Source: European Parliament
This infographic aims to present the current maternity and paternity leave situation in EU Member States. Most EU countries also grant an additional period of parental leave, but parental leave is not covered in this infographic.
Source : © European Union, 2025 – EP
Source: Scotland – Highland Council
Issued by Scottish Fire and Rescue Service
For more information, visit https://www.firescotland.gov.uk/outdoors/wildfires/
Firefighters are urging the public to be aware of wildfire risk this Spring as figures show almost 80% of large outdoor fires since 2010 were recorded between March and May.
On average, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) attends 170 large outdoor fires each year.
Prolonged wet weather last year saw the figure drop to 55 incidents, but the seasonal risk remains.
Analysis shows that around two thirds of wildfires are accidental with the most common causes recorded as discarded cigarettes or unattended campfires.
Area Commander and Local Senior Officer for Highland, Michael Humphreys, the SFRS Wildfire Lead, emphasised the need for public responsibility. He said: “It is crucial that people understand the impact of careless fire-setting. Even with the best intentions, small fires can rapidly spread causing devastating damage.
“If you light a campfire during high winds, high temperatures and low humidity there is potential that it could get out of control.
“Always take steps to ensure your campfire is fully extinguished before you leave. Simple steps to act safely and responsibly is a must.”
SFRS continues to collaborate with partners, such as the Scottish Wildfire Forum, to issue wildfire warnings when weather and ground conditions are high and very high for fires. The public can follow SFRS social media channels and website for real-time wildfire warnings and safety guidance.
Deputy Chair of the Scottish Wildfire Forum, Michael Bruce, said: “Large wildfires burning over several days have a devastating impact on our natural environment.
“In May 2019, a wildfire burned for six days in the Flow Country where the burned peatland doubled Scotland’s emissions.
“Wildfires can strike a blow to rural economies and tourism.”
With climate change, we may be seeing hotter, drier summers and wetter, warmer winters. This could increase the chances for wildfires to occur, which is why preventative measures are more important than ever.
To address these risks, SFRS is advancing its Wildfire Strategy, and have invested £1.6 million in specialist equipment and firefighter training to improve its response capabilities.
While wildfires can happen year-round, Spring presents ideal conditions due to the combination of new growth and typically drier ground.
However, wildfire risks are not solely linked to warm conditions—cold, dry winter air can also create highly flammable environments.
For more information, visit Wildfires | Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.
Source: Scotland – Highland Council
Works are progressing well on the exciting changes taking place at Whin Park in Inverness.
Leader of Inverness and Area, Cllr Ian Brown said: “The works are moving with pace as eighty five percent of the equipment is in place and groundworks are continuing.”
Chair of Communities and Place Committee Cllr Graham MacKenzie added: “This month, visitors to the park will see the progression of the groundworks and the installation of the play surfacing and you might even catch a glimpse of the Nessie play feature!”
Weather dependant, the target is to have the works completed for Easter 2025. The park remains open during the works, but the main play area and a section of the car park in front of the shop are closed to allow the works to continue. This also includes the main entrance ramped area to the park. The path network from the Ness Islands and the path at the side of the public toilets also remain open enabling the public to view the works’ progress during this exciting period for this landmark location.
Funding for the contract has been awarded by the Scottish Government Play Area Fund (£234,988) which was allocated to the redevelopment of the park by Members of the Inverness, Central, Ness-side, Millburn, and Inverness West Wards. In 2023, Inverness City Committee Members agreed £150,000 Inverness Common Good Funding; and in 2024 a further £100,000 from the Community Regeneration Fund towards the park development costs.
Watch the video of the latest works. On YouTube: https://youtu.be/nZswm-1T0vo and look out for our next video update later in March.
3 Mar 2025
Source: Scotland – Highland Council
As part of The Highland Council’s proposed three-year Medium Term Financial Plan, £14 million has been allocated for expansion of bus company operations across the Highlands and shared investment in renewable energy opportunities.
£6 million is proposed to be allocated for an ‘Investment in Community Transport’ programme to build on the success of the Council’s in-house bus service by expanding its services to benefit more communities across the Highlands.
Chair of the Economy and Infrastructure Committee, Councillor Ken Gowans said: “A big part of our budget setting process is focussing on investing in our Highland transport services. In our My Future Highland Programme we gave a commitment to develop affordable and reliable public transport, as part of our work to develop sustainable communities.
“Since we established our In-House Bus Service it has grown from strength to strength. The Council spends around £25m on school and public transport throughout the region, with well over 300 separate contracts. The last tendering round saw an increase of £8m in one financial year, which led to the Council setting up an in-house bus team. The new £6m being proposed will enable us to expand our operations, increase the availability of service provision and facilitate improved cost effectiveness in the next round of bus contract tenders.”
Last month Highland Council took over the operations of D&E Coaches who had operated a significant number of school contracts which will now be serviced in-house by the council.
Cllr Michael Green, Vice Chair of the Economy and Infrastructure Committee, said: “The public are set to benefit with greater control in the ways in which public and school transport is managed across the Highlands. This investment may well have positive impacts on older and younger age groups, and disabled people reliant on bus services, also those on lower incomes by supporting access to employment and training especially in rural areas through more accessible service provision.”
£8 million is proposed to be allocated for shared investment in renewable energy opportunities created by the Social Value Charter for Renewables. Agreed by the Council in June 2024, the Charter aims to maximise economic benefits from natural resources by setting out the community benefit expectations from developers wishing to invest in renewables in the Highlands and the way in which public, private and community partnerships can support and enable this contribution.
Leader of The Highland Council, Cllr Raymond Bremner, said: “If approved, an £8 million investment in renewable energy projects will reaffirm the Council’s vision as a centre for global renewable energy by capitalising on the wealth of resources and expanding renewables development in the Highlands. Significant investment opportunities in renewable energy schemes are being created through the Social Value Charter for Renewables, and we hope these investments could support a sustainable, long-term income stream for Highland Council. The Charter was developed as a way of unlocking economic opportunities for the Highlands and this investment would strengthen our commitment to community wealth building and enabling this wealth to remain within the local area.”
Convener of The Highland Council, Cllr Bill Lobban, said: “By capitalising on natural resources to deliver alternative energy solutions, the Council aims to create a more sustainable Highland environment for our communities. We must ensure that those living in the Highlands can benefit from potential income from renewables and the economic growth that these developments can support. The scale of renewable investment opportunities is considerable and a long-term revenue income for the Council and community partners could leave an important legacy that would have lasting benefits and positive impacts for local communities whilst addressing climate challenges.”
The full budget report and proposals can be found on the Council’s website.
Source: Scotland – Highland Council
People are being asked for their opinions on whether The Highland Council should introduce knowledge tests as part of the licensing process for private hire car drivers. Currently only taxi drivers are required to sit and pass a knowledge test as part of the licensing process.
The public consultation process will run for an 8 week period and will close on Monday 28 April 2025.
All representations received will be considered by the Highland Licensing Committee at a future meeting.
The consultation can be accessed using the following link or by scanning the QR code:
https://forms.office.com/e/GAf7LBHtdG
ENDS
3 Mar 2025
Source: United States Department of Defense
Today Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum renaming Fort Moore in Georgia to Fort Benning. The new name pays tribute to Corporal (CPL) Fred G. Benning, who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his extraordinary heroism in action during World War I with the U.S. Army in France in 1918. This change underscores the installation’s storied history of service to the United States of America, honors the warfighter ethos, and recognizes the heroes who have trained at the installation for decades and will continue to train on its storied ranges.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tailane Scapin, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Deakin University
In many countries, buying food at supermarkets, convenience stores and online has become the norm. But what’s the convenience of modern food shopping doing to our health?
Our study, published today with colleagues from UNICEF, looked at how people in 97 countries shopped for groceries over 15 years.
Globally, we found a huge increase in the number of supermarkets and convenience stores (which we’ll shorten to chain grocery stores in this article). We also found people are spending more money in these stores and on their online platforms.
But this has come at a cost to our health. People in countries with the most chain grocery stores per person buy more unhealthy food and are more likely to be obese.
Here’s why we’re so concerned about this public health disaster.
Our study analysed food industry data from a business database to understand how the food retail sector has changed worldwide over time. We looked at the kinds of stores, how much people spend there, and how much unhealthy processed food is sold. We linked these trends with changes in obesity rates using data from a large global initiative.
We found the density of chain grocery stores (number of stores per 10,000 people) has increased globally by 23.6% over 15 years (from 2009 to 2023).
We found far more of these stores per person in high-income countries, as you may expect. However, it’s in low- and middle-income countries where numbers are increasing the fastest.
Rapid urbanisation, rising incomes and customer demand mean large retail companies see these countries as new potential markets.
For example, the density of chain grocery stores increased by about 21% a year in Myanmar, about 18% a year in Vietnam and about 12% a year in Cambodia.
The data in our study also covers the rise of online food shopping. For instance, the worldwide spend on online grocery shopping was 325% more in 2023 compared with 2014.
Out of the 27 countries we looked at for online food shopping, people in the United Arab Emirates and the United States were the top spenders. In 2023, the average person in the United Arab Emirates spent about US$617 that year, 570% more than in 2014. In the US, the average person spent US$387 in 2023. That’s about 125% more than in 2014.
It seems many of us took to online shopping during the early days of the COVID pandemic, a habit that appears to have stuck.
The rise of chain grocery stores, including their online platforms, is also changing what we eat.
Over the 15 years of our study, there has been a 10.9% increase in the sales of unhealthy processed food from those chain grocery stores.
In South Asia, the increase has been particularly rapid. People in Pakistan have been buying 5% more unhealthy processed foods from chain grocery stores every year for the past 15 years. In India, it’s 4% more and in Bangladesh 3% more.
Over 15 years, our study also showed the percentage of people with obesity across all countries rose from 18.2% to 23.7%. It was the countries with the biggest increases in chain grocery stores where we saw the sharpest increases in obesity.
Laos is a good example. The number of chain grocery stores per person in the country has been increasing by 15% each year since 2009, while the percentage of people with obesity has doubled from 2009 to 2023.
In almost all countries, obesity is on the rise. In Australia, overweight and obesity have recently officially overtaken tobacco as the biggest burden on our health.
Supermarkets and hypermarkets sell healthy foods, such as fruit and vegetables. Yet, there are good reasons to think our retail environment might be to blame for the rise in obesity.
Highly processed foods
Chain grocery stores typically sell an enormous array of highly processed packaged foods high in sugar, fat and salt that can harm our health. One study of the food and drinks available in supermarkets from 12 countries showed the majority are classified as unhealthy. Given our findings of rapid increases in chain grocery in low- and middle-income countries, it was alarming in this study that the least healthy products were typically seen in supermarkets from countries like India, China and Chile.
Heavy promotion
Chain grocery stores often aggressively promote unhealthy foods. This includes through price discounting; advertising in circulars, on TV and social media; and by being placed in prominent displays at checkouts and the ends of aisles. Studies have shown this to be true in Belgium, Ireland and another 12 countries.
Online, we see unhealthy foods promoted more often (with discounts and displayed more prominently) than healthy options. For instance, on average at least one-third of products prominently displayed on Australian supermarket websites are unhealthy.
More buying power
Compared to small independent grocers, large chain grocery stores globally have a far larger influence on decisions around product assortment and price. Because of this, they can control supply chains, often in partnership with national and multi-national food manufacturers of ultra processed, unhealthy packaged foods.
There are many social, political, cultural and economic factors that contribute to the rise in obesity globally. Many of these relate to the price, availability and promotion of food in retail settings and the way the retail industry is structured.
Because of this, we think it’s time for governments and retailers to step up and start making changes to where and how we shop for food.
