Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
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Equine therapy at the heart of an award-winning, veteran-led community hub in the Rhondda Valley
Equine therapy is at the heart of an award-winning, veteran-led community hub in the Rhondda Valley.
Paul Bromwell standing with a horse. Copyright: RFCA for Wales
Around 20 years ago the charity Valley Veterans was founded by Falklands War veteran Paul Bromwell, initially as an informal support group for veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Having served in the Welsh Guards during the Falklands Conflict 40 years ago, Paul was all too aware of the effects of returning to civilian life after leaving the Armed Forces. He himself suffered from PTSD as a result of his time in the South Atlantic, and on his return home to the Rhondda Valley, initially struggled to get the support he needed.
It was that struggle that led him to set up an informal support group for PTSD sufferers that has now grown into a vibrant, veteran-led community hub with more than 140 active participants.
In the latest in a series of accolades, Paul recently won the Community Champion category in the prestigious St David Awards – the national awards for Wales which recognise exceptional achievements by Welsh citizens. The award was presented by First Minister Eluned Morgan in a ceremony at the Senedd.
The award recognised how Valley Veterans provides weekly support for vulnerable veterans which benefits their mental and physical health. For the first 15 years Paul personally funded the group by remortgaging his home to purchase land to build stables for equine therapy services.
Over the years, the support at the hub has widened and the group now holds a breakfast club every Thursday in the Ton Pentre Community Centre that attracts up to 60 veterans each week, a Wednesday morning paperwork session, and daily equine and horticultural activities on nearby land.
Founder and CEO Paul Bromwell explained that the idea for equine therapy as part of the Valley Veterans hub came about because he wanted to offer the same opportunity to others that had been given to him.
Paul said:
I went away horse trekking with Combat Stress and it helped me so much that when I came home, I bought a horse and on the days that I couldn’t sleep, I’d be up on the mountain with my horse and it would calm me down.
I just thought if this is working for me that it will help others. By then I was looking after a couple of lads that were good friends of mine and were also feeling a bit of stress and had problems caused through active service.
And from those early days of a few friends and one horse, Valley Veterans now links many support groups and more than 100 veterans across the Valley.
When people need help, we are always here – it’s never that dark place with no-one to help, there’s always somebody here,
said Paul.
Being outside has been a game changer for many of the people that come here – it could be working in the gardening, mucking out the stables or grooming the horses –the benefits are clear to see.
They can come and get help with their paperwork on a Wednesday, socialise at the breakfast club on a Thursday and any day of the week, work outside in the gardens and the equine area.
Gary Pethig (64) from Gelli, who served in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, said,
This group has changed my life – it has literally been a godsend for me because without it I’d just be sitting at home watching television – instead I come here and have made lots of new friends.
I get practical face-to-face help from various organisations who help me fill in all sorts of paperwork which otherwise I would find very difficult or impossible to complete by myself online or over the phone – and this means I can access the help that I need and am entitled to.
I also enjoy getting outside by going outside into the garden and growing crops.
Stephen Roberts (55) from Williamstown, who served in the Royal Engineers and now works for the Welsh Blood Service, said,
I first came here six years ago as I was struggling with PDSD, I’d shut myself away from society and was struggling to get out. I knew about this place but I didn’t have the guts to come up here until eventually I arranged to meet someone here that I knew and have been coming ever since.
I have met a brilliant bunch of friends that I’m close to and have had support off them ever since. It has changed my life, I was withdrawn from society before but coming up and spending time here and socialising has helped me hugely and I can now go out to social events such as birthday celebrations and fundraisers that I wasn’t able to before.
Des Sparey (79) from Caerphilly, who served in The Welch Regiment, said:
This group has changed my life totally, without it I’d be lost. There is nothing better than coming up and talking to the guys here – I love it and won’t be without it. There are charities here that will help you if you have problems with things like healthcare, your finances or even finding somewhere to live.
Veteran support agencies, mental health organisations, local authority representatives and other community groups attend the Thursday and Wednesday sessions to provide support and advice on areas ranging from housing support to employment and benefits advocacy.
Sian Sexton, Money Advice Advocate for MIND said:
We are here building relationship, doing the groundwork and providing consistency. We are able to provide practical face-to-face help for people such as filling in forms when they need it and how they need it so they can access help more easily and more quickly.
Stephen Sullivan, Strategic Pathways Development Officer, Adferiad Change Step said:
I use this hub on a weekly basis and I bring in other projects – it’s all about collaboration and networking and making the referral pathways easier.
Source: United Kingdom UK Parliament (video statements)
The Defence Committee will hold an evidence session with outgoing Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Sir Tony Radakin on the work of the Chief of the Defence Staff, at 3pm, on Tuesday 10 June.
The session will be wide-ranging, covering Defence Reform, the Strategic Defence Review, recruitment and retention and the readiness of the Armed Forces.
The treatment and experiences of personnel are likely to be discussed, including the unacceptable behaviours towards women and ethnic minority personnel.
Home » Latest News » Longport car park set for resurfacing, trees, bike parking facilities and more
As part of our Canterbury Connected project, paid for from government money, we are improving some of our car parks to make them more welcoming.
Longport car park is next to see some action. This currently understated car park next to a World Heritage Site is in need of some TLC so it is more in keeping with its location and environment.
The site will be fully resurfaced and relined, trees and a hedge will be added, cycle parking and storage will be installed and visitor welcome information will be provided.
Work will start next Monday (16 June) and will take around eight weeks. Part of the car park will be closed initially and then we will move to a period of full closure from Monday 7 July for the resurfacing and relining.
We apologise in advance for any disruption this work will cause but believe the end result of creating a better welcome in this important area of the city will be well worth it.
Health Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, has praised the adoption of the Pandemic Agreement during the 4th Health Working Group meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) held in Johannesburg.
This significant international treaty, supported by 124 member states on 20 May 2025, is only the second international health treaty approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO) since its establishment in 1948.
The agreement’s adoption follows three years of intensive negotiation launched due to gaps and inequities identified in the national and global COVID-19 response.
It aims to boost global collaboration to ensure a stronger, more equitable response to future pandemics.
Delivering the welcome address on Tuesday morning, Motsoaledi celebrated the momentous achievement and emphasised the importance of collective action in ensuring global health security.
“Your presence here today is a testament to our collective commitment to global health security,” he said.
Motsoaledi stated that the agreement results from the diligent efforts of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), which was established to develop a legally binding framework for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.
“The stark lessons of the COVID-19 crisis fuelled our collective resolve to forge a more robust and equitable framework, one that ensures international cooperation and protects all nations from the devastating impact of future pandemics,” the Minister told the attendees.
South Africa, playing a pivotal leadership role as a co-chair of the INB, worked alongside partners from France and the Netherlands, while acknowledging contributions from vice-chairs representing Brazil, Thailand, Egypt, and New Zealand.
The Minister stated that the four key pillars of the agreement are designed to fundamentally transform the global response to health emergencies.
The agreement emphasises the importance of equitable access to pandemic-related health products, the establishment of a global supply chain and logistics network, and the creation of a coordinating financial mechanism to strengthen pandemic response capabilities.
In addition, the agreement highlights a holistic “One Health” approach, which stresses the connections between human, animal, and environmental health, which is now a central focus of global pandemic strategies.
The Minister said the agreement incorporates a Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) system, requiring pharmaceutical companies to contribute 20% of production during pandemics in exchange for access to critical pathogen data.
This mechanism aims to ensure that all nations benefit from scientific advancements, especially in times of crisis.
“As an active participant and representative member for the African region, I can say with certainty that we see this agreement as a crucial step towards rectifying the deep-seated imbalances in access to life-saving pandemic products that were so painfully exposed during the recent crisis.”
Although Motsoaledi has acknowledged the agreement’s adoption as a significant success, there is still much work ahead.
“While we celebrate the adoption of the Pandemic Agreement, our work is far from over. We are now entering a critical new phase.”
He urged immediate engagement in further discussions regarding the PABS system, to convene the Intergovernmental Working Group before 15 July 2025.
“Finalising a robust and equitable PABS annex is the ultimate litmus test of our collective commitment. It is the essential next step to transform the Pandemic Agreement from a document of principles into a functional, life-saving tool for justice and our shared global health security.”
He has since called for continued collaboration and commitment to safeguarding global health for everyone.
This important week-long meeting began this morning and will conclude on Friday, 13 June 2025.
The event brings together health leaders, experts, and policymakers from the world’s largest economies, invited nations, and international organisations. – SAnews.gov.za
South Africa is closely monitoring the emergence of a new COVID-19 variant, known as Nimbus or NB.1.8.1, associated with a rise in cases in certain regions of Asia.
This is according to Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, who addressed the 4th Health Working Group meeting of the Group of 20 (G20), which is underway in Johannesburg.
Motsoaledi said the World Health Organisation (WHO) has designated this “a variant under monitoring” due to its growing presence.
India is the latest country to experience a surge in new COVID-19 cases due to the emergence of the new variant, NB.1.8.1.
According to the Independent, infections have been confirmed in several Asian countries, including Thailand, Indonesia and China.
In addition, the United Kingdom Health Security Agency reported the first 13 cases of this variant in England last week.
“I wish to reassure this esteemed gathering that South Africa has robust surveillance systems in place.
“Our National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) manages a comprehensive sentinel surveillance programme that systematically tests for key respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, influenza, and RSV. Currently, our data show very low SARS-CoV-2 activity,” Motsoaledi explained.
South Africa is currently experiencing a seasonal rise in influenza, but the country is well-prepared to manage the situation, he said.
“Crucially, the new variant remains a descendant of the Omicron lineage. This means that current recommendations for updated SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are still effective. Therefore, at this stage, no specific new public health actions are required from the public.”
Motsoaledi said government continues to promote good hygiene practices, including handwashing, covering coughs, and staying home when feeling unwell.
“These simple measures are effective in reducing the spread of all respiratory illnesses. We will continue to monitor the situation closely through our established networks and will report any significant changes.”
Meanwhile, he called on the attendees of the meeting to work together with “renewed urgency and unwavering resolve”.
“Let us build a future where solidarity, equity, and cooperation are the cornerstones of our global health architecture.”
The week-long Health Working Group meeting began on Tuesday and will conclude on Friday.
It brings together health leaders, experts, and policymakers from the world’s largest economies, invited nations, and international organisations.
The plenary sessions will build on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and address ongoing barriers to accessing countermeasures, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
There will be a focus on prioritising the expansion of local and regional manufacturing capacity, especially in regions like Africa.
Delegates will also explore opportunities for technology transfer, sustainable financing, and regulatory alignment to ensure timely and equitable access to life-saving tools during health emergencies. – SAnews.gov.za
Headline: ICC joins Business Call to Action to accelerate global cooperation for our oceans
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As the largest business association in the world, the International Chamber of Commerce is proud to be a convener of this important call to action, bringing the voice of the global business community to the United Nations Ocean Conference.
The call is convened by an unprecedented coalition of business networks, supported by signatories, including 80 businesses with a combined turnover of over €$600 billion and 2 million employees. In anticipation of the upcoming 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France,the call builds on the experience of leading businesses and organisations already advancing a sustainable blue economy. It emphasises the intrinsic connection between land and sea, highlighting the contribution and interdependencies between coastal and marine environment and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
This call is directed at all economic actors, whether directly or indirectly connected to the ocean, and includes:
A call to action for businesses to expedite maintaining ocean health through business actions, such as contributions to ocean science, monitoring and reducing environmental impacts, incorporating ocean considerations into their climate and nature roadmaps and investing in blue solutions.
A call to action for policy makers to pursue ambitious science-driven policies and measures that stimulate sustainable business action and to jointly address land and ocean for enhanced global resilience
With this Business Call to Action, companies and business networks urge policymakers to:
Agree to adopt and implement international agreements: champion strong, sustainable outcomes for existing and upcoming ocean-related agreements,
Invest in ocean science and support strong science-policy interfaces,
Acknowledge and embed into policies the links between ocean, nature and climate,
Help all actors to collectively adapt to sea-level rise,
Develop robust and innovative finance mechanisms,
Raise awareness to encourage all actors to care for the ocean, even those based on land.
This business declaration is still open to new signatories. For information on signing this declaration please contact
The Business Call to Action is convened by global and leading business networks including International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), World Economic Forum (WEF), We Mean Business Coalition (WMB), Business for Nature (BfN), Mouvement des Entreprises de France (MEDEF), UN Global Compact Network France and Association française des Entreprises pour l’Environnement (EpE).
In the face of US President Donald Trump’s wavering commitments and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inscrutable ambitions, the talk in European capitals is all about rearmament.
To that end, the European Commission has put forward an €800 billion spending scheme designed to “quickly and significantly increase expenditures in defence capabilities”, in the words of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
But funding is only the first of many challenges involved when pursuing military innovation. Ramping up capabilities “quickly and significantly” will prove difficult for a sector that must keep pace with rapid technological change.
Of course, defence firms don’t have to do it alone: they can select from a wide variety of potential collaborators, ranging from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to agile start-ups. Innovative partnerships, however, require trust and a willingness to share vital information, qualities that appear incompatible with the need for military secrecy.
That is why rearming Europe requires a new approach to secrecy.
A paper I co-authored with Jonathan Langlois of HEC and Romaric Servajean-Hilst of KEDGE Business School examines the strategies used by one leading defence firm (which we, for our own secrecy-related reasons, renamed “Globaldef”) to balance open innovation with information security. The 43 professionals we interviewed – including R&D managers, start-up CEOs and innovation managers – were not consciously working from a common playbook. However, their nuanced and dynamic approaches could serve as a cohesive role model for Europe’s defence sector as it races to adapt to a changing world.
How flexible secrecy enables innovation
Our research took place between 2018 and 2020. At the time, defence firms looked toward open innovation to compensate for the withdrawal of key support. There was a marked decrease in government spending on military R&D across the OECD countries. However, even though the current situation involves more funding, the need for external innovation remains prevalent to speed up access to knowledge.
When collaborating to innovate, firms face what open innovation scholars have termed “the paradox of openness”, wherein the value to be gained by collaborating must be weighed against the possible costs of information sharing. In the defence sector – unlike, say, in consumer products – being too liberal with information could not only lead to business losses but to grave security risks for entire nations, and even prosecution for the executives involved.
