbook on marriage under the laws of the Catholic Church and provided detailed explanations of the matrimonial customs of the Aztec and Tarascan Indians of Mexico.
The Law Library encourages researchers, legal historians, and anyone interested in the colonial history of the Americas to explore this exciting new digital collection.
Subscribe to In Custodia Legis – it’s free! – to receive interesting posts drawn from the Law Library of Congress’s vast collections and our staff’s expertise in U.S., foreign, and international law.
Source: United Kingdom – Government Statements
The Security Industry Authority (SIA) today (17 March 2025) welcomed the publication of the Home Office public body review of the regulator.
Public body reviews provide an opportunity for government departments to ensure they are satisfied that an arm’s length body such as the SIA is operating with a clear purpose using an appropriate delivery model.
In a joint statement issued today, Heather Baily, Chair of the SIA, and Michelle Russell, Chief Executive of the SIA, said:
We welcome the publication of this review of the SIA and of the regulatory regime for private security. The SIA embraced the review with a collaborative, open, and transparent approach. We are pleased the review provides the necessary assurance to ministers and the public that the SIA is a well-run organisation doing good work.
The focus of this review was efficiency, and the review confirms the SIA has challenged itself to increase efficiency to contain the cost of its operations.
The review also confirms the SIA is best placed in its current form to deliver the licensing of regulated security roles and the regulation of private security.
We are particularly pleased that the review acknowledges the work licensed security operatives do to protect the UK. The review encourages them to “continue to work with the SIA as an expert and authoritative regulator that is punching above its weight to encourage the highest standards in the profession.
We seek and continue to benefit from the support and co-operation of those working in the private security industry and our many partners to provide effective regulation and pursue robustly those who choose not to comply.
We will work with the Home Office and the devolved governments to implement the recommendations of this review.
The Home Office conducted the review between August 2023 and March 2024.
Download and read the full review here: Security Industry Authority: Public Body Review 2025 – GOV.UK.
The SIA is the organisation responsible for regulating the private security industry in the UK, reporting to the Home Secretary under the terms of the Private Security Industry Act 2001. The SIA’s main duties are the compulsory licensing of individuals undertaking designated activities and managing the voluntary Approved Contractor Scheme (ACS).
For media enquiries only, please contact: media.enquiries@sia.gov.uk.
Published 17 March 2025
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Charity Commission warns charities about fraudulent messages recently sent to charities and trustees.
The messages typically request action to be taken such as removing a trustee or chief executive from their position, releasing funds as part of a grant or supplying documents such as a passport or utility bill. They may be signed as coming from ‘the Commission,’ Chief Executive Officer and/or its Directors.
We have reported the incidents to Action Fraud and will continue to monitor the situation.
It’s not always easy to tell if correspondence is real or fake, however please note we:
In the rare circumstance where we might send you a letter by post it will:
It is unlikely that any serious allegations against individuals would be detailed in a letter, or that we would name individuals before there was clear evidence of wrongdoing.
Matters to do with casework or investigation would normally come from a caseworker or a team at the Commission .
If you are in any doubt, contact us to check.
Published 17 March 2025