Some countries are already beginning to act. In the United Kingdom for example, government legislation now prevents placing unhealthy foods in prominent places such as the checkout counter and at the ends of aisles close to checkouts. From October this year, further restrictions on the price promotion of unhealthy foods (such as “buy one, get one free”) will also come into force in the UK.
There is also plenty that retailers can do. In Norway, for example, one major grocery chain launched a comprehensive healthy eating campaign several years ago, including by increasing the size and prominence of healthy food displays and offering discounts on fruits and vegetables. This led to a 42% increase in vegetable sales and a 25% rise in fruit sales from 2012 until 2020.
But most grocery chains are still not doing enough to prioritise their customers’ health and nutrition. In the US, we see this in particular for supermarkets catering to people on low-incomes. And in the UK, although there has been some promising progress by some supermarket retailers, all those assessed have considerable scope for improvement.
Now more than ever, it is time to create healthier retail food environments that support nutritious diets and help reverse the rising rates of obesity.
Tailane Scapin receives funding from UNICEF.
Adrian Cameron receives funding from the National Heart Foundation of Australia, the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and UNICEF. He is affiliated with INFORMAS (International Network for Food and Obesity / Non-communicable Diseases Research, Monitoring and Action Support) and is the Director of the RE-FRESH: Next Generation NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Food Retail Environments for Health.
– ref. We looked at what supermarkets in 97 countries are doing to our waistlines. Here’s what we found – https://theconversation.com/we-looked-at-what-supermarkets-in-97-countries-are-doing-to-our-waistlines-heres-what-we-found-246412
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
UK Statement at the 58 Human Rights Council for the Item 2 General Debate. Delivered by UK Ambassador for Human Rights to the UN, Eleanor Sanders.
Thank you, Mr Vice President.
And thank you for your update, High Commissioner.
First of all, we share your concern at Thailand’s decision to deport forty Uyghurs to China. We urge China to ensure they are treated in accordance with international standards.
Mr Vice President,
Sudan’s people have suffered enough. This Council’s Fact-Finding Mission has reported appalling violence: women raped and sexually abused, people executed because of their ethnicity, children recruited as soldiers, and heavy artillery shelling including in civilian areas. All parties must adhere to their obligations to protect civilians and perpetrators of atrocities must be held accountable.
We commend DRC for its engagement with the Council and urge all parties to act in accordance with international law.
In Venezuela, civil society and independent media are targeted and political opposition face severe restrictions. We call on the authorities to immediately and unconditionally release those arbitrarily detained.
And in Guatemala, the continuing persecution of justice officials linked to the fight against corruption is deeply concerning and must stop.
Finally, Mr President,
The situation in Libya remains precarious, with armed groups and security actors operating with impunity. We urge all Libyan actors to comply with international law and engage in the UN-facilitated and Libyan-led political process in good faith.
Published 3 March 2025
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon O’Connor, Professor in U.S. Politics and U.S. Foreign Relations, United States Studies Centre,, University of Sydney
Since returning to the US presidency, Donald Trump has outdone himself, gaining global media headlines and attention with outrageous statements and dramatic decisions.
The most consequential decision so far has been the freezing of many US aid and development programs. The freeze had an immediate impact. Even with some waivers now in place, it is likely that starving people in Ethiopia will not get the famine relief desperately needed; food is rotting in African harbours as constitutional battles over executive power are waged in Washington.
In Africa alone, the US has also been funding lifesaving malaria prevention efforts and HIV/AIDS drug programs. Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency has cruelly disrupted those.
There are numerous examples of other reckless policy decisions. In terms of long term consequences, arguably the worst decision Trump has made is pulling the United States out of the Paris Agreement on climate change. He also wound back a slew of Biden administration policies while erasing the term “climate change” from various government websites.
Trump has attempted to bully Mexico and Canada with threats of a 25% tax on all imports from those two trading partners. He has also imposed a 10% tariff on all Chinese imports coming into the US.
Then there are Trump’s statements on Ukraine, Gaza and Panama. Last weekend, his treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House meeting caused widespread dismay around the world, as Trump doubled down on his promotion of Putin’s talking points and Russian government interests.
With Trump, it is tempting to claim he is a chaos merchant with no plan or method to his madness. According to this view, when he is challenged or criticised, he will escalate the threats and increase the insults.
Therefore, conventional wisdom has it that the best way to deal with Trump is to flatter and humour him, then wait for his attention to be distracted by another prize. This understanding of Trump has been developed by international relations scholar Daniel Drezner into the “toddler-in-chief” thesis.
Psychological understandings of Trump are useful to a point, but it is worth remembering presidencies are run by vast administrations of people, departments and agencies, and not just one person. Moreover, an institution as large as the US Defense Department – with its two million employees and military bases in at least 80 countries around the world – has a near permanent mindset of its own. This, in turn, tends to make presidents as seemingly different as Obama and Trump custodians of many similar military policies and postures.
The way I have initially examined Trump in my own research is to see him as a hardline conservative nationalist who believes projecting US power with tough talk and reminding other nations of American military might is the best approach to world politics.
Previous Republican presidents, most notably George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, adopted this so-called “cowboy” approach. It’s a posture that rejects the idea that the US is the leader of a liberal international order (a leadership role promoted by their Democratic party opponents).
My starting point for analysis sees continuities between Reagan, Bush and Trump, and highlights their arrogance and ignorance when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world.
However, there are some things about Trump that are clearly different and distinct. Before his second term, the most unusual aspect of Trump’s foreign policy approach was the volume and range of his scattergun rhetoric towards other leaders and nations. For example, he threatened North Korea with “fire and fury and, frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before”, but later told a rally of supporters that, “We fell in love. No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters.”
As for academic perspectives that might help us better understand what kind of politician Trump is and what his next moves might be, the obvious label is “crudely transactional”. His attitude to most minor and middle powers seems to be “what have you done for me lately?” or “why does America owe your nation anything?”.
When it comes to Russia, and potentially China, there has been speculation Trump is adopting a geopolitical approach with parallels to the “great game” of the 19th century. The “great game” is another way of saying imperialism, and this is a largely underused way of describing American foreign policy in general and the second Trump administration in particular.
Then there is the question of whether the (other) “f-word” is a useful way to understand Trump and Trumpism: are his rhetoric and his domestic and international policies fascist? They are definitely ultra-nationalist and racist, which are two key components of fascism; Trumpism revolves around a charismatic leader that has enough in common with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to make opponents of Trump justifiably nervous. But does Trumpism have the other key element of fascism: mob or state violence that is at times directed at scapegoated enemies?
There is certainly an embrace of revenge and cruelty by Trump in general, which is being carried out in practice by Musk’s DOGE project. However, whether it is useful to call the second Trump administration fascist, or just fascistic for now, is a complex question within scholarly circles.
Five weeks into the second Trump administration, and many of the most destructive ideas that were laid out last year in the unofficial campaign manifesto Project 2025 are being put into place. It has been a long-term dream of many hardline conservatives to gut America’s foreign aid and development programs, which is now happening at a frightening pace.
What lies ahead that turns rhetoric into reality is hard to entirely predict, but many of Trump’s utterances this year have clearly been imperialistic and fascistic. Trump does not have to ignore the constitution or be a textbook fascist to be a terribly dangerous president. Being an authoritarian, which he has no qualms about embracing, is worrying enough.
Brendon O’Connor 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. Donald Trump is picking fights with leaders around the world. What exactly is his foreign policy approach? – https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-is-picking-fights-with-leaders-around-the-world-what-exactly-is-his-foreign-policy-approach-251238
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yee-Fui Ng, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Monash University
The question of how best to eliminate corruption has exercised the minds of philosophers as much as the practical drafters of legislation from Ancient Greek and Roman times.
Within the political sphere, the notion of “corruption” has fluctuated between broad and narrow conceptions.
The broad conception relates to the decay of institutions or of the stature of the individuals who comprise them. On the other hand, the narrow conception focuses on the abuse of public office for private gain.
There is also “grey corruption” – which involves questionable behaviour involving a breach of integrity standards that does not necessarily amount to criminal conduct.
This could include where a person has undue influence over a politician, such as by essentially buying that power through making large donations or hiring expensive lobbyists, particularly where it causes public officials to behave in corrupt ways.
However the notion is defined, it is clear the fight against corruption is one of the basic tasks of a liberal democracy, perhaps even of an effectively functioning civil society.
Corruption control is a pressing issue worldwide: the United Nations estimated the economic cost of corruption at 5% of global domestic product or $3.6 trillion annually.
Australia has had a number of major corruption scandals throughout its history. Corruption was rife in the colonial era, where wealthy landholders sought to influence parliamentarians with monetary bribes.
This has been followed by several major corruption scandals, such as the Fitzgerald inquiry, which revealed widespread police corruption involving illegal gambling and prostitution.
Anti-corruption commissions are arguably the most significant tool developed in liberal democracies to fight corruption in recent times.
The first anti-corruption commission in Australia, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), was established in New South Wales in 1988 by then premier Nick Greiner.
Infamously, a few years later, Greiner became the first premier to resign due to an ICAC investigation.
Over the next few decades, all states and territories have set up their own anti-corruption or integrity commissions.
In 2023, the Commonwealth followed suit with the introduction of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), a promise made by Anthony Albanese in the lead-up to the 2022 election after considerable pressure from the public and from within parliament.
As a result, Australia now has a comprehensive network of broad-based public sector anti-corruption agencies covering all levels of government – a significant development nationally and internationally.
Anti-corruption commissions are tasked with investigating serious and systemic corrupt conduct in government. This includes not just members of the House and Senate, but their staff and public servants.
In performing their functions, these commissions have strong coercive powers, equivalent to the powers of a royal commission. This includes the power to compel documents and witnesses.
Some anti-corruption commissions such as the NACC and NSW’s ICAC have the power to conduct public hearings if they believe it’s in the public interest. This increases transparency in government. But concerns have been expressed about reputational damage for those subject to investigations.
Anti-corruption commissions also have corruption prevention functions. They are tasked with educating the public about the detrimental effects of corruption on public administration.
Reports of anti-corruption commissions are often attended by significant media publicity, leading to public awareness of corruption in government.
It has become well accepted that effective anti-corruption institutions play an important role as institutions supporting constitutional democracy.
The state anti-corruption bodies have brought to light many indiscretions by politicians that would have otherwise remained hidden.
Without these commissions, corruption in the public sector can take root without us knowing about it. An anti-corruption agency is a powerful deterrent against improper behaviour.
Yet anti-corruption commissions tend to be unpopular within governments because they scrutinise government action. This means the a commission may expose improper conduct or corruption within their ranks.
It is common for governments hostile to anti-corruption commissions to attack them, including by reducing their powers or funding.
This is despite their integral role in our democracy. Alongside other oversight bodies such as the ombudsman (who investigates maladministration within government) and auditor-general (who performs audits of government expenditure), anti-corruption commissions form part of an intricate, interlocking integrity framework that monitors executive action.
A big question is about how we ensure anti-corruption commissions do not overstep their bounds. Given their broad coercive powers, how do we hold them to account?
From their inception, concerns have been expressed about the potential for anti-corruption bodies to infringe on civil liberties, and the possibility they may exceed or abuse their powers.
In Australia, anti-corruption commissions are subject to a strong system of accountability through parliaments and the courts. They report to dedicated parliamentary committees who scrutinise their actions and decisions. Complaints against anti-corruption commissions can be made to a dedicated inspectorate – an independent statutory officer who oversees their actions.
Anti-corruption commissions are also subject to judicial review by the courts to ensure they don’t exceed their legal boundaries. Court scrutiny occurs when a person investigated by an anti-corruption commission takes their grievance to court.
To be effective, anti-corruption commissions require strong powers and institutional independence. But this needs to be balanced with accountability and the protection of individual rights.