Although secrecy was a constant concern, Globaldef’s managers often found themselves in what one of our interviewees called a “blurred zone” where some material could be interpreted as secret, but sharing it was not strictly off-limits. In cases like these, opting for the standard mode in the defence industry – erring on the side of caution and remaining tight-lipped – would make open innovation impossible.
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Practices that make collaboration work
Studying transcripts of more than 40 interviews along with a rich pool of complementary data (emails, PowerPoint presentations, crowdsourcing activity, etc.), we discerned that players at Globaldef had developed fine-grained practices for maintaining and modulating secrecy, even while actively collaborating with civilian companies.
Our research identifies these practices as either cognitive or relational. Cognitive practices acted as strategic screens, masking the most sensitive aspects of Globaldef’s knowledge without throttling information flow to the point of preventing collaboration.
Depending on the type of project, cognitive practices might consist of one or more of the following:
Encryption: relabelling knowledge components to hide their nature and purpose.
Obfuscation: selectively blurring project specifics to preserve secrecy while recruiting partners.
Simplification: blurring project parameters to test the suitability of a partner without revealing true constraints.
Transposition: transferring the context of a problem from a military to a civilian one.
Relational practices involved reframing the partnership itself, by selectively controlling the width of the aperture through which external parties could view Globaldef’s aims and project characteristics. These practices might include redirecting the focus of a collaboration away from core technologies, or introducing confidentiality agreements to expand information-sharing within the partnership while prohibiting communication to third parties.
When to shift strategy in defence projects
Using both cognitive and relational practices enabled Globaldef to skirt the pitfalls of its paradox. For example, in the early stages of open innovation, when the firm was scouting and testing potential partners, managers could widen the aperture (relational) while imposing strict limits on knowledge-sharing (cognitive). They could thereby freely engage with the crowd without violating Globaldef’s internal rules regarding secrecy.
As partnerships ripened and trust grew, Globaldef could gradually lift cognitive protections, giving partners access to more detailed and specific data. This could be counterbalanced by a tightening on the relational side, eg requiring paperwork and protocols designed to plug potential leaks.
As we retraced the firm’s careful steps through six real-life open innovation partnerships, we saw that the key to this approach was in knowing when to transition from one mode to the other. Each project had its own rhythm.
For one crowdsourcing project, the shift from low to high cognitive depth, and high to low relational width, was quite sudden, occurring as soon as the partnership was formalised. This was due to the fact that Globaldef’s partner needed accurate details and project parameters in order to solve the problem in question. Therefore, near-total openness and concomitant confidentiality had to be established at the outset.
In another case, Globaldef retained the cognitive blinders throughout the early phase of a partnership with a start-up. To test the start-up’s technological capacities, the firm presented its partner with a cognitively reframed problem. Only after the partner passed its initial trial was collaboration initiated on a fully transparent footing, driven by the need for the start-up to obtain defence clearance prior to co-developing technology with Globaldef.
How firms can lead with adaptive secrecy
Since we completed and published our research, much has changed geopolitically. But the high-stakes paradox of openness is still a pressing issue inside Europe’s defence firms. Managers and executives are no doubt grappling with the evident necessity for open innovation on the one hand and secrecy on the other.
Our research suggests that, like Globaldef, other actors in Europe’s defence sector can deftly navigate this paradox. Doing so, however, will require employing a more subtle, flexible and dynamic definition of secrecy rather than the absolutist, static one that normally prevails in the industry. The defence sector’s conception of secrecy must also progress from a primarily legal to a largely strategic framework.
Sihem BenMahmoud-Jouini ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
The video of a Los Angeles police officer shooting a rubber bullet at Channel Nine reporter Lauren Tomasi is as shocking as it is revealing.
In her live broadcast, Tomasi is standing to the side of a rank of police in riot gear. She describes the way they have begun firing rubber bullets to disperse protesters angry with US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants.
As Tomasi finishes her sentence, the camera pans to the left, just in time to catch the officer raising his gun and firing a non-lethal round into her leg. She said a day later she is sore, but otherwise OK.
Although a more thorough investigation might find mitigating circumstances, from the video evidence, it is hard to dismiss the shot as “crossfire”. The reporter and cameraman were off to one side of the police, clearly identified and working legitimately.
The shooting is also not a one-off. Since the protests against Trump’s mass deportations policy began three days ago, a reporter with the LA Daily News and a freelance journalist have been hit with pepper balls and tear gas.
British freelance photojournalist Nick Stern also had emergency surgery to remove a three-inch plastic bullet from his leg.
In all, the Los Angeles Press Club has documented more than 30 incidents of obstruction and attacks on journalists during the protests.
Trump’s assault on the media
It now seems assaults on the media are no longer confined to warzones or despotic regimes. They are happening in American cities, in broad daylight, often at the hands of those tasked with upholding the law.
But violence is only one piece of the picture. In the nearly five months since taking office, the Trump administration has moved to defund public broadcasters, curtail access to information and undermine the credibility of independent media.
International services once used to project democratic values and American soft power around the world, such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia, have all had their funding cut and been threatened with closure. (The Voice of America website is still operational but hasn’t been updated since mid-March, with one headline on the front page reading “Vatican: Francis stable, out of ‘imminent danger’ of death”).
The Associated Press, one of the most respected and important news agencies in the world, has been restricted from its access to the White House and covering Trump. The reason? It decided to defy Trump’s directive to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.
Even broadcast licenses for major US networks, such as ABC, NBC and CBS, have been publicly threatened — a signal to editors and executives that political loyalty might soon outweigh journalistic integrity.
The Committee to Protect Journalists is more used to condemning attacks on the media in places like Russia. However, in April, it issued a report headlined: “Alarm bells: Trump’s first 100 days ramp up fear for the press, democracy”.
A requirement for peace
Why does this matter? The success of American democracy has never depended on unity or even civility. It has depended on scrutiny. A system where power is challenged, not flattered.
The First Amendment to the US Constitution – which protects freedom of speech – has long been considered the gold standard for building the institutions of free press and free expression. That only works when journalism is protected — not in theory but in practice.
Now, strikingly, the language once reserved for autocracies and failed states has begun to appear in assessments of the US. Civicus, which tracks declining democracies around the world, recently put the US on its watchlist, alongside the Democratic Republic of Congo, Italy, Serbia and Pakistan.
The attacks on the journalists in LA are troubling not only for their sake, but for ours. This is about civic architecture. The kind of framework that makes space for disagreement without descending into disorder.
Press freedom is not a luxury for peacetime. It is a requirement for peace.
Peter Greste is Professor of Journalism at Macquarie University and the Executive Director for the advocacy group, the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom.
In reality, the competition is the latest chapter in FIFA’s long-running quest – going all the way back to 1960 – to create a global championship that would determine which club really is the best in the world.
As always, the litmus test for success will come from the fans. So far, things are not going well on that front. Falling prices on Ticketmaster bode ill for the competition. Just days before the games were due to begin, FIFA slashed prices for the opening match: MLS club Inter Miami against Egypt’s Al-Ahly. Reports suggest that less than a third of tickets at the 65,000-seat venue for the opener, Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, had sold – despite the likely presence of soccer superstar Lionel Messi.
Of course, the declining number of tourists coming to the U.S. since the second inauguration of Donald Trump – and the president’s recently announced travel ban affecting 19 countries – hasn’t helped encourage fans of the global game to the U.S., even if none of the competing clubs come from one of those countries.
FIFA vs. UEFA
So, given all the problems and controversies, why is FIFA so invested?
As someone who has long researched the nexus of soccer, money and power, I see the World Club Cup as part of a struggle between UEFA, the European governing body that runs the Champions League – currently seen as the pinnacle of soccer club competition – and FIFA, which wants to supplant the Champions League with its own competition.
UEFA’s power stems from hosting the world’s biggest clubs. Only one club from outside Europe appears in soccer data website Transfermarkt’s list of the 50 most valuable squads – with Palmeiras from Brazil squeaking in at 50.
Top players in their prime rarely quit Europe to play on another continent – the high-profile names that opt to play in the U.S. or Saudi leagues tend to be veterans cashing in on their name.
Meanwhile, the world’s soccer talent flocks to European clubs. It’s not just that big clubs like Real Madrid, Liverpool or Bayern Munich that can pay top dollar for the star players – less storied clubs like Brentford, Real Sociedad or VfB Stuttgart have the wherewithal to fish in the global player market.
The wealth and status of these clubs form the muscle behind UEFA. And the jewel in the UEFA crown is the Champions League, an annual competition that brings together the best clubs in Europe.
A game of two halves
While UEFA also has its own national competition, the Euros, its pull is nowhere near as great as FIFA’s World Cup.
This division – with FIFA dominating the international team competition and UEFA the club competition – dates back to the 1960s and the early years of mass television.
When the 1966 World Cup was hosted by England, it was one of the very first global sports events, watched by an estimated audience of 400 million people worldwide.
The 1970 World Cup, a legendary event in the eyes of boomer soccer fans, established the four-year ritual that surpasses even the Olympics as a global sporting event.
At this time, UEFA’s Euros were barely a competition at all. The 1968, 1972 and 1976 editions – played in Italy, Belgium and Yugoslavia, respectively – each had only four teams and only four or five games.
UEFA had by then established its role in club competition. The European Cup, as the Champions League was then called, started in 1955.
Ferenc Puskas of Real Madrid scores his team’s sixth goal during the European Cup final against Eintracht Frankfurt at Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland, on May 18, 1960. Keystone/Getty Images
Witnessed by a crowd of 128,000 at Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland, the more important statistic was the estimated 70 million television audience in Europe.
The 1968 final at London’s Wembley Stadium, when Manchester United overcame Benfica in honor of the “Busby Babes” – Manchester players who died in a 1958 Munich air disaster while traveling home from a European Cup game – saw a TV audience of 270 million.
A history of failure
The ambition to create a club world cup to rival the European Cup goes back to the 1950s. Soccer powerhouses Brazil and Argentina in particular promoted the idea that the top clubs in Europe should face off against the top South American teams.
The resulting Intercontinental Cup ran from 1960 to 2004, with the top teams from UEFA and CONMEBOL, the South American soccer federation, taking part.
But played in midseason, it barely made an impression on the fans.
In 2000, FIFA created the Club World Championship, with eight teams drawn from the five international federations.
It also attracted little love, and the 2001-to-2004 editions had to be canceled for lack of financial backing.
In the early years, it seemed like an excuse to emulate the Intercontinental Cup, and the first three winners were South American. However, since 2006, all the winners bar one – Brazil’s Corinthians in 2012 – have been European.
Europe is ‘on the beach’
Then, in 2017, Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, announced plans to expand the competition and move it to the summer. With 32 teams, the competition will look more like the World Cup and will receive a lot of TV coverage.
The fact that it will be free to watch will help. So too will the presence of Messi.
Yet the overwhelming feeling going into the competition is that, like its predecessors, the revamped FIFA club competition is destined for failure.
With the European domestic leagues all completed and the Champions League final – the unofficial marker of the end of the soccer season – having taken place on May 31, players and fans appear to be “on the beach,” to use a favorite phrase of soccer commentators.
Ultimately, FIFA’s revamped World Club Cup faces the same issues that beset its forerunners: European teams are overwhelmingly tipped to win.
Rather than the global soccer “solidarity” that FIFA hopes, the competition sets to reinforce the dominance of European clubs – and of Europe’s governing body when it comes to club competition.
Stefan Szymanski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump at the G20 Summit on July 7, 2017, in Hamburg, Germany. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
On June 5, U.S. President Donald Trump held a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping. It marked the first direct conversation between the two leaders since Trump began his second term — and the first since tensions sharply escalated in 2025’s U.S.-China trade war.
After the call, Trump was quick to frame it as a success for his administration, posting on social media that it led to “a very positive conclusion for both Countries.” He later told reporters that Xi had agreed to resume exports of rare earth minerals and magnets to the U.S. — allaying the fears of the auto industry, which had previously warned that parts suppliers were facing severe and immediate risks to production.
The presidential phone call also yielded an invitation for Trump and first lady Melania to visit China, an invitation that Trump reciprocated.
But aside from the easing of some trade tension and surface-level niceties, the call conveyed subtle messages about an imbalance in the bilateral dispute. As an expert on U.S.-China relations, I believe these subtleties point to Xi having the upper hand in U.S.-China talks and also using Trump as a foil to burnish his own image as a strong leader at home and abroad.
A rare earths ace
The Trump-Xi call should not distract from the fragile state of China-U.S. relations — and the willingness of Beijing to play its “rare earth materials card.”
Although China and U.S. delegations reached a 90-day tariff truce in Geneva on May 12, negotiations between the two countries remain ongoing. As many observers have noted, deep-rooted and structural differences — such as disputes over currency manipulation, export subsidies and other nontariff barriers — continue to cast a long shadow over the prospects of U.S-China trade talks.
Beijing, in turn, accuses the U.S. of breaking the Geneva agreement first and blames Washington for rolling out a wave of discriminatory measures against China after the talks, including new export controls on artificial intelligence chips, a ban on selling electronic design automation software to Chinese companies, and plans to revoke visas for Chinese students.
Trump’s order banning American companies from using AI chips by China-based Huawei — issued just one day after the Geneva agreement on May 12 — was seen by many in Beijing as directly countering the spirit of the agreement. Indeed, it may well have prompted Beijing to delay the resumption of rare earth exports to the U.S. in the first place.
Aside from the actual effect of the resumption of rare earth exports, Trump’s apparent priority given to the issue signals to Beijing just how reliant the U.S. is on China in this regard — something that would not have gone unnoticed by Xi.
Xi never came calling
Just one day before the June 5 call, Trump wrote on social media: “I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!”
His conversation with the Chinese leader would have further reinforced Xi’s tough image — not just for a Chinese audience, but for international observers as well.
This was certainly encouraged by how China described the call. According to China’s official statement, Xi “took a phone call from U.S. President Donald J. Trump” – the subtle implication being that it was Trump who initiated the call.
This framing promotes the idea that Xi holds the upper hand. The Chinese statement also highlighted that the Geneva talks were “at the suggestion of the U.S. side,” implying that China did not back down in the face of Trump’s trade pressure — and that it was Trump who ultimately blinked first.
