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Category: Global

  • MIL-OSI Global: Pressure to seem perfect can strain teen relationships, but kindness from peers can help

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Danielle S. Molnar, Associate Professor of Child and Youth Studies; Canada Research Chair (Tier II) Adjustment and Well-Being in Children and Youth, Brock University

    For many teens, the pressure to project a perfect persona can feel necessary to fit in, avoid criticism and gain approval from their peers. (Shutterstock)

    Imagine trying to always appear perfect. You stay on top of the latest beauty trends, excel academically and project confidence in social settings, even when you’re struggling or feeling completely overwhelmed. You work hard to hide any potential flaws, constantly worrying that if you stumble or show any cracks in your armour, everything will fall apart.

    For many teens, the pressure to project a perfect persona feels necessary to fit in, avoid criticism and gain approval from their peers. It’s easy to think that being perfect will make you more likeable, because who wouldn’t want to be around someone who seems to have it all together?

    However, our new study reveals an ironic twist: the very effort to appear perfect may actually push others away. Instead, positive interactions with peers may help teens break free from the constant need to seem perfect and foster more supportive friendships.

    With our research, we want to shed light on the hidden costs of trying to maintain a flawless image and reveal how letting go of this pressure can pave the way for more authentic and supportive connections for teens.

    Signs of perfectionism

    Perfectionistic self-presentation refers to the effort to create and maintain an image of perfection, where people go to great lengths to ensure they appear perfect to others. For teens, this often means showcasing a polished exterior and suppressing signs of distress, vulnerability or imperfection.

    Many teens who engage in perfectionistic self-presentation also struggle with feelings of insecurity. They may believe they aren’t worthy of love or support, so they try to create a flawless image in the hopes of securing the acceptance they long for.

    Research identifies some main aspects of perfectionistic self-presentation: self-promotion, where teens highlight their achievements while downplaying any struggles; perfectionistic non-disclosure, where they avoid revealing any personal challenges; and perfectionistic non-display, where teens make a concerted effort to refrain from doing anything that might be judged as imperfect by others.

    Many teens who engage in perfectionist self-presentation also struggle with feelings of insecurity.
    (Shutterstock)

    According to our research, parents, teachers and teens should be aware of the following signs that may indicate a young person is struggling with the pressure to appear perfect:

    • Hiding emotions: Suppressing signs of distress, such as sadness, anger or frustration, even when expressing them would be appropriate, like when they experience a disappointment, a loss or a setback.

    • Difficulty accepting compliments: Rejecting praise or positive feedback because they feel like they haven’t fully earned it or that their image isn’t “perfect” enough.

    • Unwillingness to ask for help: Shunning reaching out for assistance or support because they fear it will make them seem imperfect or incapable.

    • Outward self-promotion: Frequently discussing or showcasing successes, such as awards, honours or high grades, to reinforce their sense of accomplishment.

    • Effortlessness: Downplaying the effort behind an achievement, making any successes appear effortless.

    • Avoiding vulnerability: Avoiding sharing their authentic thoughts and experiences with friends out of worry that showing any flaws or struggles will lead to rejection or judgment, even if those feelings aren’t necessarily negative.

    • Risk aversion: Steering away from tasks they might not be immediately good at and seeking excessive reassurance or guidance before even starting, fearing failure will hurt their image.

    Our recent study

    In our recent study, we asked 239 teens between the ages of 13 and 19 (72 per cent of whom were female) to complete a series of four questionnaires, spaced approximately seven months apart between October 2017 and November 2021. The questions were designed to measure perfectionistic self-presentation, relational victimization and receipt of pro-social acts.

    We found that the more teens focused on appearing flawless, whether through constantly showing off achievements or hiding their real feelings, the more they experienced relational aggression, like gossip or social exclusion.

    This supports the idea that perfectionism can lead to social disconnection. When teens prioritize a perfect image over real connections, it can create a barrier between them and their peers. As a result, they may struggle to form meaningful friendships, and may even become targets of bullying because their perceived perfection may make others feel threatened or disconnected.

    Our study also revealed that when teens focused on presenting an ideal image and hiding their real selves, they received less kindness and support from their peers, creating a cycle that only increased the pressure to keep up the perfect image.

    Over time, this can lead to emotional distress, as teens may increasingly question their self-worth and struggle with deepening feelings of loneliness. The absence of meaningful connections can also limit opportunities for growth and learning from peers, which are crucial during adolescence.

    When teens prioritize a perfect image over real connections, it can create a barrier between them and their peers.
    (Shutterstock)

    Positive peer interactions

    The good news from our new study is that teens who received more acts of kindness and support from their peers felt less of a need to hide behind a flawless facade. This highlights the power of kindness and connection in helping teens let go of perfectionist tendencies.

    Fostering supportive, authentic friendships can be a crucial step in reducing the anxiety and isolation that comes with trying to appear perfect. Positive, supportive interactions with peers create the foundation for strong and meaningful connections, where teens can feel free to be themselves, imperfections and all. If you have a friend or relative who is struggling with the pressure to be perfect, here are some things you can try:

    Encourage them to share their feelings, even when things aren’t going well, and assure them it’s OK to show vulnerability in friendships. Remind them that real friends accept one other’s flaws, and that perfect friendships don’t exist; what matters is support, understanding and mutual care.

    Create an environment where imperfections are celebrated and help them understand that they matter and that they don’t need to be perfect to be loved or valued. Be open about your own struggles and show each other that vulnerability is a sign of strength, not weakness.

    The reality is that needing to keep up an image of perfection often keeps us from building the supportive, meaningful relationships we need. By letting go of the need to appear flawless and embracing imperfections, we open the door to more genuine relationships where we can receive the care and understanding we deserve.

    Danielle S. Molnar receives funding from the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation and from the Canada Research Chairs Program (CRC-2020-00095).

    Dawn Zinga receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

    Hanna Puffer receives funding from the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program.

    Melissa Blackburn receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

    – ref. Pressure to seem perfect can strain teen relationships, but kindness from peers can help – https://theconversation.com/pressure-to-seem-perfect-can-strain-teen-relationships-but-kindness-from-peers-can-help-251213

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Modern workplaces were never designed for mothers, and it’s time for that to change

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Erica Pimentel, Assistant Professor, Smith School of Business, Queen’s University, Ontario

    Close to 80 per cent of mothers work outside the home, yet they are are consistently paid less for their work and passed up for job opportunities.

    A recent survey from the United States found that two-thirds of mothers considered leaving the workforce in 2024 due to the stress and cost of child care — an issue most pronounced among Gen Z mothers, with 82 per cent reporting these concerns.

    Our recent research study calls for recognition of the physical and emotional toll of motherhood on women at work. The essay draws on a combination of personal experience and academic research to examine situations where mothers are pulled between work and family obligations.

    We found that many working mothers are faced with the impossible trade-off of balancing full-time work with full-time mothering. It’s no wonder that many mothers feel like they don’t belong in the workplace.

    An impossible trade-off

    The demands of the modern workplace are at odds with contemporary expectations of motherhood. Today, mothers spend twice as much time with their children as they did in the 1970s.

    Contemporary mothers are expected to practise “intensive mothering,” a parenting style that requires them to be intimately involved in the minutiae of their children’s lives, like attending multiple after-school activities.

    On the other hand, professional workplaces are becoming increasingly demanding of all workers. American sociologist Alison Wynn coined the term “everwork” to refer to the “combination of overwork, face time, constant availability, and unpredictability” that have become the norm in professional workplaces.

    The demands of the modern workplace are at odds with contemporary expectations of motherhood.
    (Vitolda Klein/Unsplash)

    Wynn refers to mothers as “tightrope walkers” trying to balance personal and professional responsibilities under the conditions of everwork, with the potential to fall at any time. Worse still, mothers who try to reconcile their personal and professional obligations by leveraging flexible working options are often penalized with more intense workloads and lost opportunities for professional development.

    The simultaneously increasing demands of motherhood and professional life are untenable. Women are expected to work in spaces where performance expectations are simply inconsistent with the reality of family life. Naturally, this is taking a toll: almost half of Canadian mothers report they’ve reached their “breaking point,” meaning they feel overworked, overwhelmed and undervalued.

    Struggling to fit into workplaces

    Not only do many women believe workplaces are hostile to motherhood, but many also feel that their bodies are not welcome there. Societal norms dictate how women should look and dress at work.

    This stress only intensifies during pregnancy. Sociologist David J. Hutson explains how pregnant women oscillate between concealing their bodies in early pregnancy to learning how to deal with unwanted comments and uninvited touching in later maternity.

    Many pregnant women are expected to endure this uncomfortable behaviour as a form of emotional labour, a term coined by U.S. sociologist Arlie Hochschild to describe the way women are taught to manage their emotions to make others feel better.

    Many mothers feel like their bodies are not welcome in the workplace.
    (Shutterstock)

    Although laws exist to protect pregnant women from discrimination, this doesn’t prevent colleagues from engaging in practices that make pregnant women feel like they do not belong.

    Many mothers also struggle with the physical realities of having a postpartum body in the workplace, such as dealing with leaky breast milk overflows from engorged breasts, unpredictable menstrual cycles and other postpartum changes. While some workplaces provide breastfeeding spaces, this is far from the norm, leaving women to adapt to the rhythms and spaces of the office on their own.

    Even long after giving birth, women must remain attentive of their appearance at work. Researchers shows that women who look too “mothering” risk being taken less seriously at work. Dressing like a mom is sometimes used as an insult to describe women who choose an easy to manage hairstyle, don’t wear makeup or prioritize comfort over fashion when choosing their clothes.

    Women are expected to control and manage their bodies to conform to workplace norms before, during and after pregnancy — expectations that are at odds with their biology.

    Making workplaces work for mothers

    As experts in motherhood and mothers ourselves, we are adamant that things need to change. Our recent research outlined a three-pillar call to action to make workplaces more inclusive and equitable toward mothers.

    1. Enlist allies and resist negative attitudes about motherhood. Much of modern motherhood has become a logistical battle. Workplaces should implement institutional policies that recognize these logistical challenges, such as a four-day work week or flexible hours. Mothers must also build strong support networks, especially in places like the workplace where positions of power are often occupied by those who aren’t mothers.

    2. Recognize the physical toll of mothering and normalize maternal bodies. Workplaces must break down taboos surrounding maternal bodies by creating dedicated spaces for breastfeeding and breast pumping, and running awareness campaigns to normalize these needs. Workplaces should also hire more women — particularly mothers — into leadership roles. When maternal bodies become a common and accepted presence at work, they will no longer be a subject of scrutiny.

    3. Recognize the emotional cost of mothering. The emotional burden of parenting, like imbuing children with good values and guiding their decision-making, is the most taxing part about being a parent. Workplaces should acknowledge this by redesigning performance evaluations to account for the time and energy needed for caregiving. This could also mean considering parental and caregiving roles in annual performance evaluation criteria.

    Mothers and those who care about them must come together to demand better workplace conditions, not just for mothers, but for others as well. Only through collective action can we create lasting change.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Modern workplaces were never designed for mothers, and it’s time for that to change – https://theconversation.com/modern-workplaces-were-never-designed-for-mothers-and-its-time-for-that-to-change-250584

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Sugary drinks are a killer: a 20% tax would save lives and rands in South Africa

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Susan Goldstein, Associate Professor in the SAMRC Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science – PRICELESS SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons in Systems Strengthening South Africa), University of the Witwatersrand

    Non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular conditions account for over 70% of global deaths annually.

    In South Africa, non-communicable diseases cause more than half of all deaths. Diabetes ranks as the second leading cause after tuberculosis.

    A major contributor to rising diabetes rates is the high consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, including cooldrinks.

    The World Health Organization recommends a tax of at least 20% on sugary drinks as an effective tool to help reduce consumption and curb related health risks.

    South Africa introduced a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, officially known as the Health Promotion Levy, in 2018.

    The tax applies at R0.0221 ($0.0012) per gram of sugar beyond a 4g/100ml threshold, amounting to an 8% of final selling price. The tax has increased slightly since it was introduced, but not in line with inflation. The Health Promotion Levy therefore falls short of the original 20% target as industry pressure led to a watered-down version of it.

    I lead the South African Medical Research Council/Wits Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science – PRICELESS SA, which has been studying various aspects of the levy for over 10 years.

    PRICELESS SA is still in the process of measuring the health and financial impact of not implementing the Health Promotion Levy at the recommended 20%. A lack of recent data adds to this challenge. But it is worth noting that the World Obesity Report shows that obesity is still a severe problem in South Africa.

    Without interventions, obesity in South Africa is projected to affect 30 million adults and 10 million children by 2035. In 2019 there were 55,238 deaths in South Africa from non-communicable diseases attributable to obesity, and with an annual increase of 2.3% in obesity, deaths are going to increase.

    Taxing sugary beverages is effective

    Despite the sugar industry’s claims that the Health Promotion Levy is ineffective, global evidence strongly suggests otherwise. Countries that have implemented such taxes have seen significant declines in sugar consumption.

    Sugar-sweetened beverage taxes have been implemented in 103 countries and territories globally and have been shown to be effective in many countries.

    In Ireland there was a 30.2% reduction in sugar intake through these beverages.

    In California a study showed a decrease in overweight and obesity among young people living in cities where there was a sugary beverage tax.

    In Mexico, a sugar-sweetened beverages tax at 1 peso ($0.05) per litre was introduced in 2014, and by 2016, sugary drinks sales had dropped by 37%.

    Similarly, in the UK, a tax introduced in 2018 led to a 35.4% reduction in sugar consumption from taxed beverages.

    The levy has had a positive impact in South Africa. Studies show decreased purchasing of these beverages. There were greater reductions in sales among lower socioeconomic groups and in sub-populations with higher sugary drink consumption.

    Mean sugar from taxable beverage purchases fell from 16.25 g/capita per day from the pre-health promotion levy announcement to 10.63 g/capita per day in the year after implementation.

    Lower-income households, which initially purchased more taxable sugary beverages than wealthier households, showed the most significant reductions in consumption after the tax was enforced.

    This is particularly important as non-communicable diseases disproportionately affect poor and vulnerable populations.

    Stronger taxation on sugary beverages not only decreases consumption but also encourages reformulation by manufacturers, leading to healthier products.

    The levy does not cause job losses

    Sugar-related industries often argue that the tax has led to massive job losses.

    Our research contradicts these claims.

    A recent study carried out by PRICELESS SA, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies through the University of North Carolina and the South African Medical Research Council, showed no significant association between the levy and employment levels. It showed that the levy had not been associated with job creation or job losses in sugar-related industries. These include agriculture, beverage manufacturing and commercial enterprises that sell food and beverages.

    The study suggests several factors that may explain this:

    Firstly, firms may reallocate labour within their operations rather than
    cut jobs.

    Secondly, many beverage producers have responded to the tax by reformulating their products, reducing the sugar content and using non-nutritive sweeteners rather than reducing production.

    Thirdly, demand for taxed sugary drinks has not declined enough to affect employment.

    Finally, consumers often switch to untaxed alternatives produced by the same companies, preventing financial losses to the industry.

    Increasing the levy is beneficial to the public purse

    The recent delay of South Africa’s budget speech, due to disagreements within the government over the proposed value added tax increase of two percentage points, highlights the urgent need for additional and alternative revenue sources.

    South Africa’s health system is experiencing a massive financial burden due to overweight and obesity, costing R33 billion (US$1.78 billion) annually. This expense accounts for 15.38% of the government’s health expenditure and 0.67% of the country’s GDP. On a per-person basis, the annual cost of overweight and obesity is R2,769 (US$150).

    On the other hand, the levy generated R5.8 billion (US$313m) in revenue over its first two fiscal years.

    Beyond raising funds, a higher tax rate would provide public health benefits and savings for health services.

    Based on our research, increasing the levy to 20% in South Africa could reduce obesity rates by 2.4 to 3.8 percentage points, prevent 85,000 strokes, and save 72,000 lives over two decades.

    These improvements potentially save over R5 billion (US$270m) in medical costs.

    Unlike other taxation measures, which affect all consumers equally, the levy primarily targets discretionary purchases, making it a fairer fiscal tool.

    Therefore, government must act – raise the Health Promotion Levy to 20% and cut the sugar-fuelled health crisis at its root.

    Raising the levy to 20% would be a smarter tax for a healthier nation.

    Darshen Naidoo, Legal Researcher and Associate Lecturer at PRICELESS SA, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg contributed to the article.

    Susan Goldstein on behalf of PRICELESS receives funding from the Bloomberg Foundation, the SAMRC and the National Institutes for Health Research

    – ref. Sugary drinks are a killer: a 20% tax would save lives and rands in South Africa – https://theconversation.com/sugary-drinks-are-a-killer-a-20-tax-would-save-lives-and-rands-in-south-africa-251393

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Europe-Nato ‘coalition of the willing’ scrambles for collective response to hostility from Trump and threat from Putin

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

    Six days after the infamous shouting match between the US president and Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president is scrambling to try and repair what looked initially like a near-total breakdown in the relationship between the US and Ukraine.

    Zelensky, urged by European leaders, including the British prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, has tried to mend his ties with Trump. The US president acknowledged as much in his first post-inauguration speech to congress on March 5, saying that he appreciated Zelensky’s readiness to work for peace under US leadership.

    But that happened just 24 hours after he decided to halt all military aid to Ukraine. And since then, the new director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, and national security adviser, Mike Waltz, have confirmed that intelligence sharing with Kyiv, which was critical to Ukraine’s ability to hit strategic targets inside Russia, has also been suspended.

    Neither of these two moves will have an immediate game-changing effect on the war, but they certainly increase pressure on Ukraine to accept whatever deal Trump will ultimately make with Putin.

    So far, so bad for Zelensky. Yet Trump’s manoeuvring does not only affect Ukraine. It has also had a profound impact on the relationship between the US and Europe. On Sunday March 2, in the aftermath of the White House debacle, Starmer convened an emergency meeting in London with a select number of European leaders, as well as the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

    This “coalition of the willing”“ has been in the making for some time now. Its members straddle the boundaries of the EU and Nato, including – apart from the UK – non-EU members Norway and Turkey. Since the relatively disappointing first-ever EU meeting solely focused on defence on February 3 – which was more notable for the absence of a European vision for the continent’s role and place in the Trumpian world order – Europe has embarked on a course of more than just rhetorical change.

    The UK was first out of the blocks. Ahead of Starmer’s visit to Washington, the UK government announced on February 25 an increase of defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027. This was then followed on March 2 with a pledge of additional air defence missiles for Ukraine worth £1.6 billion.

    Europe responds

    In a crucial boost to defence spending at the EU level, the president of the European commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the “Rearm Europe” plan on March 4. It is projected to mobilise around €800 billion (£670 million) for European defence.

    This includes a “national escape clause” for EU members, exempting national defence expenditures from the EU’s deficit rules. It also offers a new loan instrument worth up to €150 billion, allows for the use of already allocated funds in the EU budget for defence projects, and proposes partnerships with the private sector through the Savings and Investment Union and the European Investment Bank.