Pork barrelling involves governments channelling public funds to seats they hold or seats they would like to win from an opponent, as a way of winning voters’ favour. This means the money is used for political purposes, rather than proper allocation according to merit.
We have been inundated with pork barrelling scandals in recent years. This includes the car park rorts scandal, where 77% of the commuter car park sites selected were in electorates held by the then Coalition government, rather than in areas of real need with congestion issues.
This followed close on the heels of the “sports rorts” scandal. Minister Bridget McKenzie resigned from cabinet following allegations she had intervened in the sport grants program to benefit the Coalition government while in a position of conflict of interest.
My research has shown that pork barrelling is an intractable problem across multiple governments over many decades. It takes different forms based on electoral systems.
Australia has a single member electorate parliamentary system, which makes it more susceptible to pork barrelling than multi-member electorates such as Norway or Spain. The belief is that politicians who “bring home the bacon” for their constituents are electorally rewarded for doing so.
This means there are incentives for the central cabinet to strategically apportion benefits to marginal electorates to increase prospects of electoral success. There is also an incentive to bias the apportionment of funds towards the party in power.
In short, rorts scandals keep happening because governments believe that channelling money to marginal and government electorates will win them elections.
Potentially the NACC could investigate rorts scandals, but only where it amounts to serious or systemic corrupt conduct.
At the federal level, we have sophisticated financial management legislation that provides a framework for grant rules. The Commonwealth grant rules provide a detailed set of guidelines that ministers and government officials must follow on grant application and selection processes.
However, there are significant loopholes in the rules. For example, the “car park rorts” scandal is not covered by these rules because it involves money being channelled through the states.
Also, there are no sanctions for breaching the rules. So ministers and government officials can break the rules without any repercussions.
To fix the system, we need to reform the rules about grants allocation and close the loopholes. We also need to impose punishment for breaching the rules.
It is imperative our grants administration system be reformed to ensure that taxpayer funds are protected from governmental abuse. If the ministerial discretion available in grants processes is improperly used, this can give rise to political favouritism and corruption.
There is a public perception that a small elite is reaping large benefits in Australian society in terms of political influence and its flow-on dividends.
In Australia, the “game of mates” is flourishing. There’s now a revolving door in politics with many politicians, advisers and senior government officials leaving the public sector to become well-paid lobbyists.
Add to that the appointments of political “mates” to commissions, tribunals and cushy ambassadorships and the blatant misuse of parliamentary entitlements such as helicopter trips on taxpayer funds.
Political parties are also accepting millions of dollars in donations from lobbyists and others interested in influencing policy outcomes.
All of this adds to the perception that the system is rigged – and not in favour of the person on the street.
Australia has fallen steadily in Transparency International’s global corruption index, from 8th place in 2012 to 14th in 2024. But even so, Australia is the 14th-least corrupt country in the world, which is still a respectable ranking.
More alarming is the fact that one in 30 Australian public servants said in a survey last year they had seen a colleague acting in a corrupt manner.
The types of corruption witnessed included cronyism or nepotism (favourable treatment of friends or family members without proper regard to merit). Fraud, forgery, embezzlement and conflicts of interest were also reported.
In the 1980s, there were incidences of large-scale corruption that rocked the country, culminating in the Fitzgerald Inquiry in Queensland and the WA Inc Royal Commission in Western Australia. These scandals led to the resignations and imprisonments of various former ministers and officials.
Although we have not sunk to such depths since then, state anti-corruption commissions, such as the NSW ICAC, have uncovered various instances of corruption in recent years. The NSW ICAC’s inquiries have led to the resignations of several politicians, as well as the conviction of former Labor MP Eric Obeid.
Another classic case of corruption exposed by the ICAC led to the downfall of former Newcastle lord mayor, Jeff McCloy. McCloy famously bragged that politicians treated him like a “walking ATM” and admitted to giving two MPs envelopes of cash amounting to $10,000.
In Victoria, the Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission’s (IBAC) revealed that a lobbyist funnelled suitcases of cash totalling more than $100,000 from a property developer to a councillor, under the guise of sham transactions.
These explosive scandals involving corrupt conduct by public officials have eroded public trust in politicians. But the exposure of these scandals by anti-corruption commissions have an important deterrent and educative effect on public officials and the broader public.
Our faith in government has been eroded by a lack of transparency and the perception that those in power are enjoying unfair benefits. The active investigations by robust institutions such as anti-corruption commissions will act as checks and balances on governmental power – and are key to a vibrant democracy.
This is an edited extract from How Australian Democracy Works, a new book from leading authors at The Conversation on all aspects of our political system and its history, out March 4.
Yee-Fui Ng 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. Democracy’s bad eggs: corruption, pork-barrelling and abuses of power – https://theconversation.com/democracys-bad-eggs-corruption-pork-barrelling-and-abuses-of-power-229888
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Raffaele F Ciriello, Senior Lecturer in Business Information Systems, University of Sydney
Have you ever been called a Luddite? We have – usually as an insult, rooted in a popular misconception that Luddites are anti-progress fanatics.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The original 19th century Luddites weren’t against technology. Rather, they resisted its oppressive use.
Their rebellion was violently suppressed. But their core critique lives on: technology should benefit all of humanity, not a privileged few.
Today, as Silicon Valley billionaires and United States president Donald Trump turbocharge corporate control of public digital infrastructure, this critique rings truer than ever.
In response, we are a seeing a growing surge of attempts to wrest back control of technology for democratic ends. This is a kind of “digital Luddism” which echoes past struggles against high-tech injustice.
The Luddites were 19th century English textile workers who destroyed machinery threatening their craft and livelihoods. Historians call their tactics “collective bargaining by riot”. They were fighting against technologies that centralised power and stripped workers of dignity.
Luddite resistance was part of broader struggles for labour rights and socioeconomic justice.
For example, in 18th century France, silk weavers similarly revolted against mechanisation that devalued their craft.
Earlier, England’s Diggers and Levellers resisted the privatisation of communal lands. This foreshadowed today’s battles over corporate control of digital infrastructure.
The Luddites faced severe punishment, including imprisonment and even execution. Despite this, their legacy endures. Today, dismissing critics of Big Tech as “Luddites” repeats the mistake of conflating resistance to exploitation with fear of progress.
In the most extreme scenario, unchecked corporate power allied with monstrous government polices can lead to atrocities. In Nazi Germany, for example, Dehomag, a former subsidiary of computer giant IBM, provided data systems to the Nazis to track victims. Chemical company IG Farben also supplied Zyklon B gas for extermination camps. Many other companies profited from forced labour and funded the regime. This shows how complicity can make oppression more efficient.
Today, digital technologies are deepening inequality, eroding democracy, undermining privacy, and concentrating power.
Digital technologies are also fuelling surveillance capitalism, the displacement of human workers by AI algorithms and the growth of monopolistic platforms.
Platforms and AI systems governed by “broligarchs” such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are also shaping politics, culture, and beliefs globally.
Digital Luddism, also known as neo-Luddism, tackles these issues through three strategies: resistance, removal and replacement.
Technology is not inevitable — it’s a choice. Sustained collective action can counter corporate dominance and align tech with democratic values.
In 2018, more than 3,000 Google workers protested the company’s military AI contract, forcing it to adopt ethical guidelines. However, in February this year, Google expanded defence deals, showing how resistance must be sustained.
Three years later, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen exposed the harmful algorithms at the heart of the social media platform.
Then, in 2024, Amazon and Google staff also staged walkouts over a US$1.2 billion AI contract linked to Israeli military operations.
Creative industries are also fighting back. For example, in 2023 screenwriters and actors in Hollywood protested against AI replacing their roles. Similarly, Australia’s “right to disconnect” law reflects Luddite principles of reclaiming autonomy.
Non-profit organisations such as the Algorithmic Justice League and the Electronic Frontier Foundation empower digital rights advocates to take back control over digital spaces by exposing AI bias and through legal litigation.
Digital Luddism doesn’t reject innovation. It demands technology serve stakeholders, not shareholders.
Some systems are beyond reform, requiring direct intervention. Removal involves political action and legal regulation. It also involves public pressure to break monopolies or impose penalties on unethical corporations.
For example, the TraffickingHub petition has garnered more than two million signatories to hold adult website PornHub accountable for unethical or unlawful content. This has led financial institutions, such as Visa and Mastercard, to cut ties to the website. For more than 20 years, hacker collective Anonymous has carried out cyber-attacks on authoritarian regimes, extremists and corporations.
Digital Luddites can also lend a hand to the long arm of the law.
The European Union’s 2023 Digital Markets Act broke Apple’s app store monopoly. This sparked a surge in small EU developers.
Big Tech has also repeatedly faced huge fines and antitrust lawsuits. However, breaking up or nationalising these corporations remains rhetoric for now.
Proprietary corporate systems have long been challenged by free, open-source alternatives.
But digital Luddism isn’t just about using different tools. It’s about systemic change towards sustainable, transparent and user-controlled infrastructure.
After Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, decentralised alternatives that let users control content flourished. For example, Bluesky grew from 1 million to more than 27 million users in one year.
The Australian government is also responding to a broader public demand for platform independence. For example, it has introduced policies aimed at enhancing people’s data rights. Its Digital Transformation Agency is also advocating for improved open data standards.
Open-source AI projects such as China’s DeepSeek and HuggingFace’s Deep Research now rival corporate models, proving open tech is a force to reckon with.
The original Luddites smashed machines. But the global nature of today’s digital infrastructure makes physical sabotage impractical. That’s why digital Luddism isn’t about smashing screens. Instead, it’s about smashing oppressive systems.
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. Digital Luddites are rising. They want to democratise tech, not destroy it – https://theconversation.com/digital-luddites-are-rising-they-want-to-democratise-tech-not-destroy-it-251155
US Senate News:
Source: United States Senator for Texas John Cornyn
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Alex Padilla (D-CA) today introduced the U.S. Research Protection Act to shield American research from malign foreign influence by updating language in the CHIPS and Science Act to include additional restrictions against programs sponsored by countries of concern:
“In a world where competition turns into hostility all too often, we must do everything in our power to safeguard American ingenuity against bad actor nations,” said Sen. Cornyn. “This legislation will place even more restrictions on academic programs involving countries of concern to ensure American scientific research is protected.”
“The bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act included important provisions to bolster our research security,” said Sen. Padilla. “This legislation will provide much needed clarity for federal agencies and academic institutions to better safeguard national security, while preserving research collaboration and international partnerships crucial to the strength of America’s innovation economy.”
Background:
Malign Foreign Talent Programs are sponsored by countries of concern like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea to obtain American scientific research and technology by incentivizing or coercing American researchers to act on their behalf. The CHIPS and Science Act included provisions to prohibit the U.S. government and academic institutions from partnering with such programs.
However, the law’s current definition of a Malign Foreign Talent Program only includes programs that “directly provide” incentives and benefits to researchers to participate, leaving out other methods to provide indirect benefits to researchers to induce their cooperation. This legislation would broaden the definition to include “indirect benefits,” ensuring foreign adversarial nations cannot exploit this loophole to evade U.S. research restrictions.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland met Independent Monitoring Panel following announcement of first monitoring period for UK Internal Market Guarantee
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Independent Monitoring Panel met today (3 March) to discuss the panel’s role in scrutinising the ‘UK Internal Market Guarantee’.
Both parties discussed the announcement made to Parliament by the Northern Ireland Secretary on 24 February 2025, confirming the first six month reporting period for the Internal Market Guarantee commenced on 1 January and will conclude on 30 June 2025. The Panel will report to the Secretary of State thereafter.
The Internal Market Guarantee relates to movements taking place under the UK Internal Market System and undertakes that more than 80% of all freight movements from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will be treated as ‘not at risk’ of moving onwards to the EU, and therefore moving within the UK internal market.