China’s message is particularly significant given that, as the U.S.-China trade war intensified in April, Washington believed it could gain “escalation dominance” by imposing tariffs on Chinese goods — perhaps underestimating China’s ability to retaliate effectively and assuming Beijing would be eager to negotiate.
Throughout the trade standoff, Xi refrained from initiating contact with Trump, and in the end, it was Trump who reached out.
This undoubtedly enhanced Xi’s image back home — and potentially undermined Trump’s negotiating posture.
The official Chinese statement following the talks noted: “The Chinese side is sincere about this, and at the same time has its principles. The Chinese always honor and deliver what has been promised. Both sides should make good on the agreement reached in Geneva.”
Those words appear aimed at signaling to the international community that it is the U.S. — not China — that failed to uphold its end of the Geneva agreement.
The second-to-last paragraph of the Chinese statement on the phone call noted: “President Trump said that he has great respect for President Xi, and the U.S.-China relationship is very important. The U.S. wants the Chinese economy to do very well. The U.S. and China working together can get a lot of great things done. The U.S. will honor the one-China policy. The meeting in Geneva was very successful, and produced a good deal. The U.S. will work with China to execute the deal. The U.S. loves to have Chinese students coming to study in America.”
While much of this language may be standard diplomatic rhetoric, it clearly aims to box in Trump as the supplicant in the current dispute and implies that he is moving closer to China’s positions, including key nontrade issues like U.S. visas for Chinese students.
A game of telephone?
Aside from the optics or broader question of who is “winning” the dispute, the Trump-Xi call has certainly eased some tensions on both sides — at least temporarily.
For the U.S., concerns over rare earth supplies were alleviated. Since the call, it has been reported that China has issued temporary export licenses to companies that supply rare earth materials to America’s three largest automakers.
For China, Trump’s remarks seemingly helped reduce anxiety over issues such as Taiwan and student visa restrictions.
But given the deep and fundamental differences between the two countries on trade and economic matters — and recalling how trade negotiations repeatedly stalled and restarted during Trump’s first term — there is good reason to believe that future talks could face similar setbacks.
But what is clear now, especially compared with the trade war during Trump’s first administration, is that Beijing appears better prepared and more skilled at leveraging its rare earth exports as a bargaining chip.
In many ways, Trump faces the greater pressure in his handling of Xi. Should talks collapse, any resulting supply chain disruptions could lead to rising inflation, market volatility and economic woe for the U.S. — with the associated risks of political fallout ahead of the midterm elections. Xi will know this and, in rare earth materials, has an ace up his sleeve to pull out when needed.
Indeed, Trump may find himself needing to reach out to Xi again in the future in an effort to revive troubled trade negotiations. But doing so would only reinforce Xi’s image as the tougher and more dominant figure.
Linggong Kong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Ice baths are everywhere in modern fitness culture. From professional athletes to weekend warriors, many swear by the post-workout plunge, hoping the icy shock will ease soreness, calm inflammation and help their bodies bounce back faster. But recent research from the Netherlands reveals a surprising downside: those freezing dips might actually slow muscle growth.
When you expose your body to cold, like during an ice bath, your blood vessels constrict. This can reduce swelling, flush out waste products from your workout and ease the muscle soreness that occurs a day or two after intense exercise. That post-workout ache is a sign that your muscles are repairing. So when it fades, it feels like you’re ready to hit the gym again, which helps explain why ice baths are so popular.
But there’s a twist. The very inflammation that causes soreness is also part of how your muscles heal and grow. Shut it down too soon and you might be holding back your progress.
In the recent study, researchers at Maastricht University tested how cold temperatures affect nutrient delivery and muscle-building signals. Twelve healthy young men each did a strength workout using just one leg. Immediately afterwards, each immersed that leg in 8°C water for 20 minutes, while the other leg sat in 30°C water (the “control”). The scientists then measured blood flow and tracked how the muscles used protein to see how the cold affected recovery and muscle-building processes.
The results were clear: right after the ice bath, blood flow in the cold-exposed leg dropped by about 60% compared with the warm-water leg.
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Even three hours after the workout, blood flow to the muscle that had been cooled was still noticeably lower. Since muscles rely on blood to deliver nutrients, such as amino acids and oxygen, this meant they were getting less of what they needed to grow. In fact, the researchers found about 30% less of the building blocks of protein being used by the muscle.
After strength training, blood flow to your muscles normally increases – a response known as hyperemia. This rush of blood brings important nutrients like amino acids, oxygen and insulin, all of which help to trigger the muscle-building process.
But when you expose your muscles to cold right after a workout, the blood vessels tighten – a reaction called vasoconstriction – which limits how much of those nutrients get through. That means your muscles may miss out during an important window for growth and recovery.
After a workout, a bit of inflammation is actually a good thing – it signals your body to start the repair process. Immune cells release special proteins called cytokines – chemical messengers that help spark muscle repair.
But cooling the muscles too soon, like with an ice bath, can reduce this natural response. It dampens the signals and slows the activation of those repair cells, which may lead to slower progress and less muscle growth over time.
Not all ice baths are equal
Most athletes who use ice baths jump in within minutes after a workout, usually soaking in water between 8°C and 15°C for ten to 20 minutes. This is the standard protocol, although coaches and athletes often adjust the timing and temperature, depending on their goals.
Waiting at least an hour before taking an ice bath might be a smart move as it gives the body time to initiate important muscle-building signals and absorb nutrients without interference. Also, using milder cold water (around 15°C) is gentler on blood flow compared with very cold water. That means it can still help ease soreness without slowing muscle growth as much as colder temperatures might.
How often you use ice baths makes a difference too. In the Maastricht study and others like it, participants used cold plunges after every workout, which led to less muscle growth over time. But if you save ice baths for especially tough days, like during competitions or intense training weeks, athletes can avoid some of those negative effects while still getting recovery benefits when they need them most.
If the goal is to stay sharp and recover quickly – rather than building maximum muscle – then a slight drop in muscle growth might be a fair trade-off for feeling fresher and bouncing back faster.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about ice baths and muscle growth. Most studies so far have focused on young men, so it’s unclear if women, older adults or people with muscle loss due to health conditions respond the same way. More research is needed to understand how cold therapy affects different groups of people.
Most research so far has focused on soaking just one arm or leg, but full-body ice baths might cause different reactions in the body, such as changes in hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, that could affect how muscles adapt. Bigger studies are needed to figure out the best timing, temperature and how different people respond to cold therapy.
The allure of ice baths is understandable: who doesn’t want to feel less sore after a gruelling training session? But current data should serve as a cautionary tale – muscles need blood, nutrients and even inflammation to grow. By plunging immediately into icy water, athletes risk dampening the very signals that drive muscle growth.
For people who want to maximise muscle size and strength, it might be best to skip the ice bath or delay it by at least an hour. But for athletes facing tough competition schedules who need to recover quickly, carefully timed ice baths can be a helpful tool. Ultimately, each athlete must weigh the benefits of feeling less sore against the possibility of slower muscle growth and adjust how they use cold therapy based on their personal goals and training demands.
Michelle Spear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The new musical film Juliet and Romeo arrives on screen with lavish visuals, saccharine pop songs and a reworked Shakespearean plot that tries to dazzle. With its vivid colour palette and dreamy masquerade aesthetic, this is Verona as filtered through a Eurovision lens: glittering, melodramatic and frequently overwrought.
Writer and director Timothy Scott Bogart and composer Evan Kidd join a lineage of Romeo and Juliet adaptations that blend music with spectacle. Who could forget Harold Perrineau’s drag rendition of Young Hearts Run Free as Mercutio in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996)? More recently, the stage show & Juliet (2019) used the iconic songwriting of Max Martin for a jukebox musical meets feminist retelling of the tragedy. So where does Juliet and Romeo fall in comparison?
Let’s begin with the fair, before turning to the foul. Shot on location in the real Verona, Juliet and Romeo makes excellent use of its scenery, with inventive sets and clever staging that breathe some vitality into its world.
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Verona’s jewel tones, candlelit street parties and endless twisting streets grant the film its fairytale quality. There’s a tactile richness to the production design that occasionally feels immersive, evoking a heightened world somewhere between Shakespeare’s imagined Verona and a perfume advert. The array of fight, dance, and crowd scenes are well-choreographed and the camera often moves with an energetic theatricality that hints at what the musical could have been.
Unfortunately, the music doesn’t keep pace. While the pop soundtrack is relentlessly inoffensive – think bubblegum ballads and power choruses – it lacks the lyrical bite or emotional weight needed to sustain a tragedy.
With sugary harmonies and banal lyrics, these numbers evoke more Eurovision than Elizabethan drama – not inherently a bad thing, but in this case, it results in emotional flatness. For example, a number like Better Than This, led with verve by Martina Ortiz Luis as Veronica, stands out slightly with its charming melody and joyful choreography. It’s a moment of brightness that briefly lifts the energy. But even that slips into the overall sameness of the score. At its best, the music is cutesy; at its worst, it’s filler.
The trailer for Juliet & Romeo.
The character work is similarly uneven. Juliet (Clara Rugaard) emerges as the most compelling figure – wry, self-aware, and played with just enough spunk to avoid cliché. Romeo (Jamie Ward), by contrast, is a forgettable boy-band archetype, rebelling weakly against a domineering father (Jason Isaacs channelling medieval Lucius Malfoy) and contributing little beyond brooding charm.
Derek Jacobi’s gravitas is squandered on narration and playing the hapless Friar Lawrence. Juliet and Romeo opens with a flurry of historical exposition delivered by Jacobi: medieval Italy, papal politics, the splintering of city-states, and the threat of “mighty Rome” coming for Verona. It’s an ambitious – if unnecessary – reframing that sets up a late-stage twist that gestures toward a sequel.
The supporting cast is also a mix of intriguing choices and tonal confusion. Mercutio’s (Nicholas Podany) subplot, involving his own forbidden love and tense relationship with an adoptive Montague patriarch, hints at deeper parallels to the central couple, but is never fully developed. The apothecary (Dan Fogler), bafflingly, gets a solo about alchemical experiments that feels lifted from a mid-tier Disney sequel. Meanwhile, the nurse (Sara Lazzaro), usually a comedic gem, is stripped of humour entirely.
The Mask I Wear from Juliet & Romeo.
A standout number comes from Rebel Wilson’s Lady Capulet and Verona’s women, who lament in The Mask I Wear about the constraints of femininity in well-arranged harmony. Yet the song’s emotional resonance is blunted by underwritten character arcs. The women sing beautifully, but we barely know why they’re angry.
In the end, Juliet and Romeo is a musical that strains to be meaningful but never earns its emotional crescendos. It gestures toward political intrigue, feminist revision and star-crossed romance, but settles for spectacle. Still, with its sparkling visuals and glossy score, for fans of unapologetic musical fanfare, there’s some joy to be found in the glitter.
Emily Rowe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alex Newman, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Sustainability Assessment at the Grantham Centre, University of Sheffield
Tomatoes could be grown at an industrial scale using heat generated from burning household waste in Essex, UK. Jenoche/Shutterstock
A new project in Bradwell, Essex, aims to change how we grow food and how we deal with our rubbish. Slated to begin operations in 2027, the Rivenhall greenhouse project could become Europe’s largest low-carbon horticulture facility.
The idea is to close two loops at once. By processing most of Essex’s household waste, the region’s reliance on landfill can be reduced – this cuts the amount of biodegradable waste decomposing to release methane (a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide). Also, by diverting the energy from that waste to grow food locally, less produce will need to be imported from regions increasingly vulnerable to climate-related stresses like drought and water scarcity.
The giant greenhouse will sit next to the Rivenhall integrated waste management facility, operated by waste company Indaver. Household waste will be incinerated on site, producing steam. Some of that steam will drive turbines to generate electricity and power the greenhouse. The rest of the steam will heat the greenhouse at a constant temperature all year round.
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To further reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a carbon capture system (separates CO₂ from other gases in exhaust streams) will extract around 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually from the incinerator’s flue gases. Rather than releasing this into the atmosphere, the captured carbon dioxide will be piped into the greenhouse to enhance plant growth.
Still, the scale of carbon capture is modest and not a quick fix. The 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide expected to be captured annually represents less than 10% of typical emissions from similar-scale waste facilities.
The facility will include 13 hectares of artificially lit greenhouse space for winter growing and a vertical farm (growing crops in stacked layers) converted from a former RAF hangar to grow leafy greens. In theory, this creates a resilient, year-round food production system largely decoupled from fossil fuels and climate-sensitive imports.
Burning waste to grow tomatoes might sound counterintuitive. Incinerators still release emissions after all. As a method of electricity generation, incineration of waste has a higher carbon footprint than burning coal. But in the context of current waste management and food import practices, it may make sense.
According to the UK government’s Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, around 30.8% of England’s household waste went to landfill in 2023 (around 8 million tonnes). Landfill emissions (primarily methane) are not just large – they’re long-lived and hard to capture.
Rivenhall’s model claims to reduce total greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 20% compared to landfill. When electricity, heat, and food outputs are factored in, and carbon capture included, emissions per kilogram of tomato could be substantially lower than those from conventional imports or fossil-powered greenhouses.
But low-carbon status is not a badge that companies claim, it’s a result that needs to be verified. In lifecycle assessment (a method for measuring the environmental impacts of a product, service, or system, and the focus of my research), low-carbon status only applies if net emissions per kilogram of tomato are demonstrably lower than those from the realistic baseline.
That baseline, be it landfill, composting, anaerobic digestion, or recycling, must be clearly defined. If incinerated waste includes material better suited to recycling, the claimed benefits narrow or vanish.
The success of this particular project hinges not just on technical integration, but on accurate emissions accounting and efficient performance of carbon capture systems.
According to the waste hierarchy, the most sustainable strategy for reducing waste-related emissions is not incineration, but waste prevention and reduction. Energy recovery is better than landfill, but less preferable than eliminating waste altogether.
The bigger picture
In the Netherlands, greenhouses often run on combined heat and power systems. In Canada, some horticultural operations use industrial waste heat. But Rivenhall’s scale and its tight integration with waste management infrastructure makes it unusual. If it works, it could serve as a blueprint for how regions can simultaneously tackle food security and waste while keeping the environmental cost of consumption closer to home.