    Perhaps most significantly, in Germany, the two main parties likely to form the next coalition government announced a major shift in the country’s fiscal policy on March 5, which will allow any defence spending above 1% of GDP to be financed outside the country’s strict borrowing rules.

    This marks an important point of departure for Germany. Apart from what it means in fiscal terms, it also sends an important political signal that Germany – the continent’s largest economy – will use its financial and political muscle to strengthen the emerging coalition of the willing.



    Read more:
    Europe will need thousands more tanks and troops to mount a credible military defence without the US

    Donald Trump reads a letter from Volodymyr Zelensky during his speech to Congress, March 4.

    These are all important steps. Taken together, and provided that the current momentum is maintained, they are likely to accelerate Europe’s awakening to a world in which US security guarantees as no longer absolute.

    The challenges that Europe faces on the way to becoming strategically independent from the US are enormous. But they are not insurmountable.

    The conventional military threat posed by an aggressive and revanchist Russia is more easily manageable with the planned boost to conventional forces and air and cyber defences. Close cooperation with Ukraine will also add critical war-fighting experience which can boost the deterrent effect.

    Europe for now, however, remains vulnerable in terms of its nuclear capabilities, especially if deprived of the US nuclear umbrella and faced with Russia’s regular threats to use its nuclear arsenal – the world’s largest nuclear power by warhead stockpiles.

    But here, too, new strategic thinking is emerging. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has indicated his willingness to discuss a more integrated European nuclear capability. And in Germany, a country with an otherwise very complex relationship with nuclear weapons, such a European approach has been debated, increasingly positively, for some time, starting during Trump’s first term in office between 2017 and 2021.



    Read more:
    French nuclear deterrence for Europe: how effective could it be against Russia?

    Tectonic shift

    A stronger, and strategically more independent Europe, even if it will take time to emerge, is also crucial for the war in Ukraine. Increased European defence spending, including aid for Ukraine, will help Kyiv in the short term to make up for at least some of the gaps left by the suspension – and possible complete cessation – of US military support.

    In the long term, however, EU accession would possibly open up the route to a security guarantee for Ukraine under article 47.2 of the Lisbon treaty on European Union.

    This so-called mutual defence clause has been derided in the past for lacking any meaningful European defence capabilities. But if the current European momentum towards beefing up the continent’s defences is sustained, it would acquire more teeth than it currently has.

    With the benefit of hindsight, Zelensky may have walked away less empty handed from his clash with Trump last week than it seemed initially. If nothing else, Europeans have since then demonstrated not just in words but also in deeds that they are no longer in denial about just how dangerous Trump is and how much they are now on their own.

    Threatened by both Moscow and Washington, Europe is now on the cusp of a second zeitenwende, the “epochal tectonic shift” that the then German chancellor Olaf Scholz acknowledged after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. They may finally even have found an answer to the question he posed at the time: “How can we, as Europeans and as the European Union, remain independent actors in an increasingly multi-polar world?”

    Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

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

    – ref. Europe-Nato ‘coalition of the willing’ scrambles for collective response to hostility from Trump and threat from Putin – https://theconversation.com/europe-nato-coalition-of-the-willing-scrambles-for-collective-response-to-hostility-from-trump-and-threat-from-putin-251332

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trudeau’s record may be spotty, but his biggest accomplishment was a national child-care program

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Naomi Lightman, Associate Professor of Sociology, Toronto Metropolitan University

    As Canada prepares to close the book on the Justin Trudeau era, some will be happy to watch him go. But in Canada’s haste to see him out the door, let’s not forget his government’s significant achievements.

    His strong performance in the ongoing showdown with United States President Donald Trump, for example, may have led Canadians to view him in a distinctly more positive light.

    But what’s undoubtedly been his single greatest achievement — prodded in no small part by the NDP — was the introduction of a national child-care program: The Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) system, colloquially known as $10-a-day child care.

    As scholars of social policy — as well as a mother and grandfather — we believe this program is the biggest improvement to Canada’s welfare state since the initial implementation of medicare in 1966-67, updated via the Canada Health Act in 1984.

    Somehow, however, amid all the negative Trudeau headlines, this major contribution has been seemingly forgotten.

    Gender equality

    Trudeau’s child-care program is a massive advancement for gender equality and should be celebrated by all women, parents and — more broadly — people who care about reducing social inequalities.

    By freeing parents — mostly women — from the need to stay home with their children or from having to rely on ageing and often frail grandparents, evidence suggests Canada will experience substantial benefits to children, parents and society as a whole.

    The program allows highly skilled and motivated workers to join the paid labour force and could also affect fertility decisions in some cases if, for example, families decide to have more children due to reduced child-care costs.

    Just as importantly, formal child care benefits children developmentally, particularly in the case of disadvantaged and single-parent households.

    In purely fiscal terms, study after study shows that a dollar invested in child care yields a greater financial return over a lifetime than any other expenditure of public funds.

    Massive uptake rates

    The CWELCC program committed more than $30 billion federally to support early learning and child care, with specific funds dedicated to Indigenous child care.

    To date, it has created 150,000 new spaces, with a goal of creating an additional 100,000 new spaces by March 2026. All provinces and territories have participated, with uptake rates among child-care centres starting at 92 per cent in Ontario and rising higher elsewhere across the country.

    Notably, the road to implementing national child care in Canada has neither been short or easy.

    In 2004, Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin was unable to bring national child care to fruition, despite gaining bilateral child-care agreements with all 10 provinces.

    When Stephen Harper replaced Martin in 2006, among the first acts of his Conservative government was to cancel these agreements. Instead, he offered the Universal Childcare Benefit that delivered $100 per child to parents monthly, but did nothing to address the lack of available child-care spaces.

    It did, however, ensure that a rhetoric of “choice” and cash in hand for in-home care for children was prioritized over women’s equal participation in the labour market. Internationally, there is consistent evidence that care allowances offered in lieu of a publicly funded child-care services reinforce traditional gendered divisions of labour and reduce female employment rates.

    All provinces/territories signed up

    By contrast — and no small feat in terms of negotiation skills — Trudeau’s team was able to persuade each and every province and territory to sign an Early Learning and Child Care Agreement.

    Major reductions in child-care fees for eligible families followed, with all territories and four provinces at $10-a-day as of 2024 (with New Brunswick and Alberta only slightly higher, while Nova Scotia] will be at $10-a-day as of March 1, 2026.)

    Even in Ontario, where rates are higher, costs now average about $23 a day.

    Trudeau managed to carry out this program by starting his efforts early in his tenure, unlike with the dental and pharmacare initiatives, and building consensus across a diverse and often contentious Canadian landscape.

    Supply issues

    It’s not all roses, of course. Some Canadians are frustrated about the slow expansion of subsidized child-care spaces. And the program remains plagued by serious supply (availability) issues, especially in rural and remote communities.

    Early childhood educators still do not receive fair pay for the essential work they do, and staff retention is a serious issue.

    But as we look towards the next federal election, Conservative Leader Pierre Polievre has had little to say about the national child-care program except for vague references to “flexibility” and a suggestion about replacing it with tax credits. This should set alarm bells ringing across the country.



    Read more:
    The baffling indifference of Canadian voters to child-care proposals

    Fortunately, Trudeau has set up a framework that will be difficult to dismantle in the future. There has been massive buy-in from users, providers, funders and much of the general public.

    We urge whoever replaces Trudeau as prime minister to highlight what’s been accomplished in child care over the last few years, and to prioritize the further expansion of the program in the years ahead.

    This would be Trudeau’s proudest legacy.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Trudeau’s record may be spotty, but his biggest accomplishment was a national child-care program – https://theconversation.com/trudeaus-record-may-be-spotty-but-his-biggest-accomplishment-was-a-national-child-care-program-251318

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Mickey 17: this absurdist, dystopian clone drama is highly entertaining – despite its flaws

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sean Seeger, Senior Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS), University of Essex

    Written, directed and co-produced by Bong Joon-ho, Mickey 17 is another exciting, discussion-worthy film from the acclaimed Korean director. For fans of his previous work, such as Oscar-winner Parasite (2019), it’s well worth seeing – even though the film is not without wrinkles.

    Like Bong’s earlier films, Mickey 17 combines artful world-building, an impeccable cast, social satire, anarchic humour and a taste for the grotesque (a shot of a severed hand floating past the porthole of a spacecraft’s cafeteria lingers in the mind).

    It’s a measure of Bong’s success to date that, as well as granting him full editorial control of the film, Warner Brothers reportedly provided a budget of US$120 million (£93 million). It’s a large sum by current Hollywood standards, though still only half that of mega productions like Avatar (£185 million) and The Dark Knight Rises (£195 million).

    Set in 2054, Mickey 17 follows a mission to establish a human settlement on an inhospitable alien planet. In this imagined future, it has become possible to replicate human beings with total accuracy using an advanced form of 3D printing.

    Although outlawed back on Earth, human printing is legal in the remote regions of space, where disposable workers known as “expendables” can be reprinted on demand each time they perish. At the start of the film, Mickey is killed and reprinted 16 times before an accident leads to two Mickeys (numbers 17 and 18) coexisting in what is referred to as a “multiples violation”.

    The trailer for Mickey 17.

    Mickey’s existence is nightmarish: an endlessly repeated cycle of exploitation, death and rebirth. Combined with some memorably surreal imagery – most notably a sequence in which multiple Mickeys are shown emerging from the printer like pages from a photocopier – this chilling scenario sometimes brings the film within the orbit of the horror genre.

    Bong Joon-ho’s dystopian satire

    Stylistically and thematically, Mickey 17 bears a clear resemblance to two of Bong’s previous films: Snowpiercer (2013) and Parasite. Where it diverges from its predecessors is the room it creates for hope.

    In Snowpiercer, a bleakly comic eco-dystopia, the oppressive society in which the film is set is overthrown when a train housing the last human survivors of a new ice age is sabotaged by workers from the lower-class tail section.

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    The ambiguous final scene of the film depicts the main characters exiting the train only to be confronted by a frozen, potentially uninhabitable wasteland. If the train stands for global capitalism, Snowpiercer seems to imply that the prospects for a life beyond capitalism are slight.

    Parasite has likewise often been read as a fable about contemporary capitalism. It follows a lower-class family as they gradually try to take over the home of a much wealthier family, waging a kind of covert class warfare from a hidden subterranean level beneath the house. In the end, however, the poorer family is publicly humiliated and violently driven back underground to plot its revenge.

    Whereas both Snowpiercer and Parasite can therefore be seen as staging revolutionary struggles that are in different ways defeated, Mickey 17 is more hopeful.

    It is somewhat disappointing, then, that other than an impassioned anti-colonial speech in the final act, the victory over oppressive systems mainly involves throwing out the few bad apples at the top before resuming business as usual. In this regard, the stalled revolutions of Snowpiercer and Parasite are more persuasive.

    Mickey 17 is a well-made and successful film. It is engaging, witty, strange and at times visually stunning. Although the film overstretches itself in attempting to envisage a future beyond dystopia, it is nonetheless gratifying in the age of the superhero franchise to see a bigger budget Hollywood film that has something to say and dares to take some creative risks.

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

    – ref. Mickey 17: this absurdist, dystopian clone drama is highly entertaining – despite its flaws – https://theconversation.com/mickey-17-this-absurdist-dystopian-clone-drama-is-highly-entertaining-despite-its-flaws-251496

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Plants struggled for millions of years after Earth’s worst climate catastrophe – new study

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marcos Amores, PhD Candidate in Palaeoclimatology, University College Cork

    A king fern at the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney, Australia. Marcos Amores

    With the world on the threshold of 1.5°C of warming, one pressing question is: how bad can it get? The answer may lie beneath our feet.

    Buried underground are rocks, many rocks, and they are old. For palaeontologists like us, they are a vast archive of past life on Earth. In particular, they can tell us how life on land fared during times when the climate warmed suddenly. Our new study showed that plants were severely affected and forests took millions of years to recover.

    About 252 million years ago more than 80% of marine species became extinct. This is known as the end-Permian mass extinction, arguably the most significant climatic crisis since the earliest appearance of animals, more than 555 million years ago. It seems that the prime culprit was the massive amount of warming-inducing greenhouse gas released by volcanoes in a region known as the Siberian Traps in Russia.

    Evidence suggests that plants may not have suffered a mass extinction, but their communities were heavily affected, if not destroyed outright. While the extreme heat would have pushed plants and animals past their tolerance limits, they probably also faced deadly droughts, ozone depletion, widespread wildfires and toxic heavy metal contamination.

    Data on how plants fared following the end-Permian extinction are plentiful, but little is known about those located at higher latitudes, where it was cooler. Thriving ecosystems existed at polar latitudes back then, aided by a mostly ice-free polar region. At the end-Permian event, however, this ecosystem was entirely wiped out.

    Our work examined the rocks and fossils of the Sydney region of Australia, which was located near the south pole for at least 8 million years following the worst mass extinction in Earth’s history. These well-preserved, long-term records provide a window into the recovery of plant communities furthest away from the source of trouble.

    The long, unsteady path to recovery

    The plant fossils from these Australian rocks showed that conifers, like modern pines or cypresses, were some of the earliest to colonise the land immediately following the calamity. The recovery to flourishing forests, however, was not smooth sailing.

    We discovered that even higher temperatures 2 million years after the end-Permian event caused the collapse of these conifer survivors. In turn, they were replaced by tough, shrubby plants resembling modern clubmosses (like Isoetes). How hot it got in Sydney is not known, but this scorching period lasted for about 700,000 years and made life challenging for trees and other large plants.

    When cooling conditions finally manifested, large but unusual plants that looked like ferns but bore seeds like conifers flourished and established more stable forests in Sydney. This recovery took less than 100,000 years to happen. These plants eventually dominated the landscape for millions of years, paving the way for the lush forests during the Mesozoic age of the dinosaurs.

    So, after million of years, the forest ecosystems of the Mesozoic came to look like those from before the end-Permian event. But crucially, the plant species that made up the new forests were completely different.

    The term “recovery” can be misleading. Forests recover eventually, but extinction of individual species is forever.

    By understanding how ancient plant ecosystems weathered extreme climate swings, we, as researchers, hope to learn valuable lessons about how modern plants and ecosystems might cope (or not) with today’s climate crisis. With this knowledge, we can inform policymakers of what is yet to come, and help steer a course that will avoid the worst climate outcomes over the longest possible timeframes.

    So, fossil records add a data-driven long-term perspective to the climate choices we make today. Ecosystems depend on a fragile balance, with plants as the backbone of food webs on land and climate regulators.

    The fossils have spoken: the disruption of these systems can have consequences that last hundreds of thousands of years, so protecting today’s ecosystems is more important than ever.

    Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Marcos Amores receives funding from Research Ireland Centre for Applied Geosciences (grants 13/RC/2092_P2 and 17/RC-PhD/3481) and Research Ireland (grant 22/FFP-P/11448).

    Chris Mays receives funding from the Irish Centre for Research in Applied Geosciences (grant #13/RC/2092_P2) and Science Foundation Ireland (grant #22/FFP-P/11448).

    – ref. Plants struggled for millions of years after Earth’s worst climate catastrophe – new study – https://theconversation.com/plants-struggled-for-millions-of-years-after-earths-worst-climate-catastrophe-new-study-251324

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why global firms are pushed to take sides in wars, and how they can avoid it

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephan Manning, Professor of Strategy and Innovation, University of Sussex Business School, University of Sussex

    Virrage Images/Shutterstock

    Russia’s war against Ukraine has changed how global firms respond to geopolitical events. Whereas in the past foreign companies often preferred to stay neutral in times of war, now they increasingly take sides.

    When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, global firms like Google and Amazon were swift to offer support to Ukraine with donations and supplies. Others, like Renault and Deutsche Bank, harmed the Russian economy by suspending operations and investment.

    Overall, more than 1,000 foreign companies reduced their activity in Russia, with nearly 300 of them leaving the country completely. These firms acted in line with the geopolitical position of their home countries, but often did so before their governments had issued any official policy.

    In our study of corporate responses to the Russia-Ukraine war, we call this
    “partisan behavior” – as it supports one side, while harming the other.

    But taking sides often comes at a cost. Shell, for example, lost almost US$5 billion (£3.9 million) by leaving a joint venture with Russia’s energy giant Gazprom, and the US digital communication company Cisco lost almost £200 million from pausing its operations in Russia.

    Supporting one side over another has also backfired for many firms in the conflict between Israel and Gaza. For example, McDonald’s restaurants in Israel (then owned by a franchise group) donated free food to Israeli soldiers, while Ben & Jerry’s sought to stop sales to Israelis in the West Bank.

    Both actions led to a considerable backlash, mostly in the form of consumer boycotts, which led to reduced growth for McDonald’s, and big losses for Ben & Jerry’s parent company, Unilever.

    So why do companies take such economic and reputational risks? One reason could be that geopolitical divides along with ongoing culture wars, amplified by social media outrage, have increased public pressure on large multinational firms to take a political stance.

    Yet continuing with business as usual does not seem to be an option either. After Coca-Cola continued to operate as normal during the Israel-Gaza conflict, it was accused by one Palestinian-led movement of being “complicit in a war crime”.

    Firms that maintained operations in Russia, such as Carlsberg and Unilever, were not only criticised for doing so by their home countries, but also faced the prospect of a takeover by the Russian state – since their western influence was perceived as threatening. In comparison, many Chinese firms took the opportunity and expanded operations in Russia – supported by the Russian government.

    A survey by the American thinktank the Conference Board confirms that western companies find it increasingly challenging to “maintain neutrality” in times of conflict. Yet geopolitical conflicts are on the rise, and multinational firms will continue to feel pressure to respond.

    Of course, sometimes foreign firms have little choice about what to do. For example their home governments may issue sanctions on a conflict party, making it difficult to continue business. This was the situation for many foreign firms operating in Russia during the war.

    Focus on the victims

    But often, foreign firms can choose how to respond. In those cases, our research suggests that they should take a non-partisan humanitarian position, and focus on supporting the victims of a conflict – on both sides – as much as possible.

    For example, two large US companies, Comcast (media) and Verizon (telecommunications), each committed US$1.5 Million to support humanitarian efforts, such as the charity Doctors Without Borders, in both Israel and Gaza. Neither firm has faced criticism or any kind of backlash.

    Humanitarian aid arriving in Gaza, February 2025.
    Anas-Mohammed/Shutterstock

    A further step would be for large corporations to develop a shared code of conduct which focuses entirely on non-partisan humanitarian measures in line with international law.

    Under this law, conflicting parties have an obligation to ensure passage of humanitarian aid, freedom of movement of humanitarian workers and the protection of civilians, refugees, prisoners and the wounded.

    Multinationals could play a constructive role in this effort. They could partner with NGOs and charities to finance essential services, provide logistical support and ensure the continuous flow of aid.

    Such a shared commitment to the humanitarian cause could also be a useful approach for other organisations, like universities. The resignations of US university presidents after they criticised pro-Palestinian campus protests could have been prevented with a clearer non-partisan approach.