The members of the Panel expressed their commitment to the role and thanked those who have been involved in supporting the arrangements for it to scrutinise and report on goods movements data. The Panel confirmed to the Secretary of State that it will engage with business organisations representing affected traders and other stakeholders in support of the commitments in Safeguarding the Union Command Paper and commence that in the second half of the reporting period.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland said:
“Today’s meeting demonstrates our continued commitment to protecting the UK internal market. I look forward to working with the panel and receiving their recommendations.”
Alistair Hamilton, Chair of the Independent Monitoring Panel said:
“Our desire is to ensure, within the parameters of the Windsor Framework, that our work will help to reduce and remove burdens for businesses and citizens and maximise the competitiveness and opportunities for Northern Ireland businesses.”
Background
A commitment to establish the Independent Monitoring Panel was made in the Safeguarding the Union Command Paper published in January 2024. The Panel’s role is to report to the Government on:
On 19 September 2024, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland appointed Alistair Hamilton CBE, Aidan Reilly and Dr Anna Jerzewska to the Panel.
Further information on the Panel’s work will be made available online in due course.
Published 3 March 2025
Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)
NEW HAVEN, Conn., March 03, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Woodbridge International, a global mergers and acquisitions firm, is pleased to announce the acquisition of a majority stake of its client, Manzanos Wines S.L. by Domaines Michel Boutin.
Manzanos Wines is a wine producer and exporter with a 132-year history of providing high-quality wines from the Navarra and Rioja regions of Spain. The Company owns 10 wineries, with a total of 3,770 acres of vineyards under its management. Manzanos is the only Spanish wine producer with U.S. importers license, with an office in Miami and warehouses in Miami, New jersey and California.
A passionate entrepreneur and philanthropist, Michel Boutin worked for 19 years in securities management and is now focusing on the acquisition and development of real estate companies in the funeral and wine sectors. He seeks to serve people by offering them an experience that exceeds their expectations and creates a Wow effect. A humanist, collaborator and unifier, he knows how to surround himself with professionals and experts to implement improvement processes to increase the quality of services and the performance of companies. A popularizer, motivator and coach, he is involved in his community to use his experience and skills in human resources, business development and finance.
Woodbridge International’s ground-breaking approach to marketing a company globally has transformed the way the sell-side M&A industry does business. Woodbridge is a Mariner Company.
For more information, contact Don Krier, dkrier@woodbridgegrp.com, or call 203-389-8400 x 201.
Source: Government of Italy (English)
Vai al Contenuto Raggiungi il piè di pagina
3 Marzo 2025
I offer my condolences following what happened in Mannheim today.
We express our closeness to the people affected and their loved ones, our best wishes to the injured and our full solidarity to the whole of Germany. Attempts to destabilise democratic nations will not prevail and it is our commitment to remain vigilant against all forms of violence.
[Courtesy translation]
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments 3
Sri Lanka Statement at the 58 Human Rights Council during the Item 2 General Debate. Delivered by UK Ambassador for Human Rights to the UN, Eleanor Sanders, on behalf of the Core Group on Sri Lanka.
Thank you, Mr President,
This statement is by the Sri Lanka Core Group comprising Canada, Malawi, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and the United Kingdom.
High Commissioner, we wish to thank you for your oral update on Sri Lanka
We would like to commend Sri Lanka’s peaceful elections and the smooth transition of power last year. We recognise that the new Sri Lankan Government has only been in place for four months, and we encourage Sri Lanka to use the opportunity that this transition represents to address the challenges it faces.
We appreciate the Government’s commitment to making meaningful progress on reconciliation and the initial steps taken, including returning land, lifting roadblocks, and allowing communities in the North and East to commemorate the past and to memorialise their loved ones.
In order to build and sustain trust, it is essential to ensure the protection of civil society spaces, including by ending surveillance and intimidation of civil society actors and organisations.
We welcome commitments to implement devolution in accordance with the constitution and to make progress on governance reforms.
We take note of the Government’s stated intention to replace the Prevention of Terrorism Act and emphasise that any new legislation should be in line with Sri Lanka’s international obligations. We encourage the release of those who remain detained under the Act.
As the Government seeks to make progress on human rights and corruption cases, we urge that any comprehensive reconciliation and accountability process carry the support of affected communities, build on past recommendations and meet international standards.
We also encourage the Government to re-invigorate the work of domestic institutions focused on reparations and missing persons.
We reaffirm our willingness to work with the Government to ensure that any future transitional justice mechanisms are independent, inclusive, meaningful, and meet the expectations of affected communities.
Thank you.
Published 3 March 2025
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lauren Connell, Podiatrist & Doctoral Researcher, University of Galway
Does your small toe hide beneath the next its next-door neighbour? Although there isn’t scientific evidence this condition known as “Irish pinky toe” is more common in Ireland, it’s a popular idea that it’s a genetic trait among some people with Celtic heritage. And as podiatrists in Ireland, it is certainly something we see every day.
An Irish pinky toe may look unusual, cause pain or increase your chances of losing it altogether. Added pressure on the toe or toenail can also cause corns, calluses, thickened toenails and even ulcers that may lead to amputation.
If you’ve ever thought, “What is wrong with that little toe?” or “Why don’t I have a nail on that toe?” then here’s why you might need to take extra care to avoid potential wounds – and even amputation – in future. Fortunately, toe amputations are a relatively rare occurrence but can be offered if the toe continues to cause pain after all other treatments have been tried or if there is infection or gangrene.
Because an Irish pinky toe sits under the one beside it and often rotates, this can cause pressure on the neighbouring toe. If two bones or joints are pressed close together, this may cause the skin to thicken and result in a corn.
This might also happen if the little toenail irritates the skin and, if the nail is long or sharp, this might pierce the skin and cause a wound or an infection.
The little toe and toenail may also rub up against the lining of your shoes, leading to painful friction blisters or shoes that wear out quickly. Wellington boots may be ideal for music festivals and the rainy Irish weather but don’t tend to fit very well, causing the foot to slide about inside.
Repeated friction or trauma may even damage the nail matrix, the part that makes nail, attached to the bone. This could lead to permanent thickening of the nail, that may become unsightly and cause pain.
The “Irish pinky toenail” is similar. This is when the toenail may split in two or an extra nail-like skin lesion develops. Sometimes, it may look like you have two nails, a condition described by podiatrists as a petaloid nail or a Lister’s or Durlacher corn. It’s difficult to determine how common petaloid nails are because they’re underdiagnosed and rarely reported.
Whatever your heritage, show your pinky toes some love and avoid future problems by trying to avoid tight footwear, especially boots with a firm toe, such as steel toe caps, court shoes, or any shoe with an unforgiving fabric such as a patent finish.
Some people might throw on any old socks in the morning but ill-fitting socks can contribute to problem foot health – socks that do not stretch, or have heavy seams, may increase the pressure on your pinky toes. Pain or problems may be caused by the toe itself or, perhaps, a sock seam, rigid fabric or the style of shoe. It’s worth investing in high quality, breathable fabrics for socks, such as cotton or bamboo.
If you have to wear specific safety footwear for your job, such as in farming and construction, you may find higher quality, thicker socks are better than boots with thick fabrics in the toe, that will wear down over time. Perhaps also consider investing in a silicone-lined toe sleeve, which acts like a hat for your toes and protects them from the pressure of footwear.
Alternatively, it’s possible “prop the toe” by making custom supports. We do this by creating a silicone device which lifts the toe off the ground, separates tight toes or improves the toes position, to avoid future problems. For existing corns, callus or wounds, it’s best to get a trained specialist who can remove excess nail or skin painlessly with a blade to reduce discomfort.
Irish pinky toes don’t always always cause pain, but if they do, there are ways to reduce it, one step at a time.
Lauren Connell is the owner of L.A Podiatry.
Benjamin Bullen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. Why you should check for ‘Irish pinky toe’ – and what to do if you have one – https://theconversation.com/why-you-should-check-for-irish-pinky-toe-and-what-to-do-if-you-have-one-250800
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Hao Cui, Research Fellow in AI-Enhanced Collective Intelligence, Trinity College Dublin
Imagine a large city recovering from a devastating hurricane. Roads are flooded, the power is down, and local authorities are overwhelmed. Emergency responders are doing their best, but the chaos is massive.
AI-controlled drones survey the damage from above, while intelligent systems process satellite images and data from sensors on the ground and air to identify which neighbourhoods are most vulnerable.
Meanwhile, AI-equipped robots are deployed to deliver food, water and medical supplies into areas that human responders can’t reach. Emergency teams, guided and coordinated by AI and the insights it produces, are able to prioritise their efforts, sending rescue squads where they’re needed most.
This is no longer the realm of science fiction. In a recent paper published in the journal Patterns, we argue that it’s an emerging and inevitable reality.
Collective intelligence is the shared intelligence of a group or groups of people working together. Different groups of people with diverse skills, such as firefighters and drone operators, for instance, work together to generate better ideas and solutions. AI can enhance this human collective intelligence, and transform how we approach large-scale crises. It’s a form of what’s called hybrid collective intelligence.
Instead of simply relying on human intuition or traditional tools, experts can use AI to process vast amounts of data, identify patterns and make predictions. By enhancing human decision-making, AI systems offer faster and more accurate insights – whether in medical research, disaster response, or environmental protection.
AI can do this, by for example, processing large datasets and uncovering insights that would take much longer for humans to identify. AI can also get involved in physical tasks. In manufacturing, AI-powered robots can automate assembly lines, helping improve efficiency and reduce downtime.
Equally crucial is information exchange, where AI enhances the flow of information, helping human teams coordinate more effectively and make data-driven decisions faster. Finally, AI can act as social catalysts to facilitate more effective collaboration within human teams or even help build hybrid teams of humans and machines working alongside one another.
AI-driven improvements to all these different aspects can make the entire, interconnected system more adaptive and intelligent.
We’re already seeing the impact of AI-enhanced collective intelligence. In disaster response, AI systems already analyse satellite imagery and sensor data, generating risk assessments that help human responders to prioritise rescue efforts and allocate resources efficiently.
In healthcare, AI already helps doctors make faster and more accurate diagnoses by analysing large patient datasets. Medical teams refine AI recommendations with their expertise, ensuring the best possible treatment plans. Robots equipped with AI can assist surgeons in performing delicate tasks, allowing for greater precision.
In media, AI curates and verifies news from global sources, assisting journalists in fact-checking and uncovering misinformation. This collaboration can strengthen the accuracy and reliability of information in an era of digital media. However, AI can also drive the dissemination of fake news and disinformation. These include deep fake videos of, for example, politicians, which have the potential to affect elections.
In the public sector, AI-powered policy simulations help governments anticipate the impacts of regulations. Crowd-sourced citizen feedback, combined with AI analysis, can give a sense of the public mood.
Environmental protection is another area benefiting from AI-enhanced collective intelligence. AI systems can analyse patterns data on pollution, deforestation, and wildlife movements, guiding human efforts to address environmental challenges more effectively.
As we can see, AI-enhanced collective intelligence is already here, transforming how we approach some of the world’s toughest problems. The key is to recognise that AI is a collaborator, not a competitor. When we combine human creativity, intuition, and ethics with AI’s data processing power, the possibilities for what we can be achieved are substantial.
As we look towards the future, AI’s potential becomes even more exciting. From addressing global health challenges like pandemic prevention to developing solutions to the climate crisis, AI will be at the forefront of tackling issues once thought insurmountable. But this potential comes with responsibility.
It’s up to us to guide how this collaboration evolves, ensuring that AI is used responsibly and ethically in ways that enhance human capabilities rather than diminish them. We must engage in shaping policies and frameworks that promote transparency, fairness and inclusivity through a new sociology of humans and machines.
Collaboration across industries, governments, and communities will be crucial to unlocking AI’s full potential. Together, we can build a future where AI not only augments human intelligence but also helps solve the challenges of tomorrow, creating a more equitable, sustainable, and prosperous world for all.