Beyond greenhouse gas emissions, there are other environmental considerations. Even modern incinerators produce air-polluting nitrogen oxides and particulates, which must be rigorously controlled to avoid human health problems such as lung disease. To comply with the UK’s biodiversity net gain rules, natural habitats and wildlife populations around this site must be enhanced, not degraded.
While delivering on its technical promises, Rivenhall must also prove that its low-carbon credentials are more than just hot air. Even so, projects like this are no substitute for upstream solutions like waste prevention, reduced consumption and circular design.
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Alex Newman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Francesco Grillo, Academic Fellow, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University
Shutterstock/Coffeemil
I believe we Europeans feel far too safe. Europe’s political and economic leadership in the world, which was still unchallenged at the beginning of the century, has long since ceased to exist. Will the dominant cultural influence of Europe be maintained? I think not, unless we defend it and adjust ourselves to new conditions; history has shown that civilisations are all too perishable.
It is astonishing how much these words used in 1956 by Konrad Adenauer, one of the founding fathers of the European Union, still sound valid today. They perfectly define the current state of the union. Europeans are still struggling to adjust to new conditions – and the conditions to which they need to adjust also continue to change dramatically.
The battle for technological leadership is the current version of this struggle. Success in this domain could transform Europe, yet the continent remains complacent about its decline into backwardness. The European commission itself calculates that of the 19 digital platforms that have more than 45 million EU users, only one (Zalando) is from the EU.
Information is (economic and political) power and losing control means to gradually lose both market share and the ability to protect European democracies. Brussels has produced a mass of regulation on digital services, yet American digital platforms are getting away with what European leaders themselves call the manipulation of democratic elections, with very little repercussions. Elon Musk’s X, was banned in Brazil for less – refusing to ban accounts accused of spreading misinformation.
This decline, however, has been slow enough to lull European leaders into complacency about the future.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has a point when he laments that the European Union has been slow to engage in the negotiations he imposed on trade. Indeed, even on trade – one of the very few areas in which the European Union has a mandate from the member states to deal directly with third parties – progress is generally stuttering. The commissioner in charge has to constantly find a common denominator with the agendas of 27 member states, each of which has a different industrial agenda.
Europe’s decision-making processes are sub-optimal. Indeed, they were built for a different age. There is no shared voice on foreign policy – the EU has been able to say far less on Gaza than individual countries like Spain or the UK, for example. This may have the practical consequence of eroding the “moral leadership” that should still be Europe’s soft advantage.
Crisis of confidence
Europe’s failure to respond to real-world changes is due to sub-optimal institutional settings. However the current paralysis in the face of clear need for action may be due to an even more fundamental question of trust in its own capabilities.
On one hand, there still seems room for complacency. As Stanley Pignal, the Charlemagne columnist for The Economist, recently put it, Europe can take a moderate amount of satisfaction from its continued status as a place where people are free to pursue “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. Yet, it is evident that the institutions needed to concretely achieve those objectives are crumbling: healthcare systems and welfare; robust and independent media; energy and military autonomy in a world without order.
On the other hand, Europe is increasingly resigned. A global poll taken by Gallup International shows that when responding to the question “do you think that your children will live better than you?” seven of the most pessimistic countries of the world are from the EU. Only 16% of Italians and 24% of French respondents answered “yes” to this question.
According to Ipsos, less than half of young Europeans feel prepared to enter the job market. And they blame the education system for that. The picture may well be even worse now – this survey was taken in 2019, before the pandemic, war in Europe and, more importantly, AI made the picture even more uncertain.
Europe has no alternative, as even far-right and far-left parties seem to acknowledge. Note that France’s Rassemblement National and Italy’s Lega no longer talk about exiting the EU but about changing it from the inside. Individual nation states simply do not have the minimum scale to even try to take leadership in a world looking for a new order.
In a world abandoned by the US, Europe stands a real chance. However, it urgently needs to be creative enough to imagine new mechanisms through which EU institutions take decisions and EU citizens have their say. This in turn requires an entire society to somehow recover the reasonable hope that decline is not inevitable (although we also must be aware that it may even nastily accelerate).
Finally, young people are absolutely crucial in the process. The rhetoric of “listening to them” must now be replaced by a call for them to govern. They are today what Karl Marx would have probably defined as a class – with very specific demographic, cultural, economic and linguistic characteristics. These must be turned into a political agenda and a new vision of what Europe of the future could look like.
The challenges ahead for the European Union will be the subject of the forthcoming conference on the Europe of the future in Siena, Italy. This will feed into a seven-point paper that will be discussed with EU institutions.
Francesco Grillo is associated to VISION think tank.
Source: United States Department of Defense (video statements)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth commemorates the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings by American and Allied troops during a ceremony at Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France. June 6, 2025.
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Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Scientists comment on news that the UK government is investing in a nuclear plant at the Sizewell C site and a small modular reactor programme.
Prof Patrick Regan, Professor of Nuclear Metrology, University of Surrey, said:
“The announcement that the UK government has committed £14.2bn of investment to build European Pressurized Reactors (EPRs) at the Sizewell C site will contribute to the UK tackling the delicate balance between ever-increasing secure energy requirements and our commitment to achieving net-zero. The EPRs planned at Sizewell C represent Generation 3+ technology and build on more than 70 years of operational reactor experience worldwide to provide the cleanest, safest and most efficient form of nuclear power yet.
“This large investment, however, brings with it the obvious need to produce and maintain a highly skilled, expert workforce related to all phases of the Sizewell C project. Science and Engineering Apprentice, Graduate and Post-Graduate training in areas such as chemical engineering, material science, nuclear physics & radiochemistry, environmental monitoring, radiation measurement and health physics will be key in enabling ‘life-long’ UK-based careers in this industry, in line with such a far horizon project. This is a long-term investment in the UK’s national infrastructure, and it needs a skilled workforce to ensure its ultimate success.”
Dr Phil Johnstone, Principal Research Fellow, University of Sussex Science Policy Research Unit, Patron of Nuclear Information Service, Member of Sussex Energy Group, and Member of Nuclear Consultation Group:
Is this a good move?
“The decision on Sizewell C is a bad move. It will likely lead to increasing costs for UK electricity consumers and represents a significantly slower means of combatting climate change than alternative options. The announcement comes alongside the decision to select submarine reactor manufacturer Rolls Royce as the winning bidder to develop Small Modular Reactors. These are part of the same underlying goal: to sustain the UK military nuclear industrial base via subsidies from civil nuclear power, with democratic scrutiny of this strategy almost entirely absent.”
Prof Andy Stirling, professor of science and technology policy at the University of Sussex Science Policy Research Unit:
Is this a good move (or not) when it comes to energy and fossil fuels?
“It is well acknowledged behind the scenes (but denied in public), that this move is more intended to support the kind of nuclear industrial base needed for military than for climate reasons. Nuclear power stations like Sizewell C are so slow and expensive compared to renewables and storage strategies, that they erode rather than enhance climate action.”
What does this mean for UK energy production? Is there overspeculation?
“This will make UK energy production needlessly more expensive, less secure and less effective in climate terms, than if the same money had been spent on renewables and energy storage.”
What does the science say?
“On this as on many other policy issues, what counts as ‘the science’ is more uncertain and context-dependent than any side typically implies. If either nuclear advocates or critics claim their arguments to be uniquely or unequivocally science-based then that is a sign that they are seeking to mislead.”
Dr Sarah Darby, Emerita Research Fellow, Energy Programme, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, said:
“The argument that building Sizewell C will be markedly cheaper and quicker than Hinkley C is weak. Hinkley C is ‘first of a kind’ in the UK but has the same design as Olkiluoto in Finland and Flamanville in France. These two have been, respectively, over 10 years late and almost four times over budget [1] and over 12 years late and over four times over budget in real terms [2,3]. Neither is yet working reliably [4,5].
“The unfinished Hinkley C was reported by EdF last year as already 90% over budget and 7 years late – and EdF do not expect it to be finished before 2029-31.
“In the light of these figures from three power plants of the same design as SZC, Ed Miliband’s forecast of a 10-year build time looks wildly optimistic. Where cost and complexity are concerned, there is the additional concern about the SZC site being on a flood-prone and eroding coastline, with sea levels on the rise.
“EdF are now wholly owned by the French government, following their extreme financial difficulties, and it is unclear whether they will take any stake at all in SZC. This is hardly a vote of confidence in the prospects of their own design.
“The argument that nuclear build helps with climate goals is similarly weak. New nuclear would arrive too late to assist – renewables already supply over half of UK generation [6] – and are on the rise. The massive sums involved are money not spent on quicker and more effective moves towards energy transition. Bloomberg NEF’s latest assessment of energy transition investment trends* refers to renewables, energy storage, electric vehicles, and power grids as ‘proven, commercially scalable [and with] established business models’, yet categorises nuclear power as an ‘emerging’ technology, with investment held back by lack of affordability and technology maturity [7].
“Nuclear is being presented by the Government as complementary to renewables, for ‘when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow’. But what we need for these times – and for times of abundant renewable supply – is flexibility from storage and demand-side response, not large-scale inflexible power plants that cannot easily be turned down or up and that can be shut down at a moment’s notice [5,8].
“As so often, the debate is focused on supply rather than demand – what we use energy for. The government are citing figures of a doubling of demand by 2050 that are certainly not set in stone and likely to be exaggerated. AI demands are the new kid on the block but, as DeepSeek has shown, they need not be nearly as high as is often made out. There is still plenty of scope to improve energy security through energy efficiency, allied with storage and demand-side response, without compromising quality of life [9].
“Successive governments have already sunk £6.4bn of taxpayers’ money into Sizewell C, but this is no reason to compound the error. A further £14.2bn is substantial but falls a long way short of the £40bn ‘overnight’ cost estimated by the FT [10]. Further, this £40bn estimate does not take into account the costs of capital, decommissioning and disposal of waste. The last of these is itself a topic of major concern to the Public Accounts Committee [11].
“It is not too late to avoid a FID for Sizewell C and to steer funding in more productive directions, including modernisation of the electricity grid, energy efficient buildings and transport systems, and storage. Such investment could create jobs and improve living conditions around the country.”
Stephanie Baxter, Head of Policy, Institution of Engineering and Technology, said:
“The £14.2 billion of funding announced today for the development of Sizewell C, alongside selecting Rolls-Royce SMR as the preferred bidder to develop the UK’s first small modular reactors, marks an important step forward towards nuclear playing a significant role in the UK’s energy mix.
“Nuclear infrastructure, both large and small, will be needed in our energy system if the UK is to have a secure, affordable and sustainable energy system for 2030 and beyond. However, the Government must also take a whole system view of the wider energy system to ensure new nuclear infrastructure compliments other energy generation and distribution resources currently deployed and being developed.
“Significant infrastructure projects such as these rely on long-term stability – in the supply chain, regulations and the skills pipeline. That is why today’s announcements must be backed up by clear plans for delivery, including engagement with local communities.
“These ambitions will also not be met without the skilled engineering and technician workforce that will be critical to delivering and maintaining new nuclear infrastructure.
“Great British Energy must work closely with Skills England to ensure that these plans are backed by a long-term workforce strategy to deliver skilled job opportunities across the country – both by training up new workers in schools and colleges, and upskilling/reskilling the existing workforce through flexible funding in the Growth and Skills Levy.”
Will Davis, Nuclear Expert and a Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s Sustainability and Net Zero Policy Centre, said:
“Today’s announcements are a clear demonstration of the government’s long-term commitment to low-carbon energy security, extending beyond the 2030 clean power target and taking concrete steps toward achieving net zero by 2050.
“To meet our net zero ambitions, we must significantly scale up electricity generation – by two to three times current levels – and this will only be possible through large-scale projects like Sizewell C and the Small Modular Reactor (SMR) programme.
“While these developments are both welcome and necessary, the UK nuclear industry must address its ongoing credibility challenges around delivering projects on time and within budget. Unlike the UK’s Hinkley Point C, nuclear projects in countries like China and the UAE have avoided major delays. Learning from these international examples is essential if we are to attract private investment and reduce reliance on gas-fired power stations.
“The selection of a preferred bidder for the SMR fleet is a long-awaited milestone – over a decade in the making – and we’re pleased to see it finally progressing.
“The clarification of roles between Great British Energy and Great British Energy – Nuclear, with NESO overseeing the critical upgrades to our national electricity infrastructure is welcomed. These upgrades are vital and must be properly funded, not treated as an afterthought.
“With the announcements on Sizewell C and SMRs, we urge the government to clarify its position on future gigawatt-scale nuclear projects, such as the previously proposed development at Wylfa.
“New nuclear power stations require a high-tech supply chain and a highly skilled workforce. Investment in key manufacturers like Sheffield Forgemasters is encouraging, but broader supply chain investment hinges on project certainty – contracts must be signed.
“The IET continues to support the sector through initiatives like the Nuclear Skills Taskforce. We’re also pleased to see continued investment in STEP, the UK’s prototype fusion power plant. A £2.5 billion commitment is significant and deserves more visibility.
“However, we note the absence of updates on advanced nuclear technologies, which could play a crucial role in decarbonising hard-to-abate sectors such as steelmaking and hydrogen production. We hope to see further clarity on this soon.”
Dr Lewis Blackburn, Lecturer in Nuclear Materials, University of Sheffield, said:
“Today the UK government demonstrated a clear and renewed commitment to nuclear fission as a means to achieve Net Zero, a key goal that was outlined in the 2024 White Paper “Civil Nuclear: Roadmap to 2050”. This comes in the form of an approximately £14B commitment to the Sizewell C project, comprising two EPR (European Pressurised Reactors) delivering a total of 3.2 GWe. The project is forecast to support 70k jobs and produce enough energy to power 6M UK homes. Today’s news also comes alongside an announcement that Rolls-Royce have been identified as the preferred bidder to construct the UK’s first Small Modular Reactors (SMR) – a fleet of smaller fission reactors designed to be built ‘modular’ on a production line, prior to shipping and assembly on-site.
“The UK faces a potential skills challenge in the field of nuclear engineering and projects like Sizewell C and Rolls-Royce SMR offer an exciting opportunity to build a skills pipeline, increasing the number and diversity of people entering the nuclear workforce, and bolstering the supply chain.