    A politically polarised world can be difficult to navigate, and one that global businesses should be increasingly wary of. But a non-partisan humanitarian approach, which helps those who suffer the most, offers a balanced and ethical alternative.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Why global firms are pushed to take sides in wars, and how they can avoid it – https://theconversation.com/why-global-firms-are-pushed-to-take-sides-in-wars-and-how-they-can-avoid-it-249409

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The king has a tricky diplomatic role to play in inviting Trump for a state visit

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Francesca Jackson, PhD candidate, Lancaster Law School, Lancaster University

    As monarch, King Charles III is bound by constitutional convention to remain politically neutral. But that hasn’t stopped the UK government from deploying the king to advance its foreign policy agenda.

    During their inaugural meeting, Keir Starmer presented Donald Trump with a letter from the king, inviting the president for a “truly historic” and “unprecedented” second state visit to the UK and a visit to the monarch’s private Balmoral residence.

    Later that week, the government arranged for the king to meet Volodymyr Zelensky at the royal countryside retreat of Sandringham, to show support for the Ukrainian leader following his disastrous meeting with Trump.

    The government is walking a tightrope: it wants to avoid tariffs from Trump, while continuing to support Zelensky and Ukraine. And it is using the king to help it do so.

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    It is not unusual for governments to use monarchs to boost international relations, particularly through state visits. The monarch has a huge amount of soft power and the pomp and ceremony of a state visit can help governments achieve their foreign affairs aims.

    State visits differ from regular diplomatic visits: they are the most formal way in which a foreign head of state can come to the UK, and happen just once or twice a year.

    Visitors are greeted by the king and other members of the royal family with a ceremonial welcome accompanied by gun salutes on the Horse Guards Parade ground in London. They then travel back to Buckingham Palace in a carriage procession, where they enjoy a formal state banquet at which the monarch toasts the visiting head of state.

    State visits are not cheap: Trump’s first visit cost £3.5 million in policing alone. But they can play a key role in diplomacy.

    A state visit to France by Queen Elizabeth II in 1972 helped seal the deal on the UK’s third attempt at joining the the European Economic Community. And in 2024, the UK’s defence partnership with Qatar was “strengthened” following the state visit of the Qatari emir.

    There is a danger that the monarch’s reputation is affected by hosting controversial heads of state. No doubt the palace PR team is less than enthused about the prospect of Charles being seen wining and dining Trump. The optics of hosting Trump during his first state visit reportedly put the late Queen Elizabeth in a “very difficult position”.

    But monarchs have little (if any) influence over who they host for a state visit. Charles will have been advised by the government to invite Trump in accordance with the cardinal convention. This fundamental constitutional principle requires the monarch to act on the advice of the government.

    Constitutional conventions are not legally binding. But in the UK’s constitutional monarchy, the monarch reigns but does not rule and power is exercised by democratically-elected ministers rather than the sovereign. Failure by the monarch to follow convention could spark a constitutional crisis, as fictional plays and dramas have long imagined.

    A royal invitation.
    Number 10 Flickr, CC BY-ND

    This is why the late queen had to host some controversial and less-than-democratic figures. It even once led her to hide in a bush to avoid encountering Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu in the Buckingham Palace gardens.

    And it is why Charles, on the government’s advice, will host Trump.

    Laying on the royal charm

    Usually, the public doesn’t see invitations for state visits, but we did see this particular letter. Signed “Yours most sincerely, Charles”, it feels particularly personal and designed to charm Trump, whose love of the British royal family is well known. The offer of an additional visit to Balmoral is a nod to the president’s mother, who was born in Scotland.

    The king’s invitation seems to have done the diplomatic trick. Trump ended his meeting with Starmer by stating: “I think we could very well end up with a real trade deal where the tariffs wouldn’t be necessary”.

    But the visit won’t be without controversy. In the days since, a petition asking for Trump’s invitation to be withdrawn has reached nearly 200,000 signatures. But Starmer has publicly dismissed calls to withdraw the invitation.

    No doubt Charles himself is less than thrilled to invite the president, both after his recent behaviour towards Zelensky and his decision to pull the US from the Paris agreement, given the king’s advocacy on environmental issues.

    Could the king raise such issues with Trump? Charles is bound by the doctrine of political neutrality: he must refrain from acting on political opinions. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be room for other senior royals not bound by the convention, like William, from doing so.

    Indeed, as prince of wales, Charles himself showed opposition to controversial leaders, effectively boycotting Chinese state visits in 1999 and 2015 allegedly in support for the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama.

    The monarch plays an important diplomatic role, especially during state visits. While the leaders they host may be controversial, the monarch must respect constitutional boundaries. Nevertheless, with an outspoken king and heir, this visit could prove to be even more unprecedented than it already is.

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

    – ref. The king has a tricky diplomatic role to play in inviting Trump for a state visit – https://theconversation.com/the-king-has-a-tricky-diplomatic-role-to-play-in-inviting-trump-for-a-state-visit-251308

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Russia launching ‘suicide missions’ across strategic Dnipro river as pause in US aid hampers defence

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Veronika Poniscjakova, Deputy Director, Porstmouth Military Education Team, University of Portsmouth

    After publicly belittling Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in a White House meeting, Donald Trump has suspended US military aid to Ukraine and paused intelligence sharing. It is now clear that Ukraine is in trouble in both its political and military situations, and the latter will only worsen as the effects of the US aid suspension hit.

    Trump’s outburst has, to some extent, reinvigorated European support for the war-torn country. But Zelensky’s recent statement that “Ukraine is ready to negotiate about an end to the conflict” suggests that he recognises how precarious the situation has become.

    In Trump’s address to the US Congress on February 4, the US president welcomed this shift, and claimed that Russia was also ready for a truce.

    What would a negotiated peace look like? The side that holds the upper hand, both politically and militarily, will have a stronger position at the negotiating table.

    At the moment, the advantage is overwhelmingly with Russia, which is striving to press home its battlefield advantage and occupy as much territory as it can before a potential ceasefire. This is likely to mean a freezing of the conflict on its current lines of contact.

    The war has now lasted more than three years, and since Ukraine’s failed summer 2023 counteroffensive, there have been no major changes on the battlefield, except for Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August 2024. Kyiv had hoped that seizing this territory could serve as a bargaining chip in future peace negotiations.

    But even this has not gone according to plan, as Russia has been steadily reclaiming the area, aided by North Korean troops.

    Recent battlefield developments reaffirm the ongoing stalemate. According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) (as of March 4), Russian forces continued offensives along various key strategic points in the east and south. While Russian advances continue to be slow, it’s a situation that could change quickly, particularly with the dramatic shutdown of US assistance.

    One of the key areas where Russia is now putting intense pressure on Ukrainian troops is in the Kherson oblast in the south of the country. Russian forces are reportedly attempting to cross the Dnipro river, aiming to establish footholds on the west (right) bank at four locations to allow them a clear run at the strategically important port city of Kherson.

    Russia has successfully negotiated river crossings during the three-year war, but this time, the situation seems more challenging. Recent reporting from the frontlines has described Russian assaults on Dnipro crossings as “suicide missions”, causing heavy Russian casualties.

    A high Russian body count is nothing new in this conflict. But why is Russia willing to sacrifice so many of its soldiers, particularly when the political prospects favour Putin and the Russians?

    Oleksandr Prokudin, the governor of Kherson, suggests that Russia is desperate to establish a foothold as crossing the Dnipro would open up Kherson oblast for further advances and could be used in negotiations to strengthen Russia’s claim over the entire region. The occupation of Kherson was listed by Russian defence minister, Andrei Belousov, as a key strategic goal for 2025.

    Strategic barrier

    Crossing the Dnipro will not be easy. Ukraine has tried and failed in the opposite direction on several occasions for example, in April and August 2023.

    At that stage, as part of the (ultimately unsuccessful) spring-summer offensive, Kyiv hoped crossing the river would be a major breakthrough that would lead to easier access to Crimea. This now looks like a lost cause – at least militarily.

    State of the conflict in Ukraine, March 5 2024.
    Institute for the Study of War

    The Dnipro is not only a natural barrier dividing the country into two parts. It’s also vital as a transport artery through the country and its dams provide energy.

    Russia realises this, and it has seen the river as one of Ukraine’s “centres of gravity”. On day one of the invasion, Russian forces made a beeline for the Dnipro, crossing and taking up positions that they were later forced to abandon as Ukraine fought back.

    Now, as Prokudin observed, Russia is once again throwing its troops at the river. A series of assaults in December 2024 were successfully repelled, but things have changed even in the few months since. Ukraine is in an increasingly difficult position.

    Ukraine’s military is facing increasingly critical troop shortages and has a far smaller population to draw on than Russia – something which is beginning to tell.

    And each day seems to bring further bad news. The US decision to pause intelligence sharing will mean its forces in the field will be virtually deaf and blind and at the mercy of Russian attacks on their positions (although there is reason to believe the pause may be reasonably shortlived).

    But, with the decision to halt military aid, it’s an indication of the Trump administration’s determination to force Kyiv into a peace deal – whether or not it’s acceptable to Ukraine.

    At this stage it looks almost inevitable that Ukraine will be unable to reclaim all the territory it has lost to Russia since 2014. Its best chance may be to secure what it still does control and go all-out to prevent further Russian advances. One of the ways it needs to do that right now is to ensure Russia does not establish a foothold across the Dnipro river.

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

    – ref. Russia launching ‘suicide missions’ across strategic Dnipro river as pause in US aid hampers defence – https://theconversation.com/russia-launching-suicide-missions-across-strategic-dnipro-river-as-pause-in-us-aid-hampers-defence-251439

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What climate vulnerability actually looks like

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Charlotte Kate Weatherill, Lecturer in Politics and International Studies, The Open University

    Floods affected main roads in Norfolk, UK, in February 2024. mick wass photography/Shutterstock

    The imagery of climate change matters. How we perceive the world affects how we perceive climate change, and how it will affect us – or whether it will affect us at all.

    Imagery has long been understood as an important part of climate communication. Climate change is complex, and requires some simplification to be communicated widely. Yet, this process of simplification can rely too heavily on existing stereotypes, which can affect risk perception across different populations.

    Think of climate vulnerability. This term describes who is likely to be negatively affected by climate change. Perceptions of vulnerability are affected by the images that are chosen to represent climate change. However, the images that are chosen also reflect our perceptions of who is vulnerable.

    For example, sea level rise is often represented through aerial images of Pacific atolls and ice melt is made emotional through the use of polar bears. But which images are most often used to represent human vulnerability to climate change?

    Search online for an image of climate victims and you are likely to see a photograph showing a stereotypical image of “brown women and children” standing in rising flood waters. Images like this show women and children, usually in Asia or Africa, looking distressed in a way that frames them as victims.

    However, when searching by region, images of climate victims can look different. For example, compare the search for “climate victim Asia” and “climate victim UK”.

    Fuli Khatun, a flood victim whose home was submerged in the 2019 floods in Bangladesh.
    UN Women Asia and the Pacific, CC BY-NC-ND

    The image above of of Fuli Khatan, a Bangladeshi flood victim, shows a woman experiencing a disaster. But the image below is very different. It shows Mary Long-Dhonau, a climate victim from the UK whose home has been flooded several times. She is looking directly at the camera, smiling slightly. She is not portrayed as a victim, but as a campaigner.

    The difference in how these women are portrayed is effective in showing how climate vulnerability is understood. For the most part, the climate vulnerable are imagined to be women and children in the global south (developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America), due to their marginalised position within society.

    In other words, the climate vulnerable are portrayed as the same people who are already considered vulnerable.

    This framing makes climate change an issue that follows an established pattern of risk. It doesn’t seem like a new issue, but rather chalk on the white wall of other political issues such as development.

    This overlap is partly the result of long-running and deeply embedded power inequalities that have made some people vulnerable in order to make other people wealthy.

    However, this pattern is overstated and climate vulnerability extends beyond those we already understand as vulnerable. Last month, the European Copernicus climate service declared that 2024 was the first calendar year to pass the symbolic threshold of 1.5°C heating, as well as the world’s hottest on record. Every degree of heating means more people will suffer the effects of climate change.

    These images also reflect the dominant understanding in the UK of climate change vulnerability as something that only happens elsewhere – in countries that are already vulnerable.

    Climate is an ‘us’ problem

    I’ve often encountered this issue in my research on the politics of climate vulnerability. My work questions the assumptions of climate change and vulnerability, tracing them back to understand the logics on which they rely. For example, the Pacific was described as vulnerable and doomed to not being habitable long before climate change became an issue.

    At the same time, assumptions of safety are rooted in history. In developed societies, there is a popular narrative that affluence provides a shield, which assumes wealthier people will be better protected by default.

    And yet, the UK is already experiencing climate change.

    The UK’s rainfall intensity has increased markedly over the past 60 years, leading to an increase of extreme flooding events. The east coast is being eroded, and battling sea level rise. And the UK government’s climate change committee has argued that the UK has no credible adaptation plan.

    Also, in an interconnected world, we have already experienced how shocks elsewhere can affect our food supply and gas prices. Even if the UK could escape the direct effects of climate change, it would still feel the consequences.

    Our perceptions of vulnerability are so entrenched that even climate-related incidences in wealthy countries, like the recent floods in Valencia or wildfires in LA don’t lead to a change in narrative. In fact, climate activists continue to be criminalised.

    Being aware of how images are used to influence our perceptions of vulnerability is an important step in changing the narrative. Climate change is already at levels at which we are all affected. We need to make this clearer.

    The UK has an historical responsibility to mitigate but it also needs to take more steps towards adaptation to the climate change that is already locked in.

    Speaking in February 2025, professor of energy and climate change Kevin Anderson described the future of humanity as a range of possibilities that goes from “dire consequences” to “catastrophic outcomes”. The higher temperatures are pushed past 1.5°C warming, the truer it is that nobody is safe.

    Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

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

    – ref. What climate vulnerability actually looks like – https://theconversation.com/what-climate-vulnerability-actually-looks-like-249422

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Paying attention to how multilingual children read can help foster reading for pleasure for all

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sabine Little, Lecturer in Educational Studies (Languages Education), University of Sheffield

    PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    Just 34.6% of children in the UK read for pleasure, according to a 2024 survey by the National Literacy Trust. This is the lowest number since the annual survey began in 2005 – down from 43.4% in the previous year.

    These figures are worrying, but a key to helping children learn to love reading could lie in the reading habits of multilingual children.

    My own research with the National Literacy Trust, conducted in 2021, explored the reading habits of 10,000 multilingual children in the UK. These are children who speak at least one language other than English at home.

    We found that not only do multilingual children spend more time reading for pleasure than those growing up speaking just one language, they also read a wider variety of texts and formats, and they enjoy reading for pleasure more.

    In a separate study, published in 2021, I found that multilingual children have a multitude of connections to their reading. A book might be important because it paved the way to a new hobby or because it was the first book they read in a new language, or one that was received from a beloved relative.

    The research showed that multilingual children have a wide variety of ways in thinking about “importance” in reading, including what the book represents to them, in terms of their migration journey, the people in their lives, and the languages they read in.

    Understanding these connections helps us to understand what children and young people are reading for. It teases out where and how reading had an impact on a child’s life: as an escape, as a guide to a new experience, as a link to a friend.

    The study also showed that parents continue to have a significant input into the reading lives of multilingual children. Because they often have a vested interest in supporting the development of the home or heritage language development, they stay involved, by reading together with children, or being on hand to help with language-related stumbling blocks.

    As a result, multilingual children persevere with their reading: they read while listening to the audio book at the same time, to improve literacy skills, or they read a book in both their languages, to make sure they catch nuances and meaning. Children identify these successes as “important” parts of their reading journey.

    But in my research with the National Literacy Trust, multilingual children told us that they wished schools paid more attention to their multilingualism. While conducting focus groups about multilingual reading in schools a few years ago, I noticed that children would only talk to me about their reading in English. When I queried this, one girl said: “Sure, I read all the Harry Potter books in Bengali. But why do you want to know about that? Nobody wants to know about that.”

    Celebrating reading by all children

    In working to address this problem, I have developed techniques in my research that have helped multilingual children map their reading both in and outside school, and in more than one language.

    This can also help other children understand and plot their own connections to what they read, and to recognise the value in what they read that isn’t books at school.

    Photo taken in River of Reading project.
    Sabine Little, CC BY-NC-ND

    One key method is to create a “river of reading”: a chronological artefact that charts a child’s reading journey across their various languages, and what reading is important to them. It’s suitable for all reading, multilingual or monolingual.

    This activity prompts children to think about the books that were important to them when they were very small, and to ask the adults in their lives about this too. It asks them to think about what they read that isn’t in books, such as magazines, recipes and messages from friends.

    And it prompts children to consider that a written text might be important to them without being their “favourite” – that reading something important isn’t always easy. This allows them to claim and discuss books they didn’t like or found difficult, too.

    This year’s World Book Day has taken on board the rivers of reading activity to help schools understand the reading that goes on at home and in school.

    As a bonus, activities such as this could make multilingualism more visible in a positive way in schools. This sends a message to multilingual children that all parts of their identity are welcome and can have a positive effect on motivation for language learning for all children.

    Sabine Little receives funding from the UK Literacy Association.

    – ref. Paying attention to how multilingual children read can help foster reading for pleasure for all – https://theconversation.com/paying-attention-to-how-multilingual-children-read-can-help-foster-reading-for-pleasure-for-all-250711

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Vaping hits alarming levels among South African teens – new study of fee-paying schools

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Sam Filby, Research Officer, Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products, University of Cape Town

    It’s become common to see kids, some in their school uniforms, puffing on a vape.

    The World Health Organization points to the enticing flavours and targeted marketing to young people as the key reasons behind this trend.

    In the US, e-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco product among middle and high school students aged 12 and older, with 5.9% of students reporting use.

    Surveys from the UK indicate that 20.5% of children (aged 11–17) have tried vaping, and that 7.6% of children currently vape. Similar usage rates ranging from 3.3% to 11.8% have been found in south-east Asia. Evidence on vape use among adolescents living in Africa is more scarce.

    We are public health researchers who have studied the phenomenon in South Africa. Our latest study, published in The Lancet’s eClinical Medicine, found that vaping among South African pupils is sky high. We surveyed over 25,000 South African high school students across 52 schools in eight of South Africa’s nine provinces.

    An estimated 16.8% of the sampled learners currently use e-cigarettes.

    Research has shown conclusively that children should not use these products because of the health risks.

    Our findings in South Africa show that high rates of adolescent vaping are not restricted to high income countries.

    Harmful impact on young minds and bodies

    In a 2016 report, the US surgeon general called vaping among young people an “urgent public health problem”.

    One reason for this is that these products commonly deliver nicotine. Nicotine use during adolescence harms the developing brain, with potential long-term effects on learning, memory and attention.

    Nicotine is also an addictive substance. Addictive behaviour in general is associated with the development of mental illness, further fuelling the mental health problems experienced by some adolescents.
    Substance abuse can lower their inhibitions, leading to increased high-risk behaviours.

    Non-nicotine vapes are also bad for health. The chemical composition of specific flavours such as cherry, cinnamon and vanilla have also been shown to cause damage to the lung lining and blood vessels.

    The rising popularity of e-cigarette use among adolescents globally should make helping young people with quitting vapes a priority.