Hao Cui receives funding from the Research Ireland.
Taha Yasseri 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. AI could supercharge human collective intelligence in everything from disaster relief to medical research – https://theconversation.com/ai-could-supercharge-human-collective-intelligence-in-everything-from-disaster-relief-to-medical-research-249437
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael Tamvakis, Professor of Commodity Economics and Finance, City St George’s, University of London
Gas and electricity bills will rise again for millions of UK households on April 1, when the latest energy price cap takes effect. A typical household will pay £111 more per year.
Though prices have fallen somewhat since their peak in 2022, bills are still considerably higher than they have been historically. That’s despite the construction over the past decade of vast wind farms in the North Sea – which, once built, provide electricity for very little extra cost.
So what explains the UK’s pricey gas and electricity?
Since the 1990s, the UK has been dependent on natural gas in more ways than one. In 2023 (the most recent year for which we have full statistics), gas accounted for 33% of the UK’s energy and almost as much of the electricity it generated. That year, wind contributed 29% to generation and solar an additional 5%, which is of some significance.
As nearly all households are connected to mains gas, most energy bills reflect the global price of gas.
The UK has to compete with demand for gas from other markets, especially, but not exclusively, the EU. The higher the demand, the higher the price. Before the Ukrainian crisis, many EU economies, especially Germany, were able to source abundant gas through pipelines from Russia.
The UK, like other big European countries such as Spain, Italy and France, was able to meet some of its gas supply via pipelines (from Norway in the case of the UK), but also in the form of more expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG) from as far afield as Qatar, Algeria, West Africa and, more recently, the US.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the flow of pipeline gas has almost entirely stopped. Germany and western EU countries have to compete with everyone else to source their gas from Norway or international LNG markets. A few countries on the eastern side of the EU, such as Austria and Hungary, are still sourcing their gas from Russia but face western criticism for that continued dependence.
This all matters to UK consumers because most of a household’s average energy bill reflects the vagaries of the international gas market. A relatively harsh winter in Europe means they have purchased more gas and paid more for it. In a global market the UK consumer will have to pay this price as well. Even a harsh winter in Japan means that more LNG is directed there, increasing prices for UK and EU consumers.
Even the growth in renewables, especially wind power, does not offer protection against the vagaries of the global gas markets. It is well known that wind energy is intermittent and therefore difficult to forecast and base generation plans on.
Wind energy is what people in the electricity industry call “non-dispatchable”. Because electricity is a universal good, which we expect to have whenever we ask for it, the national grid needs to be able to balance the randomness of wind generation with the immediate response of a reliable, quick-start, “dispatchable” source of generation. Gas fits the bill.
As a result, expensive gas which is called on to make up for the loss of wind or solar generation, ends up setting the electricity price (called the “system price”) most days. Other countries experience something similar. Germany, for instance, generates just 15% of its electricity from gas (albeit with a further 25% from coal) and gets a higher proportion from renewables (28% wind and 12% solar). Yet it still has to use gas frequently to balance the electrical system, with the same effect as in the UK.
Ultimately, the more variable renewable electricity we inject into the system, the more we need to plan for, and invest in, infrastructure that can support it. That means a smarter grid, fewer grid bottlenecks within the UK, more and bigger interconnections to other European countries and battery solutions which can store electricity both for short periods (minutes and hours) and for days and even weeks.
Putting all these elements in place is a Herculean task. Gas fills the gap, but in a way which is more expensive (for now) and continues emitting greenhouse gases, albeit at half the rate that coal did.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
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Michael Tamvakis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. How gas keeps the UK’s electricity bills so high – despite lots of cheap wind power – https://theconversation.com/how-gas-keeps-the-uks-electricity-bills-so-high-despite-lots-of-cheap-wind-power-251136
Source: City of Plymouth
The first of 169 new trees destined for Armada Way have been planted in the ground as the regeneration continues to progress at pace.
Three silver limes have been anchored today and six cockspur hawthorns and 10 double crimson hawthorns will be arriving in the next few weeks to be planted between existing single rows of trees on both sides of Zone 1a – near the Copthorne Hotel.
A second row is being created on each side to create the avenue of trees that will line either side of this important city centre street.
Tree pits, a metre deep, had already been dug in readiness and ground workers will backfill the planted trees with soil that’s good for tree root growth and topsoil.
Council leader Tudor Evans OBE said: “We wanted to mark this moment – it is a big deal. “Anyone who has been in the city centre recently will know that the scheme is cracking on at an incredible pace. There’s a lot still to do but this marks the start of the re-greening of Armada Way.”
City Centre manager Steve Hughes added: “We know that companies are in conversation about sites in the city centre as a direct result of the recently completed work on Old Town Street.
“We also know that investors are keeping a watching eye on this scheme. We are aware there’s a bit of pain for some traders – but long term there’s a lot to be gained. This project will be transformational.”
Trees are semi mature on arrival and because of their height, will be put into position by mechanical excavators for planting.
A bit more about the trees:
Source: Microsoft
Headline: Disrupting a global cybercrime network abusing generative AI
In an amended complaint to recent civil litigation, Microsoft is naming the primary developers of malicious tools designed to bypass the guardrails of generative AI services, including Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service. We are pursuing this legal action now against identified defendants to stop their conduct, to continue to dismantle their illicit operation, and to deter others intent on weaponizing our AI technology.
The individuals named are: (1) Arian Yadegarnia aka “Fiz” of Iran, (2) Alan Krysiak aka “Drago” of United Kingdom, (3) Ricky Yuen aka “cg-dot” of Hong Kong, China, and (4) Phát Phùng Tấn aka “Asakuri” of Vietnam. These actors are at the center of a global cybercrime network Microsoft tracks as Storm-2139. Members of Storm-2139 exploited exposed customer credentials scraped from public sources to unlawfully access accounts with certain generative AI services. They then altered the capabilities of these services and resold access to other malicious actors, providing detailed instructions on how to generate harmful and illicit content, including non-consensual intimate images of celebrities and other sexually explicit content.
This activity is prohibited under the terms of use for our generative AI services and required deliberate efforts to bypass our safeguards. We are not naming specific celebrities to keep their identities private and have excluded synthetic imagery and prompts from our filings to prevent the further circulation of harmful content.
In December 2024, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Virginia alleging various causes of action against 10 unidentified “John Does” participating in activities that violate U.S. law and Microsoft’s Acceptable Use Policy and Code of Conduct. Through this initial filing, we were able to gather more information about the operations of the criminal enterprise.
Storm-2139 is organized into three main categories: creators, providers, and users. Creators developed the illicit tools that enabled the abuse of AI generated services. Providers then modified and supplied these tools to end users often with varying tiers of service and payment. Finally, users then used these tools to generate violating synthetic content, often centered around celebrities and sexual imagery.
Below is a visual representation of Storm-2139, which displays internet aliases uncovered as part of our investigation as well as the countries in which we believe the associated personas are located.
Through its ongoing investigation, Microsoft has identified several of the above-listed personas, including, but not limited to, the four named defendants. While we have identified two actors located in the United States—specifically, in Illinois and Florida—those identities remain undisclosed to avoid interfering with potential criminal investigations. Microsoft is preparing criminal referrals to United States and foreign law enforcement representatives.
As part of our initial filing, the Court issued a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction enabling Microsoft to seize a website instrumental to the criminal operation, effectively disrupting the group’s ability to operationalize their services. The seizure of this website and subsequent unsealing of the legal filings in January generated an immediate reaction from actors, in some cases causing group members to turn on and point fingers at one another. We observed chatter about the lawsuit on the group’s monitored communication channels, speculating on the identities of the “John Does” and potential consequences.
In these channels, certain members also “doxed” Microsoft’s counsel of record, posting their names, personal information, and in some instances photographs. Doxing can result in real-world harm, ranging from identity theft to harassment.
As a result, Microsoft’s counsel received a variety of emails, including several from suspected members of Storm-2139 attempting to cast blame on other members of the operation.
This reaction underscores the impact of Microsoft’s legal actions and demonstrates how these measures can effectively disrupt a cybercriminal network by seizing infrastructure and create a powerful deterrent impact among its members.
We take the misuse of AI very seriously, recognizing the serious and lasting impacts of abusive imagery for victims. Microsoft remains committed to protecting users by embedding robust AI guardrails and safeguarding our services from illegal and harmful content. Last year, we committed to continuing to innovate on new ways to keep users safe by outlining a comprehensive approach to combat abusive AI-generated content. We published a whitepaper with recommendations for U.S. policymakers on modernizing criminal law to equip law enforcement with the tools necessary to bring bad actors to justice. We also provided an update on our approach to intimate image abuse, detailing the steps we take to protect our services from such harm, whether synthetic or otherwise.
As we’ve said before, no disruption is complete in one day. Going after malicious actors requires persistence and ongoing vigilance. By unmasking these individuals and shining a light on their malicious activities, Microsoft aims to set a precedent in the fight against AI technology misuse.
US Senate News:
Source: United States Senator for Connecticut – Chris Murphy
March 03, 2025
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WASHINGTON–U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Sunday joined CNN’s State of the Union with Dana Bash to discuss President Donald Trump’s meeting with President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and the upcoming joint address to Congress.
Murphy explained why President Trump appears to be aligning himself with Vladimir Putin: “The White House has become an arm of the Kremlin…It appears as if America is trying to align itself with dictators. Donald Trump wants us to have our closest relationships with despots all around the world because that makes it easier for him to transition America into a kleptocratic oligarchy where Elon Musk and Donald Trump rule and steal from the American people. If we were allied with democracies, that would be harder. But if the United States’ closest partner is Russia, then it makes it a lot easier for Donald Trump, Elon, and their billionaire pals to steal from the American people, to steal our data, to steal our Medicare, to steal our Medicaid in order to enrich themselves.”
On the Trump-Zelensky meeting, Murphy said: “The back half of that meeting ended up just being the Kremlin literally driving the message of the White House. It is a sad day in America when we are getting closer and closer to Russia, a brutal dictatorship, and we are getting further and further away from democratic allies. Nobody in America wants that. People in America want that war to end, but they don’t want it to end by handing the entirety of Ukraine to Russia and elevating the power of a dictator in the Kremlin.”
On President Trump’s upcoming joint address to Congress, Murphy said: “I think that State of the Union speech is going to be a farce. I think it’s going to be a MAGA pep rally, not a serious talk to the nation. I think Donald Trump is going to spew a series of lies about his alignment with Russia, about what he’s trying to do to allow Elon Musk to essentially monetize the American government to enrich Musk and his billionaire crowd. And I’m just not going to be a part of that.”
He continued: “Listen, the case I’m making to Democrats is that we have to fight every single day. Every single day. Republicans flood the zone. Democrats have to flood the zone. They flood the zone with lies. We flood the zone with truth. We are going to stop this billionaire takeover of government. We are going to stop their destruction of democracy, which they have to do, because what they are attempting to do – gut Medicaid in order to feed another set of tax cuts to Elon Musk and his billionaire friends – it’s unpopular. We’re going to stop that billionaire takeover, that destruction of our democracy, only by fighting them every single day.”
Translartion. Region: Russians Fedetion –
Source: Government of the Russian Federation – An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
Denis Manturov held a meeting on the development of the automotive industry.
First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov held a meeting on the prospects for the development of the automotive industry until 2035. Currently, interested departments, on behalf of the First Deputy Prime Minister, are already preparing their proposals to update the Strategy for the Development of the Automotive Industry of the Russian Federation until 2035, approved at the end of 2022. Let us recall that the possibility of updating is provided for by the document itself.