“In order for the UK to maintain its international reputation as a leader in civil nuclear, it must continue to invest heavily in new infrastructure, the wider industrial supply chain and R&D. Thus, producing the next generation of nuclear expertise in both the industrial and academic sectors, equipping them with the skills required for the UK to continue to utilise nuclear fission, safely, for generations to come.
“An important aspect of this is ensuring that highly radioactive waste, generated as a by-product of nuclear fission, is not passed onto future generations and is permanently disposed of. In this area, the UK is in the process of siting a geological disposal facility – a dedicated site wherein intermediate and high-level radioactive waste will be isolated from the wider environment permanently. The international consensus in the wider scientific and technical community is that this is the only feasible way to safely manage such wastes, ensuring passive safety. This is the focus of significant R&D in both the technical and academic space.”
Dr Mark Foreman, Associate professor of Nuclear Chemistry / Industrial Materials Recycling, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, said:
“Building a new power plant based on light water reactors at Sizewell is a good idea, it will provide a reliable supply of electric power which will help society reduce its dependency on fossil fuels. I hold the view that it will be a safe means of providing for the energy needs of society. Many critics of nuclear power use the example of the Chornobyl accident to argue that all nuclear power plants are unsafe. This is unreasonable, operating the Chornobyl reactor in the same way as it was just before the accident can be thought of as like roller blading along the M1. While running modern (or even a 1980s era) light water reactor is like calmly driving a Volvo equipped with all the latest safety features along the M1.”
Prof Robin Grimes FRS FREng, Professor of materials physics, Imperial College London, said:
“Large plants such as Hinckley, currently under construction and this announced plant at Sizewell are very good at providing constant base load electricity capacity. They are also good for supporting grid stability and providing inertia. Of course they offer generation diversity and energy security. They will offer these benefits for many decades. As we turn to more electricity use to reduce carbon emissions we will need more nuclear electrify. However, large plant are less good at helping with the inherent intermittency of renewables. For this we need the greater flexibility as provided by small modular reactors or the higher temperatures of advanced modular reactors which offer access to more technology options for decarbonisation. I therefore see this announcement as part of the systems approach by which we progress to greater energy security and decarbonisation.”
Prof David Armstrong, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering (Department of Materials), University of Oxford, said:
“This is excellent news for the UK energy landscape. As the UKs aging AGR fleet retires new baseload energy is required. Sizewell C will sit alongside Hinkley Point B to provide sustainable emission free baseload energy complementing the growing wind and solar power and making a significant contribution to UK energy security.”
Dr Iain Staffell, Associate Professor of Sustainable Energy at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, said:
“Today’s decision is an important one, but even with Hinkley C and Sizewell C, the UK’s nuclear capacity in the 2030s will still be below its 1990s peak.
“After a decade of dithering, Sizewell C is a litmus test of the UK’s ability to deliver complex infrastructure on schedule.
“This deal lives or dies on its delivery. Sizewell C must be built on time and on budget, learning from the (many) mistakes from Hinkley Point C and other UK mega-projects.
“Nuclear power offers a strong energy security hedge. Fuel and key parts can be stockpiled, insulating consumers from foreign instability and gas price spikes.
“Sizewell C won’t start generating for nearly a decade if it is built on time, so it only just contributes towards the Government’s 2035 clean-power goal. But, it is building for the long-term, and will deliver carbon-free electricity well into the 2080s.
“People are rightly concerned by the environmental impacts and emissions from the enormous construction project, but compared to the scale of energy production over the next six decades, nuclear remains one of the cleanest power sources we have.
“The upfront cost is undoubtedly high. £14 billion could fund around 10 GW of offshore wind versus just 3.2 GW of nuclear. But, these reactors will run day and night, especially valuable when the wind is not blowing.”
Louis Barson, the Institute of Physics Director of Science, Innovation and Skills said:
“It is good to see this decision made about developing Sizewell C. New nuclear will play a vital role in bringing reliable, secure and affordable power to new markets, decarbonising industry and helping countries meet their net zero commitments – as part of our future low-carbon energy mix.
“But we need to make sure we also pay attention to the desperate need for hundreds of thousands of skilled workers to support both this project and the development of smaller, modular, nuclear reactors.
“Signing off on Sizewell C is only half the picture, we need the nuclear-ready scientific workforce to make it a reality: that means more physics teachers, well-funded physics departments in universities and a healthy pipeline of physics talent.”
Tom Greatrex, Chief Executive, Nuclear Industry Association, said:
On Sizewell C Given Go-Ahead from Government
“This is a momentous day for Sizewell C and for the British nuclear programme. Sizewell C is one of Britain’s most important clean power projects, and will give the country the jobs, the economic growth and the energy security we need to ensure a secure and reliable power supply for the future. This record investment confirms the government is serious about building new nuclear and all the economic benefits that come with it, and will be welcomed in communities the length and breadth of Britain.”
On Rolls-Royce SMR Winning the UK SMR Competition
“This is a hugely significant moment for Rolls-Royce SMR and for the British nuclear programme. These SMRs will provide essential energy security and clean power alongside large scale reactors, all the while creating thousands of well-paid, skilled jobs, opportunities for growth right across the country and significant export potential. We look forward to working with Rolls-Royce SMR and all other potential SMR vendors, including those not successful today, on making Britain the best place to build new nuclear anywhere in the world.”
Prof Mark Wenman, Professor in Nuclear Materials, Imperial College London, said:
“This is a big step forward. Since the 1990s the amount of nuclear energy the UK produces has been steadily declining from around 12 to 4.5 GWe today. Sizewell C will help reverse this trend and further provide the UK with energy security. It will help balance the grid with the increase of renewables, replace fossil fuel plants and protect us against potential blackouts, as recently seen in Spain. Whilst the costs may seem high initially, this needs to be balanced against the fact that these reactors will produce low carbon electricity for 80 or possibly 100 years, 24/7, providing around a tenth of the current UK electricity needs. Once paid for, nuclear reactors produce the cheapest electricity of any kind, so this investment should be seen as future proofing the UK electricity system.”
Prof Adrian Bull,Chair in Nuclear Energy and Society, Dalton Nuclear Institute, University of Manchester, said:
“It’s very welcome news to see the announcements today of Government support for a new wave of nuclear power in this country. We’ve known for decades that reliance on imported gas could ruin the environment – but recent years showed us that it can ruin the economy too. Nuclear gives much-needed resilience against global fossil fuel prices, without emitting the gases that cause climate change, so it’s excellent news that we are going to see new plants – both large and small – built.
“I’m especially pleased that we have finally got over our national phobia of replicating a previous project. We’ve never done that in our UK nuclear fleet before, but the rest of the world learned ages ago that series construction is the route to certainty over the time and budget for such projects. Doing the same things at Sizewell which we have already done at Hinkley Point is much easier than starting from scratch to build a massively complex plant for the first time.
“The announcement of Rolls Royce as the winner of the SMR competition is a welcome sign of progress, but it’s disappointing to see only one winner selected, when we had all anticipated more. Government has long been supporting the Rolls Royce SMR project – with over £200m of public funds provided already – so it was inconceivable they would not be on the podium at the end of the race. Seeing them there alone makes the two years spent by Great British Nuclear on running a competition look like time and effort that could have been better spent.
“Overall though, these nuclear plants – whilst not cheap – will produce reliable, low carbon electricity around the clock and will most likely do so for the best part of a century. This is an investment in our grandchildren’s future as well as helping towards our 2050 climate goal.”
Prof Dame Sue Ion GBE FREng FRS, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said:
“It’s really good news that the Government is finally taking steps to ensure that nuclear energy plays the vital role it should in achieving significant quantities of stable low carbon electricity. Perhaps as importantly, if not more so, is the news that Rolls Royce’s Small Modular Reactor has been selected as the technology of choice to progress the opportunity presented by SMRs. These systems are designed from the outset to be modular, with modern construction techniques using much more factory fabrication, so they will be faster and easier to build.”
Prof Tom Scott, Professor in Materials, University of Bristol, said:
“This is an extremely important strategic step for the UK towards achieving net zero carbon emissions. Nuclear energy is a safe, secure and reliable form of electricity generation. With the lessons learnt from the Hinkley Point C project, and with the experienced workforce and supply chain that has been established because of it, my expectations are high for the delivery of Sizewell C at a much lower cost and shorter timescale.
“The announcement about Government investment in Sizewell C and more excitingly, about the investment in Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), really shows the Government’s understanding and commitment towards nuclear as a key part of the solution towards achieving zero carbon emissions in the UK.
“SMRs offer the potential for providing new nuclear power stations much faster and more cheaply than conventional large-scale light water reactors like Hinkley Point C. Ultimately, the roll-out of SMRs delivered by British companies like Rolls-Royce will help to keep our electricity prices low whilst also generating high-value jobs across the U.K. This is a smart investment for the UK.”
Dr Mark Foreman, Associate professor of Nuclear Chemistry / Industrial Materials Recycling, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, said:
“Building a new power plant based on light water reactors at Sizewell is a good idea, it will provide a reliable supply of electric power which will help society reduce its dependency on fossil fuels. I hold the view that it will be a safe means of providing for the energy needs of society. Many critics of nuclear power use the example of the Chornobyl accident to argue that all nuclear power plants are unsafe. This is unreasonable, operating the Chornobyl reactor in the same way as it was just before the accident can be thought of as like roller blading along the M1. While running modern (or even a 1980s era) light water reactor is like calmly driving a Volvo equipped with all the latest safety features along the M1.”
Prof Adrian Bull: “I am a (paid) part time Professor at the Dalton Nuclear Institute, part of the University of Manchester; I am a (paid) consultant for US nuclear communications consultancy Full On Communications; I am an (unpaid) Board member of the Northern Nuclear Alliance; I am an (unpaid) Trustee of the Nuclear Institute; and am also the President-Elect, taking over in Jan 2026.”
Prof Dame Sue Ion: “Sue is Honorary President of the National Skills Academy for Nuclear.” “Sue is also a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Task Force.”
Prof Tom Scott: “In terms of interests, I am Director of the Spur West Nuclear Hub and Professor of Nuclear Materials at the University of Bristol sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering and the UK Atomic Energy Authority.
The nuclear hub is a consortium of academic, industrial and governmental partners coalescing around the requirement for research, skills and innovation in the UK nuclear sector.”
Dr Mark Foreman: “I have worked on advanced nuclear reprocessing for years and have also have worked on nuclear reactor safety issues. I have done and supervised research on the chemistry of nuclear accidents.”
Prof Mark Wenman “I have previously received funding for research from EDF Energy, Rolls-Royce, the UK National Nuclear Lab”
Tom Greatrex “The NIA is funded by its 320 member companies from across the civil nuclear industry.”
Dr Iain Staffell “I receive industry funding from a several companies in the UK and European energy sector, I try to keep this balanced so as not to over-represent any one technology or organization. Recent funding sources include: Drax, Octopus, SSE, HM Government, NESO (National Grid), EWE, Aurora, Baringa, Shell, Uniper, SLB, and the World Bank.”
Prof David Armstrong “I’ve had funding from UKAEA, Rolls Royce and EdF for research and students over the last 20 years.”
Prof Robin Grimes “I am a non-executive director of UKAEA and receive research funding from the UK national nuclear laboratory.”
Dr Mark Foreman “I do not currently get any money from the nuclear industry, I do not stand to make any money from the sales of nuclear products / technology. I have not been employed by the nuclear industry. I think that in terms of conflicts of interest I have none.”
Dr Lewis Blackburn“He receives funding from industry via Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, National Nuclear Laboratory, and Nuclear Waste Services”
Stephanie Baxter “No conflicts of interest.”
Will Davis “No conflicts of interest.”
Prof Andy Stirling “no conflicts of interest to declare.”
Dr Phil Johnstone “no conflicts of interest to declare.”
Dr Sarah Darby “I have no conflicts of interest to declare.”
For all other experts, no reply to our request for DOIs was received.
Applications will open for the fifth year of the Marine Fund Scotland today.
The fund will make £14 million available in 2025-26 to help deliver Scotland’s Blue Economy Vision, transform the way the marine environment is used and how Scotland’s ‘blue’ resources are managed.
Eligible individuals, businesses, and organisations can apply for funding for new projects that will contribute to an innovative and sustainable marine economy, support coastal communities, and help Scotland reach net zero emissions.
Last year, a total of 67 projects received funding, with grants ranging from under £1,000 up to £1.6 million. These projects included the modernising of seafood processing facilities to reduce energy consumption and improve efficiency; the first Scottish facility to recycle mixed material from fishing and aquaculture nets and marine litter prevention; support for young fishers purchasing their first fishing vessel; and marine research and innovation to protect iconic wild salmon.
Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands Mairi Gougeon said:
“Since 2021 the Marine Fund Scotland has awarded more than £55 million in grants to 330 projects, facilitating a total of £121 million of investment and supporting jobs and communities right around our coastline and throughout our islands. I urge all those with ideas for projects to help marine industries to evolve and flourish to apply.
“We are backing Scotland’s marine economy, which is crucial to the economic, social and cultural fabric of our rural, coastal and island communities. They now need the UK government to do the same and to provide Scotland with its fair share of funding.
“The UK Government recently announced a new £360 million Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund, and I am calling for a fair share of the budget allocation to be devolved. This multi-year funding will be key to delivering benefits for the marine economy and environment, as well as supporting coastal communities, for years to come. If this newly announced funding isn’t devolved to Scotland, it will duplicate the current funding programmes, causing stakeholder confusion and dilution of intended benefits.”
Donna Fordyce Chief Executive of Seafood Scotland said:
“The Marine Fund Scotland funding has been vital to not only retain existing markets for our premium Scottish seafood but to develop new markets to achieve the highest value for the industry. Funding also allowed Seafood Scotland to further develop the Seafood in Schools programme launching the Scottish Seafood Ambassador scheme and Teach the Teacher curriculum-linked educational resources. The aim is to increase consumption of our delicious seafood and highlight the sector as a career of choice; this is very relevant given the labour shortage the industry is currently facing.”