    Surveying South African schools

    We approached schools predominantly in major centres like Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban. All were “fee-paying” schools. We were not able to include less well resourced schools without easy internet access or non-fee-paying schools.

    We categorised the schools into three brackets:

    • lower-fee schools: annual fees between R20,000 and R40,000 (US$1,100-2,100)

    • medium-fee schools: annual fees between R40,000 and R90,000 (US$2,100-4,800)

    • high-fee schools: annual fees more than R90,000 (over US$4,800).

    Around 17% of pupils in our sample attended lower-fee schools, 64% attended mid-fee schools, and 19% attended high-fee schools. Around 31% of learners attended co-ed schools, 41% attended all-boys’ schools, and 29% attended all-girls’ schools.

    Students were asked about their use of four products in the 30 days preceding the survey: e-cigarettes, tobacco cigarettes, cannabis and hookah pipes.

    Students who indicated that they currently vaped were asked additional questions
    about their vaping history and habits. We also asked students about their
    reasons for starting and continuing to vape.

    Using this data, we studied e-cigarette use, nicotine dependence, and the mental
    health and social stressors associated with vaping among a large sample of South
    African high school learners.

    Alarming rates

    Our study found that 16.8% of high school learners we surveyed were currently using e-cigarettes. There were far lower rates of tobacco cigarette use (2%), cannabis use (5%) and hookah pipe use (3%).

    The proportion of learners reporting e-cigarette use increased by grade: around 9% of grade 8 students reported using vapes, but this rose sharply to an average of 29.5% among grade 12 pupils (who will turn 18 in their final school year). Some schools had usage rates as high as 46% among grade 12 pupils.

    Among the learners who indicated that they vaped, 38% vaped daily, and more than half of the learners in our sample reported that they vaped four or more days per week.

    Around 88% of pupils reported using vapes that contained nicotine. About 47% reported that they vaped within the first hour of waking up – this is highly suggestive of nicotine addiction. We estimate that up to 61% of high school learners who vape could be seriously addicted to nicotine.

    Why adolescents start and continue vaping

    We found that the primary reasons for starting vaping differed from the main reasons for continuing to vape.

    • Just over half (50.6%) of the students who vaped cited social influences
      (family, friends, peer pressure, the need to fit in) as reasons for starting. Around 20% of learners indicated that they’d started vaping to cope with stress and anxiety, while 16.2% said they had started out of general curiosity.

    • Common reasons cited for continuing their vape use were to cope with
      anxiety, depression or stress (28.4%), or because they were addicted (14.9%).

    Some learners explicitly stated addiction in their reasoning:

    It’s an addiction, no matter what I try I can’t stop. (female, 17)

    Others described it more as a habit:

    It has become a habit. I have to consume something constantly. (female, 18)

    Less than 10% of students identified social influences as the reason they continued to vape.

    Around 46% of students did not list addiction as a reason for continuing to vape, although their reported vaping habits aligned with patterns typically seen in individuals who are highly addicted. This suggests that many learners in our sample may lack awareness of what constitutes addiction.



    Read more:
    South Africa’s new vaping tax won’t deter young smokers

    What needs to be done

    Our research underscores the urgent need for a coordinated public health response
    to address the vaping crisis among high school learners.

    The South African government must pass the Tobacco Products and Electronic
    Delivery Systems Control Bill. This legislation will ensure that vapes cannot be sold near schools or online.

    The restrictions on the advertising of vaping products provided for in the bill may aid with this as well as the deglamorisation of vaping among young people – reducing the general curiosity that leads many young people to begin in the first place.

    The dangerous myth that “vaping is safe” also needs to be debunked.

    Finally, we need to help addicted teenagers to stop vaping.

    Punishing students for vaping is unlikely to be an effective strategy. Parents must be more aware of the signs of vaping and the underlying issues driving it.

    Healthcare professionals should ask young people about their vape use during routine checkups.

    And school counsellors should teach coping strategies to help teens navigate life’s challenges.

    Sam Filby receives funding from the African Capacity Building Foundation and Cancer Research UK and has previously received funding from the CDC Foundation and the US Department of State.

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

    – ref. Vaping hits alarming levels among South African teens – new study of fee-paying schools – https://theconversation.com/vaping-hits-alarming-levels-among-south-african-teens-new-study-of-fee-paying-schools-244843

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why does Ethiopia have earthquakes and volcanoes? A geologist explains

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Gemechu Bedassa Teferi, Lecturer, Department of Geology , Addis Ababa Science & Technology University

    A swarm of earth tremors and fears of volcanic eruptions in January forced tens of thousands of people to move away from Awash Fentale, an area in the Afar region of Ethiopia. The area falls within a geologically active region of the Great Rift Valley that has experienced a number of earthquakes and volcanic events in the last 800 years. Two major volcanic eruptions occurred in 1250 and 1820 AD.

    What’s unfolded in Fentale in 2025 is part of an ongoing process millions of years in the making, deep under the earth’s surface. Scientists see it as a fascinating natural laboratory that will culminate in a north-south continental split – and ultimately create a new ocean – along the great East African Rift Valley. Gemechu Bedassa Teferi, a researcher who studies the volcanoes of the Main Ethiopian Rift, unpacks what’s behind the recent events.

    What causes tremors and volcanic eruptions in this region of Ethiopia?

    Eighteen million years ago, the continents broke apart to form the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Around 11 million years ago, a crack formed deep under the present Afar Depression, an area of north-east Ethiopia.

    The region sits on a hot, semisolid layer called the mantle. This mantle is constantly in motion due to the heat from the deeper part of the earth. One result is that the heated semi-solid rock (molten rock) can be forced up from the mantle and erupt through the weak spots in the earth’s crust. This is called a volcanic eruption.

    Deep beneath the surface, the molten rock is also enabling a parallel process of the ground moving apart. This creates a gap – called a rift – which is eventually filled by the molten rock. The friction created results in rocks suddenly breaking and releasing enormous amounts of energy. The released energy radiates outward in the form of seismic waves like ripples on water, causing the ground to shake. This is what is felt as the so-called earthquake.

    The Afar region is one of the most volcanically and tectonically active areas in the world.

    The ongoing events in Fentale, as well as the Dofan area to the north, are the most recent in the history of molten material rising to the surface as parts of the earth’s crust move apart from each other.

    No volcanic eruption has occurred in the most recent events. But more than 200 quakes with a magnitude of more than 4 have been recorded in the last five months. The strongest of these measured at 6 on the Richter scale.

    The swarm of earthquakes damaged dozens of buildings, schools, roads and factories. Most residents in the capital, Addis Ababa, which is nearly 190km away from the epicentre (starting point for an earthquake), also felt the tremor.

    The strongest earthquake since 1900 – in 1989 – had a magnitude of 6.5 on the Richter scale. This is strong enough to damage old buildings or those not built to withstand earthquakes.

    The last volcanic eruption at Fentale occurred in 1820. Based on historical records and global trends, an earthquake is a common precursor to volcanic eruptions. This has fuelled fears that recent earthquakes could signal eruptions at two nearby active volcanoes.

    What can scientists learn from the current events?

    Satellite radar images of the Fentale area revealed that the earthquakes in the region are due to hot molten rock pushing its way up from about 10km below Awash Fentale.

    What could follow is complex and depends on several factors, such as:

    • the temperature of the molten material – the hotter it is, the more easily it flows

    • the viscosity (how thick it is) – thicker molten rock flows slowly

    • the strength of the surrounding material – strong, resistant rocks around the hot molten rock can resist the pressure to rise.

    Three scenarios could possibly play out under Fentale.

    The first possible outcome is the cooling of the molten rock. That would lead to the formation of a dense, solidified rock material.

    The second is that the molten material could cause an eruption after forcing its way vertically to the surface or moving laterally underneath the earth’s surface.



    Read more:
    Ethiopian earthquakes and volcanic eruptions: earth scientist explains the link

    Under the third scenario, the super hot molten rock may also propagate laterally, interacting with other molten materials. This could eventually lead to either cooling or a massive volcanic eruption.

    Still, there are other unknown factors that could affect these potential processes in a geologically dynamic region.

    This calls for better predictions to mitigate future hazards. Scientists suggest that scientific monitoring techniques should be employed. These include volcanic gas measurement, onsite GPS monitoring, and geophysical study. Equally important is the collaborative effort of scientists and government officials to create a communication channel to engage the at-risk community.

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

    – ref. Why does Ethiopia have earthquakes and volcanoes? A geologist explains – https://theconversation.com/why-does-ethiopia-have-earthquakes-and-volcanoes-a-geologist-explains-250688

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Death by firing squad set to resume in the US – but no matter the method, all means of execution come with a troubling history

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Austin Sarat, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College

    The firing squad chair in which Brad Sigmon will be strapped before three volunteers shoot him dead. South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP

    Barring any late developments, the U.S. is set to see its first execution by firing squad in 15 years on March 7, 2025.

    Photos released by the South Carolina Department of Corrections suggest that the prisoner, Brad Sigmon, will be strapped to a metal seat in the same small death chamber that has been the location of the state’s other executions by means of the electric chair and lethal injection. Sigmon, who was sentenced to death in 2002 for the brutal killing of his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat, chose death by firing squad over other forms of execution under a 2021 law that allows inmates that option.

    According to the state’s firing squad protocol, the condemned man will have a hood put over his head and a target placed on his heart. Three volunteers will then shoot him from a distance of 15 feet. They will stand behind a wall with a small opening.

    But this method of execution has raised concern over the safety of observers of the execution. Meanwhile, others object to the use of a firing squad as a relic of a brutal past not fitting for modern times.

    As someone who has studied execution methods in the U.S., I see the resumption of death by firing squad as part of a morbid search for “better” execution methods. It comes amid concern over botched lethal injection attempts and a scarcity of the drugs needed to carry out such executions.

    In 2020, the first Trump administration expanded how federal execution can be carried out to include ghoulish methods such as hanging, the electric chair, gas chamber and, indeed, the firing squad.

    But revisiting all methods reveals a checkered history. Each has, at one time or other, been touted as humane only to be sidelined because its use was found to be gruesome and offensive. Given that history, there are questions over whether the resumption of death by firing squad can serve any purpose other than continuing a death penalty system deemed to be a cruel outlier among modern societies.

    The noose and the chair

    Let’s start with hanging.

    Hanging was the execution method of choice throughout most of American history, and it was used in America’s last public execution in 1936, when Rainey Bethea was put to death in Owensboro, Kentucky. When done correctly, the noose killed by severing the spinal column, causing near instantaneous death.

    A large crowd watches as attendants adjust a black hood over Rainey Bethea in 1936.
    AP File Photo

    But, all too often, hanging resulted in a slow death by strangulation and sometimes even a beheading. Given this gruesome record and hanging’s association with the lynching of mainly Black men, by the end of the 19th century the search for other execution methods began in earnest.

    The first of those alternatives was the electric chair. At the time it was adopted, it was regarded as a truly modern instrument of death, a technological marvel in the business of state killing. Hailed by penal reformers as a humane alternative to hanging, the electric chair was first authorized in 1888 by New York state following the report of a commission that concluded: “The most potent agent known for the destruction of human life is electricity. … The velocity of the electric current is so great that the brain is paralyzed; it is indeed dead before the nerves can communicate a sense of shock.”

    Yet, right from the start, electrocution’s potency was a problem. Its first use in the 1890 execution of convicted murderer William Kemmler was horribly botched. Reports of the execution say that “after 2 minutes the execution chamber filled with the smell of burning flesh.” Newspapers called the execution a “historic bungle” and “disgusting, sickening and inhuman.”

    In spite of the Kemmler debacle, the electric chair quickly became popular, being seen as more efficient and less brutal than hanging. From the start of the 20th century until the 1980s, the number of death sentences carried out by this method far outstripped those of any other method.

    But electrocutions continued to go wrong, and eventually several dramatic botched executions in Florida helped turn the tide. Included were two executions – one in 1990, the other in 1997 – in which the condemned inmates caught fire.

    The gas chamber

    By the start of the 21st century, states all over the country were abandoning the electric chair. As Justice Carol W. Hunstein of the Supreme Court of Georgia explained, “Death by electrocution, with its specter of excruciating pain and its certainty of cooked brains and blistered bodies,” was no longer compatible with contemporary standards of decency.

    A gas chamber at San Quentin prison from 1959.
    AP Photo/Clarence Hamm

    One alternative to electrocution was the gas chamber, but it too has its own history of problems. First adopted in Nevada in 1922, executions using lethal gas were to take place while the condemned slept. Death row inmates were supposed to be housed in airtight, leak-proof prison cells, separate from other prisoners. On the day of the execution, valves would be opened that would fill the chamber with gas, killing the prisoner painlessly.

    This plan was soon abandoned because officials decided it would be impractical to implement it, and states constructed special gas chambers fitted with pipes, exhaust fans and glass windows on the front and back walls for witness viewing. But deaths by lethal gas were never pretty or easy to watch.

    Inmates regularly fought against breathing the gas as it entered the chamber. They convulsed, jerked, coughed, twisted and turned blue for several minutes before they died.

    Far from solving the problems associated with hangings or electrocutions, lethal gas introduced its own set of horrors to the institution of capital punishment. In fact, by the end of the 20th century, 5% of executions by lethal gas had been botched.

    As a result, states used gas as the sole method of execution only from 1924 to 1977, and it was last used in 1999. By then, the gas chamber had become a relic of the past because of its inability to deliver on its promise to be “swift and painless” and its association with the Nazi use of gas to kill millions during the Holocaust.

    Lethal injection

    Lethal injection was first considered by the state of New York in the late 1880s when it convened a blue ribbon commission to study alternatives to hanging. During deliberations, Dr. Julius Mount Bleyer invited the commission to envision a future in which a person condemned to death “could be executed on his bed in his cell with a 6-gram injection of sulfate of morphine.”

    But it wasn’t until 1977 that Oklahoma became the first state to introduce the method.

    Right from the start, administering lethal injections proved to be a complex procedure that was difficult to get right. In fact, during the first use of lethal injection by Texas in 1982, the team responsible repeatedly failed to insert an IV into a vein in the condemned man’s arm, splattering blood onto the sheet covering his body.

    Part of the problem is that medical ethics do not allow doctors to take part in choosing the drugs or administering them. In the place of doctors, prison officials are responsible for the lethal injection procedure. In addition, dosages of the drugs used are standardized rather than tailored to the needs of particular inmates as they would be in a medical procedure.

    Despite the effort to medicalize executions, the history of lethal injection has been anything but smooth, sterile and predictable. In fact, my research reveals that of the 1,054 executions carried out from 1982 to 2010 using the standard three-drug lethal injection protocol, more than 7% were botched.

    And as states, faced with a scarcity of the drugs needed, have experimented in finding new ingredients, my research shows that botched executions have occurred as much as 20% of the time.

    The firing squad

    Finally, the firing squad. Of all of America’s methods of execution, it has been least often used. From 1900 to 2010, only 35 of America’s 8,776 executions were carried out using this method, and since 1976 just three people have faced a firing squad, with the last one carried out in Utah in 2010.

    The execution chamber at Utah State Prison used in the United States’ last firing squad execution.
    AP Photo/Trent Nelson

    Critics point out that because death by guns evokes images of raw, frontier justice in a society awash in gun violence, this method mimicked something that the law wished to discourage. Nonetheless, Utah revived the firing squad in 2015 due to challenges to the state’s lethal injection protocol.

    While it has some contemporary proponents who claim it is the least cruel of all execution methods, the history of the firing squad is marked by gruesome mistakes when marksmen missed their target. In the 1951 execution of Eliseo Mares, for example, four executioners all shot into the wrong side of his chest, and he died slowly from blood loss.

    A cruel history, revived

    While authorities in South Carolina allow for death by firing squad, it cannot erase the cruelty that marks the method’s history – nor that of other means of execution.

    That history stands as a reminder of America’s failed quest to find a method of execution that is safe, reliable and humane.

    This article contains sections previous published in The Conversation articles from Dec. 4, 2020 and Nov. 30, 2022.

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

    – ref. Death by firing squad set to resume in the US – but no matter the method, all means of execution come with a troubling history – https://theconversation.com/death-by-firing-squad-set-to-resume-in-the-us-but-no-matter-the-method-all-means-of-execution-come-with-a-troubling-history-251579

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Anger is a flow of emotion like water through a hose − at work, it helps to know when to turn it up or down and how to direct it

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Laura Rees, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior, Oregon State University

    Is the anger targeted or blasting everyone in the area? Witthaya Prasongsin/Moment via Getty Images

    Pretty much everyone will sometimes struggle with anger at work. People fear the wrath of abusive supervisors, suppress anger to maintain a façade of professionalism, or vent anger toward co-workers who are, fairly or not, targets. Reactions to anger in the workplace can be strong, but they’re not always effective.

    As scholars who also fall prey to the pitfalls of anger ourselves, we are fascinated by anger. We have studied the causes, underlying processes and consequences of anger from the perspectives of management, psychology, marketing and negotiations.

    We recently reviewed more than 400 research articles across psychology, business and related fields on topics ranging from brain activity to negotiation to race relations. Yet despite the ubiquity of anger in the workplace and the decades of anger research that exists across a number of fields, we found no straightforward way to understand the complexity of the life cycle of anger and how to manage it most effectively.

    As we dived more deeply into the research literature, though, we realized that simply reframing how we think about anger could provide a novel, flexible framework for how to deal with this emotion in daily life. Our suggestion: Think of anger as a flow of emotion, like water through a garden hose.

    By thinking of the flow of anger, you can unpack its key dimensions: its path and strength. Understanding whether the hose is pointed effectively and whether the strength of the stream is appropriate are critical for knowing when, how and why to focus or redirect the anger and amplify or weaken its intensity.

    When tempers flare, sometimes innocent bystanders take the heat.
    RapidEye/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    The direction of anger

    Imagine a co-worker charges into your office, yelling, breathing heavily, face reddened, veins bulging. Even if you are simply an unsuspecting colleague who happened to have your door open, your attention is undoubtedly now fixed on your co-worker.

    Are you the target of their anger for something you did, or merely an observer of their anger at someone else?

    If you are an undeserving target, do you try to reframe the issue so that the angry person will realize the anger is better directed elsewhere?

    If you are the observer, you also have a choice about whether to ignore your co-worker’s anger or help them redirect it to a more effective outlet. You might simply listen empathetically while they let off steam, perhaps pointing out the relative risks and benefits of their taking their complaints to the supervisor.

    You are deciding, in effect, what suggestions to make about the direction of this person’s anger.

    The key to effectively managing the direction of anger is to manage the attention of those in the room. Reshaping how angry people attribute blame, for example, can help people take another person’s perspective or understand the situation in a new way, directing the flow more productively.

    The intensity of anger

    When an angry co-worker approaches you as the target, do you ignore the signal or offer to work with the person so a similar situation doesn’t happen in the future? Both are ways to tamp down the intensity of the emotion coming at you.

    When you are angry, do you try to distract yourself from the anger, let it simmer, or embrace it? You are essentially deciding how you want to manage the intensity of your own angry feelings.