“It is important to conduct joint work of all departments and ensure the interrelation of the developed updates to the industry strategy for the development of the automotive industry with both the Transport Strategy of the Russian Federation – in terms of infrastructure development and balance with other types of transport, and with the Energy Strategy – in terms of the use of traditional and alternative types of fuel,” noted Denis Manturov.
The event, which took place at the Government Coordination Centre, was attended by Deputy Prime Ministers Alexander Novak and Vitaly Savelyev, Minister of Industry and Trade Anton Alikhanov, Minister of Transport Roman Starovoit, representatives of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and other federal and regional executive bodies, as well as leading companies in the industry.
Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Albert Karimov spoke about the factors and prerequisites that, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, could have the greatest impact on the development of the domestic automobile industry in the period 2035–2050. Among the key factors is the expansion of the use of alternative fuels in the industry.
“In the strategic aspect of the development of the domestic auto industry, the further introduction of transport on environmentally friendly fuel is a priority for us. We already have state support measures in place for the conversion of equipment to gas motor fuel, as well as measures stimulating the production of electric transport. The development of commercial transport on liquefied natural gas and hydrogen is currently being discussed. The use of these types of fuel improves the environment, helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and meets the climate goals of achieving carbon neutrality by the Russian Federation by 2060,” said Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade identified the further development of the sharing economy, an increase in the share of electric transport and driverless cars as other factors that will influence the appearance of the Russian auto industry.
The meeting participants also agreed to work out options for fine-tuning government support measures, thanks to which the promising image of the domestic auto industry will be formed.
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: United Nations MIL OSI b
In his latest address to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors on Monday, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi warned of the escalating nuclear safety risks in Ukraine as the conflict grinds on.
Reaffirming the UN-backed IAEA’s commitment to monitoring facilities such as the Khmelnitsky, Rivne and South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs), he described how facilities were performing under extreme conditions.
“The electrical grid’s ability to provide a reliable off-site power supply to Ukrainian NPPs was reduced by damage sustained following military attacks in November and December 2024,” Mr. Grossi stated, underscoring the ongoing strain on national energy infrastructure, in the face of Russia’s ongoing invasion.
© IAEA
A team of IAEA experts visits Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine in June 2024.
Direct attacks have complicated the agency’s work. The Director General described a drone strike that severely damaged an IAEA vehicle during a routine rotation.
“Staff survived this unacceptable attack unharmed, but the rear of the vehicle was destroyed,” he said, noting the continuous risks faced by staff working in these volatile conditions.
Particularly concerning is the situation at the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), where six reactor units remain in cold shutdown. The facility’s off-site power supply continues to be vulnerable.
Mr. Grossi highlighted a recent incident in which ZNPP relied on a single off-site power line after losing its remaining backup, further underscoring the fragility of the plant.
Meanwhile, an attack on the Chernobyl site nearly three weeks ago, which caused significant damage to the protective structure of the 1986 reactor, was also addressed.
While no radioactive release occurred, Mr. Grossi stressed that the attack “underlines the persistent risk to nuclear safety during this military conflict.”
© IAEA
Fire on the New Safe Confinement (NSC) at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant site following a drone attack on 14 February 2025.
Despite the challenges, Mr. Grossi reaffirmed the IAEA’s ongoing support for Ukraine.
Since November 2024, the Agency has delivered 31 shipments of nuclear safety, security and medical equipment, totalling over €15.6 million in value.
“We are grateful to all 30 donor states and the European Union for their extrabudgetary contributions,” Mr. Grossi added, urging continued support for the comprehensive assistance programme.
Mr. Grossi also reported fresh concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme, especially its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 per cent.
Iran remains the only non-nuclear weapon State enriching uranium to this level, raising significant concerns over potential weapons development.
“Iran says it has declared all nuclear material, activities and locations required under its NPT Safeguards Agreement. However, this statement is inconsistent with the Agency’s findings of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at undeclared locations in Iran,” Mr. Grossi explained.
The Director General emphasised the need for greater transparency, stressing that unresolved safeguards issues must be addressed for Iran’s nuclear activities to be deemed peaceful.
He called on Iran to urgently implement the Joint Statement of March 2023 and engage in serious dialogue aimed at resolving outstanding issues.
Mr. Grossi also outlined the IAEA’s broader initiatives, including his recent visit to Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, where he oversaw the collection of water samples related to the ongoing release of ALPS-treated contaminated water – in the wake of the major 2011 meltdown.
“The IAEA has maintained its independent monitoring and analysis efforts, confirming that tritium concentrations in the discharged batches remain far below operational limits,” he noted.
Looking ahead, the Director General highlighted key upcoming initiatives, such as the launch of the Atomic Technology Licensed for Applications at Sea (ATLAS) and the IAEA’s first International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Energy, which will take place in December 2025.
With the global demand for energy rising, Mr. Grossi pointed to the growing role of nuclear power in addressing energy needs.
“In the IAEA’s high case scenario, global nuclear electricity generating capacity is seen increasing two and a half times by 2050,” he said.
However, the Director General stressed that such growth must be accompanied by public support and a continued commitment to safety.
Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Natasha Lindstaedt, Professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex
After the catastrophic press conference on February 28 between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and US president Donald Trump, it is clear that there has been a global realignment.
What the press conference revealed was that Trump’s position is a lot closer to Russian president Vladmir Putin than long-time US ally Ukraine, and also that other US allies cannot count on Washington to promote the global world order.
The extraordinary spectacle ended with Trump and vice-president J.D. Vance shouting at Zelensky, telling him he wasn’t thankful for US aid. Since then, the expected mineral deal between Ukraine and the US has been called off – at least for now.
There was already a wake-up call for European allies about how reliable the US might be during Trump’s first term when he launched his “American first” policy. This included chastising Nato member countries for not paying enough, and characterising Europe as free-riding on US security guarantees.
While this sparked alarm among some European leaders over how to ensure that the continent becomes less dependent on the US, Europeans are now scrambling to respond to Trump 2.0’s much more extreme version of America first. After the press conference, European Union foreign minister Kaja Kallas declared: “Today it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.”
To some extent Europe was caught off guard because it was hard to imagine that a US president would swing US support behind Russia, especially after Russia’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But Trump has turned the page on challenging Russian aggression, and does not seem to see Putin’s ambitions as a threat to global security.
Instead in the press conference – as in previous statements – Trump has echoed some of Putin’s talking points, such as Ukraine not having any cards to play, being unwilling to do a peace deal, and having to give up land to Russia.
Trump also refused to say that Putin started the war, and even claimed that peace could have been possible early on in the war had Zelensky wanted peace. Trump even repeatedly opined that both Putin and Trump were brothers of sorts — victims of the same investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
The press conference also revealed that the security guarantees that Zelensky pushed Trump to confirm were secondary at best. Trump remained vague and offered no details, possibly because he has no intention of the US providing any security to Ukraine.
The aim may have been to goad Zelensky – just weeks ago on Fox News Trump stated that he did not know if Ukrainians would one day become Russian. Meanwhile, Trump’s claim that Ukraine did not have any cards to play is unhelpful to highlight if you are trying to negotiate a great deal for one of your allies.
What Trump seemed to forget is that Ukraine once had a lot of cards — holding the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world with 1,900 strategic warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 44 strategic bombers. Ukraine was coaxed into returning all of its nuclear warheads in exchange for security assurances from Russia and the west, in a 1994 agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum.
But while this memorandum might mean little to the current US president, allies around the world can see how quickly a US leader can forget their country’s commitments. The message that Trump is sending now is that every country must fight for themselves. All interactions are transactional, and economic interests trump the genuine security needs of allies.
This plays perfectly into China’s hands. To China, Trump has signalled that he primarily cares about the tariff issue. In addition, he could implement higher tariffs on the US’s biggest trading partners (and allies), Canada, the EU and Mexico, than on China.
The symbolism of the unsigned mineral deal with Ukraine and the capitulation to Russia’s territorial interests in Ukraine should be music to the ears of China’s president, Xi Jinping.
China has inundated Taiwan with a propaganda campaign that says the self-governing island is part of China. Part of the campaign focuses on the notion that if China were to invade, the US would abandon Taiwan, citing the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 as evidence of this.
The US’s abrupt abandonment of Ukraine adds fuel to this fire. Xi could be emboldened to execute his plan of uniting Taiwan by 2049, if not earlier, which could have disastrous consequences for the global economy.
Taiwan produces 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors needed for artificial intelligence and quantum computing, and has a market share of 68%.
An invasion could lead to a block on global access to semiconductors, causing shortages of all sorts of tech, a possible stock market crash and a fall in trade between Taiwan and western economies. This could cost around US$10 trillion (£7.9 trillion), equal to 10% of global GDP.
Additionally, for countries such as South Korea and Japan that have been persuaded to not embark on nuclear programmes, the US U-turn sows doubt about its commitment to provide a nuclear shield to its Pacific allies. This could prompt these countries to reverse policies of nonproliferation.
Nato has been traditionally led by a US general, but it’s not even clear that the US will remain in the alliance. In the past few weeks Europe has been forced to hold a series of emergency meetings to try to rise to the various global challenges – with or without the US as a key partner.
All of this makes the US more vulnerable as well. The US is more secure and prosperous when it is part of a long-term alliance, working in partnership with its allies to ensure security, stability, free trade and investment. If the US were to even reduce its security commitments to Nato by 50%, estimates suggest trade with members would fall by US$450 billion.
The alliance system has been a backbone of US security since 1949. The cost to Nato’s credibility and to defending its borders if Ukraine loses the war would be trillions, not billions, of dollars.
With Trump appearing desperate to do a deal on Putin’s terms with no concessions, Russia will become much stronger as a result. In spite of the fact that more than 95,000 Russians have died, it’s likely that Russia will act even more boldly, becoming a more attractive ally to US adversaries.
Trump’s support for Putin not only encourages a hostile nuclear power on the doorstep of the US’s top Nato allies, but also suggests that the US cannot be counted on in future.
Natasha Lindstaedt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. How Trump’s spat with Zelensky threatens the security of the world – including the US – https://theconversation.com/how-trumps-spat-with-zelensky-threatens-the-security-of-the-world-including-the-us-251229
Source: Microsoft
Headline: Microsoft partners shaping the future of healthcare with Microsoft Dragon Copilot
Today, Microsoft is introducing Microsoft Dragon Copilot, the first AI assistant for clinical workflow that brings together proven natural language voice dictation and ambient listening capabilities with fine-tuned generative AI and healthcare-adapted safeguards. Part of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, Dragon Copilot enables healthcare partners and their customers to unlock new levels of efficiency and care by streamlining documentation, surfacing pertinent information, and automating tasks so clinicians can focus more on their patients and themselves.
Dragon Copilot is bolstered by our collaboration with healthcare industry experts across our extensive global ecosystem of trusted partners. We work with leading independent software vendors (ISVs), system integrators (SIs), and cloud service providers (CSPs) across the globe to help our customers drive better healthcare outcomes.
Partnering with Microsoft allows organizations to tap into Dragon Copilot to accelerate innovation and unlock new avenues for future business growth through the Microsoft commercial marketplace.
Dragon Copilot’s trusted AI models are trained on healthcare data, providing a host of AI solution possibilities. Partners can build even stronger healthcare solutions and offerings by leveraging a comprehensive end-to-end toolchain—including Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and Microsoft Azure AI Foundry. Plus, a single integration to Dragon Copilot extends a partner’s AI clinical use cases throughout the entire Microsoft Azure ecosystem, opening new opportunities for innovation and collaboration.
Dragon Copilot’s new capabilities are built on a secure data estate and incorporate healthcare-specific clinical, chat, and compliance safeguards for accurate and safe AI outputs. They also align to Microsoft’s responsible AI principles to help guide AI development and use—transparency, reliability and safety, fairness, inclusiveness, accountability, privacy, and security. We remain committed to developing responsible AI by design and ensuring that these technologies positively impact both the healthcare ecosystem and broader society and will share our learnings on this journey with our customers.