June 9, 2025 – Ottawa, Ontario – Global Affairs Canada
The Honourable Anita Anand, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today announced that she will welcome Deputy Prime Minister,
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade, Cooperation, and Humanitarian Affairs of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, to Ottawa from June 10 to 12, 2025.
Minister Anand and Minister Bettel will meet to discuss working together to advance our countries’ shared interests, including bolstering the rules based international order and maintaining a strong global economy.
During his visit, Minister Bettel will inaugurate Luxembourg’s new diplomatic presence in Canada, highlight 80 years of bilateral relations, and celebrate Luxembourg’s National Day, which is on June 23. The Honourable Rob Oliphant, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, will participate in a reception hosted by Luxembourg to mark these important occasions.
Professor of anthropology Dimitris Xygalatas is a scientist and self-declared rational thinker. But he’s also a lifelong soccer fan, and he fully admits that when his Greek home team finally won their league in 2019, he cried tears of joy.
“Not what you might call a rational organism’s behavior,” he jokes.
But his reaction is in keeping with his latest study, published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), which shows that the intense feelings of joy, unity, and excitement fans experience surrounding sports can be less about the game and more about the ritual of coming together.
“Rituals are the kinds of things that, at first glance, don’t make any sense in terms of human behavior, but are deeply meaningful to people,” says Xygalatas.
With the cooperation of a die-hard Brazilian soccer (actually, it’s “football,” Xygalatas grudgingly reminds us Americans) fan club, Xygalatas and his team tracked the physiological arousal of fans before, during, and after a state championship final in Minas Gerais between local rival teams.
Using wearable heart monitors, they measured the emotional reactions of fans during the ritual of Rua de Fogo (Street of Fire), where crowds gather near the stadium to welcome the team’s bus. As it arrives, fans light flares, smoke bombs, and fireworks, wave flags, and chant to boost team morale and unify supporters.
The scientists outfitted participants with EKG monitors hidden beneath their clothing. The devices measured heart rate fluctuations, which is a proxy for emotional arousal, as fans participated in the pre-game celebration, entered the stadium, and watched the match unfold.
What they found was striking: The levels of shared excitement, or what the scientists call “collective effervescence,” peaked not during the game, but during the pre-game fan rituals.
Only when the home team scored a goal did those physiological markers exceed the emotional high of the pre-match gathering.
“What we see is that, in fact, the pre-game ritual generates more emotional synchrony than the game itself,” Xygalatas says. “There’s a single moment in the entire game when they have more collective emotional synchrony than the pre-game ritual, and that’s when they scored a goal.”
The findings underscore Xygalatas’ broader work to understand how ritual shapes human behavior and identity.
Xygalatas’ past research has taken him to remote firewalking ceremonies and intense religious festivals. But soccer, he says, offers a unique laboratory: It’s a global obsession that’s rich in ritual and pageantry, but largely free from political or religious ideology.
“People attribute a lot of meaning to sports,” Xygalatas says. “Sports generate billions and billions of dollars globally, and they take up so much of people’s attention. And the reason they do that is not just because of what’s happening on the pitch. It’s because of these ritualized interactions that occur among the fans.”
The implications, the paper argues, extend beyond sports. Ritualized group behaviors like concerts, religious ceremonies, or political rallies, may powerfully shape people’s emotions and even their beliefs.
“By going to these events, we’re actually shaping our beliefs,” he says. “So, sports is not just an excuse for people to get together. It’s a driver of identity.”
Xygalatas speaks from experience. As a young man growing up in Thessaloniki, Greece, he was a member of a soccer fan club. One day, while wearing his team’s scarf in the wrong neighborhood, he was ambushed by four men and brutally attacked, an incident that echoes the fatal beating of a 19-year-old in his hometown years later, also over team allegiance.
“I felt a blow to my head from behind, and next thing I knew, there were four men beating me, kicking me on the head, everywhere,” remembers Xygalatas. “The reason I was able to escape is that another group of men was turning the corner, wearing my insignia, so they chased them away.”
Football, he says, is the only sport that regularly leads to deadly violence, a fact that leagues and governing bodies like FIFA should take seriously.
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He says it’s in soccer clubs’ best interest to strike a balance between building loyalty, which Europeans and South Americans are excellent at doing, and making it safe for people to participate in.
Still, Xygalatas is clear that he’s not advocating for less passion. He hopes his work helps people understand why they care so deeply in the first place.
“If we look at what makes us human, we realize that it’s our ability and our need to derive meaning from things that seem meaningless,” he says.
Xygalatas’ co-authors on this paper are Mohammadamin Saraei, graduate student in the Department of Psychological Sciences; Vitor Leandro da Silva Profeta, professor in the Departamento de Educação Física at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; and Gabriela Baranowski-Pinto, professor in the Department of Human Movement Sciences at the Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais.
In almost the same way the rope aboard the Pequod “folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,” so too have the details of the 14th International Melville Society Conference around UConn’s Mary K. Bercaw Edwards.
Who knew planning a weeklong event at UConn Avery Point for 150 Herman Melville scholars from lands as far away as those along the route in the hunt for Moby Dick would imitate passages from the English professor’s favorite chapter in the novel by the same name?
The whaling line, Melville writes of the rope, is both “magical, sometimes horrible.”
But once the scholars arrive and the opening plenary address begins on Monday, June 16, Bercaw Edwards says she’ll settle in and enjoy what the week has to offer as the UConn campus and southeastern Connecticut show off their maritime heritage.
“It’s going to be an amazing conference. The talks look outstanding, and everyone is so excited to be in this location,” Bercaw Edwards says.
Titled “Oceanic Melville,” the conference follows a 2022 gathering in Paris and other global destinations through the years including Poland in 2007, Israel in 2009, Italy in 2011, and Japan in 2015. The first was held in Greece in 1997, with gatherings planned generally biennially.
The latest exhibition, “Oceanic Melville,” at the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery of Art features artwork inspired by Herman Melville’s novel “Moby-Dick,” including artist Robert Del Tredici’s mixed media print, “Torn Body, Gnashed Soul.” The exhibition at UConn Avery Point is open through June 19. (Kimberly Phillips/UConn Today)
Bercaw Edwards says The Melville Society, an international organization dedicated to the study of the author, asked her to arrange a conference at Avery Point in part because of its proximity to Mystic Seaport Museum just 15 minutes down the road where the Charles W. Morgan, the last wooden whaleship in the world, is on display.
The Morgan was launched in 1841 from New Bedford, Massachusetts, built seven months after and 7 miles away from the Acushnet, the whale ship on which Melville served as a crewmember in the Pacific Ocean before writing “Moby-Dick,” making the Morgan as identical as possible to the Acushnet.
While several days of panel discussions and other academic talks (some are open to the public) on topics ranging from Melville in popular culture to Melville and his animals are the centerpiece of the conference, Bercaw Edwards says a daylong trip to the Museum, where she works in the summer, and the chance to get up close with the Morgan is a highlight.
“They’ll see us raise sails, lower and raise the whale boat. They’ll get to pull on the halyards, which will give them a visceral feeling of what it’s like to set sail,” she says of conference attendees. “We’re also going to give them an opportunity to actually row in whale boats.”
Participants’ day at the Museum also will include the daily activities available to the public, including a concert by staff musicians playing and singing the songs mentioned in “Moby-Dick” and a 35-minute play with three actors using Melville’s words to tell the story of Ahab and the whale.
“Monstrous: Whaling and its Colossal Impact,” the Museum’s newest exhibition that opened in late May and runs through Feb. 16, 2026, by happenstance coincides with the conference.
The exhibition has been built around Mexican American artist Jos Sances’ scratchboard mural, “Or, The Whale,” a 51-foot-long artwork the same size as a juvenile sperm whale. Bercaw Edwards says Sances created the piece after reading and finding inspiration in “Moby-Dick.”
“Sances is a screen printer and a scratchboard artist who’s from Mexico and lives in California – and then he read ‘Moby-Dick’ and was driven to make this mural,” she says. “With his background, there was nothing that would have drawn him naturally to reading a book by a white New England author, but he did just like so many others do.”
‘Deep and Important Questions’
From the perspective of Pequod crewmember Ishmael, “Moby-Dick” tells the story of Captain Ahab’s trek across the globe for vengeance against the albino sperm whale Moby Dick, which took off his leg during a previous encounter.
Some chapters are incredibly dense with precise details about whaling and sailing, while others are so action-packed the story moves quickly. It’s considered among the greatest American novels and for many English majors might be considered their very own white whale.
“Quenchless Feud (Ahab)” from artist Jos Sances is on display as part of “Oceanic Melville” at the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery of Art at UConn Avery Point. (Kimberly Phillips/UConn Today)
Bercaw Edwards says she’s oftentimes amazed that today’s audiences are so interested in something written in 1851 – that’s nearly 175 years ago – especially given that it’s authored by a dead, white male and features the killing of whales.
“It seems as politically incorrect as it can possibly be, and yet it feels as if it’s still on the ascendancy,” she says. “It’s a long, dense, tough book, and yet it’s immensely popular. There are graphic novels, movies, plays, concerts, memes, and T-shirts about it.”
She says she once witnessed a colleague who writes about Melville in popular culture mention the word “tattoo” during a talk, and afterward a throng of people gathered around to show him the Melville-inspired artwork on their biceps, forearms, and calves.
“It’s just amazing to me that Melville is so popular. I think it’s because he asks all kinds of deep and important questions: Is there truth? Is there justice? Is there anything beyond our human existence? How do we go about life? And he doesn’t give us any answers. Every time you think ‘OK, that’s the answer,’ he undercuts it. He wants you to realize there are no answers, but he’s asking these great questions. I think that’s part of why it’s still eternal,” she says.
Never mind the beauty of Melville’s writing.
“At the end of Chapter 1, Melville writes, ‘It is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.’ I’ve always loved that. We should all get along,” Bercaw Edwards says. “I also love, ‘Ignorance is the parent of fear.’ People are afraid of things they don’t know. It’s so true.”
Pequod third mate Flask fears butter – yes, a stick of butter – Bercaw Edwards continues, noting the humor in the book. He feels as if he’s not entitled to the spread: “So when they’re all eating with Ahab – Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask – they’re always really quiet because they’re kind of nervous around Ahab, and Flask, of course, never dares to take butter. Then Melville writes, ‘For Flask is a butterless man.’”
Reading ‘Moby-Dick’
Every time “Moby-Dick” appears on a syllabus in one of Bercaw Edwards’ classes, she says she gives it a fresh read, no specific routine around it, no tableside requisite cup of black tea to share with Ahab.
She’s delighted in its humor during her at least 35 times rereading it through the years – so many instances that she finds herself quoting it as she goes along. And when she gets to her favorite chapter – number 60, “The Line” – she knows she’ll get the best Melville has to offer.
“He’s describing the whale line, which is attached to the harpoon and thrown into the whale. He has really basic information about the line, about rope, and then it’s infused with all kinds of humor,” she says, quoting his description of hemp: “Hemp is a dusky, dark fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired Circassian to behold.”
Melville then builds to what Bercaw Edwards calls a “metaphysical lift,” explaining that the whale-line surrounds the boat, crisscrossing it and traveling by each of the crewmembers. He then notes that we’re all surrounded by ropes, and no one knows when it will take you to eternity.
“It’s set up like a sermon,” she says of the chapter. “Sermons pick apart a line from biblical text. This does the same thing. It just does it with real line rather than a line of text.”
Then again, Bercaw Edwards can relate to Melville and journeys around the world better than most.
As her friends shifted into high school upperclassman status at 16 years old, she and her family went to sea, she says. The family of five – Mom and Dad, sister and brother, and her – sailed around the globe on a journey that took 3½ years.
“When I went to college, I knew I wanted to be an English major, but I was thinking I would study Henry James,” she says of the American British author. “Then my professor suggested that with my sailing background I should be a Melville scholar – and now I can’t imagine anything else. All my scholarship has been on Melville, with a little on Joseph Conrad and Jack London, but always centered on Melville.”
She acknowledges, though, that for some, reading “Moby-Dick” might be daunting, to which she offers four words of advice: Visit Mystic Seaport Museum.
Seeing the whale boat demonstrations and getting onboard the Morgan to imagine sleeping in its belly every night for between two and five years oftentimes help people get through those challenging whaling chapters.
She further recommends listening to the story as an audio book.
“When people hear it read aloud, they’ll often see how funny it is. I mean, it’s full of humor, and that’s often lost when people get stuck on the fact that this is The. Great. American. Novel,” she says.
From July 31 to Aug. 1, Mystic Seaport Museum will host its 40th annual “Moby-Dick” Marathon reading of the book to coincide with Melville’s Aug. 1 birthday. Readers gather onboard the Morgan and take about 24 consecutive hours to get through the 135 chapters.
“One of the things I always notice is people listening and then they start to laugh and feel embarrassed, like they’re not supposed to. This is The Great American Novel, but of course we’re supposed to laugh,” she adds.
Public Events and AVS Exhibition
With grant funding from Connecticut Humanities and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, several events during The Melville Society conference will be open to the public, Bercaw Edwards says.
The opening plenary talk at 10:15 a.m. on Monday, June 16, “Other Seas: Sailing Without Ahab,” will come from St. John’s University English professor Steve Mentz, who’s figured prominently in the field of blue humanities. He will discuss how humans engage with water, along with the history and theory of water-centric thinking.
“The Pod” from artist George Klauba is on display as part of “Oceanic Melville” at the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery of Art at UConn Avery Point. (Kimberly Phillips/UConn Today)
Then, at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, June 18, “Does the Whale Diminish? – Will He Perish? Cross-Disciplinary Currents in Conversation” will offer a panel discussion with Anne Cohen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, conservation biologist and author Joe Roman, and Portuguese marine researcher Rui Prieto.
The closing plenary address at 4 p.m. on Thursday, June 19, also is open to the public. It features Lenora Warren from Cornell University, one of the leading scholars about Melville and race. Her talk, “Melville’s Ghosts,” dovetails with the day also being Juneteenth.
At the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery of Art at Avery Point, the exhibition “Oceanic Melville” comes together thanks to curator and gallery director Jeanne Ciravolo, along with Bercaw Edwards and Robert K. Wallace from Northern Kentucky University.