    It is important to recognize that managing the intensity of anger can go in both directions. Sometimes high-intensity anger should be turned down and sometimes subtle anger should be amplified.

    For example, consider an instance in which you feel anger at what you perceive to be an unfair change to a company policy. In this case, simply going for a walk outside to avoid expressing your frustration may result in the leadership not realizing that you and others on the team feel this way, leaving little opportunity to discuss and update the policy to more reasonable standards.

    Learning to self-regulate your thoughts and behaviors can help you manage the intensity of any anger you find yourself feeling. Rather than impulsively reacting, you can practice handling your emotions so you control whether you crank up your expressed anger or dial it down. Part of this process is thinking carefully about the cost-benefit trade-offs of expressing your anger. In these ways, you more effectively manage the strength of the flow without unnecessarily just turning it off.

    The decision whether or how to intervene depends on the specifics of the situation.
    FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images

    Controlling anger

    Knowing when, how and why to shape the direction and intensity of anger is no small feat. Some of this decision is rightly based on the situation. For example, is it safe to step in? Do you feel personally skilled at intervening?

    But it is within everyone’s power to learn how to manage their own and others’ anger more effectively.

    To do so, you need to understand your role and whether the flow is a one-time situation or a persistent problem. Understanding whether you’re holding the hose, standing in its path or observing from a distance is the first step to effectively managing the direction and intensity of the flow.

    Second is deciding whether and how to intervene: Can you reframe the initial trigger so that the faucet is never turned on, or turned on more or less powerfully? If anger is already too strong and you cannot or do not want to avoid it, can you help the angry person regulate the direction and intensity of their anger to overcome the issue in some way?

    You can get better at controlling the flow of anger in ways that can improve rather than harm relationships and outcomes. Research supports working on your emotional intelligence and building belief in your own capability to handle anger. Manage factors that tend to wrest control of the hose away from you, including becoming defensive, feeling shame or even suffering from a lack of sleep.

    Taking these steps and practicing controlling the hose’s path and intensity can help address problems in the short term and prevent anger from becoming a destructive pattern in the long term.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Anger is a flow of emotion like water through a hose − at work, it helps to know when to turn it up or down and how to direct it – https://theconversation.com/anger-is-a-flow-of-emotion-like-water-through-a-hose-at-work-it-helps-to-know-when-to-turn-it-up-or-down-and-how-to-direct-it-243670

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why Muslim American nonprofits are taking steps to build trust with donors during Ramadan

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Shariq Siddiqui, Assistant Professor of Philanthropic Studies, Indiana University

    Nearly 70% of American Muslims report giving Zakat, the obligatory charity, during Ramadan. NickyLloyd/E+ via Getty Images

    As Muslims fast from dawn to dusk during Ramadan, an important aspect of their faith is their role as stewards of God on Earth. One way Muslims do this is through the practice of Zakat, an obligatory kind of charity that’s one of the five pillars of Islam.

    Zakat requires Muslims to give 2.5% of their wealth to eight prescribed categories: the poor; the needy; Zakat administrators; those whose hearts can be reconciled; to free the enslaved; to help those in debt; for travelers; and for the sake of God.

    Muslims, however, worry that they are responsible to God to ensure that their Zakat is used by institutions in ways that would do good, while adhering to the theological requirements of this religious practice. Yet, my research shows that Muslim American nonprofits are taking steps to build trust with donors.

    Zakat as a communal practice

    Muslims see themselves as custodians of whatever they possess as gifts from God.

    During their lifetime, they must use wealth responsibly and for good; upon their death, the Quran prescribes who can inherit their wealth.

    One important aspect of how Muslims are supposed to use their wealth is through charity. Zakat is an obligatory charitable practice in which donations are traditionally channeled through institutions.

    According to research my team conducted, nearly 70% of Muslims in the United States report giving Zakat during Ramadan. Ramadan is thus a critical time for nonprofits to solicit Zakat funds.

    Historically, Zakat was given through central Zakat collection agencies, or “bait-ul-maals.” For example, at the time of the Prophet Muhammad and early Islamic rulers, Zakat collection and distribution was carried out by the government.

    Today, Zakat collection and distribution varies from place to place. In six of the 47 Muslim-majority countries – Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen – Zakat is obligatory and collected by the state. In Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon and Bangladesh, Zakat is regulated by the state, but contributions are voluntary.

    Most countries do not have a formal Zakat collection agency and rely upon local nonprofits or individuals for the collection and distribution of Zakat.

    Over time, due to distrust in Zakat collecting institutions and perceived corruption, the practice of Zakat has become more individual and less communal. The vast majority of Zakat across the globe is collected and distributed individually rather than through institutions. Scholars have argued that many fear that Zakat collecting institutions may not be using the funds ethically, impactfully and in accordance with Islamic requirements.

    For example, according to the Hanafi school of thought, a Zakat collection agency can spend up to 12.5% of donation money on administrative costs; other schools of thought argue that Zakat should be administered at no cost.

    Building trust through transparency

    It is important for many Muslims that their contributions are used in compliance with Islamic religious requirements.
    Photo by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images

    Nonprofits are taking steps to build trust. For example, Muslim American charities were among the first to embrace Charity Navigator as a way to evaluate their impact.

    Charity Navigator is a U.S.-based nonprofit that rates nonprofits. Many Muslim-led charities in the United States proudly display their “Four Star” Charity Navigator status.

    My team has found that Muslim Americans are more likely to donate to nonprofits that the Internal Revenue Service has granted 501(c)(3) status. This is true even if they don’t claim the charitable deduction on their taxes and therefore cannot get tax breaks for their donations.

    More recently, in my conversations with leading Muslim-led nonprofits, I learned that they are seeking to respond to Muslim concerns about how these nonprofits use Zakat funds. It is important for them that funds are used in compliance with Islamic religious requirements.

    For example, they are looking at how nonprofits interpret what it means to be “needy,” “the poor,” “the enslaved” or “for the sake of God” in the contemporary context.

    Many nonprofits are adopting Zakat policies that explain how they define these terms and how much of their budget covers their administrative costs. These include international organizations that are not led by Muslims, like the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, Save the Children, and the anti-poverty group Oxfam.

    A case study

    The Muslim Philanthropy Initiative at Indiana University, which I lead, convened a group of scholars in November 2024 to discuss challenges of collecting and distributing Zakat in the U.S. This discussion resulted in a report that sums up these conversations and examines the Zakat policy of the largest U.S. Muslim-led nonprofit: Islamic Relief USA.

    Islamic Relief USA’s Zakat policy limits its administrative costs to 12%; it permits funding for both immediate and long-term projects and allows Zakat to be distributed not just as cash payments but also as goods and services. It does not discriminate on the basis of religion.

    While not all scholars at the convening agreed with every aspect of the Islamic Relief USA Zakat policy, they accepted that diversity in Islamic thought permitted various approaches to Zakat. They also concurred that Islamic Relief USA’s process was likely the best framework for how nonprofits should approach the development of Zakat policies.

    Ultimately, there was consensus that nonprofits seeking Zakat should have Zakat policies; should make them available on their websites; should state the process through which it was developed; and name the scholars and other experts who took part in the process.

    Since a majority of American Muslims prefer to donate their Zakat during Ramadan, perhaps this might be the time when nonprofits can build trust through adopting more transparent Zakat policies.

    This article discusses a meeting funded by the the Islamic.. However, Islamic Relief USA is not consulted on any of our scholarly or public facing publications resulting from that convening.

    – ref. Why Muslim American nonprofits are taking steps to build trust with donors during Ramadan – https://theconversation.com/why-muslim-american-nonprofits-are-taking-steps-to-build-trust-with-donors-during-ramadan-251319

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Philly’s street fentanyl contains an industrial chemical called BTMPS that’s an ingredient in plastic

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Karli Hochstatter, Research Scientist in Epidemiology and Health Services, Columbia University

    Adulterants such as xylazine, medetomidine and now BTMPS are common in Philly’s street fentanyl. Juan Pablo Pino/AFP via Getty Images

    As much as half of the fentanyl sold on Philly’s streets contains an industrial chemical used in plastics manufacturing. That’s according to our November 2024 testing of fentanyl samples collected in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, regarded as the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast.

    What’s more, the amount, or concentration, of this industrial chemical in the drug samples often exceeded the amount of fentanyl.

    We are an epidemiologist and anthropologist whose research focuses on substance use disorders and the opioid overdose epidemic. Our team’s findings were published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association in February 2025.

    The industrial chemical we found is called BTMPS, which is the common abbreviation for bis(2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-4-piperidyl) sebacate. BTMPS belongs to a class of molecules called hindered amine light stabilizers that manufacturers frequently add to plastics and other polymers to protect against degradation from heat and sunlight.

    Since March 2024, our team has tested 228 street fentanyl samples collected in Kensington. Of these, 39 – or 17% – contained BTMPS.

    We first detected BTMPS in Philadelphia in June 2024. We found it in two of the eight samples – 25% – that we collected that month. By November 2024, 12 of 22 samples – or 55% – contained BTMPS.

    Why BTMPS is being added to the street opioid supply, and at what stage in production or distribution it is being added, remains unknown.

    Researchers suspect that it may be added to stabilize a fentanyl precursor chemical that is susceptible to degradation from heat and oxygen.

    Given its low cost, BTMPS may also be added to dilute other psychoactive substances or more expensive ingredients or both.

    Kensington Avenue in North Philadelphia is considered the epicenter of the city’s opioid crisis.
    Spencer Platt via Getty Images

    How toxic is BTMPS?

    Among the 39 samples that contained BTMPS in Philadelphia, the average amount of BTMPS was nearly double that of fentanyl. On average, BTMPS made up 4% of the sample, while fentanyl made up 2.3% of the sample. In one sample tested, BTMPS made up 18% of the sample.

    BTMPS has not been approved for human consumption or been studied in humans.

    However, it has been shown in rat studies to reduce nicotine use and attenuate withdrawal symptoms associated with morphine and cocaine.

    The rat studies revealed several adverse health effects from exposure to BTMPS. They include heart defects, serious eye damage and death.

    These findings raise concerns about the increasing exposure of BTMPS to humans through street drugs. The concentrations up to 18% found in the Philly samples are many orders of magnitude higher than the estimated concentration of 0.1% to 0.5% that people are exposed to through plastic products.

    Some of the street fentanyl samples from Philadelphia contained more BTMPS than fentanyl.
    Joe Lamberti for The Washington Post via Getty Images

    BTMPS appearing in fentanyl across the US

    Our colleagues who are testing street opioid samples in other regions also detected BTMPS in fentanyl samples or paraphernalia residue in Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, Washington and California. In Los Angeles, BTMPS was first detected in July 2024 – by September, 56% of samples there contained it.

    The sudden and almost simultaneous appearance of a new adulterant in U.S. street opioids from the East Coast to the West Coast is rare. For example, fentanyl, xylazine and medetomidine became prevalent in the U.S. opioid supply in different regions at different times.

    The recent emergence of BTMPS in street opioid markets nationwide suggests that it may be entering the supply at an early stage in production or wholesale distribution.

    Historically, Philadelphia’s street opioid supply has had strong ties to Puerto Rico. These ties influenced Philly’s early incorporation of the veterinary sedative xylazine into the street drug supply. Since 2021, xylazine has been present in virtually all of Philly’s street fentanyl.

    Given these associations, we are also testing the street opioid supply in Puerto Rico to examine potential similarities and relationships with Philadelphia’s supply. To date, we have detected BTMPS in two out of 49 – or 4% – of street opioid samples in Puerto Rico. We first detected it in a sample in September 2024 and again in December 2024.

    What’s next

    We continue to monitor BTMPS trends in Philadelphia’s street fentanyl. We are also examining whether concentrations of fentanyl and other key compounds such as xylazine in Philly’s street fentanyl have changed as new adulterants such as BTMPS and medetomidine become more widespread – and whether these changes play a role in the declining overdose death rate in Pennsylvania and other parts of the U.S.

    We are also developing plans to study the immediate and long-term effects that BTMPS exposure has on people using drugs.

    Karli Hochstatter receives funding from the NIH.

    Fernando Montero receives funding from the NIH, the Social Intervention Group at Columbia University, and the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research (CDUHR) at New York University.

    – ref. Philly’s street fentanyl contains an industrial chemical called BTMPS that’s an ingredient in plastic – https://theconversation.com/phillys-street-fentanyl-contains-an-industrial-chemical-called-btmps-thats-an-ingredient-in-plastic-249990

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: As tuberculosis cases rise in the US and worldwide, health officials puzzle over the resurgence of a disease once in decline

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Karen Dobos, Professor of Microbiology, Colorado State University

    A microscopic view of _Mycobacterium tuberculosis_, the bacteria that causes tuberculosis. koto_feja/E+ via Getty Images

    An outbreak of tuberculosis, or TB – a lung disease that is often accompanied by a hacking cough – began in January 2024 in Kansas City, Kansas, and two nearby counties and continues as of early March 2025. To date, 147 people have been reportedly diagnosed with TB in the outbreak, with 67 becoming ill. The remaining 80 people diagnosed with TB in Kansas contracted the illness but showed no symptoms, which is called a latent infection.

    TB is the leading infectious cause of death around the world, outpaced only by COVID-19 during the first three years of the pandemic.

    The Conversation asked microbiologists Karen Dobos and Marcela Henao-Tamayo, both from Colorado State University, to explain why this ancient disease seems to be making a comeback.

    What’s the history of TB?

    Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the organism that causes the disease tuberculosis in humans. The disease has been infecting humans for thousands of years. Researchers found evidence of the disease 9,000 years ago in the excavated remains of people who lived in the Eastern Mediterranean region during that time.

    Reports of TB date back to around 410-400 B.C.E., when the physician Hippocrates termed the disease phthisis, an archaic word that means a progressive “wasting away,” due to the way people with the disease become emaciated.

    TB was also known as consumption for the same reason. Similarly, it was called the white plague or white death – due to anemia from the disease, with people appearing pallid or chalky – leading to near-certain death. Untreated active TB, meaning cases that are symptomatic, is highly lethal.

    About half of all people with untreated active TB die from the disease, whereas treatment reduces the death rate to 12%.

    One of the more colorful phrases describing TB is “the king’s evil.” This is a form of TB that also causes neck swelling and lesions, a condition called scrofula. During the Middle Ages, people believed that the touch of a king could cure a person from this form of TB through miraculous intervention.

    TB infections, which are typically found in the lungs, have risen since the COVID-19 pandemic.
    Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

    Finally, TB was most ominously called the “robber of youth” due to its historical propensity to afflict people 15 to 30 years old.

    In 1865, Jean Antoine Villemin, an army physician in Paris, demonstrated that TB could be transmitted from infected animals to healthy ones through inoculation. Before these studies, the cause of TB was presumed to be primarily constitutional, by either an inherent predisposition or from unhealthy or immoral lifestyles.

    The microorganism causing TB was ultimately discovered in 1882 by the German physician Robert Koch. Koch announced his findings on March 24, 1882, a day globally recognized as World TB Day.

    How does TB spread?

    Tuberculosis is spread by small infectious droplets in the air. A TB patient may emit these droplets by coughing, singing and potentially from regular breathing that occurs during sleep or resting.

    One form of TB can be spread through unpasteurized dairy products. While rare, there have been reports of TB transmission through bone graphs, in which healthy, donated bone material is used to replace damaged bones.

    Close-up view of an infection by Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
    Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

    The origin of the TB outbreak in Kansas remains unknown as of early March 2025. The outbreak has disproportionately affected those in low-income communities, and two people have died from it.

    Importantly, a patient with untreated TB can infect 10 to 15 others.

    Could the COVID-19 pandemic be a factor?

    The COVID-19 pandemic has played a pivotal role in the resurgence of TB. Cases increased globally by 4.6% from 2020 to 2023, reversing decades of steady declines in the disease. In the U.S. alone, TB cases rose by more than 15% from 2022 to 2023.

    During mandatory shutdowns, people were less able to access health care centers for early diagnosis of TB or to fill prescriptions for treatment, perhaps due to the fear of contracting COVID-19 while visiting a medical care facility. COVID-19-related disruptions in care resulted in nearly 700,000 excess deaths from TB.

    Access to health care may not be the only factor behind this uptick. Medical supply shortages and delays in shipment may have also played a role. For example, the U.S. experienced shortages of one of the primary TB drugs between 2021 and 2023.

    As illustrated by this 1963 photo, TB is often detected by an X-ray of the chest.
    Smith Collection/Gado/Archive Photos via Getty Images

    What are the main treatments?

    Multidrug treatment is currently the only way to cure TB and stop its spread.

    Prior to the late 1930s, when the first antibiotic for TB treatment was developed, TB treatments included bloodletting and consumption of cod liver oil. The most popular treatment involved isolated sanatoriums in high-altitude areas such as the Adirondacks and the Rocky Mountains, where the cold, dry air was believed to be a cure. Scholars at the time suggested that the potential for cure was due to these environments being more invigorating for the body and providing more restful sleep. There is no evidence to support these beliefs.

    Streptomycin was the first antibiotic treatment to become available for TB, in the 1940s. However, the microorganism quickly became drug resistant. A second antibiotic, called isoniazid, was developed as a first-line treatment against TB in the 1950s. Again, the microorganism became drug resistant.

    Two- and four-drug combinations are now used to treat both latent infections and active disease. Treatment of active TB requires at least six months of uninterrupted therapy. Disruptions in treatment result in further spread of TB and the emergence of multidrug resistant TB, which requires additional drugs and more than nine months of treatment.

    All TB drugs are toxic; the quality of life for TB patients deteriorates during treatment and remains so throughout their lives. Finding cases and treating TB illness early, before symptoms begin, is important because it not only reduces the spread of disease but also greatly reduces drug toxicity.

    What should people be aware of?

    People should be aware that TB is still a public health problem across the globe. Education on the transmission, treatment and need for active work to eradicate TB is the best defense.

    One of the reasons why education and awareness about TB are so important is that a person with latent TB may be unknowingly harboring the microorganism for years. In the absence of symptoms, these people are unlikely to seek care and will not be diagnosed and treated unless identified as part of an outbreak, as was the case for more than half of the patients in Kansas.

    Karen Dobos receives funding from NIAID, NIH and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

    Marcela Henao-Tamayo receives funding from NIAID, NIH and OEDIT.

    – ref. As tuberculosis cases rise in the US and worldwide, health officials puzzle over the resurgence of a disease once in decline – https://theconversation.com/as-tuberculosis-cases-rise-in-the-us-and-worldwide-health-officials-puzzle-over-the-resurgence-of-a-disease-once-in-decline-249450

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What’s that microplastic? Advances in machine learning are making identifying plastics in the environment more reliable

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ambuj Tewari, Professor of Statistics, University of Michigan

    Microplastics are tiny bits of plastic that show up in the environment. Svetlozar Hristov/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    Microplastics – the tiny particles of plastic shed when litter breaks down – are everywhere, from the deep sea to Mount Everest, and many researchers worry that they could harm human health.

    I am a machine learning researcher. With a team of scientists, I have developed a tool to make identification of microplastics using their unique chemical fingerprint more reliable. We hope that this work will help us learn about the types of microplastics floating through the air in our study area, Michigan.