Our healthcare partner ecosystem is constantly growing, highlighted below are just a few of the more than 30 major partners already working with Microsoft. We’re committed to advancing AI innovation in healthcare together with a diverse partner community that spans regions, partner types, and specialties.
Dragon Copilot empowers ISVs with trusted AI models to create innovative AI-powered use cases, along with opportunities for new revenue channels through the extensibility framework. Several of our industry-leading ISV partners—including MEDITECH, ChipSoft, Dedalus, Canary Speech, and Softway—are helping bring Dragon Copilot to life.
Leading U.S.-based electronic health provider (EHR) provider MEDITECH is embedding Dragon Copilot into their Expanse EHR solution to improve clinical workflows.
“We understand the challenges clinicians face today, and Dragon Copilot represents a significant step forward in alleviating those burdens. Integrating this innovative solution directly into Expanse streamlines documentation and ordering processes, reduces cognitive overload, and ultimately empowers providers to deliver superior, more patient-centered care. At MEDITECH, we’re proud to partner on solutions that prioritize both efficiency and clinician well-being.”
—Cathy Turner, Chief Marketing and Nurse Executive, MEDITECH
ChipSoft, an EHR provider serving Dutch-speaking markets, is integrating new healthcare AI applications into their EHR solution HiX using Dragon Copilot to address the growing demand for digital solutions that reduce the workload of healthcare professionals.
“We are excited to bring this cutting-edge AI platform to healthcare professionals, enabling them to work more efficiently and effectively. With the availability of AI in HiX, we take an important step in supporting healthcare professionals with their administrative burden. This helps to keep healthcare accessible despite increasing demand and ongoing staff shortages.”
—Hans Mulder, CEO of ChipSoft
European electronic medical record (EMR) market leader Dedalus, based in Italy, is integrating Dragon Copilot into their EMR solutions, providing clients with healthcare IT innovations that enhance clinical efficiency and improve patient outcomes.
Additionally, Canary Speech, a US-based leader in voice AI, sees Dragon Copilot as an opportunity to integrate their innovative voice technology with Microsoft’s robust cloud and AI capabilities, driving advancements in early disease detection, mental health assessment, and overall patient care.
“Microsoft’s commitment to working with partners is helping drive digital transformation in healthcare. [The investments Microsoft is making into its partner ecosystem] are helping us transform our business to deliver impactful, human-centered solutions.”
—Henry O’Connell, CEO and co-founder of Canary Speech
French healthcare enterprise resource planning (ERP) system provider Softway provides solutions that focus on the needs of the user, including improving the quality of life of nurses at work, optimizing care processes, increasing organizational efficiency, and improving quality of care.
“We are committed to serving healthcare professionals, designing digital solutions that enable them to make informed decisions, while preserving their well-being and providing quality patient care. Partnering with Microsoft allows us to respond to the major challenges faced by healthcare organizations by providing innovative tools and applications.”
—Sherley Brothier, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Softway Medical Group
With powerful AI infrastructure and technology that works across EMRs, Dragon Copilot provides SIs with a strong foundation for new AI use cases and integrations. Our SI partners such as Accenture-Avanade, Kyndryl, and Cognizant, to name a few, are at the forefront of AI innovation.
To boost clinician productivity and provide better patient services, the Accenture-Avanade partnership uses generative AI capabilities powered by Tejash Shah, M.D., Managing Director and Global Care Reinvention Lead, Accenture Health
Additionally, Kyndryl—the world’s largest IT infrastructure provider—co-creates solutions to help healthcare organizations reach their peak digital performance.
“Today’s announcement marks a significant milestone in Kyndryl’s commitment to optimizing clinical workflows and improving patient care through ambient listening with advanced AI technology. We’re thrilled to be a Microsoft partner as we work to address clinician burnout and improve the overall healthcare experience. By automating routine tasks, we can help clinicians reclaim valuable time to spend with their patients, bringing the joy back into care.”
—Trent Sanders, Vice President for U.S. Healthcare and Life Sciences, Kyndryl
Cognizant plans to integrate Dragon Copilot into its TriZetto Provider Solutions with the goal to provide their clients with state-of-the-art capabilities to streamline documentation and improve efficiencies.
“This innovative solution represents an opportunity for us to help our clients transform the way they provide care. Dragon Copilot’s integrated AI technologies aim to enhance operational efficiency, reduce clinician burnout, and improve patient care. This partnership with Microsoft will underscore our commitment to driving innovation in healthcare and delivering exceptional value to our clients.”
—Dr. Scott R. Schell PhD MD MBA, Chief Medical Officer, Cognizant
Dragon Copilot enables CSPs to reach new markets by leveraging robust AI infrastructure and technology that works across EHRs and EMRs to create innovative service offerings. We’re partnering with trailblazing CSP partners—including CDW, ORdigiNAL, and Clinically Speaking—to boost efficiency in healthcare with Dragon Copilot.
Combined with the power of Mike Grisamore, Vice President of Healthcare, CDW
A global value-added distributor based in the Netherlands, ORdigiNAL empowers healthcare organizations with the tools to improve operational efficiency and patient experience.
“At ORdigiNAL, we recognize the critical need for technology that supports clinicians without disrupting their workflow. By partnering with Microsoft on Dragon Copilot, we are bringing an AI solution to healthcare professionals worldwide, helping them improve care quality, increase efficiency, and enhance patient outcomes.”
—Jordy Onrust, CEO and owner of ORdigiNAL
EHR solution provider Clinically Speaking is looking forward to integrating the ambient and generative AI capabilities of Dragon Copilot to advance their documentation solutions and improve healthcare provider office workflows.
“Combining our significant user base with the new AI and ambient recording capabilities from Microsoft, Clinically Speaking is uniquely positioned to deliver the maximum benefit from this new technology.”
—Michael Janas, President of Clinically Speaking
Whether you want to build, integrate, migrate, extend, or sell with Microsoft, we’ll help you grow across our extensive global healthcare channel.
Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Alexis Shotwell, Professor, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Carleton University
A couple of weeks before the astonishing Feb. 28 White House Oval Office meeting that saw United States President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance scold Ukraine’s leader, Vance told European leaders at the Munich Security Conference: “If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.”
Vance was responding — with humour, he said — to pushback over Elon Musk’s vocal support for Germany’s far-right parties, expressed on X in a livestream event and in a December 2024 German newspaper op-ed.
Newsweek reported that the administration of Germany’s lower house of parliament “is investigating whether Musk’s support for the AfD on the platform where he has 210 million followers could constitute an illegal party donation.”
Are Musk’s actions, which some allege are interference, comparable to a young woman’s moralizing?
It might seem odd to equate the richest person in the world supporting far-right political parties with an eco-activist saying politicians should address climate change. However, there is a long history of people seeing scolding as one of the worst things we can do.
Our research has been concerned with how “purity politics” shape people’s attempts to live ethical lives, and what it means to reason about ecological catastrophe. We are writing a book about how rebellion against moralizing has become a surprising rallying point for the political right, and how to think about moralizing more broadly.
Whereas conservatives used to be defenders of morals, they now rage against moralizing, seeing “wokism” as a threat to freedom. Religious conservatives used to position themselves as bastions of morality. But research shows secular societies do not behave less morally as a whole than religious ones.
Philosopher Judith Butler argues that while Trump displays a “shameless sadism”
we are seeing his supporters revel in his rejection of moral repression.
The rejection of moralizing seems to be creating a terrain in which many on the right feel liberated by the current turn against “wokism.” But even on the left, some now worry about too much moralism in what is called “cancel culture.”
Read more:
Cancel culture looks a lot like old-fashioned church discipline
How did moralizing come to this? Could understanding this help us navigate political deadlocks? The history of philosophy has some surprising suggestions here.
First: there are some dangers in moralizing. One is a kind of traditionalism, which shows up in the creation of moral panics about transgender people, street gangs, abortion, immigrants and so on.
Another is if someone scolds: “you should take the bus rather than driving” — but the bus doesn’t run to your neighbourhood. Moralizing like this is just posturing. Maybe it makes the driver feel bad, but it doesn’t create more public transit.
Still, many of us have strong ethical convictions, and we try to live according to what we believe is right or wrong. Even if we judge someone else for the way they are living or behaving, we might hesitate to say something directly. Having personal ethics is socially acceptable; telling others what to do turns us into a scold. Why?
The word “ethos” in ancient Greek means something like “posture” or “standing.” Aristotle saw ethos as marking our credibility, our character; we enact our ethics only in a shared world. Contemporary ethical approaches often focus on the personal side of this, setting an example without pushing values on others.
The related word “moral” comes from the Latin mores, usually understood as naming shared customs. Ancient Roman philosopher Cicero used the term moralis to translate ethos, (ἠθική) from Greek. “Morals” were regarded as “the common consent of all living together, constituted from shared traditions,” to quote the influential definition of Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro.
This “common consent” did not claim to apply to everyone. As late as the 16th century, philosophers such as Michel de Montaigne, Cardano or Agrippa of Nettesheim developed a comparative study of various customs and value systems known as “scienta moralis.”
Moral philosophers discussed different inclinations and life-ways of people without postulating one superior norm that would govern everyone. There was a Christian strand of moral theology that saw morality as a universal principle, but even after the era of 16th-century Reformation in the western church, it was not primarily about condemnation and judgement. Rather, this branch of “humanist” moral inquiry examined how people create and maintain shared norms in a pluralistic society.
This changed with ideas that we could have a universally applicable moral science, governed by reason. Philosophers like Immanuel Kant helped formulate this idea. If we think of morality as a law everyone can be subjected to, it makes sense that people rebel against it.
When Vance characterised Thunberg as “scolding,” he unwittingly channelled opponents of moralizing, such as philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche once defined his philosophical project as a “declaration of war against morals and moralists.” For him and the thinkers he inspired, moralizing is conceived as a negative emotion motivated by resentment and envy.
Read more:
Stephen Bannon’s world: Dangerous minds in dangerous times
Nietzsche’s almost total rejection of morals can be understood as one of the many roots of the contemporary hesitation (though this idea is debated). No one wants to be denigrated by being seen as one of the sheep who unquestioningly embraces a herd mentality.
In this context, paradoxically, moralizing — scolding — has come to mean that anyone who says they think something is bad, or should be otherwise, is oppressing the people they criticize.
When we look at the extraordinary difference in power between Musk and Thunberg, this definition of moralizing begins to seem a little weird. Is scolding so dangerous to people in power?
For people interested in pushing back against authoritarianism, maybe we should hope that it is. We can look to the earlier ideal of morality as forging “common consent” for direction here.
In the philosophical sense, addressing our “mores” suggests moving towards a collective re-evaluation of how people want to live. Saying “no, I do not agree with this” can perhaps express our character in a way that shapes our shared world.
Moralizing could then be the process of building new customs. It would be about building morale and seeing hope and agency in these admittedly dire times. Moralizing with others, rather than at them, could help people move beyond feeling immobilized and cynical.
Studies about “bystander intervention” usually focus on the ways that people go along with things they think are wrong. Research does suggest our moral actions are shaped by the people around us, but this also means moral courage is contagious.
Standing up for something allows other people to also express their moral convictions. It can be a testament about hope or agency and could be more powerful than we think.
It is perhaps the fear of this powerful potential that is the core of truth in Vance’s otherwise absurd equation.
Perhaps this signals the true threat moralizing poses to the status quo — the possibility that there is a better way to live together in a shared world.