Ciravolo says she mentioned during a campus faculty meeting more than a year ago that she enjoys making the gallery’s exhibitions interdisciplinary experiences and afterward Bercaw Edwards asked if she was interested in working together on a show to dovetail with the conference.
“I absolutely was,” Ciravolo says. “I’m a reader. I once thought I’d be an English teacher, but I became an artist, so to have the opportunity to marry literature plus art is very unusual for me and special.”
About two dozen framed artworks on loan from The Melville Society, which houses its collection at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts, are part of the show, along with several artists’ books, Ciravolo says, noting that most of the pieces relate to “Moby-Dick.”
This includes three full-color pieces from artist George Klauba, prints from sculptor and graphic artist Leonard Baskin, and an abstract piece, “Skin’s Path/Moby Dick,” from artist Aileen Callahan, a charcoal on paper that depicts the damaged skin of a whale that’s been beaten with time.
“The idea is to always get a mix of things, a variety of style and media, into the gallery,” Ciravolo says, explaining she and Bercaw Edwards visited the New Bedford Museum to pour through The Melville Society’s full collection, as well as the Museum’s Elizabeth Schultz Collection, and select the most powerful artworks from watercolor to printmaking.
“The scholars who are coming are going to appreciate seeing these artworks,” Ciravolo says. “I love that it will be a generative experience for them and that the public will have the chance to see this very interesting show. We’re here on Long Island Sound, near the whaling center of New England, so it’s a perfect place for this.”
The AVS Gallery is open Thursdays through Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. in the Branford House at UConn Avery Point. It will have extended hours from noon to 4 p.m. on Monday, June 16, and Tuesday, June 17, during the Melville conference for both participants and the public. The “Oceanic Melville” exhibition is open now through Thursday, June 19.
City of Wolverhampton Council will carry out the works at the site’s West Chapel and East Chapel at separate times, with the aim of causing minimum disruption at the site.
Cremations and services will continue at Bushbury Crematorium throughout the refurbishments. Work will not affect burials taking place within Bushbury Cemetery.
Each chapel will be closed for a 4 week period beginning with the West Chapel, which will close from Monday 30 June until Friday 25 July. This will be followed by the East Chapel, which will close from Monday 28 July until Friday 22 August.
West Chapel will have new carpets, new curtains around the catafalque, refreshed paintwork, improvements to the windows to prevent sun glare and renovations to the floor at the entrance to the chapel.
East Chapel will have new carpets, a full repaint, new lights in the entrance hall and a new oak door to match the existing chapel doors. The refurbishment works also include cleaning out and repair or replacement of guttering at both chapels.
The works follow the update to the Remembrance Room, located near the flower terrace on the East Chapel. The flower terrace will remain open for those who regularly place flowers overlooking the Garden of Remembrance.
Councillor Bhupinder Gakhal, cabinet member for resident services at City of Wolverhampton Council, said: “These are important refurbishment works that will improve both chapels at Bushbury Crematorium.
“The works have been planned to try and avoid as much disruption as we can for families as we are very aware that attending a service or visiting a loved one can be a difficult and sensitive time.
“Cremations, services and burials will continue as usual and we hope that by alternating the work on the chapels, people will still feel welcome and comfortable at the crematorium. In addition, our bereavement services team will be available to answer any questions or concerns.
“We thank people for their understanding during this time and we can reassure families that this refurbishment work will improve the chapels for services and periods of reflection.”
NEW YORK, June 10, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Sharps Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: “STSS” and “STSSW”) (“Sharps”), an innovative medical device and pharmaceutical packaging company offering patented, best-in-class smart safety syringe products to the healthcare industry, today announced that Robert Hayes, CEO, will present live at the Life Sciences Virtual Investor Forum hosted by VirtualInvestorConferences.com, on June 12th, 2025 at 9:30 AM ET.
Sharps recently announced that the Company has commenced shipments under three customer orders tied to previously announced purchase agreements. These shipments represent the Company’s first commercial deliveries and its transition to revenue-generating operations. All products are being manufactured and shipped from Sharps’ facility in Hungary, which has undergone significant upgrades to support high-volume production. Read the update releaseHERE.
This will be a live, interactive online event where investors are invited to ask the company questions in real-time. If attendees are not able to join the event live on the day of the conference, an archived webcast will also be made available after the event.
It is recommended that online investors pre-register and run the online system check to expedite participation and receive event updates.
About Sharps Technology: Sharps Technology is an innovative medical device and pharmaceutical packaging company offering patented, best-in-class smart-safety syringe products to the healthcare industry. The Company’s product lines focus on providing ultra-low waste capabilities, that incorporate syringe technologies that use both passive and active safety features. Sharps also offers products that are designed with specialized copolymer technology to support the prefillable syringe market segment. The Company has a manufacturing facility in Hungary. For additional information, please visit www.sharpstechnology.com.
Investor Contact: Holdsworth Partners Adam Holdsworth Phone: 917-497-9287 Email:IR@sharpstechnology.com
FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS: This press release contains “forward-looking statements”. Forward-looking statements reflect our current view about future events. When used in this press release, the words “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “future,” “intend,” “plan,” “poised” or the negative of these terms and similar expressions, as they relate to us or our management, identify forward-looking statements. Such statements, include, but are not limited to, statements contained in this press release relating to our business strategy, our future operating results and liquidity, and capital resources outlook. Forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions regarding our business, the economy, and other future conditions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks, and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict. Our actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. They are neither statements of historical fact nor guarantees of assurance of future performance. We caution you therefore against relying on any of these forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include, without limitation, our ability to raise capital to fund continuing operations; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights; the impact of any infringement actions or other litigation brought against us; competition from other providers and products; our ability to develop and commercialize products and services; changes in government regulation; our ability to complete capital raising transactions; and other factors relating to our industry, our operations and results of operations. Actual results may differ significantly from those anticipated, believed, estimated, expected, intended, or planned. Factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. We cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect any event or circumstance that may arise after the date of this release.
About Virtual Investor Conferences® Virtual Investor Conferences (VIC) is the leading proprietary investor conference series that provides an interactive forum for publicly traded companies to seamlessly present directly to investors.
Providing a real-time investor engagement solution, VIC is specifically designed to offer companies more efficient investor access. Replicating the components of an on-site investor conference, VIC offers companies enhanced capabilities to connect with investors, schedule targeted one-on-one meetings and enhance their presentations with dynamic video content. Accelerating the next level of investor engagement, Virtual Investor Conferences delivers leading investor communications to a global network of retail and institutional investors.
Virtual Investor Conferences: John M. Viglotti SVP Corporate Services, Investor Access OTC Markets Group (212) 220-2221 johnv@otcmarkets.com
Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian – People’s Republic of China in Russian –
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
VIENNA, June 10 (Xinhua) — At least nine people were killed in a shooting at a school in Austria’s second-largest city of Graz, local media reported on Tuesday.
Several students and teachers were seriously injured, local media reported, citing police. The suspect apparently committed suicide, the reports added.
According to Austria’s largest newspaper, Kronen Zeitung, the incident took place at a school in the Lend district at around 10:00 /08:00 GMT/ on Tuesday.
Local police have been mobilized and a helicopter has been dispatched. The school has been evacuated and there is no further danger, local police said on social media X. –0–
India is poised to make history as Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla of the Indian Air Force prepares to become the first Indian astronaut in over four decades to travel to space. Selected under the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Human Spaceflight Programme, Shukla will serve as Mission Pilot for Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) to the International Space Station (ISS), launching aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 on June 11, 2025. This mission, reviving the legacy of Rakesh Sharma’s 1984 spaceflight, underscores India’s bold ambition to lead in global space exploration.
Managed by Axiom Space and led by Commander Peggy Whitson of the USA, Ax-4 is a landmark collaboration involving India, Poland, and Hungary, each sending government-sponsored astronauts to the ISS for the first time. Shukla’s role highlights India’s growing prominence in the global space community, focusing on operational readiness, microgravity adaptation, and advanced scientific experiments in space biology and life support systems. His work will include pioneering studies on edible microalgae to explore their growth under microgravity and space radiation, alongside research on cyanobacteria like Spirulina and Synechococcus for self-sustaining life support systems. An ISRO-led project, Voyager Tardigrades, will investigate the resilience of tardigrades in space, aiming to uncover molecular mechanisms for surviving extreme environments. Additional experiments on crop seeds, myogenesis, STEM demonstrations, and sprouts will further bolster India’s space science expertise. These efforts, developed in partnership with ISRO, NASA, and the Department of Biotechnology, are vital for long-duration missions and align with India’s Gaganyaan Programme, targeting a crewed mission to Low Earth Orbit by 2027.
The Gaganyaan Programme, backed by a ₹20,193 crore budget, is India’s flagship initiative for indigenous human spaceflight. It aims to develop and validate technologies for safe crewed missions, with a vision to establish the Bharatiya Antariksh Station by 2035 and achieve a crewed lunar landing by 2040. Four Indian Air Force test pilots—Group Captains PB Nair, Ajit Krishnan, Angad Pratap, and Shukla—have completed rigorous training. As of May 2025, the programme is in its final phase, with the Human-rated LVM3 vehicle, Crew Escape System, and Crew Module undergoing final testing for a planned 2027 launch. Gaganyaan is expected to drive technological innovation, industrial growth, and high-tech job creation, while inspiring future generations in STEM fields.
India’s space programme has already achieved remarkable milestones. Between January 2015 and December 2024, ISRO launched 393 foreign satellites and three Indian customer satellites, serving 34 countries, including the USA, UK, and Singapore. In 2017, ISRO set a world record by launching 104 satellites in a single mission. The Chandrayaan-3 mission made India the first nation to land on the Moon’s southern pole, with the Pragyan rover confirming sulphur presence. The Aditya L-1 solar mission, launched in 2017, captured unprecedented solar flare data in February 2025. Upcoming initiatives like the SpaDeX mission in December 2024 will demonstrate indigenous docking technology, while ISRO’s Orbital Re-entry Vehicle will enable autonomous re-entry and landing capabilities.
International collaborations are central to India’s space strategy. Partnerships with NASA on the NISAR mission, ESA on astronaut training and microgravity research, CNES on the TRISHNA satellite, and JAXA on lunar exploration studies highlight India’s global role. The India Space Policy 2023 and liberalized FDI norms, allowing up to 100% investment in certain space activities, have fueled private sector growth, with over 328 space startups emerging in recent years. Central Public Sector Enterprises like Antrix Corporation Limited and NewSpace India Limited, alongside IN-SPACe, are driving innovation and commercialization. The space budget has nearly tripled over the past decade, from ₹5,615 crore in 2013-14 to ₹13,416 crore in 2025-26, reflecting strong government commitment.
India’s Space Vision 2047 outlines ambitious goals, including the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, lunar landings, and missions to Venus.
President Donald Trump has praised the Gilded Age, which he believes was a time of immense national prosperity thanks to tariffs, no income tax, and few regulations on business.
Similar to today, the late 19th century was a time where a small group of men enjoyed immense wealth, privilege and power to shape the nation. It was a time of immense inequality, as factory and housing conditions crushed the lives of the poor.
And it was a time of white Christian nationalism.
In Northern cities, reformers saw the wealth gap, the plight of workers and the squalid conditions in tenements as undermining their vision of a Christian America. Fueled by faith, the Social Gospel movement worked to expand labor rights and improve living conditions at the turn of the 20th century.
At the same time, many of these white Protestant activists believed their own culture and race to be superior, and this prejudice hindered their efforts. They often spouted anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant rhetoric, and mostly ignored Black workers’ plight.
One of Jacob Riis’ many photographs of living conditions on New York’s Lower East Side. Bettmann via Getty Images
Ever since the Puritans landed, white Christian nationalism has informed how many Protestants try to shape their country – a history I trace with church historian Richard T. Hughes in the book “Christian America and the Kingdom of God.” But Christian nationalism has taken dramatically different forms over time. The progressive Social Gospellers of a century ago are a particularly striking contrast to the conservative Christian right that has shaped U.S. politics for half a century, up to today.
Guardians of a Christian nation
There are many differences between Christian nationalism then and now. Like many conservative Christians today, however, the Social Gospellers believed that the United States was uniquely chosen and blessed by God, and called to be a Christian nation. They saw themselves as the rightful guardians of that mission. And though the country was still overwhelmingly Protestant, they feared they were losing influence.
New research explored the history of the Bible – research that many Christians feared would undermine people’s trust in Scripture as the word of God, by emphasizing its human composition. New scientific ideas about the Earth’s creation and human evolution challenged their visions of an all-powerful, all-knowing God. Meanwhile, rapid industrialization and urbanization had created new social challenges, such as workers’ safety and living conditions, leading some to reject faith as irrelevant to their needs.
Social Gospellers wanted to vindicate Christianity and show it was still relevant to modern life. But white leaders’ vision of what a Christian America should look like conflated their Protestant faith with their race and culture.
Josiah Strong, for example, was a Congregationalist minister known for promoting factory safety. But he stoked fear of Catholic immigrants and endorsed the expansion of the U.S. as a benevolent empire. The Anglo-Saxon race “is destined to dispossess many weaker races, assimilate others, and mold the remainder,” Strong argued in his 1885 book, “Our Country.”
Another Social Gospel reformer, Northern Baptist theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, railed against unrestrained greed, political corruption, militarism and contempt between elites and the working class. But he shared the white supremacy of his age. God was favoring Germanic and Anglo-Saxon people, he claimed, to enact God’s purposes.
“Other races are as dear to God as we and he may be holding them in reserve to carry His banner when we drop it,” he wrote in an undated article. But it was part of God’s plan, he believed, for Northern Europeans to “hold the larger part of the world’s wealth and power in the hollow of their hands and the larger share of the world’s intellectual and spiritual possessions in the hollow of their heads.”
The ‘right’ kind of Christian
Though many white Protestants felt threatened by the challenges of immigration, they were still a clear majority, and they presumed that most Americans would endorse applying Christian ethics to public policy and social reform.
What’s more, women gaining the right to vote in 1920 meant Social Gospel leaders expanded Protestants’ power at the ballot box. Many Social Gospel leaders embraced women’s suffrage because women were already leading supporters for their causes: For example, Frances Willard, who promoted temperance and workers’ rights; and Jane Addams, who ran a Christian “settlement house,” or community center, for the poor.
But in another sense, demographics were not on their side. The U.S. might have been a very white and Christian country, but in some Social Gospellers’ minds, the era’s waves of immigrants were not the “right” kind of Christian: Northern European and Protestant. Immigration was shifting from Great Britain, Ireland and Germany to Russia, Poland, Hungary and Italy. While Protestants far outnumbered Catholics nationally, Strong wrote that they were double the Protestant population in major cities like New York, Chicago and Philadelphia.
Strong argued that Catholic immigrants were lazy, prone to alcoholism and criminal activity, and willing to sell their vote to corrupt city politicians. He claimed they would corrupt the morals of Anglo-Saxon Americans, and that if the Catholic population grew, it would undermine Protestants’ religious liberty.
Nativist views like these led to the National Origins Act of 1924, which restricted the number of immigrants. Quotas for each country were based on the profile of the American population in 1890 – an attempt to maintain Protestant dominance against Catholic and Jewish immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. That distrust also kept Social Gospellers from partnering with Roman Catholic leaders on shared concern for workers.
Flourishing for all, or some?
Still, when it came to workers’ basic needs, reformers cared deeply about improving circumstances for the “least of these.” The movement was strongly influenced by the biblical parable of the sheep and the goats: verses in the Book of Matthew where Jesus promotes feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, clothing the naked and visiting those in prison.
Social Gospellers aimed to prove that Christianity could answer the social challenges caused by industrialization, urbanization and immigration. For the most part, they sought to use their privilege in ways that promoted the flourishing of all Americans, such as expanding labor rights and providing services to the poor through settlement houses.
A photograph by Jacob Riis in a small New York City sweatshop in the 1880s. Bettmann via Getty Images
In 1908, for example, the Federal Council of Churches adopted a 14-point statement called the “Social Creed,” affirming that churches should support reforms “to lift the crushing burdens of the poor, and to reduce the hardships and uphold the dignity of labor.” While some of the reforms they called for are taken for granted today — like one day off per week — other calls, like a living wage for all, are yet to be realized.
Over the past half-century, the modern Christian right, too, has feared that its vision for the nation is eroding. Conservative churches have seen their influence drop as more Americans move awayfrom organized religion and reject their rejection of LGBTQ+ people.
Like the Social Gospellers of a century ago, the Christian nationalists of recent decades are wary of religious and racial change in their country. Yet the movement’s priorities – often focused around its vision of families, sex and gender – are starkly more limited than the broader quality-of-life issues that Social Gospellers addressed.
Both groups desired an America rooted in biblical values. But each interpreted Scripture through its own lens, seeking to remake America in its own, white Protestant image.
Christina Littlefield does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 10, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Real-Time Innovations (RTI), the software framework company for physical AI systems, is proud to announce its recognition as one of this year’s Best Workplaces in the Bay Area by Fortune magazine and Great Place To Work®. This marks RTI’s third appearance on the prestigious list, ranking No. 26 in 2025. Earning a spot means that RTI has surpassed rigorous benchmarks, establishing itself as one of the best workplaces among companies headquartered in the San Francisco Bay region.
“This region is a hub of innovation, creativity and collaboration, and those transformative values are woven into the very fabric of our culture,” said Stan Schneider, CEO of RTI. “This recognition as a leading workplace isn’t just about our achievements; it’s a direct reflection of the incredible dedication and spirit of the people at RTI. They are the ones who make our mission a reality, bringing it to life day after day. To be celebrated as one of the Best Workplaces in the Bay Area for the third time is a tremendous honor, and something we are deeply proud of.”
RTI’s culture, known internally as “1RTI,” focuses on inclusion, transparency, and connection, uniting a globally distributed workforce under shared values. Through regular company-wide events, flexible work policies, and open communication, RTI encourages meaningful engagement and career growth. In 2025, 93% of U.S.-based employees said RTI is a great place to work—36 points higher than the national average.
The Best Workplaces in the Bay Area list is highly competitive. Survey responses reflect a comprehensive picture of the workplace experience. Honorees were rewarded based on their ability to deliver positive outcomes for employees regardless of role or status within the organization.
“Congratulations to the Fortune Best Workplaces in the Bay Area,” says Michael C. Bush, CEO at Great Place To Work. “These companies prove that prioritizing people leads to better performance, and that leaders who invest in their people are rewarded with more sustainable and profitable businesses.”
In addition to this recognition, RTI was also Great Place To Work Certified™ in both the U.S. and Spain earlier this year for the seventh consecutive time, further underscoring its global reputation for workplace excellence.
WE’RE HIRING! Looking to grow your career at a company that puts its people first? Visit our careers page at: rti.com/company/careers
Don’t meet every single requirement? At RTI, we are dedicated to building an inclusive and authentic workplace. So, if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t perfectly align with all qualifications in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or another one of our open roles.
About RTI
RTI is the software framework company for physical AI systems, with a mission to run a smarter world. RTI Connext® provides the data architecture for over 2,000 designs in Aerospace and Defense, Medtech, Automotive, and Robotics – running in more than $1T of total deployed systems worldwide. Only RTI combines decades of technical expertise with industry-leading software and tools to develop smarter systems, faster. Learn more at www.rti.com.
CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom, June 10, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Subscription brands are pulling away from digital advertising. According to a new industry-wide study from Bango (AIM: BGO), 48% of subscription leaders report diminishing returns from traditional direct acquisition methods like paid search and paid social media. A further 53% warn that direct marketing is becoming “unsustainable” as customer acquisition costs spiral.
The report — Gravity Shift: Subscribers, bundles, and the acquisition black hole — captures responses from more than 200 senior executives at subscription-based businesses, spanning sectors from AI productivity apps to streaming services, retail, and finance. It reveals a stark reality: the performance marketing model that powered subscription growth over the last decade is under serious strain.
“Direct marketing used to be a reliable engine for growth. Now it’s a black hole,” said Anil Malhotra, CMO at Bango. “When nearly half your industry says ROI is vanishing, alarm bells should be ringing. It’s time to rethink how subscriptions go to market.”
Key findings:
88% of subscription brands expect direct acquisition costs to rise in 2025, with nearly one in three forecasting increases of over 25%.
80% are cutting back on at least one paid channel, including:
Paid search ads (33%)
Display advertising (30%)
Paid social ads (29%)
46% of leaders describe direct marketing spend as a “black hole” for their budgets.
53% believe direct channels are no longer a sustainable path to growth.
What’s driving the pullback?
Executives cited rising ad costs, algorithm changes, data privacy limits, and subscriber fatigue as the most pressing challenges. Compounding this, many brands report hitting the ceiling on their ability to profitably scale one-to-one acquisition.
“Netflix spends nearly $3 billion a year on marketing. That’s simply not feasible for the rest of the market,” said Giles Tongue, subscription expert at Bango. “Most brands don’t have the scale to absorb that kind of spend, especially when the returns are eroding. Direct-to-consumer marketing is hitting diminishing returns, and leaders are now looking for smarter, more sustainable ways to grow.”
Where the money is going
Rather than doubling down, brands are reallocating budget toward indirect acquisition strategies, such as bundling, partnerships, and aggregator platforms. According to the report:
82% of brands plan to increase investment in indirect channels this year.
90% are already bundling — or plan to — in 2025.
72% say indirect routes bring in higher quality subscribers than direct channels.
Among the fastest-growing channels: partnerships with telcos, banks, device platforms, and social media platforms. Over a quarter of brands (27%) are joining “Super Bundling” platforms like Verizon myPlan and myHome to reach new audiences without high upfront acquisition costs.
Bango’s recent consumer data also supports the shift: 62% of U.S. subscribers would prefer to manage multiple subscriptions through a single bundle, and 44% already get at least one subscription free as part of a packaged deal. Among younger users, these numbers are even higher — 55% of 18–24-year-olds now receive a bundled subscription they previously paid for directly.
Tongue added: “We’re seeing a clear shift from the subscription economy to the bundle economy. Consumers don’t want to manage ten separate subscriptions — they want value, convenience, and flexibility. The brands that win in this next phase will be the ones that package their offerings in ways that reflect how people actually want to buy.”
Implications beyond the subscription market
The findings come at a critical time for digital advertising giants like Google, Meta, and TikTok — whose earnings rely heavily on performance ad spend. If subscription leaders are a bellwether, Bango’s findings suggest we could be entering a post-performance marketing era, where distribution partnerships replace ad impressions as the metric that matters.
Bango expects the pivot to indirect acquisition and bundling to drive a wave of commercial opportunity for its Digital Vending Machine® (DVM™) platform. Bango’s DVM currently powers many of the world’s leading Super Bundling platforms, including Verizon myPlan and myHome, and supports acquisition for major services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Uber, YouTube, and Xbox. With 90% of subscription leaders now investing in bundling, the DVM is well placed to capitalize on the wider industry adoption and accelerated growth of indirect marketing through 2025 and beyond.
Bango enables content providers to reach more paying customers through global partnerships. Bango revolutionized the monetization of digital content and services, by opening-up online payments to mobile phone users worldwide. Today, the Digital Vending Machine® is driving the rapid growth of the subscription economy, powering choice and control for subscribers.
The world’s largest content providers, including Amazon, Google and Microsoft, trust Bango technology to reach subscribers everywhere.
Bango, where people subscribe. For more information, visit www.bango.com
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Correspondence
UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre: letters of support
The UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation has received letters of support from leading figures in Holocaust education and remembrance, encouraging Peers to vote in favour of the UK Holocaust Memorial Bill.
The UK Holocaust Memorial Bill will return to the House of Lords on Wednesday, 11 June. In anticipation, the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation has received letters of support from 16 individuals and organisations, urging Peers to support the Bill. Prominent figures in Holocaust education, Jewish organisations, and security services have voiced their support of the Bill and encourage Peers to do the same.
The victims of one of the worst acts of brutality of the Second World War, have been remembered at a ceremony in the city centre.
The ceremony marked the 83rd anniversary of the Lidice atrocity, which took place on 10 June 1942, when Nazi forces entered the mining village of Lidice, Czechia.
In retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, ‘The Butcher of Prague’, by British-trained Czech resistance fighters, the Nazis executed 173 men, forcibly removed the women and children and destroyed the village.
Today (Tuesday 10 June) the Lord Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent, Councillor Steve Watkins and Honorary Custodian, Councillor Ross Irving laid a wreath at the Messenger of Hope pear tree – grown from a cutting from the only living thing to survive the atrocity.
Cheryl and Alan Gerrard – trustees of the Lidice Lives organisation – have donated a print of ‘Lidice Shall Live’ by Sid Kirkham to the city. The artwork – the original of which is in the prestigious Lidice Collection in Czechia – will be hung in the newly named Lidice Hall at the Civic Centre in Stoke as a lasting reminder of the enduring friendship between Stoke-on-Trent and Lidice.
The bond between the two communities goes back to September 1942, when news of the massacre sparked an extraordinary response in Stoke-on-Trent. Local GP and Councillor Barnett Stross, alongside the North Staffordshire Miners’ Federation led the “Lidice Shall Live” campaign in direct defiance of Adolf Hitler’s claim that “Lidice shall die”.
The campaign was launched at a mass meeting at the Victoria Hall in Hanley on 6 September 1942. It raised £32,000 – the equivalent of more than £1.5 million today – with most of the donations coming from local miners who gave part of their wages to help rebuild the village.
Lord Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent, Councillor Steve Watkins, said: “I am incredibly proud to represent our city as we remember both the tragedy that took place in Lidice and the inspiring response of the people of Stoke-on-Trent.
“At the launch of the Lidice Shall Live campaign, at the Victoria Hall in Hanley, Dr Edvard Beneš, the Czech President in exile, said ‘From now on, Stoke-on-Trent will live forever in the heart of every Czech citizen.’ The newly named Lidice Hall will be another powerful reminder of this enduring friendship for generations to come.”
Honorary Custodian, Councillor Ross Irving, said: “As Lord Mayor, I was proud to plant the Messenger of Hope pear tree outside the Victoria Hall in Hanley in 2018, alongside Cheryl and Alan Gerrard.
“Seven years on, it’s an honour to be involved in continuing to remember the victims of this terrible atrocity and celebrating the strong links between our two mining communities in my role as Honorary Custodian of the city of Stoke-on-Trent.”
A shooter killed at least nine people and wounded many others in an attack at a secondary school in the southern Austrian city of Graz on Tuesday, the city’s mayor said.
Graz Mayor Elke Kahr was quoted by Austrian news agency APA as saying the attacker was also dead, and that many of the injured had been taken to hospital following the shooting, which she called a “terrible tragedy”.
Police gave no initial toll but said “several” people were dead and they were working in the assumption there was only one attacker. APA video showed emergency workers loading a stretcher into an ambulance.
The reports did not specify how many of the dead were pupils. Ambulances were on the scene outside the school.
A local police spokesman said the area had been secured, the school had been evacuated and relatives of the victims and pupils were being cared for.
“There is no further danger for the population, but there are several dead,” he told Austrian television.
Salzburger Nachrichten newspaper cited unconfirmed reports as saying the suspect was a 22-year-old former student who carried two weapons – a pistol and a shotgun. Kronen Zeitung tabloid said a suspect had been found dead in a bathroom. Reuters could not immediately confirm this.
UNBEARABLE
“It’s incomprehensible and unbearable. My sympathy and grief go out to the victims and their families. No one can imagine the suffering; as a mother of three children, it breaks my heart,” Austria’s Minister for European and International Affairs Beate Meinl-Reisinger wrote on X.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on X: “Every child should feel safe at school and be able to learn free from fear and violence. My thoughts are with the victims, their families and the Austrian people in this dark moment.”
Austria has one of the most heavily armed civilian populations in Europe, with an estimated 30 firearms per 100 persons, according to the Small Arms Survey, an independent research project.
Machine guns and pump action guns are banned, while revolvers, pistols and semi-automatic weapons are allowed only with official authorization. Rifles and shotguns are permitted with a firearms license or a valid hunting licence, or for members of traditional shooting clubs.
Four people were killed and 22 injured when a convicted jihadist went on a shooting spree in the centre of Vienna in 2020. In November 1997, a 36-year-old mechanic shot dead six people in the town of Mauterndorf before killing himself.
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