    Microplastics – a global problem

    The term plastic refers to a wide variety of artificially created polymers. Polyethylene, or PET, is used for making bottles; polypropylene, or PP, is used in food containers; and polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, is used in pipes and tubes.

    Microplastics are small plastic particles that range in size from 1 micrometer to 5 millimeters. The width of a human hair, for comparison, ranges from 20 to 200 micrometers.

    Most scientific studies focus on microplastics in water. However, microplastics are also found in the air. Scientists know much less about microplastics in the atmosphere.

    When scientists collect samples from the environment to study microplastics, they usually want to know more about the chemical identities of the microplastic particles found in the samples.

    Plastic bottles are often made of polyethylene, while food containers usually containe polypropylene.
    Anton Petrus/Moment via Getty Images

    Fingerprinting microplastics

    Just as fingerprinting uniquely identifies a person, scientists use spectroscopy to determine the chemical identity of microplastics. In spectroscopy, a substance either absorbs or scatters light, depending on how its molecules vibrate. The absorbed or scattered light creates a unique pattern called the spectrum, which is effectively the substance’s fingerprint.

    Spectroscopy can match a substance with its unique fingerprint.
    VectorMine/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    Just like a forensic analyst can match an unknown fingerprint against a fingerprint database to identify the person, researchers can match the spectrum of an unknown microplastic particle against a database of known spectra.

    However, forensic analysts can get false matches in fingerprint matching. Similarly, spectral matching against a database isn’t foolproof. Many plastic polymers have similar structures, so two different polymers can have similar spectra. This overlap can lead to ambiguity in the identification process.

    So, an identification method for polymers should provide a measure of uncertainty in its output. That way, the user can know how much to trust the polymer fingerprint match. Unfortunately, current methods don’t usually provide an uncertainty measure.

    Data from microplastic analyses can inform health recommendations and policy decisions, so it’s important for the people making those calls to know how reliable the analysis is.

    Conformal prediction

    Machine learning is one tool researchers have started using for microplastic identification.

    First, researchers collect a large dataset of spectra whose identities are known. Then, they use this dataset to train a machine learning algorithm that learns to predict a substance’s chemical identity from its spectrum.

    Sophisticated algorithms whose inner workings can be opaque make these predictions, so the lack of an uncertainty measure becomes an even greater problem when machine learning is involved.

    Our recent work addresses this issue by creating a tool with an uncertainty quantification for microplastic identification. We use a machine learning technique called conformal prediction.

    Conformal prediction is like a wrapper around an existing, already trained machine learning algorithm that adds an uncertainty quantification. It does not require the user of the machine learning algorithm to have any detailed knowledge of the algorithm or its training data. The user just needs to be able to run the prediction algorithm on a new set of spectra.

    To set up conformal prediction, researchers collect a calibration set containing spectra and their true identities. The calibration set is often much smaller than the training data required for training machine learning algorithms. Usually just a few hundred spectra are enough for calibration.

    Then, conformal prediction analyzes the discrepancies between the predictions and correct answers in the calibration set. Using this analysis, it adds other plausible identities to the algorithm’s single output on a particular particle’s spectrum. Instead of outputting one, possibly incorrect, prediction like “this particle is polyethylene,” it now outputs a set of predictions – for example, “this particle could be polyethylene or polypropylene.”

    The prediction sets contain the true identity with a level of confidence that users can set themselves – say, 90%. Users can then rerun the conformal prediction with a higher confidence – say, 95%. But the higher the confidence level, the more polymer predictions given by the model in the output.

    It might seem that a method that outputs a set rather than a single identity isn’t as useful. But the size of the set serves as a way to assess uncertainty – a small set indicates less uncertainty.

    On the other hand, if the algorithm predicts that the sample could be many different polymers, there’s substantial uncertainty. In this case, you could bring in a human expert to examine the polymer closely.

    Testing the tool

    To run our conformal prediction, my team used libraries of microplastic spectra from the Rochman Lab at the University of Toronto as the calibration set.

    Once calibrated, we collected samples from a parking lot in Brighton, Michigan, obtained their spectra, and ran them through the algorithm. We also asked an expert to manually label the spectra with the correct polymer identities. We found that conformal prediction did produce sets that included the label the human expert gave it.

    Some spectra, such as polyethylene on the left and polypropylene on the right, look very similar and can easily be confused. That’s why having an uncertainty measure can be helpful.
    Ambuj Tewari

    Microplastics are an emerging concern worldwide. Some places such as California have begun to gather evidence for future legislation to help curb microplastic pollution.

    Evidence-based science can help researchers and policymakers fully understand the extent of microplastic pollution and the threats it poses to human welfare. Building and openly sharing machine learning-based tools is one way to help make that happen.

    Ambuj Tewari receives funding from NSF and NIH. The microplastics project is funded by the “Meet the Moment” initiative of the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. This initiative focuses on impactful research on pressing societal issues.

    – ref. What’s that microplastic? Advances in machine learning are making identifying plastics in the environment more reliable – https://theconversation.com/whats-that-microplastic-advances-in-machine-learning-are-making-identifying-plastics-in-the-environment-more-reliable-249075

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: DOGE threat: How government data would give an AI company extraordinary power

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Allison Stanger, Distinguished Endowed Professor, Middlebury

    Elon Musk has simultaneous control of DOGE and his AI company xAI. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

    The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has secured unprecedented access to at least seven sensitive federal databases, including those of the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration. This access has sparked fears about cybersecurity vulnerabilities and privacy violations. Another concern has received far less attention: the potential use of the data to train a private company’s artificial intelligence systems.

    The White House press secretary said government data that DOGE has collected isn’t being used to train Musk’s AI models, despite Elon Musk’s control over DOGE. However, evidence has emerged that DOGE personnel simultaneously hold positions with at least one of Musk’s companies.

    At the Federal Aviation Administration, SpaceX employees have government email addresses. This dual employment creates a conduit for federal data to potentially be siphoned to Musk-owned enterprises, including xAI. The company’s latest Grok AI chatbot model conspicuously refuses to give a clear denial about using such data.

    As a political scientist and technologist who is intimately acquainted with public sources of government data, I believe this potential transmission of government data to private companies presents far greater privacy and power implications than most reporting identifies. A private entity with the capacity to develop artificial intelligence technologies could use government data to leapfrog its competitors and wield massive influence over society.

    Value of government data for AI

    For AI developers, government databases represent something akin to finding the Holy Grail. While companies such as OpenAI, Google and xAI currently rely on information scraped from the public internet, nonpublic government repositories offer something much more valuable: verified records of actual human behavior across entire populations.

    This isn’t merely more data – it’s fundamentally different data. Social media posts and web browsing histories show curated or intended behaviors, but government databases capture real decisions and their consequences. For example, Medicare records reveal health care choices and outcomes. IRS and Treasury data reveal financial decisions and long-term impacts. And federal employment and education statistics reveal education paths and career trajectories.

    What makes this data particularly valuable for AI training is its longitudinal nature and reliability. Unlike the disordered information available online, government records follow standardized protocols, undergo regular audits and must meet legal requirements for accuracy. Every Social Security payment, Medicare claim and federal grant creates a verified data point about real-world behavior. This data exists nowhere else with such breadth and authenticity in the U.S.

    Most critically, government databases track entire populations over time, not just digitally active users. They include people who never use social media, don’t shop online, or actively avoid digital services. For an AI company, this would mean training systems on the actual diversity of human experience rather than just the digital reflections people cast online.

    A security guard prevented U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., from entering an EPA building on Feb. 6, 2025, to see DOGE staff working there.
    Al Drago/Getty Images

    The technical advantage

    Current AI systems face fundamental limitations that no amount of data scraped from the internet can overcome. When ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini make mistakes, it’s often because they’ve been trained on information that might be popular but isn’t necessarily true. They can tell you what people say about a policy’s effects, but they can’t track those effects across populations and years.

    Government data could change this equation. Imagine training an AI system not just on opinions about health care but on actual treatment outcomes across millions of patients. Consider the difference between learning from social media discussions about economic policies and analyzing their real impacts across different communities and demographics over decades.

    A large, state-of-the-art, or frontier, model trained on comprehensive government data could understand the actual relationships between policies and outcomes. It could track unintended consequences across different population segments, model complex societal systems with real-world validation and predict the impacts of proposed changes based on historical evidence. For companies seeking to build next-generation AI systems, access to this data would create an almost insurmountable advantage.

    Control of critical systems

    A company like xAI could do far more with models trained on government data than building better chatbots or content generators. Such systems could fundamentally transform – and potentially control – how people understand and manage complex societal systems. While some of these capabilities could be beneficial under the control of accountable public agencies, I believe they pose a threat in the hands of a single private company.

    Medicare and Medicaid databases contain records of treatments, outcomes and costs across diverse populations over decades. A frontier model trained on new government data could identify treatment patterns that succeed where others fail, and so dominate the health care industry. Such a model could understand how different interventions affect various populations over time, accounting for factors such as geographic location, socioeconomic status and concurrent conditions.

    A company wielding the model could influence health care policy by demonstrating superior predictive capabilities and market population-level insights to pharmaceutical companies and insurers.

    Treasury data represents perhaps the most valuable prize. Government financial databases contain granular details about how money flows through the economy. This includes real-time transaction data across federal payment systems, complete records of tax payments and refunds, detailed patterns of benefit distributions, and government contractor payments with performance metrics.

    An AI company with access to this data could develop extraordinary capabilities for economic forecasting and market prediction. It could model the cascading effects of regulatory changes, predict economic vulnerabilities before they become crises, and optimize investment strategies with precision impossible through traditional methods.

    Elon Musk’s xAI company is well financed.

    Infrastructure and urban systems

    Government databases contain information about critical infrastructure usage patterns, maintenance histories, emergency response times and development impacts. Every federal grant, infrastructure inspection and emergency response creates a data point that could help train AI to better understand how cities and regions function.

    The power lies in the potential interconnectedness of this data. An AI system trained on government infrastructure records would understand how transportation patterns affect energy use, how housing policies affect emergency response times, and how infrastructure investments influence economic development across regions.

    A private company with exclusive access would gain unique insight into the physical and economic arteries of American society. This could allow the company to develop “smart city” systems that city governments would become dependent on, effectively privatizing aspects of urban governance. When combined with real-time data from private sources, the predictive capabilities would far exceed what any current system can achieve.

    Absolute data corrupts absolutely

    A company such as xAI, with Musk’s resources and preferential access through DOGE, could surmount technical and political obstacles far more easily than competitors. Recent advances in machine learning have also reduced the burdens of preparing data for the algorithms to process, making government data a veritable gold mine – one that rightfully belongs to the American people.

    The threat of a private company accessing government data transcends individual privacy concerns. Even with personal identifiers removed, an AI system that analyzes patterns across millions of government records could enable surprising capabilities for making predictions and influencing behavior at the population level. The threat is AI systems that leverage government data to influence society, including electoral outcomes.

    Since information is power, concentrating unprecedented data in the hands of a private entity with an explicit political agenda represents a profound challenge to the republic. I believe that the question is whether the American people can stand up to the potentially democracy-shattering corruption such a concentration would enable. If not, Americans should prepare to become digital subjects rather than human citizens.

    Allison Stanger receives funding from the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University.

    – ref. DOGE threat: How government data would give an AI company extraordinary power – https://theconversation.com/doge-threat-how-government-data-would-give-an-ai-company-extraordinary-power-250907

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How 18F transformed government technology − and why its elimination matters

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kayla Schwoerer, Assistant Professor of Public Administration & Policy, University at Albany, State University of New York

    18F was a group of technology hotshots within the GSA. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

    Healthcare.gov, the government health insurance marketplace website, launched in October 2013 only to buckle under the weight of just 2,000 simultaneous users. As millions of Americans stared at error messages and frozen screens, a political crisis unfolded, but so did a new era of government technology.

    The result was 18F, an in-house digital services consulting agency that brought Silicon Valley expertise to government, challenging decades of outdated procurement practices and introducing a radical new approach to building digital public services.

    Founded on March 19, 2014, by Presidential Innovation Fellows, 18F was housed within the Technology Transformation Services department of the General Services Administration, or GSA. The name 18F was derived from the address of GSA headquarters: 1800 F Street. On March 1, 2025, just a few weeks shy of 18F’s 11th anniversary, the Trump administration eliminated the agency and laid off its staff.

    As a researcher who studies public administration and technology, I have observed the transformational role 18F played in government digital services. The unit’s elimination raises the question of what the future of those services will look like.

    Impact of 18F

    18F served a unique role as an in-house digital consultancy for the U.S. government, drawing on innovative strategies to improve public service through technology. Within 18F, teams consisting of designers, software engineers, strategists and product managers worked together with federal, state and local agencies to not only fix technical problems but to build, buy and share technology that helped to modernize and improve the public’s experience with government services.

    Over nearly 11 years, 18F built an impressive portfolio of successful digital projects that transformed how people interact with the U.S. government. Even if the average person is unfamiliar with 18F, the odds are quite high that they have at least encountered one of its many products or services.

    18F staff describe the group’s mission and work.

    For example, 18F supported the Internal Revenue Service in creating IRS Direct File, a free online tax filing tool that provides taxpayers with a simplified filing process. As of today, IRS Direct File is available in 25 states and is expected to serve 30 million eligible taxpayers during the 2025 tax filing season.

    18F has been pivotal in modernizing and securing digital systems to help create more streamlined and secure user experiences for the public. For instance, Login.gov is a secure single sign-on platform that simplifies access to multiple government services for users.

    Perhaps the most notable of 18F’s modernization efforts that touches nearly every aspect of government today is the U.S. Web Design System. The comprehensive design system was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Digital Service in 2015. It helps support dozens of agencies and makes nearly 200 websites more accessible and responsive to user needs.

    How 18F worked

    What set 18F apart was its approach. Rather than spending years on giant information technology contracts that often failed to deliver, 18F championed agile development. Agile and lean methodologies have been popular in Silicon Valley startups and software companies for decades due to their flexibility and focus on rapid iteration.

    By applying agile development principles, 18F focused on breaking down large projects into manageable pieces with incremental improvements based on frequent user feedback. This approach allowed continuous adaptation spurred by user feedback and changing requirements while reducing risk.

    Another cornerstone of 18F’s innovative approach was its focus on user-centered design. By focusing on the needs of the people who actually used government services, 18F was able to go beyond merely satisfying technical requirements to design digital products that were more accessible and user-friendly. The idea was to understand the end users and the problems they encountered in order to effectively design products and solutions that addressed their needs. It also aimed to provide a consistent user experience and earn the users’ trust in the services.

    By prioritizing open-source development and collaboration, 18F also helped to make government IT more affordable. Making project code transparent meant that agencies could reuse the code and reduce the cost of duplicate development efforts across agencies and levels of government.

    18F also had a hand in helping agencies develop their own technology capacity, whether by teaching them how to build software using open-source development and agile methodologies or by teaching agencies how to hire and oversee technology vendors themselves. This model was especially beneficial for state and local agencies following 18F’s expansion in 2016 to provide services to state and local government agencies that receive federal funding.

    End of an era

    The elimination of 18F marks the end of an era, raising concerns about both current and future technology projects. As of now, there does not appear to be a succession plan, leaving many federal agencies without ongoing support for their digital transformation efforts. Critics also argue that the loss of 18F means the loss of significant technical expertise within the government.

    These changes come at a time when agencies are experiencing substantial personnel shifts, rendering digital services potentially even more critical. As agencies brace for more personnel cuts, the public may need to rely more on digital services to fill the gap amid growing staffing shortages.

    Since the news was announced, current and former 18F team members as well as advocates of the unit have taken to social media platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), Bluesky, and LinkedIn, to share stories of its successes, honor its legacy and share 18F resources.

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

    – ref. How 18F transformed government technology − and why its elimination matters – https://theconversation.com/how-18f-transformed-government-technology-and-why-its-elimination-matters-251333

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Taung child: the controversial story of the fossil discovery that proved humanity’s common origins in Africa – podcast

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

    The cast of the Taung child skull found in South Africa in 1924. Didier Descouens/Wikipedia Commons, CC BY-SA

    One hundred years ago, a paper was published in the journal Nature that would radically shift our understandings of the origins of humanity. It described a fossil, found in a lime mine in Taung in South Africa, which became known as the Taung child skull.

    The paper’s author, an Australian-born anatomist called Raymond Dart, argued that the fossil was a new species of hominin called Australopithecus africanus. It was the first evidence that humanity originated in Africa.

    In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we talk to science historian Christa Kuljian about Dart’s complicated legacy and to paleoanthropologist Dipuo Kgotleng about what’s happened to the city of Taung itself, and how paleoanthropology has changed over the last century.

    When Dart’s paper was first published, it was roundly ridiculed by his scientific peers. Charles Darwin had a hunch that all humans had common origins in Africa, but archaeologists at the time weren’t looking for evidence on the continent, as Kuljian, a research associate at the University of Witwatersrand, explains:

     ”Scientists argued that humans had evolved in Europe or perhaps Asia, and that belief was influenced by the false assumption that many scientists had that Europeans were superior to other people from around the world, and that there was a hierarchy of race. Paleoanthropology and the search for human origins had its roots in that era of racialised thinking and white supremacy.“

    Dart’s contribution eventually proved this to be wrong. But at the same time, Dart, like many scientists working in Europe and the US in the early 20th century, was engaged in disturbing and racist anthropological practices, says Kuljian.

    “They were not only collecting ancient fossils, they were also collecting human skeletons. And scientists thought that humans could be divided into separate and distinct racial types based on physical characteristics. They thought that these pure racial types, which we now know do not exist, would give them a clue to understanding human evolution.”

    Not just one ‘hero’

    Alongside Dart’s own complicated legacy, researchers are also reassessing the way discoveries like the Taung child skull are commonly told: through the lens of a solo, white, hero like Indiana Jones.

    What’s missing, says Kgotleng, director of the Palaeo Institute at the University of Johannesburg, are often the stories of the “hidden figures” behind such discoveries. For example, the rock that contained the Taung skull was put aside by local mine workers who recognised its potential significance and passed it onto Dart’s colleague. Kgotleng argues:

    “ For a scientist to have that fossil in hand there was somebody who was on the ground assisting with that excavation. There were other labourers who were there, in most cases they never get recognised … we need to recognise all the workers in that whole process of the discovery through to publication.”

    Kgotleng, who used to work as the archaeologist at Taung, says that today the town “generally looks like it’s still stuck in the 1920s”. She says that many local people know little about the significance of the fossil find and that “the knowledge about the science has not filtrated through to the locals”.

    Listen to the conversations with Kuljian and Kgotleng on The Conversation Weekly podcast, which also includes an introduction from Natasha Joseph, science commissioning editor at The Conversation Africa. Kuljian and Kgotleng both also contributed papers to a special issue of the South African Journal of Science to mark the centenary of Dart’s article.

    This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Katie Flood with assistance from Mend Mariwany and hosted by Gemma Ware. Sound design was by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

    Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here.