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. How rebellion against moralizing has become a surprising rallying point for the political right – https://theconversation.com/how-rebellion-against-moralizing-has-become-a-surprising-rallying-point-for-the-political-right-250549
Source: Huawei
Headline: Huawei Launches AI-Ready Data Storage for Carriers to Embrace AI
Mar 04, 2025
[Barcelona, Spain, March 3, 2025] At MWC 2025 Barcelona, Dr. Peter Zhou, President of Huawei Data Storage Product Line, delivered a keynote speech on AI-Ready Data Storage Accelerates Telco-to-Techco Transformation. The speech, delivered at the product and solution launch event.
Dr. Peter Zhou, President of Huawei Data Storage Product Line, delivered a keynote speech
Dr. Peter Zhou believes the AI-powered transformation of various industries is creating a golden era for data. Global carriers are continuously exploring business value by capitalizing on and monetizing application scenarios, such as smart home and digital factories. And that means higher demands on data storage, service capabilities, and business models.
To address these challenges, “Huawei Data Storage provides the AI-Ready data lake solution, diverse data storage services, and the FlashEver business model, empowering carriers to turn their disordered data into high-quality assets to unlock the value of data,” as Dr. Peter Zhou said.
The AI-Ready data lake breaks data silos, making data visible, manageable, and available
For mission-critical production workloads, Huawei launches the New-Gen OceanStor Dorado Converged All-Flash Storage and OceanStor A Series High-Performance AI Storage. These solutions boast 100 million–level IOPS, financial-grade reliability, and efficient AI training and inference, supporting tens of billions of daily charging services and robust mobile financial services. Further, the enhanced object storage enables seamless integration of carrier services with cloud-native and AI applications.
For mass data, the Huawei New-Gen OceanStor Pacific All-Flash Scale-Out Storage provides industry-high density and low power consumption. The storage provides exabyte-level scalability to handle cost pressure from emerging services like live streams and XR games.
Another new offering is the New-Gen OceanProtect All-Flash Backup Storage for data protection. The storage offers five times faster data recovery than industry alternatives, accommodating service needs such as emergency drills and AI application development to protect the value of every bit.
Diverse data storage services are fueling carrier AI evolution
Carriers face several challenges in adopting AI, including weak data engineering, inadequate efficient AI model development platforms, long data preparation times, slow model training, and complex AI application development. The Huawei DCS AI Solution provides a one-stop AI full-process toolchain and containerized environment, accelerating fine-tuning and large-scale deployment of AI models.
FlashEver business model maximizes carrier investment
Changes in services and technologies are placing greater investment demands on carriers. Dr. Peter Zhou shared FlashEver, the business model that protects investments, providing an evolutionary, flexible architecture to enable seamless upgrades for live-network equipment. Also, Huawei storage platform services offer flexible purchase options, SLA assurance, and diverse storage and data services, ensuring high-quality customer experiences.
Dr. Peter Zhou reaffirmed Huawei’s commitment to continuous innovation, specifically building the AI-ready data storage foundation and future-proof storage power to fuel the AI adoption across the carrier industry.
MWC Barcelona 2025 is held from March 3 to March 6 in Barcelona, Spain. During the event, Huawei will showcase its latest products and solutions at stand 1H50 in Fira Gran Via Hall 1.
In 2025, commercial 5G-Advanced deployment will accelerate, and AI will help carriers reshape business, infrastructure, and O&M. Huawei is actively working with carriers and partners around the world to accelerate the transition towards an intelligent world.
For more information, please visit: https://carrier.huawei.com/en/events/mwc2025
Source: Huawei
Headline: Huawei: Helping Carriers Reshape Business, Infrastructure, and O&M with AI
Mar 04, 2025
[Barcelona, Spain, March 3, 2025] During MWC Barcelona 2025, Huawei is gathering carriers, industry partners, and opinion leaders from around the world to explore the intersection of 5G networks and AI, and how they can support one another to unlock new growth opportunities.
The company is showcasing a sweeping range of solutions:
AI-to-X – Shorthand for AI-to-Consumers, AI-to-Businesses, and AI-to-Homes, including a series of solutions that can help carriers expand into AI services for new, more targeted domains and achieve business growth
AI-Centric Network solution – Helping carriers build networks that can meet the challenging demands of new AI applications to ensure a smooth and superior experience
AI-powered O&M – Using AI to revitalize network O&M, and helping carriers achieve L4 autonomous networks (AN) for fully intelligent O&M
These discussions come at a time when high-quality, open-source AI models are developing fast, powering a new, more diverse wave of innovation in AI applications.
Huawei’s booth at MWC Barcelona 2025
Huawei’s theme this year is “Accelerating the Intelligent World”, and their star-studded booth in Hall 1 is designed to represent countless bits of intelligence lighting up the night’s sky. The company is showcasing its innovation in digital infrastructure and service applications for individuals, homes, and enterprises, as well as success stories created together with its customers and partners.
Evolving 5G networks to seize new opportunities
By the end of 2024, there were more than 2.1 billion 5G users around the world, and the numbers continue to grow. Huawei has been working with carriers to drive the development of 5G through both business and network innovation, helping them transition from mobile Internet to mobile AI.
In 2024, a number of pioneering carriers have already kicked off commercial 5G-Advanced (5G-A), launching 5G-A packages for users in more than 200 cities around the world. For consumers, these packages take advantage of 5G-A’s enhanced capabilities to provide an optimized user experience for scenarios like livestreaming and gaming, as well as metro and business travel. For carriers, these packages are an opportunity to go beyond traditional connectivity and start monetizing a more personalized experience for different users. Carrier progress in these domains has propelled the industry into an era of AI-powered 5G-A connectivity.
Huawei is actively working with carriers in China, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific to explore innovative experience monetization models, define application scenarios, design new offerings, and build their user base. This shift of focus from connectivity to experience has both improved user experience and increased carrier revenue.
AI-Centric Network
Huawei launched its AI-Centric Network solution that helps carriers upgrade their ICT network infrastructure to meet new demands on bandwidth, latency, coverage, and O&M brought about by a flood of new AI applications. It’s designed to help quickly reshape telecom service and business models to seize new opportunities in the age of AI.
With the rapid development of technologies like 5G-A, cloud, and AI, carriers will need to upgrade from connectivity service providers to digital service providers. To guide this process, Huawei is launching a three-layer technology architecture for carriers looking to transform from telcos to techcos, helping them tap into new business domains and open the door to new growth opportunities.
Accelerating Industrial Intelligence
At this year’s MWC, Huawei’s Enterprise Business is demonstrating how different industries can incorporate AI into their unique business scenarios using the company’s industrial intelligence reference architecture.During the event, Huawei unveiled 83 different industry showcases with customers, and launched ten 10 major solutions to accelerate intelligent transformation together with its partners.
Pushing the boundaries of consumer devices and experience
Huawei’s consumer business will showcase a lineup of high-end, fashion-forward, and technology-driven flagship products at the event. Through multiple scenario-based experience zones, the company will share its latest innovations in foldable phones, fitness and health, photography, and creativity, focusing on how technology can further enrich people’s everyday lives.
Huawei believes in a human-centric approach to developing technology that shapes the future. In 2025, the company will continue to develop consumer products that push the boundaries of technology, provide an ultimate smart experience for all user scenarios, and build a high-end brand that consumers both love and trust.
MWC Barcelona 2025 will be held from March 3 to March 6 in Barcelona, Spain. During the event, Huawei will showcase its latest products and solutions at stand 1H50 in Fira Gran Via Hall 1.
In 2025, commercial 5G-Advanced deployment will accelerate, and AI will help carriers reshape business, infrastructure, and O&M. Huawei is actively working with carriers and partners around the world to accelerate the transition towards an intelligent world.
For more information, please visit: https://carrier.huawei.com/en/events/mwc2025
Source: Huawei
Headline: Huawei: Helping Carriers Reshape Business, Infrastructure, and O&M with AI
[Barcelona, Spain, March 3, 2025] During MWC Barcelona 2025, Huawei is gathering carriers, industry partners, and opinion leaders from around the world to explore the intersection of 5G networks and AI, and how they can support one another to unlock new growth opportunities.
The company is showcasing a sweeping range of solutions:
AI-to-X – Shorthand for AI-to-Consumers, AI-to-Businesses, and AI-to-Homes, including a series of solutions that can help carriers expand into AI services for new, more targeted domains and achieve business growth
AI-Centric Network solution – Helping carriers build networks that can meet the challenging demands of new AI applications to ensure a smooth and superior experience
AI-powered O&M – Using AI to revitalize network O&M, and helping carriers achieve L4 autonomous networks (AN) for fully intelligent O&M
These discussions come at a time when high-quality, open-source AI models are developing fast, powering a new, more diverse wave of innovation in AI applications.
Huawei’s booth at MWC Barcelona 2025
Huawei’s theme this year is “Accelerating the Intelligent World”, and their star-studded booth in Hall 1 is designed to represent countless bits of intelligence lighting up the night’s sky. The company is showcasing its innovation in digital infrastructure and service applications for individuals, homes, and enterprises, as well as success stories created together with its customers and partners.
Evolving 5G networks to seize new opportunities
By the end of 2024, there were more than 2.1 billion 5G users around the world, and the numbers continue to grow. Huawei has been working with carriers to drive the development of 5G through both business and network innovation, helping them transition from mobile Internet to mobile AI.
In 2024, a number of pioneering carriers have already kicked off commercial 5G-Advanced (5G-A), launching 5G-A packages for users in more than 200 cities around the world. For consumers, these packages take advantage of 5G-A’s enhanced capabilities to provide an optimized user experience for scenarios like livestreaming and gaming, as well as metro and business travel. For carriers, these packages are an opportunity to go beyond traditional connectivity and start monetizing a more personalized experience for different users. Carrier progress in these domains has propelled the industry into an era of AI-powered 5G-A connectivity.
Huawei is actively working with carriers in China, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific to explore innovative experience monetization models, define application scenarios, design new offerings, and build their user base. This shift of focus from connectivity to experience has both improved user experience and increased carrier revenue.
AI-Centric Network
Huawei launched its AI-Centric Network solution that helps carriers upgrade their ICT network infrastructure to meet new demands on bandwidth, latency, coverage, and O&M brought about by a flood of new AI applications. It’s designed to help quickly reshape telecom service and business models to seize new opportunities in the age of AI.
With the rapid development of technologies like 5G-A, cloud, and AI, carriers will need to upgrade from connectivity service providers to digital service providers. To guide this process, Huawei is launching a three-layer technology architecture for carriers looking to transform from telcos to techcos, helping them tap into new business domains and open the door to new growth opportunities.
Accelerating Industrial Intelligence
At this year’s MWC, Huawei’s Enterprise Business is demonstrating how different industries can incorporate AI into their unique business scenarios using the company’s industrial intelligence reference architecture.During the event, Huawei unveiled 83 different industry showcases with customers, and launched ten 10 major solutions to accelerate intelligent transformation together with its partners.
Pushing the boundaries of consumer devices and experience
Huawei’s consumer business will showcase a lineup of high-end, fashion-forward, and technology-driven flagship products at the event. Through multiple scenario-based experience zones, the company will share its latest innovations in foldable phones, fitness and health, photography, and creativity, focusing on how technology can further enrich people’s everyday lives.
Huawei believes in a human-centric approach to developing technology that shapes the future. In 2025, the company will continue to develop consumer products that push the boundaries of technology, provide an ultimate smart experience for all user scenarios, and build a high-end brand that consumers both love and trust.
MWC Barcelona 2025 will be held from March 3 to March 6 in Barcelona, Spain. During the event, Huawei will showcase its latest products and solutions at stand 1H50 in Fira Gran Via Hall 1.
In 2025, commercial 5G-Advanced deployment will accelerate, and AI will help carriers reshape business, infrastructure, and O&M. Huawei is actively working with carriers and partners around the world to accelerate the transition towards an intelligent world.
For more information, please visit: https://carrier.huawei.com/en/events/mwc2025