    Dipuo Winnie Kgotleng has received funding from the Wenner-Gren foundation, National Heritage Council and National Research Foundation. Christa Kuljian has received funding from the Academic and Non-Fiction Authors Association of South Africa, the South African National Research Foundation and the Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences.

    – ref. Taung child: the controversial story of the fossil discovery that proved humanity’s common origins in Africa – podcast – https://theconversation.com/taung-child-the-controversial-story-of-the-fossil-discovery-that-proved-humanitys-common-origins-in-africa-podcast-251530

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: US trade wars with China – and how they play out in Africa

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Lauren Johnston, Associate Professor, China Studies Centre, University of Sydney

    Since taking office, US president Donald Trump has implemented policies that have been notably hostile towards China. They include trade restrictions. Most recently, a 20% tariff was added to all imports from China and new technological restrictions were imposed under the America First Investment Policy. This isn’t the first time US-China tensions have flared. Throughout history the relationship has been fraught by economic, military and ideological conflicts.

    China-Africa scholar and economist Lauren Johnston provides insights into how these dynamics may also shape relations between Africa and China.

    How has China responded to hostile US policies?

    First, China tends to have a defiant official response. It expresses disappointment, then states that the US policy position is not helpful to any country or the world economy.

    Second, China makes moves domestically to prioritise the interests of key, affected industries.

    Third, China will sometimes impose retaliatory sanctions.

    In 2018, for instance, China imposed a 25% tariff on US soybeans, a critical animal feed source. The US Department of Agriculture had to compensate US soybean farmers for their lost income.

    Another example is how, following US tech sanctions, China took a more independent technology path. It has channelled billions into tech funds. The goal is to make financing available for Chinese entrepreneurs and to push technological boundaries in areas of US sanction, such as semiconductors. These efforts are backed up by subsidies and tax reductions. In some cases, the Chinese state will invest directly in tech companies.

    More recently, China retaliated to the US trade war by
    announcing tariffs on 80 US products. China is set to place 15% tariffs on certain energy exports, including coal, natural gas and petroleum. An additional 10% tariffs will be placed on 72 manufactured products including trucks, motor homes and agricultural machinery.

    Agricultural trade has been hard hit. The day the US announced a 10% tariff on Chinese imports, China announced “an additional 15% tariff on imported chicken, wheat, corn and cotton originating from the US”. Also, “sorghum, soybeans, pork, beef, aquatic products, fruits, vegetables and dairy products will be subject to an additional 10% tariff”.

    How have these Chinese responses affected Africa?

    We can’t say for certain that China’s response to US trade tensions has explicitly affected its Africa policy, but there are some notable coincidences.

    Less than one month after Trump’s return to the White House in 2025, and soon after the first tariffs were slapped on China’s exports to the US, China announced new measures to foster China-Africa trade efforts. The policy package aims to “strengthen economic and trade exchanges between China and Africa.”

    This is the latest in a series of Chinese actions.

    In January 2018 trade hostilities began to escalate after Trump imposed a first round of tariffs on all imported washing machines and solar panels. These had an impact on China’s exports to the US.

    Later the same year, China imposed 25% tariffs on US soy bean imports and took steps to reduce dependence on US agricultural products. China also took steps to expand trade with Africa, agricultural trade in particular.

    In September 2018, Beijing hosted the Forum on China and Africa Cooperation summit, a triennial head of state gathering. It was announced that China would set up a China-Africa trade expo and foster deeper agricultural cooperation. In the days after the summit, China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs was already acting on this. A gathering of African agricultural ministers took place in Changsha, Hunan province.

    Hunan province has since taken centre stage in China-Africa relations. It’s now the host of a permanent China-Africa trade exhibition hall and a larger biennial China-Africa economic and trade exhibition (known as CAETE).

    Hunan also hosts the pilot zone for In-Depth China-Africa Economic and Trade Cooperation. The zone has numerous initiatives designed to overcome obstacles to China-Africa trade and investment, like support in areas of law, technology and currency, and vocational training.

    Finally, the zone is located in a bigger free-trade zone that is better connected to Africa by air, water and land corridors. African agricultural exports to China pass through Hunan, where local industry either uses these imports or distributes them across the country to retailers.

    Companies in Hunan are well placed to play a key role in supporting China-Africa trade, capitalising on the opportunities left by China-US hostilities.

    Hunan’s agritech giant Longping High-Tech, for instance, is investing in Tanzanian soybean farmers.

    Hunan is also home to China’s construction manufacturing and electronic transportation frontier. This includes global construction giant Sany, which produces heavy industry machinery for the construction, mining and energy sectors. China’s global electronic vehicle manufacturing BYD and its electronic railway industry are also in Hunan. They have deep and increasing interests in Africa and can also support China’s key minerals and tech race with the US.

    As US-China hostility enters a new era, what are the implications for China-Africa relations?

    As my new working paper sets out, African countries are, for example, responding to the new opportunities from China.

    At the end of 2024, while the world waited for Trump’s second coming, various African countries made moves to strengthen economic ties with China, Hunan province especially.

    In December 2024, Tanzania became the first African country to open an official investment promotion office in the China-Africa Cooperation Pilot Zone in Changaha.

    In November 2024, both the China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo in Africa and the China Engineering Technology Exhibition were held in Abuja, Nigeria. Equivalent events were hosted in Kenya.

    Early in 2025 in Niamey, Niger, a joint pilot cooperation zone was inaugurated , and which is direct partner of the China-Africa Pilot zone in Hunan.

    As China moves away from US agricultural produce, for instance, African agricultural producers can benefit. Substitute African products and potential exports will enjoy a price boost, and elevated Chinese support.

    China’s newly elevated interest in African development and market potential will bring major prospects. The question will be whether African countries are ready to grasp them, and to use that potential to foster an independent development path of their own.

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

    – ref. US trade wars with China – and how they play out in Africa – https://theconversation.com/us-trade-wars-with-china-and-how-they-play-out-in-africa-249609

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Union wary of Canadian billionaire Jim Grenon’s NZ media influence

    By Susan Edmunds, RNZ News money correspondent

    The Aotearoa New Zealand union representing many of NZME’s journalists says it is “deeply worried” by a billionaire’s plans to take over its board.

    Auckland-based Canadian billionaire Jim Grenon is leading a move to dump the board of media company NZME, owners of The New Zealand Herald and NewsTalk ZB.

    He has told the company’s board he wants to remove most of the current directors, replace them with himself and three others, and choose one existing director to stay on.

    He took a nearly 10 percent stake in the business earlier in the week.

    Michael Wood, negotiation specialist at E tū, the union that represents NZME’s journalists, said he had grave concerns.

    “We see a pattern that has been incredibly unhealthy in other countries, of billionaire oligarchs moving into media ownership roles to be able to promote their own particular view of the word,” he said.

    “Secondly, we have a situation here where when Mr Grenon purchased holdings in NZME he was at pains to make it sound like an innocent manoeuvre with no broader agenda . . .  within a few days he is aggressively pursuing board positions.”

    What unsaid agendas?
    Wood said Grenon had a track record of trying to influence media discourse in New Zealand.

    “We are deeply concerned about this, about what unsaid agendas lie behind a billionaire oligarch trying to take ownership of one of our biggest media companies.”

    Canadian billionaire James Grenon . . . track record of trying to influence media discourse in New Zealand. Image: TOM Capital Management/RNZ

    “We are deeply concerned about this, about what unsaid agendas lie behind a billionaire oligarch trying to take ownership of one of our biggest media companies.”

    He said it would be important for New Zealand not to follow the example of the US, where media outlets had become “the mouthpiece for the rich and powerful”.

    E tū would consult its national delegate committee of journalists, he said.

    Grenon has been linked with alternative news sites, including The Centrist, serving as the company’s director up to August 2023.

    The Centrist claims to present under-served perspectives and reason-based analysis, “even if it might be too hot for the mainstream media to handle”.

    Grenon has been approached for comment by RNZ.

    Preoccupations with trans rights, treaty issues
    Duncan Greive, founder of The Spinoff and media commentator, said he was a reader of Grenon’s site The Centrist.

    “The main thing we know about him is that publication,” Greive said.

    “It’s largely news aggregation but it has very specific preoccupations around trans rights, treaty issues and particularly vaccine injury and efficacy.

    “A lot of the time it’s aggregating from mainstream news sites but there’s a definite feel that things are under-covered or under-emphasised at mainstream news organisations.

    “If he is looking to gain greater control and exert influence on the publishing and editorial aspects of the business, you’ve got to think there is a belief that those things are under-covered and the editorial direction of The Herald isn’t what he would like it to be.”

    The Spinoff founder and media commentator Duncan Greive . . . Investors “would be excited about the sale of OneRoof”. Image: RNZ News

    Greive said the move could be connected to the NZME announcement in its annual results that it was exploring options for the sale of its real estate platform OneRoof.

    “There are a lot of investors who believe OneRoof is being held back by proximity to the ‘legacy media’ assets of NZME and if it could be pulled out of there the two businesses would be more valuable separate than together.

    “If you look at the shareholder book of NZME, you don’t image a lot of these institutional investors who hold the bulk of the shares are going to be as excited about editorial direction and issues as Grenon would be . . .  but they would be excited about the sale of OneRoof.”

    Wanting the publishing side
    Greive said he could imagine a scenario where Grenon told shareholders he wanted the publishing side, at a reduced value, and the OneRoof business could be separated off.

    “From a pure value realisation, maximisation of shareholder value point of view, that makes sense to me.”

    Greive said attention would now go on the 37 percent of shareholders whom Grenon said had been consulted in confidence about his plans.

    “It will become clear pretty quickly and they will be under pressure to say why they are involved in this and it will become clear pretty quickly whether my theory is correct.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Australian university workers: ‘We will not be silenced over Palestine’

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Markela Panegyres and Jonathan Strauss in Sydney

    The new Universities Australia (UA) definition of antisemitism, endorsed last month for adoption by 39 Australian universities, is an ugly attempt to quash the pro-Palestine solidarity movement on campuses and to silence academics, university workers and students who critique Israel and Zionism.

    While the Scott Morrison Coalition government first proposed tightening the definition, and a recent joint Labor-Coalition parliamentary committee recommended the same, it is yet another example of the Labor government’s overreach.

    It seeks to mould discussion in universities to one that suits its pro-US and pro-Zionist imperialist agenda, while shielding Israel from accountability.

    So far, the UA definition has been widely condemned.

    Nasser Mashni, of Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, has slammed it as “McCarthyism reborn”.

    The Jewish Council of Australia (JCA) has criticised it as “dangerous, politicised and unworkable”. The NSW Council of Civil Liberties said it poses “serious risks to freedom of expression and academic freedom”.

    The UA definition comes in the context of a war against Palestinian activism on campuses.

    The false claim that antisemitism is “rampant” across universities has been weaponised to subdue the Palestinian solidarity movement within higher education and, particularly, to snuff out any repeat of the student-led Gaza solidarity encampments, which sprung up on campuses across the country last year.

    Some students and staff who have been protesting against the genocide since October 2023 have come under attack by university managements.

    Some students have been threatened with suspension and many universities are giving themselves, through new policies, more powers to liaise with police and surveil students and staff.

    Palestinian, Arab and Muslim academics, as well as other anti-racist scholars, have been silenced and disciplined, or face legal action on false counts of antisemitism, merely for criticising Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine.

    Randa Abdel-Fattah, for example, has become the target of a Zionist smear campaign that has successfully managed to strip her of Australian Research Council funding.

    Intensify repression
     The UA definition will further intensify the ongoing repression of people’s rights on campuses to discuss racism, apartheid and occupation in historic Palestine.

    By its own admission, UA acknowledges that its definition is informed by the antisemitism taskforces at Columbia University, Stanford University, Harvard University and New York University, which have meted out draconian and violent repression of pro-Palestine activism.

    The catalyst for the new definition was the February 12 report tabled by Labor MP Josh Burns on antisemitism on Australian campuses. That urged universities to adopt a definition of antisemitism that “closely aligns” with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition.

    It should be noted that the controversial IHRA definition has been opposed by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) for its serious challenge to academic freedom.

    As many leading academics and university workers, including Jewish academics, have repeatedly stressed, criticism of Israel and criticism of Zionism is not antisemitic.

    UA’s definition is arguably more detrimental to freedom of speech and pro-Palestine activism and scholarship than the IHRA definition.

    In the vague IHRA definition, a number of examples of antisemitism are given that conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, but not the main text itself.

    By contrast, the new UA definition overtly equates criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism and claims Zionist ideology is a component part of Jewish identity.

    The definition states that “criticism of Israel can be anti-Semitic . . . when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel”.

    Dangerously, anyone advocating for a single bi-national democratic state in historic Palestine will be labelled antisemitic under this new definition.

    Anyone who justifiably questions the right of the ethnonationalist, apartheid and genocidal state of Israel to exist will be accused of antisemitism.

    Sweeping claims
     The UA definition also makes the sweeping claim that “for most, but not all Jewish Australians, Zionism is a core part of their Jewish identity”.

    But, as the JCA points out, Zionism is a national political ideology and is not a core part of Jewish identity historically or today, since many Jews do not support Zionism. The JCA warns that the UA definition “risks fomenting harmful stereotypes that all Jewish people think in a certain way”.

    Moreover, JCA said, Jewish identities are already “a rightly protected category under all racial discrimination laws, whereas political ideologies such as Zionism and support for Israel are not”.

    Like other aspects of politics, political ideologies, such as Zionism, and political stances, such as support for Israel, should be able to be discussed critically.

    According to the UA definition, criticism of Israel can be antisemitic “when it holds Jewish individuals or communities responsible for Israel’s actions”.

    While it would be wrong for any individual or community, because they are Jewish, to be held responsible for Israel’s actions, it is a fact that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former  minister Yoav Gallant for Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    But under the UA definition, since Netanyahu and Gallant are Jewish, would holding them responsible be considered antisemitic?

    Is the ICC antisemitic? According to Israel it is.

    The implication of the definition for universities, which teach law and jurisprudence, is that international law should not be applied to the Israeli state, because it is antisemitic to do so.

    The UA’s definition is vague enough to have a chilling effect on any academic who wants to teach about genocide, apartheid and settler-colonialism. It states that “criticism of Israel can be antisemitic when it is grounded in harmful tropes, stereotypes or assumptions”.

    What these are is not defined.

    Anti-racism challenge
     Within the academy, there is a strong tradition of anti-racism and decolonial scholarship, particularly the concept of settler colonialism, which, by definition, calls into question the very notion of “statehood”.

    With this new definition of antisemitism, will academics be prevented from teaching students the works of Chelsea Watego, Patrick Wolfe or Edward Said?

    The definition will have serious and damaging repercussions for decolonial scholars and severely impinges the rights of scholars, in particular First Nations scholars and students, to critique empire and colonisation.

    UA is the “peak body” for higher education in Australia, and represents and lobbies for capitalist class interests in higher education.

    It is therefore not surprising that it has developed this particular definition, given its strong bilateral relations with Israeli higher education, including signing a 2013 memorandum of understanding with Association of University Heads, Israel.

    It should be noted that the NTEU National Council last October called on UA to withdraw from this as part of its Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions resolution.

    All university students and staff committed to anti-racism, academic freedom and freedom of speech should join the campaign against the UA definition.

    Local NTEU branches and student groups are discussing and passing motions rejecting the new definition and NTEU for Palestine has called a National Day of Action for March 26 with that as one of its key demands.

    We will not be silenced on Palestine.

    Jonathan Strauss and Markela Panegyres are members of the National Tertiary Education Union and the Socialist Alliance. Republished from Green Left with permission.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ending US birthright citizenship could have consequences for LGBTQ+ couples, lower-income parents and the surrogacy market

    Source: The Conversation – France – By Ashley Mantha-Hollands, Max Weber Fellow, Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies, European University Institute

    The first month of US President Donald Trump’s second term saw an onslaught of executive orders. The order aiming to change how birthright citizenship – the constitutional guarantee of citizenship to most children born within US territory – is granted could be the most consequential. Federal judges in Maryland, Washington state, Massachusetts and New Hampshire have issued nationwide injunctions against the order, and the San Francisco-based US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the Trump administration’s appeal.

    To date, most media outlets, civil and human rights organisations, and activist groups have expressed concern about how a change to birthright citizenship would impact undocumented people and their children. However, a change could also have a series of further consequences, particularly for children of LGBTQ+ couples and children born through assisted reproductive technologies (ART) such as surrogacy.

    There are at least three related outcomes to consider: tension between federal and state definitions of parentage, a heightened administrative burden for establishing proof of citizenship, and the potential harm to what is the world’s largest surrogacy market.

    Who are the parents? Not so simple

    In countries where children obtain citizenship based on the citizenship of their parents, the legal parameters of the family are of utmost importance. For this reason, countries often provide specific definitions of who “counts” as a parent. In the US, this responsibility falls to the states, which provide their own definitions. One common practice is known as the “parturient” rule, which holds that the person giving birth is the legal “mother” and her spouse the legal “father”. This practice is increasingly contested. With the rise of ART and, in particular, surrogacy, the person giving birth is not always the intended parent. In fact, at least 14 US states have recognized that the parturient rule does not encompass many types of family arrangements and have altered their administrative frameworks so that “intended parents” can be immediately placed on birth certificates.

    While the establishment of parentage occurs at the state level, establishing citizenship is a federal responsibility. As a result, the federal government also provides its own legal definition of parenthood. This definition includes the following family roles: a genetic parent, a non-genetic gestational parent, a non-genetic and non-gestational spouse of a genetic and/or gestational parent, and parents of an adopted child. By contrast, the definitions in Trump’s executive order would spark a return to traditional heteronormative definitions of parentage. The mother is defined as “the immediate female biological progenitor” and the father as “the immediate male biological progenitor”. Such definitions leave out not only most LGBTQ+ couples, but also some families seeking ART, because children born through these modalities may not be biologically related to the intended parents.

    If the order comes into force, it would result in a mismatch between federal and state definitions of parentage and likely invite many legal disputes, while leaving some children born through ART at risk of statelessness if their parents are unrecognized as such. Citizenship is vital to an individual’s personal security: stateless children can, in some cases, be separated from their intended parents. Moreover, without a legal status, children and their families cannot benefit from the full range of federal and state services, including access to the child welfare system, funding opportunities for higher education and health care. For example, according to officials in 24 states, children would lose benefits from the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which all US-born babies are currently eligible to receive.

    The bureaucratic burden

    The administrative burden of citizenship recognition for newborns is another overlooked issue in discussions about Trump’s order. In most cases, a birth certificate from a US state is sufficient to prove one’s citizenship status. After a child is born, hospitals normally transmit birth-certified information to the local municipality. The child’s birth certificate is then issued three-to-five business days later. The certificate suffices for recognition of citizenship and for federal documentation such as a passport.

    The executive order would increase the administrative burden for recognising citizenship. It is unclear, however, whether this burden would fall on the states or the federal government.

    In the first scenario, state bureaucracies would need to check the parents’ immigration status prior to issuing a birth certificate. This would undoubtedly cause confusion, as each state would need to provide new guidance and training to local bureaucrats on the medley of US immigration statuses and their attendant rights. The processing times for issuing birth certificates would increase, as verification procedures would require additional documentation. The fees for issuing certificates, currently between $7 and $35, would likely rise as well, since bureaucrats would need to investigate each birth rather than issue certificates automatically.

    If the administrative burden falls on the federal government, birth certificates would be issued in the same way and at the same cost by the states, but they would no longer be sufficient to prove a child’s citizenship. In this case, the government would need to issue citizenship certificates, which are normally reserved for proof of citizenship for children born abroad. Each case would require an individual investigation rather than being automatic, and while it’s hard to say how much fees could rise, current fees for citizenship certificates for children born abroad are north of $1,300. The processing of passport applications would take longer and likely be more costly, too, because a system to verify the immigration status of a child’s parents will need to be set up.

    In 2012, the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) released a report that outlined the potential impacts of ending the current approach to birthright citizenship. The report estimates, based on the costs of US citizenship certificates for children born abroad, that changing the existing law – which Trump’s order seeks to reinterpret – would cost parents “approximately $600 in government fees to prove the citizenship status of each baby and likely an additional $600 to $1,000 in legal fees”. The report describes these costs as a “tax” on “each baby born in the United States”.

    Alternately, the US could establish a new national ID card system, but this would also have bureaucratic costs. This type of ID card is common in European countries: with some variation between systems, cards can be used for travel within the EU (as an alternative to a passport) and are generally used to prove citizenship status to vote or receive certain social services. But unlike in the European states that issue these cards, the US government has no registry of vital records and would need a new administrative structure to create one. When the UK government discussed such a system in 2007, its total cost was estimated to be at least 5.75 billion pounds.

    The NFAP report mentions the federal systems that rely on the current practice of state-administered birth certificates and automatic citizenship to function. These systems include the Social Security Administration, which handles retirement, disability and family benefits, and the E-Verify system, which determines whether a person has authorisation to work in the US. The report states that systems such as E-Verify “have cost the American taxpayer billions of dollars. There is no reason to believe that a change to the Citizenship Clause requiring the verification of parents’ immigration status would be any less expensive.”

    Costs to the US surrogacy market

    The US surrogacy industry is the largest in the world. It is valued at over $20 billion (and is expected to grow to $195 billion by 2034), and attracts families from European and Asian countries where surrogacy is not as prevalent or is illegal. An important factor in the size of this market is the attractive environment for surrogacy arrangements. First, surrogacy is relatively mainstreamed in the US, and there are many companies that help with finding donors, surrogates and with navigating the legal process. Second, intended parents have the security of knowing their children will have immediate access to travel documents, such as a US passport, after birth. If a new definition of parentage goes into effect, thus removing the guarantee of US citizenship, the status of children born through surrogacy could be at risk. The attractiveness of the US surrogacy market would likely suffer, because parents would face time-consuming and costly steps to secure status and immigration documents to allow travel between the US and their home country.

    An unclear fate

    The approach to parenthood in the executive order on birthright citizenship aligns with the Trump administration’s overall push toward pronatalism and traditional heterosexual family models. Trump has also signed another executive order expanding access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) for “longing mothers and fathers”. The definition of parentage in this order also leaves out same-sex couples, who often receive IVF treatments.

    The fate of the birthright citizenship order is unclear, and it will likely end up reaching the Supreme Court. Legal debates must include the constitutionality of denying automatic citizenship to US-born children, the effect on children born via assisted reproductive technologies, and the bureaucratic and financial burdens placed on states and parents. While an end to birthright citizenship would immediately affect the children of undocumented people, taking a step back reveals other consequences that could impact the broader US public for generations to come.

    Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.

    – ref. Ending US birthright citizenship could have consequences for LGBTQ+ couples, lower-income parents and the surrogacy market – https://theconversation.com/ending-us-birthright-citizenship-could-have-consequences-for-lgbtq-couples-lower-income-parents-and-the-surrogacy-market-250846

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Investors value green labels — but not always for the right reasons

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Vasundhara Saravade, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of the Environment, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

    Imagine you are choosing between two similar investment options. One has a green label, promising to fund climate-friendly projects and assets. The other offers a slightly higher return, but has no green label. Which do you choose?

    My recent study explored this question. My co-researchers and I found that, for most retail investors — individual, non-professional investors — the presence of a green label mattered more than the actual environmental impact of the bond or the higher financial return of a non-green option.

    This finding raises critical questions about how sustainable finance is marketed and whether green labels alone are enough to drive real environmental change.

    Green bonds and retail investors

    Green bonds are a financial tool designed to fund environmentally friendly projects. Institutional investors and governments have embraced them, but their adoption by everyday retail investors remains low.

    The Canadian market was one of the first to provide access to retail-level green bonds, but demand for such bonds was always oversubscribed. Low interest rates made it difficult to balance investor returns with lending profits. This imbalance squeezed sustainable investment firms like CoPower, which ultimately led to its green bond model winding down.

    With the urgent need to attract capital for climate financing, the role of retail investors is now a key topic of discussion. In 2021, these investors accounted for 52 per cent of global assets under management in 2021 — a figure expected to jump to nearly 61 per cent by 2030. This presents a massive opportunity to mobilize private capital toward sustainable finance.

    However, before retail investors venture into the green bond market, the sustainable finance sector must address a key question: do people invest in green bonds because they believe in their environmental benefits or simply because of the “green” label?

    And, more importantly, does the green label alone persuade retail investors to accept a “greenium” — choosing a lower-return green bond over a higher-return non-green bond — like professional investors do?

    The ‘green-label effect’ is real

    To determine this, my co-researchers and I conducted an experiment with over 1,000 self-identified retail investors to see how different framing techniques — such as labels, environmental impact and reporting descriptions — shaped their willingness to invest in green bonds.

    Our study identified a “green label effect.” Most retail investors relied on green labels as a shortcut to save time and avoid having to evaluate the environmental impact of a bond. Investors often relied on simplified decision cues like labels and financial returns to navigate complex financial information.



    Read more:
    Sustainable finance: Canada risks being left behind in low-carbon economy

    However, a small subset of environmentally conscious investors researched the validity of green bonds and aligned their investments with their values, even at the cost of lower returns.

    This highlights the need for green bonds that offer a competitive return, given that a majority still invest based on financial returns in addition to labelling. Labelling alone is not enough to drive mainstream retail investment in sustainable finance.

    Our study also found that certain types of personal characteristics made people more likely to invest in labelled green bonds, even if those bonds had the lowest financial returns. Investors with a high-risk tolerance were more likely to invest in green bonds.

    Additionally, previous investment experience played a role. Those who had moderately invested in stocks, had none to high levels of experience investing in bonds.

    The greenwashing challenge

    Our findings highlight both the potential and pitfalls of sustainable finance. The popularity of green-labelled bonds suggests that retail investors are open to sustainable investment and would help to drive growth in this market considerably.

    However, the fact that many choose labels without finding out whether the bond is actually green raises concerns about greenwashing. This practice occurs when companies exploit sustainability branding and use green labels on non-green bonds to avoid delivering environmental impact.

    If investors rely too much on green labels without verifying the actual impact of their investments, they may inadvertently support projects that fail to make a meaningful difference.

    As green finance regulations evolve, governments must strengthen labelling standards and transparency. This would ensure that labelled green bonds deliver on their promises.

    Stronger green taxonomies and consumer oversight mechanisms would help prevent misleading claims, protect investors and ensure sustainable finance can scale quickly. Without these safeguards, green bonds could lose credibility and fail to scale effectively.

    What should policymakers do?

    To expand the green bond market and align it with Canada’s climate goals, policymakers could introduce tax-free government green bonds or green infrastructure bonds. These would incentivize retail investors and raise their awareness of sustainable finance.

    Policymakers could allow banks to add green bonds to registered products like tax-free savings accounts or registered retirement savings plans. They could create new green registered products that would encourage individual-level savings and investment, like the first home savings account.

    Making verified climate-related financial disclosures easier to use could help retail investors better understand the impact of green products. This would reduce reliance on labels alone and encourage more informed decision-making.

    Green bonds have the potential to be a powerful tool in the fight against climate change, but only if they’re backed by real accountability. As our study shows, labels matter a lot — but what’s behind them matters most.

    Vasundhara Saravade is affiliated with the Smart Prosperity Institute.

    – ref. Investors value green labels — but not always for the right reasons – https://theconversation.com/investors-value-green-labels-but-not-always-for-the-right-reasons-251021

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The US energy market has its troubles, though it may not be a ‘national emergency’

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Seth Blumsack, Professor of Energy and Environmental Economics and International Affairs, Penn State

    This Montana refinery processes crude oil imported from Canada. AP Photo/Matthew Brown

    President Donald Trump’s declaration of a “national energy emergency” on his first day in office – and which he reiterated during his address to Congress on March 4, 2025 – might have seemed to echo other national emergencies, like those presidents declared in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

    But there has never before been a national energy emergency. During the energy crises of the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter declared local or regional energy emergencies in a handful of states. These actions suspended some environmental regulations, such as air-pollution limits for coal-fired power plants, for very short periods to make sure those states’ residents had enough electricity.

    When a president declares a national emergency, he claims significant powers under the National Emergencies Act, which allow him to take steps to solve the emergency. In this situation, Trump might seek to override environmental regulations, order utility companies to buy power from particular power plants, or invoke the Defense Production Act to secure materials needed for power plant construction.

    A natural gas well pad in Washington County, Pa., is one of many sites around the nation where fracking has boosted U.S. energy production.
    Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images

    Six weeks into his presidency, Trump had not taken any action to address this emergency, though during his speech to Congress he said he wants to increase drilling and build a new natural gas pipeline in Alaska. And Trump’s discussion of energy policy has not directly referred to the consumer price hikes expected as a result of the 10% tariffs he imposed on Canadian oil, gas and electricity starting on March 4, 2025.

    Critics of the president’s declaration have described it as a “giveaway” to the fossil fuel industry in the form of looser regulations and measures to make it easier to drill for oil on government-owned land. In fact, the executive order’s definition of “energy” excludes energy generated from wind and solar, as well as efforts to conserve energy – all of which were major parts of the Biden administration’s energy strategy.

    As someone who has studied energy markets for decades, I have seen several events that might qualify as energy-related emergencies, such as meltdowns at nuclear power plants around the world, shortages of electricity and natural gas, and massive power blackouts.

    But over the past 15 years, the United States has become a global energy superpower even without any emergency declarations. The advent of hydraulic fracturing unleashed a wave of oil and gas production, even as U.S. energy demand barely budged. In a time of such energy abundance, there is no clear emergency on the scale of the energy crises of the 1970s. But there are some causes for concern.

    Big increases in domestic production

    One goal Trump’s declaration sets out is to increase what the executive order calls the nation’s “energy security.” Usually that phrase refers to an ability to operate using energy produced within the U.S. rather than overseas – particularly from countries that have long-standing conflicts or disagreements with the United States.

    Based on raw numbers, however, the U.S. is already quite energy secure. In 2023, the nation produced nearly 13 million barrels of oil per day, which is more than any country has ever produced in the history of the oil business. Since 2015, when a federal ban on oil exports was lifted, the U.S. has been increasing the amount of oil it exports every year. And for the past several years, the U.S. has been the world’s leading exporter of gasoline, sending 10% of its total annual production to other countries.

    Since the start of the shale-fracking boom in the mid-2000s, U.S. production of natural gas has also been increasing. The country’s natural gas exports have also risen over the past 10 years, though they have been limited by the number of ports that can handle liquefied natural gas cargo.

    Still a net importer of oil

    The U.S. produces plenty of oil to meet its demands, but not the kinds of oil that American refineries are designed to process into useful fuels.

    Therefore, despite the increases in domestic production, the U.S. is still a net importer of crude oil. In 2023, the U.S. imported almost twice as much oil as it exported.

    And U.S. refineries’ output of gasoline and heating oil depends on imported oil. Most oil refineries in the U.S. are quite old and were engineered to process so-called “heavy” crude oil produced in countries such as Canada, which is historically the United States’ biggest source of imported oil.

    Most of the recent increase in U.S. oil production comes from hydraulic fracturing of shale and is so-called “light” crude oil. Refining light crude would require new refineries or a major reengineering of existing refineries, with new equipment, expanded capacity or both.

    Making those changes would be very expensive. So refinery owners are hesitant to make these kinds of investments because there is a risk that the investments won’t pay off. Because U.S. refineries produce so much gasoline and have limited capacity, the U.S. also continues to import some refined petroleum fuels such as jet fuel.

    A liquefied natural gas tanker ship moves toward Cameron Pass near Cameron, La.
    Washington Post via Getty Images

    A fragile power grid

    Concern over the nation’s aging electric power grid is another focus of Trump’s energy emergency declaration. Experts have been issuing warnings for years. A 2024 study on the national transmission grid commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy has concluded the U.S. needs to double the size of the grid in the next couple of decades.

    For the first time in nearly half a century, the U.S. is facing the prospect of rapidly increasing electricity demand. The demand for power has always gone up and down a bit with population and the health of the economy, but this time is different. Growth in electricity demand is now driven by the construction of massive data centers and by electrification of cars and heating and cooling systems. The Department of Energy reports that data center electricity use in particular has tripled in the past 10 years and could easily double in the next few years. At that rate, data centers could account for over 10% of all electricity demand in the country before 2030.

    The U.S. supply of power generation in many regions is not ready for this surge in demand. Many power plants – particularly the older ones and those that burn coal – have shut down in the past several years, driven by a combination of economic pressures and environmental regulations. Building new power plants in many parts of the U.S. has become bogged down in regulatory red tape, public opposition and economic uncertainty. The North American Electric Reliability Corp., which develops standards for grid reliability, has placed over half of U.S. states at some level of risk for not having enough power generation to meet anticipated future demand.

    A study has found that the nation’s electricity grid is expected to need significant investment to handle rising demand.
    Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images

    Will declaring an emergency help?

    Under Trump’s energy emergency declaration, the administration seems likely to take actions that will make it easier to drill for more oil and gas. And the federal government may also make it easier to build power plants that run on coal, natural gas and possibly nuclear fuel.

    But expanded fracking, in and of itself, will probably not address any energy security issues in the U.S., unless there are major investments in refineries to handle the increased oil production. Reducing the barriers to building power plants addresses a much more pressing problem, but the country would still need to expand the transmission grid itself, which does not get as much attention in the president’s declaration.

    Time will tell whether the energy emergency declaration will be used to solve real problems in the nation’s energy supplies, or whether it will be used to further bolster oil and gas producers that have already made the U.S. a global energy powerhouse.

    Seth Blumsack receives funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, NASA, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Heising Simons Foundation.

    – ref. The US energy market has its troubles, though it may not be a ‘national emergency’ – https://theconversation.com/the-us-energy-market-has-its-troubles-though-it-may-not-be-a-national-emergency-249336

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Carolina wildfires followed months of weather whiplash, from drought to hurricane-fueled floods and back to drought

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Lauren Lowman, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Wake Forest University

    A hillside burns near Tryon, N.C., on March 3, 2025. Fire season here typically starts in late March or April. Peter Zay/Anadolu via Getty Images

    Scores of wildfires broke out across North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia in early March 2025 as strong winds, abnormally dry conditions and low humidity combined to kindle and spread the flames.

    The fires followed a year of weather whiplash in the Carolinas, from a flash drought over the summer to extreme hurricane flooding in September, and then back to drought again. A storm system on March 5, 2025, was likely to douse many of the fires still burning, but the Southeast fire season is only beginning. Wake Forest University wildfire experts Lauren Lowman and Nick Corak put the fires and the region’s dry winter into context.

    Why did the Carolinas see so many wildfires?

    Most of North and South Carolina have been abnormally dry or in moderate drought since at least November 2024. Consistently dry conditions through the winter dried out vegetation, leaving fuel for wildfires.

    When the land and vegetation is this dry, all it takes is a lightning strike or a man-made fire and wind gusts to start a wildfire.

    Drought maps: North and South Carolina conditions as of Feb. 25, 2025.
    U.S. Drought Monitor

    Hurricanes did flood the region in late summer 2024, but before that, the Carolinas were experiencing a flash drought.

    Flash droughts are extreme droughts that develop rapidly due to lack of precipitation and dry conditions in the atmosphere. When the atmosphere is dry, it pulls water from the vegetation and soils, causing the surface to dry out.

    In August and September, Tropical Storm Debby and Hurricane Helene caused extensive flooding in the two states, but the Carolinas received little rainfall in the months that followed, leaving winter 2025 abnormally dry again.

    How unusual are fires like this in the region?

    Fires are historically fairly common in the Carolinas. They’re a natural part of the landscape, and many ecosystems have evolved to depend on them.

    Carnivorous plants such as Venus flytraps and pitcher plants rely on frequent fire activity to remove shrubs and other plants that would grow over them and block the light. Even some wildlife depend on fire for their habitats and for food from the mix of native plants that regrow after a fire.

    The expected return periods for wildfires – how often fires have historically burned in a region – range from one to 10 years for the Piedmont and Coastal Plains in the east and 10 to 40 years in the Appalachian Mountains. However, many unplanned fires today are put out. That means underbrush that would normally burn every decade or so can build up over time, fueling more intense fires when it does burn.

    Some ecosystems rely on fire.

    To avoid that overgrowth, land managers conduct annual prescribed fires to try to mimic that natural fire activity in a controlled way. These controlled burns are critical for removing vegetation that otherwise could provide additional fuel for more intense and damaging wildfires.

    Is dryness like this becoming more common?

    Extreme weather events are becoming more common across the U.S., including in the Southeast and the Carolinas.

    Increasing temperatures mean the atmosphere can hold more moisture, amplifying how much water it can draw from the land surface and eventually drop in heavier storms. That can lead to more extreme storms and longer dry periods. In humid regions like the Southeast, where there is an abundance of dense vegetation, periods of warm, dry conditions that dry out that vegetation will increase the risk of wildfire.

    A fire crew prepares to battle a blaze in Horry County, S.C., on March 3, 2025.
    SC Department of Natural Resources/Anadolu via Getty Images

    According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the southeastern U.S. experienced more droughts than other regions in the country in the first two decades of the 21st century.

    The weather variability also makes it harder to clear out forest undergrowth. Prescribed burns require that vegetation be dry enough to burn but also that winds are calm enough to allow firefighters to manage the flames. Studies show those conditions are likely to become less common in the Southeast in a warming world. Without that tool to reduce fuel, the risk of intense wildfires rises.

    Lauren Lowman is a Co-PI on a National Science Foundation Grant titled, “AccelNet-Design: iFireNet: An international network of networks for prediction and management of wildland fires.”

    Nick Corak receives funding from the North Carolina Space Grant Graduate Research Fellowship for his project titled “Disentangling Burn Severity and Vegetation Regrowth Dynamics Following Prescribed Fire Across North Carolina.” The work was previously supported by the joint NC Sea Grant – NC Space Grant Graduate Research Fellowship.

    – ref. Carolina wildfires followed months of weather whiplash, from drought to hurricane-fueled floods and back to drought – https://theconversation.com/carolina-wildfires-followed-months-of-weather-whiplash-from-drought-to-hurricane-fueled-floods-and-back-to-drought-251470

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –