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Category: Global

  • MIL-OSI Global: Citizenship voting requirement in SAVE Act has no basis in the Constitution – and ignores precedent that only states decide who gets to vote

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By John J. Martin, Research Assistant Professor of Law, University of Virginia

    People stand in line to vote in Santa Monica, Calif., on Nov. 5, 2024. Apu Gomes/Getty Images

    The Republican-led House of Representatives passed on April 10, 2025, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act – or SAVE Act. The bill would make voting harder for tens of millions of Americans.

    The SAVE Act would require anyone registering to vote in federal elections to first “provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship” in person, like a REAL ID or a passport.

    The House already passed an identical bill in July 2024, also along partisan lines, with the GOP largely supporting the legislation. At that time, the Senate killed the bill. With a now GOP-controlled Senate, and a Republican in the White House, the SAVE Act could become law before 2025 ends.

    Voting rights experts and advocacy organizations have detailed how the legislation could suppress voting. In part, they say it would particularly create barriers in low-income and minority communities. People in such communities often lack the forms of ID acceptable under the SAVE Act for a variety of reasons, including socioeconomic factors.

    As of now, at least 9% of voting-age American citizens – approximately 21 million people – do not have even have driver’s licenses, let alone proof of citizenship. In spite of this, many legislators support the bill as a means of eliminating noncitizen voting in elections.

    As a legal scholar who studies, among other things, foreign interference in elections, I find considerations about the potential effects of the SAVE Act important, especially given how rare it is that a noncitizen actually votes in federal elections.

    Yet, it is equally crucial to consider a more fundamental question: is the SAVE Act even constitutional?

    Voters cast their ballot in Charlotte, N.C., on Nov. 5, 2024.
    Peter Zay/Anadolu via Getty Images

    How the SAVE Act could change voting requirements

    The SAVE Act would forbid state election officials from registering an individual to vote in federal elections unless this person “provides documentary proof of United States citizenship.”

    Acceptable forms of proof for registration would include REAL ID, a U.S. passport or a U.S. military identification card. A regular driver’s license alone would not be enough unless it shows the applicant was born in the U.S., or if it is accompanied with a birth certificate or naturalization certificate.

    So, should the SAVE Act become law, if a person turns 18 or moves between states and wishes to register to vote in federal elections in their new home, they would likely be turned away if they do not have any such documents readily available. At best, they could still fill out a registration form, but would need to mail in acceptable proof of citizenship.

    For married people with changed last names, among others, questions remain about whether birth certificates could even count as acceptable proof of citizenship for them.

    The Constitution says little about voting rights

    Despite the national conversation the SAVE Act has sparked, it is unclear whether Congress even has the power to enact it. This is the key constitutional question.

    The U.S. Constitution imposes no citizenship requirement when it comes to voting. The original text of the Constitution, in fact, said very little about the right to vote. It was not until legislators passed subsequent amendments, starting after the Civil War up through the 1970s, that the Constitution even explicitly prohibited voting laws that discriminate on account of race, sex or age.

    Aside from these amendments, the Constitution is largely silent about who gets to vote.

    Who, then, gets to decide whether someone is qualified to vote? No matter the election, the answer is always the same – the states.

    Indeed, by constitutional design, the states are tasked with setting voter-eligibility requirements – a product of our federalist system. For state and local elections, the 10th Amendment grants states the power to regulate their internal elections as they see fit.

    States also get to decide who may vote in federal elections, which include both presidential and congressional elections.

    When it comes to presidential elections, for instance, states have – as I have previously written – exclusive power under the Constitution’s Electors Clause to decide how to conduct presidential elections within their borders, including who gets to vote in them.

    The states wield similar authority for congressional elections. Namely, according to Article I of the Constitution and the Constitution’s 17th Amendment, if someone can vote in their state’s legislative elections, they are entitled to vote in its congressional elections, too.

    Conversely, the Constitution provides Congress zero authority to govern voter-eligibility requirements in federal elections. Indeed, in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling on the Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council case, the court asserted that nothing in the Constitution “lends itself to the view that voting qualifications in federal elections are to be set by Congress.”

    Is the SAVE Act constitutional?

    The SAVE Act presents a constitutional dilemma. By requiring individuals to show documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register for federal elections, the SAVE Act is implicitly saying that someone must be a U.S. citizen to vote in federal elections.

    In other words, Congress would be instituting a qualification to vote, a power that the Constitution leaves exclusively to the states.

    Indeed, while all states currently limit voting rights to citizens, legal noncitizen voting is not without precedent. As multiple scholars have noted, at least 19 states extended voting rights to free male “inhabitants,” including noncitizens, starting from our country’s founding up to and throughout the 19th century.

    Today, over 20 municipalities across the country, as well as the District of Columbia, allow permanent noncitizen residents to vote in local elections.

    Any state these days could similarly extend the right to vote in state and federal elections to permanent noncitizen residents. This is within their constitutional prerogative. And if this were to happen, there could be a conflict between that state’s voter-eligibility laws and the SAVE Act.

    Normally, when state and federal laws conflict, the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause mandates that federal law prevails.

    Yet, in this instance, where Congress has no actual authority to implement voter qualifications, the SAVE Act would seem to have no constitutional leg on which to stand.

    Reconciling the SAVE Act with the Constitution

    So, why have 108 U.S. representatives sponsored a bill that likely exceeds Congress’s powers?

    Politics, of course, plays some role here. Namely, noncitizen voting is a major concern among Republican politicians and voters. Every SAVE Act cosponsor is Republican, as were all but four of the 220 U.S. representatives who voted to pass it.

    When it comes to the constitutionality of the SAVE Act, though, proponents simply assert that Congress is acting within its purview.

    Specifically, many proponents have cited the Constitution’s Elections Clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections, as support for that assertion. Sen. Mike Lee, for example, explicitly referenced the Elections Clause when defending the SAVE Act earlier in 2025.

    But the Elections Clause only grants Congress authority to regulate election procedures, not voter qualifications. The Supreme Court explicitly stated this in the Inter Tribal Council ruling.

    Congress can, for instance, require states to adopt a uniform federal voter registration form, and even include a citizenship question on said form. What it cannot do, however, is implement a non-negotiable mandate that effectively tells the states they can never allow any noncitizen to vote in a federal election.

    For now, the SAVE Act is simply legislation. Should the Senate pass it, President Donald Trump will almost assuredly sign it into law, given, among other factors, his March 2025 executive order that says prospective voters need to show proof of citizenship before they register to vote in federal elections. Once that happens, the courts will have to reckon with the SAVE Act’s legitimacy within the country’s constitutional design.

    John J. Martin 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. Citizenship voting requirement in SAVE Act has no basis in the Constitution – and ignores precedent that only states decide who gets to vote – https://theconversation.com/citizenship-voting-requirement-in-save-act-has-no-basis-in-the-constitution-and-ignores-precedent-that-only-states-decide-who-gets-to-vote-252792

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: AI-generated images can exploit how your mind works − here’s why they fool you and how to spot them

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Arryn Robbins, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Richmond

    A beautiful kitchen to scroll past – but check out the clock. Tiny Homes via Facebook

    I’m more of a scroller than a poster on social media. Like many people, I wind down at the end of the day with a scroll binge, taking in videos of Italian grandmothers making pasta or baby pygmy hippos frolicking.

    For a while, my feed was filled with immaculately designed tiny homes, fueling my desire for minimalist paradise. Then, I started seeing AI-generated images; many contained obvious errors such as staircases to nowhere or sinks within sinks. Yet, commenters rarely pointed them out, instead admiring the aesthetic.

    These images were clearly AI-generated and didn’t depict reality. Did people just not notice? Not care?

    As a cognitive psychologist, I’d guess “yes” and “yes.” My expertise is in how people process and use visual information. I primarily investigate how people look for objects and information visually, from the mundane searches of daily life, such as trying to find a dropped earring, to more critical searches, like those conducted by radiologists or search-and-rescue teams.

    With my understanding of how people process images and notice − or don’t notice − detail, it’s not surprising to me that people aren’t tuning in to the fact that many images are AI-generated.

    We’ve been here before

    The struggle to detect AI-generated images mirrors past detection challenges such as spotting photoshopped images or computer-generated images in movies.

    But there’s a key difference: Photo editing and CGI require intentional design by artists, while AI images are generated by algorithms trained on datasets, often without human oversight. The lack of oversight can lead to imperfections or inconsistencies that can feel unnatural, such as the unrealistic physics or lack of consistency between frames that characterize what’s sometimes called “AI slop.”

    Despite these differences, studies show people struggle to distinguish real images from synthetic ones, regardless of origin. Even when explicitly asked to identify images as real, synthetic or AI-generated, accuracy hovers near the level of chance, meaning people did only a little better than if they’d just guessed.

    In everyday interactions, where you aren’t actively scrutinizing images, your ability to detect synthetic content might even be weaker.

    Attention shapes what you see, what you miss

    Spotting errors in AI images requires noticing small details, but the human visual system isn’t wired for that when you’re casually scrolling. Instead, while online, people take in the gist of what they’re viewing and can overlook subtle inconsistencies.

    Visual attention operates like a zoom lens: You scan broadly to get an overview of your environment or phone screen, but fine details require focused effort. Human perceptual systems evolved to quickly assess environments for any threats to survival, with sensitivity to sudden changes − such as a quick-moving predator − sacrificing precision for speed of detection.

    This speed-accuracy trade-off allows for rapid, efficient processing, which helped early humans survive in natural settings. But it’s a mismatch with modern tasks such as scrolling through devices, where small mistakes or unusual details in AI-generated images can easily go unnoticed.

    People also miss things they aren’t actively paying attention to or looking for. Psychologists call this inattentional blindness: Focusing on one task causes you to overlook other details, even obvious ones. In the famous invisible gorilla study, participants asked to count basketball passes in a video failed to notice someone in a gorilla suit walking through the middle of the scene.

    If you’re counting how many passes the people in white make, do you even notice someone walk through in a gorilla suit?

    Similarly, when your focus is on the broader content of an AI image, such as a cozy tiny home, you’re less likely to notice subtle distortions. In a way, the sixth finger in an AI image is today’s invisible gorilla − hiding in plain sight because you’re not looking for it.

    Efficiency over accuracy in thinking

    Our cognitive limitations go beyond visual perception. Human thinking uses two types of processing: fast, intuitive thinking based on mental shortcuts, and slower, analytical thinking that requires effort. When scrolling, our fast system likely dominates, leading us to accept images at face value.

    Adding to this issue is the tendency to seek information that confirms your beliefs or reject information that goes against them. This means AI-generated images are more likely to slip by you when they align with your expectations or worldviews. If an AI-generated image of a basketball player making an impossible shot jibes with a fan’s excitement, they might accept it, even if something feels exaggerated.

    While not a big deal for tiny home aesthetics, these issues become concerning when AI-generated images may be used to influence public opinion. For example, research shows that people tend to assume images are relevant to accompanying text. Even when the images provide no actual evidence, they make people more likely to accept the text’s claims as true.

    Misleading real or generated images can make false claims seem more believable and even cause people to misremember real events. AI-generated images have the power to shape opinions and spread misinformation in ways that are difficult to counter.

    Beating the machine

    While AI gets better at detecting AI, humans need tools to do the same. Here’s how:

    1. Trust your gut. If something feels off, it probably is. Your brain expertly recognizes objects and faces, even under varying conditions. Perhaps you’ve experienced what psychologists call the uncanny valley and felt unease with certain humanoid faces. This experience shows people can detect anomalies, even when they can’t fully explain what’s wrong.
    2. Scan for clues. AI struggles with certain elements: hands, text, reflections, lighting inconsistencies and unnatural textures. If an image seems suspicious, take a closer look.
    3. Think critically. Sometimes, AI generates photorealistic images with impossible scenarios. If you see a political figure casually surprising baristas or a celebrity eating concrete, ask yourself: Does this make sense? If not, it’s probably fake.
    4. Check the source. Is the poster a real person? Reverse image search can help trace a picture’s origin. If the metadata is missing, it might be generated by AI.

    AI-generated images are becoming harder to spot. During scrolling, the brain processes visuals quickly, not critically, making it easy to miss details that reveal a fake. As technology advances, slow down, look closer and think critically.

    Arryn Robbins 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. AI-generated images can exploit how your mind works − here’s why they fool you and how to spot them – https://theconversation.com/ai-generated-images-can-exploit-how-your-mind-works-heres-why-they-fool-you-and-how-to-spot-them-246867

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Tiny cut marks on animal bone fossils reveal that human ancestors were in Romania 1.95 million years ago

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Briana Pobiner, Research Scientist and Museum Educator, Smithsonian Institution

    Several fossils with possible cut marks from Grăunceanu, Romania. Briana Pobiner

    Looking again through the magnifying lens at the fossil’s surface, one of us, Sabrina Curran, took a deep breath. Illuminated by a strong light positioned nearly parallel to the surface of the bone, the V-shaped lines were clearly there on the fossil. There was no mistaking what they meant.

    She’d seen them before, on bones that were butchered with stone tools about 1.8 million years ago, from a site called Dmanisi in Georgia. These were cut marks made by a human ancestor wielding a stone tool. After staring at them for what felt like an eternity − but was probably only a few seconds − she turned to our colleagues and said, “Hey … I think I found something.”

    What she’d spotted in 2017 was our team’s first evidence that hominins butchered several animals at the site of Grăunceanu, in Romania, at least 1.95 million years ago. Before this discovery, those other cut marks from Dmanisi were the oldest well-dated evidence in Eurasia of the presence of hominins − our direct human ancestors.

    Other scientists have reported sites in Eurasia and northern Africa with either hominin fossils, stone tools or butchered animal bones from around this time. Our recently published research adds to this story with well-dated, verified evidence that hominins of some kind had spread to this part of the world by around 2 million years ago.

    Romanian site with fossilized animal bones

    A 1960s photo of fossil bones before they were excavated from the ground at Grăunceanu, Romania.
    Emil Racoviță Institute of Speleology

    A little background on Grăunceanu: This open-air site was originally excavated in the 1960s, and researchers found thousands of fossil animal bones there. It’s one of the best-known Early Pleistocene sites in East-Central Europe. Many of the fossil animal bones are quite complete and at the time of excavation lay together as they were positioned in life. The original deposition was called a “bone nest” because of how densely packed the bones were.

    If you were to stand on the hillside surrounding Grăunceanu almost 2 million years ago, it would likely have seemed familiar: a river channel surrounded by a forest that fades into more open grasslands to the foothills. Occasionally that river floods its banks, inundating the valley with rich soils, providing nutrients for the plants that the resident animals feed on. All pretty familiar, until you look more closely at those animals: ostriches, pangolins, giraffes, saber-toothed cats and hyenas − in Europe!

    It’s the fossil bones of these ancient animal inhabitants that were excavated at Grăunceanu. Unfortunately, most of the excavation records and provenance data for the site have been lost. Even without those, though, the Grăunceanu fossils are so remarkably preserved that they offer up a wealth of paleontological information.

    A few years after finding those first cut marks, our team, including biological anthropologist Claire Terhune, zooarchaeologist Samantha Gogol, and paleoanthropologist Chris Robinson, spent several weeks carefully studying all 4,524 Grăunceanu fossils, looking for more marks.

    We examined all surfaces of every fossil bone with a magnifying lens and low-angled light. Most of these fossils have root etching on them − sinuous, shallow, overlapping marks made by plant roots that grew nearby. But whenever we saw a linear mark that looked interesting, we took an impression of that mark with dental molding material.

    Briana Pobiner and Claire Terhune take molds of marks of interest on Grăunceanu fossils.
    Sabrina Curran

    Confirming they’re cut marks

    We can’t go back in a time machine to watch when these marks were made. Yes, ancient human butchers wielding stone tools would leave marks on bone. But mammalian predators or crocodiles could also leave marks with their sharp teeth. Sediments in rivers could scratch any bones rolling around in the water. Large animals walking across the landscape could move and scrape bones with their steps.

    So how can we be confident that they’re cut marks? That’s where our zooarchaeologist collaborators Michael Pante and Trevor Keevil came in.

    Close-up of a cut-marked bone from Grăunceanu, Romania.
    Sabrina Curran

    Within the past decade, Pante developed a novel method for identifying the source of marks left on bones. The first step is capturing precise 3D measurements of the mark impressions using an advanced microscope called a noncontact 3D optical profiler.

    Then they compare the 3D shape data from the ancient marks with a reference set of 898 marks on modern bones made by known processes, including stone tool butchery, carnivore feeding and sedimentary abrasion.

    This new method adds to the more qualitative, descriptive criteria many researchers, including our team, use to make mark identifications. For instance, we consider things such as mark location: Is the mark near a muscle attachment site, where you might expect to find a cut mark if a hominin were removing meat from a bone?

    Based on our analyses, we determined that 20 Grăunceanu fossils are marked by cuts, with eight displaying high-confidence cut marks. Most of those marks are on fossils of hoofed animals, including a few deer; one is a small carnivore leg bone. When we could identify the type of bone, the cut marks are always in anatomical locations consistent with cutting meat off bones.

    Dating the site

    While the fossil species present can give us a rough age estimate of the site, we used uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating to get more precise age information. This technique relies on the fact that naturally occurring uranium decays over long but well-known periods of time to eventually transform into lead. Geologists use the ratio of these two elements like a radiometric clock to determine how old something is.

    When one of us, Virgil Drăgușin, asked geochemist Jon Woodhead to use U-Pb dating to estimate the age of the Grăunceanu fossils based on several small tooth fragments, he was reluctant. Teeth do not usually work well for this dating technique. But he agreed to a test run, and to his surprise the teeth he tried worked very well.

    Together with his colleague John Hellstrom, they calculated a much more precise date for the site. We now know the Grăunceanu site is older than 1.95 million years.

    All of this data together − the very well-calibrated and tightly clustered dates of the specimens plus at least 20 cut-marked bones verified both by qualitative and quantitative methods − provides very reliable evidence that hominins were indeed in Eurasia by at least 1.95 million years ago, even though there are no hominin fossils from Grăunceanu.

    An artist’s reconstruction of the Early Pleistocene landscape around Grăunceanu.
    Emi Olin

    Sometimes when we look through our magnifying lenses, it almost feels like we can peer into the past. That’s impossible − but we can piece together lines of evidence to paint a clearer picture of what happened in the past at Grăunceanu.

    Now, imagining the view 1.95 million years ago, we see scenes of deer cautiously drinking from the river, majestic mammoths in the distance, a herd of horses grazing, a saber-toothed cat stalking a large monkey, a bear teaching her cubs to hunt … and a small group of hominins butchering a deer.

    Briana Pobiner has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Leakey Foundation, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

    Sabrina Curran has received funding from The Leakey Foundation, National Science Foundation, and Ohio University.

    Virgil Drãgușin received funding from CNCS-UEFISCDI (Department of Education, Romanian Government).

    – ref. Tiny cut marks on animal bone fossils reveal that human ancestors were in Romania 1.95 million years ago – https://theconversation.com/tiny-cut-marks-on-animal-bone-fossils-reveal-that-human-ancestors-were-in-romania-1-95-million-years-ago-249838

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why Keir Starmer’s psychological profile is different from other prime ministers – and what it means for his dealings with Donald Trump

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Consuelo Thiers, Lecturer in International Relations, University of Edinburgh

    Flickr/10 Downing Street, CC BY-NC-ND

    The question “Who is Keir Starmer?” echoed across headlines before and after he took office in 2024. Despite leading the Labour party for years, his personality, leadership style and core motivations remained something of a mystery. Now in office, that question matters more than ever. In moments of crisis, a national leader’s psychology plays a decisive role.

    The UK faces a difficult foreign policy landscape. Post-Brexit Britain is still rebuilding alliances amid economic strain and Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency has put a more transactional, Russia-friendly approach in the White House. The UK’s balancing act has become even more precarious. Starmer must back Ukraine, strengthen ties with the EU and manage an unpredictable relationship with Trump. For any leader, it’s a high-stakes task.

    Traditional international relations theories often treat states as rational actors, with little attention paid to who is making the decisions. In this view, leaders are interchangeable; internal traits are “black-boxed” and considered irrelevant.

    But political psychology challenges this. Leaders are not all the same. How they perceive and respond to constraints – be they economic, institutional, or geopolitical – varies dramatically.

    Faced with similar conditions, different leaders make different choices. Their decisions are shaped by traits, motivations, emotions and deeply held beliefs.

    Starmer: psychologically different to other PMs

    Political psychology provides tools for assessing leaders by analysing their public statements. Since traditional psychological assessments are rarely feasible, researchers rely on at-a-distance methods, based on the premise that the way leaders speak and the language they use can reveal underlying traits, motivations and beliefs.

    One of the most widely used approaches is leadership trait analysis (LTA), developed by psychologist Margaret Hermann. It employs computational content analysis to systematically code language and produce comparable personality profiles.

    To reduce the influence of speechwriters, the analysis focuses on spontaneous material such as interviews and press conferences. The framework identifies seven core traits that are particularly relevant to foreign policy decision-making.

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    Applying this framework to Starmer’s public appearances since taking office reveals notable differences between his profile and that of the average UK prime minister.

    Of the seven core traits measured by the framework, Starmer scores within the typical range on task orientation, in-group bias, self-confidence, and conceptual complexity. But he stands out in three areas: distrust, belief in his ability to control events, and need for power. In these, he scores significantly above average.

    These traits suggest a leader who is confident in his influence, driven to shape outcomes, and inclined to assert control when faced with obstacles. Leaders high in belief in their ability to control events tend to be proactive and view challenges as manageable. When paired with a high need for power, this reflects a strong drive to steer the political environment, often through strategic manoeuvring and behind-the-scenes influence.

    These leaders test boundaries and thrive in direct, high-stakes negotiations. This combination has been seen in figures like Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.

    Compared with his most recent predecessors – Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson – Starmer shares certain traits but also diverges in meaningful ways. Like Johnson and Sunak, he shows a strong belief in his ability to control political events and a high need for power.

    However, what sets him apart most clearly is his elevated level of distrust, which surpasses even Sunak’s. Research links this trait to risk-prone, uncooperative leadership styles.

    Distrustful leaders often view others as potential threats, are less inclined to compromise, and fall back on control rather than collaboration. It’s a hallmark of hawkish leadership and has been associated with costly policy errors, such as George W. Bush’s misjudgement of Iraq’s weapons capabilities.

    At the same time, Starmer differs from Johnson and Sunak in his greater cognitive complexity. He sees nuance, tolerates ambiguity and avoids black-and-white thinking.

    He appears more open to new information and more flexible in adapting his approach. While Johnson and Sunak were more people-focused and scored low on task orientation, Starmer brings a balanced leadership style, combining interpersonal awareness with a clear focus on results. He can build relationships while staying goal-driven – an essential combination in today’s global landscape.

    Starmer and Trump

    What does this suggest about Starmer’s potential relationship with Trump? While research on leader-to-leader dynamics is still developing, Trump’s leadership profile is well-established.

    He scores high in self-confidence, low in task orientation, places a strong emphasis on loyalty, and shows high levels of distrust. His self-confidence means he rarely seeks disconfirming information, often filtering reality to fit his beliefs.

    His low task focus reflects a preference for group loyalty over detailed policy. Combined with a deep suspicion of others, this results in a transactional, uncompromising leadership style centred on personal allegiance.

    This presents challenges for Starmer, whose high distrust and tendency to defy constraints could complicate efforts to build mutual understanding. Yet his adaptability, pragmatism, and balanced focus on people and tasks, combined with confidence in his ability to shape outcomes, may help him navigate this volatile relationship.

    His assertive style, however, could still surprise or alienate some supporters as he makes bold moves beyond expectations.

    Starmer’s leadership may lack the charisma or flair of his predecessors, but his personality profile reveals a distinct and consequential approach to power. Confident, strategic, and distrustful, he is not a passive figurehead but a leader likely to assert control, challenge limits, and drive his vision.

    When the stakes are this high, Starmer’s psychology may not just influence Britain’s path – it could determine it.

    Consuelo Thiers 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 Keir Starmer’s psychological profile is different from other prime ministers – and what it means for his dealings with Donald Trump – https://theconversation.com/why-keir-starmers-psychological-profile-is-different-from-other-prime-ministers-and-what-it-means-for-his-dealings-with-donald-trump-254242

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How insects and the smallest animals survive Antarctica

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alex Dittrich, Senior Lecturer in Zoology, Nottingham Trent University

    Ruslan Suseynov/Shutterstock

    In Antarctica’s freezing depths, tiny creatures have mastered survival tactics that could unlock secrets to extreme cold resistance, with implications for science and medicine. Some of the most intense battles against the environment are waged by the smallest of creatures.

    When it’s cold, we, as warm-blooded (endothermic), animals simply put on a coat. Other endotherms, can be large, fat or furry to insulate their body from the cold.

    Generating your own body heat, however, requires a lot of energy. Insects do not do not do this. The heat they need for metabolism and growth comes from the environment. This is partly how they are so abundant around the world. They need less energy to grow compared with warm-blooded animals like mammals and are great at exploiting this advantage.

    Not being able to generate your own body heat is a problem for insects in cold places. They are at the mercy of the environmental temperature and can only grow, develop and feed when it is warm enough. Typically this optimum temperature is around 20°C.

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    Yet some insects survive when temperatures drop below freezing. Generally, when the temperature goes below 0°C this causes damage to animal cells and even death. This cell damage is what causes frostbite.

    Many insects use one of two simple strategies. Freeze tolerance or freeze avoidance.

    For example, they produce cryoprotectants, such as glycerol, which lower their freezing point. This allows the animal to undergo supercooling without freezing. Some generate antifreeze proteins that stop ice crystals from forming in their tissue.

    Mites are common in the Antarctic – there are hundreds of species. Some even live in the nasal cavities of penguins. Penguin noses provide not only a source of food for the mites that feed on the penguins’ dead skin cells, but also a warm environment.

    However, some Antarctic mites, which don’t rely on a host, such as Halozetes belgicae, are freeze-avoiding, using antifreeze compounds to lower the freezing point of their body to well below 0°C.

    One of the smallest land animals in Antarctica are the springtails, related to primitive insects but lacking some of the features we see in modern insects. For example, their mouthparts are internal whereas insects have external mouthparts. One springtail, Gomphiocephalus hodgsoni, can reach a temperature of -38°C before it freezes. It is a small species of only 1-2 millimetres in length but important for the Antarctic soil ecosystem, fulfilling an important function as a decomposer of organic matter.

    The midge species Belgica Antarctica, however, is the only true insect found in Antarctica. It endures many periods of sub-zero temperatures throughout its life and has some unique strategies to deal with the hostile Antarctic climate. This species takes two years to reach adulthood – which in insect time is quite the long while. Some insects such as aphids have multiple generations in a year.

    Belgica Antarctica can tolerate ice crystals forming in its body by minimising the damage they do to tissue. It can also lose water from its body through a semi-permeable outer membrane, removing molecules that could form into ice crystals.

    Perhaps among the most dominant animals in the Antarctic, and indeed anywhere on the planet, are the nematodes. This is a small worm-like animal, that lives in and on top of the soil. Some species like Panagrolaimus davidi can tolerate their body cells freezing. They can also undergo a dormant state called diapause by dehydrating themselves (cryptobiosis), which prevents ice crystals forming in their cells.

    Water bears can wait out the cold for decades.
    Oleh Liubimtsev/Shutterstock

    Another group that uses this method for dealing with the cold Antarctic climate are the tardigrades (also known as water bears). Freezing can extend the life of this animal. In fact, one tardigrade species known as Acutuncus antarcticus was frozen at -20°C and defrosted 30 years later with no ill effects.

    Invertebrates, make up an enormous proportion of all life on earth. There are so many species yet to be discovered, which could help us unlock more secrets to survival in the most extreme environments and how this can benefit humans.

    Freeze tolerance and avoidance strategies, can enhance our knowledge of cryopreservation for medicine and organ transplants, improve food storage, aid climate adaptation and drive innovation in biotechnology and materials science. Studying how these microscopic life forms endure extreme conditions could reveal secrets about the evolution of life on Earth and even offer insights into the future of cryopreservation.

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

    – ref. How insects and the smallest animals survive Antarctica – https://theconversation.com/how-insects-and-the-smallest-animals-survive-antarctica-250314

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: US tariffs will squeeze the UK economy. Could the government buy itself some breathing space?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Linda Yueh, Fellow in Economics/Adjunct Professor of Economics, University of Oxford

    William Barton/Shutterstock

    “Iron-clad” and “non-negotiable” is how UK prime minister Keir Starmer recently described the country’s fiscal rules. The government has been coming under pressure to relax the rules and cut itself some financial slack. But according to the PM, these self-imposed restrictions are vital for maintaining UK economic stability.

    What Starmer is referring to is notably the “stability” rule, which says that the UK will balance day-to-day public spending with tax receipts, rather than by borrowing, over the course of the parliament.

    But the volatility unleashed by US president Donald Trump’s tariff plans has challenged this rule. US tariffs could have a significant economic impact on the UK and the world economies.

    Indeed, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that 10% across-the-board tariffs, if they ultimately result in retaliation from China and the EU, could cut global economic growth by 0.5% in 2026.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences. Join The Conversation for free today.

    Unsurprisingly, the UK’s independent economic forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), estimates a similar impact on the UK. It predicts that if the trade wars result in 20% tariff rates between the US and the rest of the world, it could reduce economic growth by as much as 1%. This, it says, could slash the expected UK budget surplus in 2029-30 to “almost zero”.

    And herein lies the challenge for the UK’s fiscal rules. Due to the stability rule, a cut to GDP growth would reduce the tax take. That would require either raising taxes or cutting public spending, due to the rule that this cannot be funded by borrowing.

    Fear that the government’s nearly £10 billion spending buffer will disappear by the end of the parliament puts pressure on the government to say how it would continue to stick to its fiscal rule. If it did result in spending cuts or tax rises, this could dampen economic growth and negatively affect people’s lives. And the decisions would have been taken on the basis of economic forecasts that may not come to pass.

    This is particularly true when the forecasts are based on US tariffs that were imposed and then paused in the space of just a week.



    Read more:
    Hopes of a ‘Brexit benefit’ from tariffs were short-lived. Here’s what Trump’s pause means for the UK

    This problem was also evident in the spring statement in March, when the chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, announced spending cuts because the GDP growth forecast had been halved from 2% to 1% for this year.

    And the vast swaths of tariffs later announced by US president Donald Trump could have a similar impact on the UK’s growth rate.

    If the UK were to relax or abolish its fiscal rules, that may ease the pressure to react to a potential growth downgrade – which may or may not happen given the volatile nature of the US tariffs announced so far.

    The debt burden

    But the prime minister and the chancellor have both resisted this change. They are concerned about the UK’s credibility in the eyes of its creditors, who buy government debt in the bond markets based on their assessment of the fiscal position of the British government.

    The UK, like other advanced economies, borrows from bond markets to fund its budget deficits. The government is concerned that with a debt-to-GDP ratio of more than 95%, creditors may be reluctant to lend to the UK. To do so, they might want to charge more.

    A higher interest rate on the UK’s national debt would of course reduce the amount available for public spending.

    The UK spends more than £100 billion a year on debt interest payments. This is more than it spends on education or investment.

    The amount increased rapidly in recent years due to the global financial crisis and the COVID pandemic. And, relatively speaking, the UK spends more money on paying interest on its debt than other G7 economies (3.3% of its GDP compared with the G7 average of 1.7% in 2022).

    Part of this is due to the UK having more inflation-linked debt than comparable economies. About one-quarter of the UK’s debt repayment is linked to inflation, which is double that of Italy, the next highest in the G7, at 12%. And, as everyone in the UK has experienced, inflation has been high in the past few years.

    High inflation over the past few years has squeezed consumers – as well as the government.
    Edinburghcitymom/Shutterstock

    This makes the UK particularly susceptible to movements in bond markets. For instance, if the UK’s borrowing costs were to decline by one percentage point, that would save £21 billion over five years. That’s double the current “fiscal headroom” (effectively the government’s spending buffer) that is at risk from US tariffs.

    Without knowing for sure how bond markets would react, it would be challenging for the government to change its fiscal rules. But it’s also challenging to apply the stability rule during times of high volatility like this. Given the unpredictable nature of the US tariff regime, this debate is likely to go on for some time.

    Linda Yueh 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 tariffs will squeeze the UK economy. Could the government buy itself some breathing space? – https://theconversation.com/us-tariffs-will-squeeze-the-uk-economy-could-the-government-buy-itself-some-breathing-space-254347

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Two key ingredients cause extreme storms with destructive flooding – why these downpours are happening more often

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Shuang-Ye Wu, Professor of Geology and Environmental Geosciences, University of Dayton

    A powerful storm system that stalled over states from Texas to Ohio for several days in early April 2025 wreaked havoc across the region, with deadly tornadoes, mudslides and flooding as rivers rose. More than a foot of rain fell in several areas.

    As a climate scientist who studies the water cycle, I often get questions about how extreme storms like these form and what climate change has to do with it. There’s a recipe for extreme storms, with two key ingredients.

    Recipe for a storm

    The essential conditions for storms to form with heavy downpours are moisture and atmospheric instability.

    First, in order for a storm to develop, the air needs to contain enough moisture. That moisture comes from water evaporating off oceans, lakes and land, and from trees and other plants.

    The amount of moisture the air can hold depends on its temperature. The higher the temperature, the more moisture air can hold, and the greater potential for heavy downpours. This is because at higher temperatures water molecules have more kinetic energy and therefore are more likely to exist in the vapor phase. The maximum amount of moisture possible in the air increases at about 7% per degree Celsius.

    Floodwaters rise in downtown Hopkinsville, Ky., on April 4, 2025.
    AP Photo/George Walker IV

    Warm air also supplies storm systems with more energy. When that vapor starts to condense into water or ice as it cools, it releases large amount of energy, known as latent heat. This additional energy fuels the storm system, leading to stronger winds and greater atmospheric instability.

    That leads us to the second necessary condition for a storm: atmospheric instability.

    Atmospheric instability has two components: rising air and wind shear, which is created as wind speed changes with height. The rising air, or updraft, is essential because air cools as it moves up, and as a result, water vapor condenses to form precipitation.

    As the air cools at high altitudes, it starts to sink, forming a downdraft of cool and dry air on the edge of a storm system.

    When there is little wind shear, the downdraft can suppress the updraft, and the storm system quickly dissipates as it exhausts the local moisture in the air. However, strong wind shear can tilt the storm system, so that the downdraft occurs at a different location, and the updraft of warm moist air can continue, supplying the storm with moisture and energy. This often leads to strong storm systems that can spawn tornadoes.

    Extreme downpours hit the US

    It is precisely a combination of these conditions that caused the prolonged, extensive precipitation that the Midwest and Southern states saw in early April.

    The Midwest is prone to extreme storms, particularly during spring. Spring is a transition time when the cold and dry air mass from the Arctic, which dominates the region in winter, is gradually being pushed away by warm and moist air from the Gulf that dominates the region in summer.

    This clash of air masses creates atmosphere instability at the boundary, where the warm and less dense air is pushed upward above the cold and denser air, creating precipitation.

    The Storm Prediction Center’s one-day convective outlooks from March 30 through April 5, 2025, and the tornado, wind and hail reports over that period reflect the damage when severe storms flooded communities in the Midwest and South.
    National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center

    A cold front forms when a cold air mass pushes away a warm air mass. A warm front forms when the warm air mass pushes to replace the cold air mass. A cold front usually moves faster than a warm front, but the speed is related to the temperature difference between the two air masses.

    The warm conditions before the April storm system reduced the temperature difference between these cold and warm air masses, greatly reducing the speed of the frontal movement and allowing it to stall over states from Texas to Ohio.

    The result was prolonged precipitation and repeated storms. The warm temperatures also led to high moisture content in the air masses, leading to more precipitation. In addition, strong wind shear led to a continuous supply of moisture into the storm systems, causing strong thunderstorms and dozens of tornadoes to form.

    What global warming has to do with storms

    As global temperatures rise, the warming air creates conditions that are more conducive to extreme precipitation.

    The warmer air can mean more moisture, leading to wetter and stronger storms. And since most significant warming occurs near the surface, while the upper atmosphere is cooling, this can increase wind shear and the atmospheric instability that sets the stage for strong storms.

    Polar regions are also warming two to three times as fast as the global average, reducing the temperature gradient between the poles and equator. That can weaken the global winds. Most of the weather systems in the continental U.S. are modulated by the polar jet stream, so a weaker jet stream can slow the movement of storms, creating conditions for prolonged precipitation events.

    All of these create conditions that make extreme storms and flooding much more likely in the future.

    Shuang-Ye Wu 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. Two key ingredients cause extreme storms with destructive flooding – why these downpours are happening more often – https://theconversation.com/two-key-ingredients-cause-extreme-storms-with-destructive-flooding-why-these-downpours-are-happening-more-often-254123

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: White House plans for Alaskan oil and gas face some hurdles – including from Trump and the petroleum industry

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Scott L. Montgomery, Lecturer in International Studies, University of Washington

    A pumping station and oil pipeline north of Fairbanks, Alaska, are part of the existing fossil fuel industry in the state. AP Photo/Al Grillo

    The second Trump administration has launched the next stage in the half-century-long battle between commerce and conservation over Alaskan oil and gas development. But its moves are delivering a mixed message to the petroleum industry.

    The administration has opened – or reopened – large swaths of government land in Alaska to oil and gas drilling, though only some of those opportunities have drawn much commercial interest in recent years. And an 800-mile pipeline across Alaska that the administration says it supports is not yet funded, and other administration policies risk turning off prospective partners.

    President Donald Trump says he wants to grow oil and gas production and advance the goal of what he calls U.S. “energy dominance.” The White House says that term means both reducing the amount of energy imported from other countries and increasing the amount of energy exported from the U.S., especially to allies.

    The U.S. is already the world’s largest producer and exporter of natural gas as well as the largest producer of crude oil. And the nation’s oil industry boomed under the Biden administration. However, the U.S. does import an average of over 6 million barrels per day of crude oil, most of it from Canada.

    Trump’s efforts seek to boost U.S. production to still greater heights by expanding access to areas for drilling and building related infrastructure. But as a former petroleum geoscientist and industry observer, I would suggest his various actions, taken as a whole, may have more limited effects than he seems to hope.

    Returned to leasing

    In one of his first executive orders after retaking office on Jan. 20, 2025, Trump declared that the U.S. would develop Alaska’s petroleum resources “to the fullest extent possible.”

    The Biden administration had banned oil leasing in three areas of Alaska. One was all but 400,000 acres in the coastal plain portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Another was a 13-million-acre swath of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a massive parcel of federal land west of the refuge. The third area was 44 million acres of the offshore coastal portion of the northern Bering Sea, based on concerns for tribal rights and the migration routes of marine mammals.

    Trump moved quickly to reverse all these bans, describing them as an “assault on Alaska’s sovereignty and its ability to responsibly develop (its) resources for the benefit of the Nation.” And Trump went farther, expanding the available land by an additional 6 million acres in the petroleum reserve and another 1.1 million acres of the wildlife refuge.

    All those areas are home to many different types of wildlife, as well as Indigenous groups.

    Caribou migrate onto the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Alaska.
    U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via AP

    The view of industry

    For the petroleum industry, I expect these actions are both welcome and irrelevant. Reopening the northeastern portion of the petroleum reserve creates a real opportunity: Exploration has found a significant amount of oil and gas in that area, and indications are that there may be more yet to discover.

    But prospects on the land in the wildlife refuge and the shallow waters of the Bering Sea are not likely of much interest to drilling companies unless oil prices rise significantly from their levels in early 2025. There is no established production in either area at present. And, though the refuge has oil and gas potential, there are no roads or pipelines, and Arctic drilling is especially expensive.

    In fact, the last two attempts by the government to lease oil development rights in the wildlife refuge drew very little interest. In 2020, the first Trump administration teamed with Republicans in Congress to overcome long-standing legal and political opposition to leasing in the refuge. But the 2021 lease sale was a bust, with none of the top oil producers in the state participating.

    A second round of bidding, in January 2025, received no interest at all from oil companies.

    The Trans-Alaska Pipeline runs 800 miles from the North Slope to the port of Valdez, Alaska.
    Mario Tama/Getty Images

    Pipe dreams that could come true

    A strong gain for the petroleum industry would be a major new pipeline to carry natural gas more than 800 miles south from the Prudhoe Bay area on the Arctic coast to a port near Anchorage on south-central Alaska’s Cook Inlet.

    The idea has its own decades-long history, and has been both pushed forward and set back over the years by changing economics, government plans, and tribal interest and opposition.

    The main challenge is that there is no way to transport natural gas off the North Slope. Since drilling began in the late 1970s, some has been used locally for heating and running equipment, with the vast majority being reinjected into oil reservoir rock to help maintain oil production.

    Rising demand and elevated prices in Asia, however, suggest the project could be profitable, despite the current cost estimate of US$44 billion. Project plans indicate most of it would go to build a liquefied natural gas export terminal near Anchorage, with the rest spent to construct an 807-mile pipeline paralleling the existing Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and a plant at Prudhoe Bay that would capture carbon from the atmosphere, compress it and inject it into oil-producing reservoirs to boost production.

    The pipeline is designed to carry 3.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day, which would make it one of the largest pipelines in North America. The export terminal, to be built near the town of Nikiski on Cook Inlet, would have a capacity of roughly 1 trillion cubic feet per year, enough to heat about 15 million homes for a year.

    The pipeline could take as little as two to three years to build, but the terminal and carbon-capture plant would take longer – five years or so. The exports from Alaska could go to other ports in the U.S., but they could also fetch higher prices in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and possibly China.

    An artist’s rendering of what a natural gas export terminal would look like on Cook Inlet, near Nikiski, Alaska.
    Alaska Gasline Development Corporation

    A wrench in the works

    Most of the permits needed for the pipeline-and-export-terminal project have been secured by the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation, a company created by the state of Alaska to build the project.

    However, no company or foreign government has yet agreed to foot the bill, and despite the support of the Trump White House, there’s no indication the federal government will do so either.

    The Trump administration has also created a new barrier to the project. Its sweeping tariffs and the resulting trade war crashed prices in the global oil and gas market in early April 2025.

    In addition, uncertainty about the permanence of tariffs or other restrictions on international trade are now widespread and directly affect the oil industry. Lower gas and oil prices and less stability make any project less attractive.

    It’s true that Trump exempted oil and gas from his most recent tariffs. But that matters less than the broader effect the trade war is already having, with analysts projecting it is driving the global economy toward recession. Less economic activity means less demand for oil and gas, and therefore less incentive for companies to drill new wells and build new pipelines.

    To top everything off, the White House slapped heavy tariffs on Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, the very countries that might be inclined to help fund the pipeline project. Even before the trade war, they were hesitant about supporting it. The potential suspension, or reinstatement, or adjustment of tariffs is not likely to help them view the situation as more stable.

    Those who favor oil and gas development in Alaska may be wondering whether the president is truly on their side. It remains to be seen whether their hopes might end up a casualty of White House economic policy.

    Scott L. Montgomery 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. White House plans for Alaskan oil and gas face some hurdles – including from Trump and the petroleum industry – https://theconversation.com/white-house-plans-for-alaskan-oil-and-gas-face-some-hurdles-including-from-trump-and-the-petroleum-industry-254040

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Companies will still face pressure to manage for climate change, even as government rolls back US climate policy

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ethan I. Thorpe, Fellow at Private Climate Governance Lab, Vanderbilt University

    Amazon partnered with Dominion Energy to build solar farms in Virginia to power its cloud-computing service. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

    As the federal government moves to eliminate U.S. climate rules, companies still face pressure to be better stewards of the planet from their customers, investors, employees, local communities, lenders, insurers, global trading partners and many states.

    Each of those groups knows it will face increasing costs from rising temperatures and extreme weather if corporations don’t rein in their greenhouse gas emissions.

    Many companies will find that returning to past polluting ways isn’t in their best interest. Over 60% of chief financial officers surveyed by global management firm Kearney in December 2024 signaled that they intended to invest at least 2% of their revenue in sustainability in 2025.

    These companies may maintain a low profile about climate change while the Trump administration is in power, but they have strong financial incentives to continue to reduce their emissions and their own climate risks.

    We study private environmental governance – the ways companies and organizations work outside government to improve the nation’s sustainability and reduce environmental damage. Our work finds that, in this polarized era, addressing climate and sustainability challenges is not just a matter of government action. That’s because a lot of climate and sustainability progress is underway in the private sector.

    Sustainability matters to companies’ bottom lines

    Businesses have used climate and sustainability initiatives for years to make their operations and supply chains more efficient and to reduce their long-term costs.

    When McDonald’s faced public pressure to reduce waste in the late 1980s, the company teamed up with the Environmental Defense Fund to analyze the problem. It was able to reduce its waste by 30% over the following decade, saving the company US$6 million a year. This early risk-taking by McDonald’s opened the door for other environmental groups to help businesses understand how to reduce their environmental impact, including emissions, while boosting the companies’ profitability.

    The shipping company Maersk expects to cut emissions and boost productivity at the same time with better logistics and low-emissions ships like this one, which runs on methanol.
    Axel Heimken/picture alliance via Getty Images

    Maersk, the logistics giant responsible for nearly a quarter of global shipping, has responded to pressure from its corporate customers with a plan to reduce carbon emissions by one-third from 2022 to 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2045. It expects the combination of low-emissions vessels and a more efficient delivery network with hubs and shuttles to help meet its climate goals while increasing productivity.

    Companies have also helped drive the expansion of renewable energy, motivated by the competitive economics of renewables and business opportunities. Facebook’s parent company Meta and Google invested nearly $2 billion in projects to provide renewable energy in the Tennessee Valley Authority service area, even though no government required them to do so. And major companies continued
    signing renewable energy power purchase agreements in 2025.

    Microsoft and Amazon are responding to massive new power demand by trying to locate data centers near existing nuclear power plants for cleaner energy supplies.

    Thousands of companies report emissions via private systems

    Another sign of companies’ continuing commitment to sustainability is how many of them measure and report their greenhouse gas emissions even when governments do not require them to do so.

    Nearly 25,000 companies representing two-thirds of total global market capitalization and 85% of the S&P 500 report their emissions to the nonprofit CDP. Disclosing emissions is like keeping a fitness journal with a personal trainer. It helps a company track its progress and plan for future financial and environmental risks. More than 12,500 small- and medium-size companies also disclosed emissions to CDP in 2024.

    Many of these companies were initially motivated by pressure from environmental groups or corporate customers. Today, they have more reason to continue paying attention to emissions.

    California has its own formal reporting requirements designed to encourage companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. And other states are considering setting climate disclosure rules. The Trump administration has promised to challenge them, and announced that it also plans to cut federal greenhouse gas reporting standards, but companies will likely still face reporting rules in the future.

    The European Union also approved reporting requirements. It delayed their start date in April 2025 to give companies more time to comply.

    Cleaner supply chains can also be more efficient

    Managing supply chains with climate and environmental risks in mind can also help businesses increase their efficiency and reduce the risk that climate change will disrupt their operations.

    The supply chain is the largest source of the average company’s emissions and may be particularly vulnerable to climate shocks. A storm can easily disrupt vital production or shipping, and droughts or heat waves can damage crops, stop work and increase costs. Companies estimate climate-related supply chain risks at $162 billion, nearly three times the cost of mitigating those risks. Many companies therefore have incentives to reduce emissions and their exposure to related hazards.

    Nearly 80% of the largest companies across seven global economic sectors had set environmental requirements for suppliers within their value chains as of 2023. These requirements include reporting carbon emissions, reducing emissions and using sustainable forestry practices.

    Walmart eliminated 1 billion tons of carbon emissions from its supply chain in less than seven years by sharing its expertise with suppliers and working with them to reduce their emissions. Walmart’s global director of sustainable retail noted in 2024 that the effort made its suppliers more efficient, too.

    Keeping employees and customers happy

    Companies also face pressure from average people − both employees and customers.

    More than two-thirds of Americans support action to address climate change. Even companies that are not consumer-facing need retail customer and employee support. Pro-climate actions have been found to improve employee and customer loyalty.

    The outdoor clothing company Patagonia ranked third out of over 300 brands in a 2024 customer experience survey, in part because of its reputation for sustainable practices. Many of the over 10,000 respondents cited the company’s sustainable practices as the leading reason for their support.

    Many companies also face pressure from lenders and insurers who want to reduce climate risks to their own bottom lines. Dozens of insurers have committed to ending or restricting underwriting for new fossil fuel projects. Others use incentives, such as lower premiums for companies that reduce emissions or invest in climate adaptation.

    Climate change may accelerate the current 5% to 7% annual increase in insured losses, according to estimates from insurer Swiss Re. That has led some insurance leaders to recommend insurance companies take bigger steps to reduce emissions through their investments and policy underwriting.

    Private climate governance can help buy time

    Media attention and interest group advocacy is often focused on government actions, but decisions made in boardrooms and through initiatives with nonprofits have created an important kind of private climate governance.

    As companies respond to their own economic risks and incentives, they help buy time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change until the political system recognizes the financial risks posed to the entire country.

    Zdravka Tzankova receives funding from the National Science Foundation.

    Ethan I. Thorpe and Michael Vandenbergh 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. Companies will still face pressure to manage for climate change, even as government rolls back US climate policy – https://theconversation.com/companies-will-still-face-pressure-to-manage-for-climate-change-even-as-government-rolls-back-us-climate-policy-251580

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Manuscript sold for €300 is now attributed to Cyrano de Bergerac – but questions remain about the play’s authorship

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alisa van de Haar, Assistant Professor in Historical French Literature, Leiden University

    Cyrano de Bergerac illustrated by Zacharie Heince (circa 1654). Gallica Digital Library/Canva, CC BY-SA

    French researchers recently published an edition of a previously unknown 17th-century French play that they argue could be attributed to the French satirist and dramatist Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac.

    Bibliophiles and literary historians like myself are rejoicing at this discovery, which sheds new light on 17th-century literary, political and libertine culture. However, questions remain regarding the authorship of the comedy.

    Cyrano de Bergerac is best known as the big-nosed protagonist in a 19th-century eponymous play by Edmond Rostand. Adapted for the screen most recently in 2021, Rostand’s play portrays Cyrano de Bergerac as a flamboyant young man who combines the arts of duelling and poetry and is tormented by love for his cousin, Roxane. It caricatures the real Cyrano, who led a tumultuous life that ended tragically when he was only 35.

    Contrary to what Rostand’s play suggests, historians have argued that Cyrano de Bergerac was homosexual. While he enlisted as a musketeer serving the French king for some time, he quit after suffering several wounds. He is often associated with libertine culture, questioning the core dogmas of Christianity and the moral, sexual and political values of 17th-century France.

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    Cyrano de Bergerac wrote a variety of plays, letters and novels, often in a satirical vein. Few were published during his lifetime and his most famous works, Les États et Empires de la Lune (The States and Empires of the Moon) and a sequel on the Sun, were both published posthumously.

    These novels have been characterised as early forms of science fiction. They describe voyages to the Moon and Sun, where the protagonist encounters utopian societies inspired by some aspects of libertine thought. While Cyrano de Bergerac became the object of ridicule by some contemporaries, others – including the acclaimed French playwright Molière – were inspired by his works.

    The 17th-century manuscript now tentatively attributed to Cyrano de Bergerac was brought to the attention of lead researcher Guy Fontaine by the previous owners, who asked him to determine its possible author.

    However, in 2022, before Fontaine and his research team were able to draw any conclusions, the manuscript was sold at an auction for the low sum of €300 (£257). The auction catalogue attributed it to the minor playwright Gabriel Gilbert.

    But Fontaine and his team later concluded that the attribution to Gilbert was unlikely. According to them, the manuscript, which contains a comedy written out over 70 pages, points in the direction of Cyrano de Bergerac.

    Cyrano, a film based on the Edmond Rostand play Cyrano de Bergerac, was released in 2021.

    The play, entitled L’Art de Persuader (The Art of Persuasion), tells the story of two young men seeking to marry two women, incidentally both named Julie, in a traditional structure in five acts. The play shows an experienced playwright at work, aware of both classical and contemporary models.

    Set against the backdrop of Paris during the political upheavals involving Cardinal Mazarin and the thirty years’ war, the political events described in the play allowed the researchers to situate its creation in the final years of the 1640s or first half of the 1650s. These dates are corroborated by physical evidence. The play is written in a mid-17th-century handwriting style, and watermarks found in the paper were only in use until 1656.

    This timeline corresponds to the the active years of Cyrano de Bergerac, who emerged as a potential author because of the combined presence of a number of elements in the comedy. The play’s references to libertine ideas and Epicurean philosophy, a topic with which Cyrano de Bergerac was familiar, point in his direction.

    L’Art de Persuader’s style, including many Latin influences, and division into acts and scenes bear similarity to Cyrano de Bergerac’s known plays, as does the pairing of its characters, who often appear in duos. The locations mentioned in the play all have some connection to the historical Bergerac – and the author’s most famous theme, the Moon, is also mentioned.

    Reason for caution

    Despite the clear similarities with the style and themes preferred by Cyrano de Bergerac, the researchers remain cautious with their claim – and rightly so. Many of the elements that correspond with his style, such as the pairing of characters, were in fashion in the mid-17th century and can be found in the works of other writers, too.

    No single element connects the play irrefutably to this particular libertine author. An additional problem is that an expert in 17th-century handwriting who was consulted by the research team was unable to definitively match the writing of the manuscript to Cyrano de Bergerac’s.

    The edition of L’Art de Persuader published by the research team will enable other experts of Cyrano de Bergerac to shed their light on the authorship question. But whoever the author is, this play is of interest to literary historians as it provides new insights into the interplay between political history and theatre culture, as well as into libertine writing and the influence of Latin comedy – in particular Plautus – on baroque literature.

    For any bibliophile or historian, finding such an important text at an auction is a dream come true. And though rare, this is not the only major literary find of recent years. Take, for example the handwritten poems by Emily Brontë and the sole surviving copy of an early edition of the Bay Psalm Book, both of which came up for auction in 2021.

    When part of a private collection, however, these materials are difficult for researchers to access. It is therefore all the more valuable when owners contact specialists themselves, which is how Fontaine and his team first learned about this precious French play. For now, their edition is the only way to study this manuscript as, following the auction, it is in private hands.

    Alisa van de Haar 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. Manuscript sold for €300 is now attributed to Cyrano de Bergerac – but questions remain about the play’s authorship – https://theconversation.com/manuscript-sold-for-300-is-now-attributed-to-cyrano-de-bergerac-but-questions-remain-about-the-plays-authorship-254315

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What lies ahead for South Korea after the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Yoon Walker, PhD Candidate in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, SOAS, University of London

    South Korea’s constitutional court upheld the parliament’s decision to impeach the country’s suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol, on April 4. The court stated that, by declaring martial law in December, Yoon had taken actions that were beyond the powers granted by South Korea’s constitution.

    Yoon is also facing criminal charges for allegedly leading an insurrection with the martial law attempt. While the criminal trial is separate from the impeachment, the court’s ruling that the martial law decree was unconstitutional could undermine Yoon’s defence of presidential authority.

    Separate to this charge, Yoon is being investigated for obstructing arrest after his security team blocked attempts by the police to detain him at his residence in January. His security service refused police warrants for search and seizure, citing national security concerns.

    Yoon has been stripped of his presidential rights, including the privilege of staying in the newly built presidential residence in Seoul and being buried at the national cemetery when he passes away.

    South Koreans will now elect a new president. But, in a country beset by deep societal division, the new leader will face an uphill battle to return the nation to stability.

    Get your news from actual experts, direct to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences. Join The Conversation for free today.

    Since parliament approved Yoon’s impeachment over 100 days ago, South Korea has been divided between Yoon’s supporters, who see him as the victim of a political establishment that has been overrun by “communists”, and those in favour of his removal. There have been weekly protests from both camps.

    Most conservative politicians from Yoon’s People Power party (PPP) stood by him throughout the political upheaval. But many have started to distance themselves from him now that he has been dismissed, especially as any criminal conviction could be a setback for the party in the upcoming snap election.

    Shortly after the constitutional court’s ruling was delivered, Kwon Young-se, the PPP’s interim leader, issued an official statement declaring that the party “solemnly accepts and humbly respects” the decision. This marked a sharp contrast to the position the party had previously taken during the crisis. Many PPP members had been involved in protests organised by supporters of Yoon.

    The political stance of far-right figures is also changing. Jeon Kwang-hoon, a Protestant pastor at the forefront of the anti-impeachment movement and an advocate for the “right to resist”, has rejected the court’s ruling on Yoon’s impeachment. He has also urged his followers to resist.

    On the other hand, another prominent far-right figure called Jeon Han-gil swiftly changed his stance after the judgment. He expressed his respect for the court’s decision and announced that he would now focus on supporting the upcoming presidential election.

    Electing Yoon’s successor

    With South Korea’s need for a new president confirmed, the date for the snap presidential election has been set for June 3. Both political camps are gearing up for the race.

    Lee Jae-myung, leader of the main opposition Democratic party (DPK), has been Yoon’s most formidable rival. Lee was the DPK’s candidate in the last presidential election in 2022, where he narrowly lost to Yoon by less than 1% of the vote.

    Few others from his party have shown interest in the primary race, including former member of the National Assembly Kim Kyung-soo and the governor of Gyeonggi province, Kim Dong-yeon.

    The situation in the ruling party is more chaotic. With no clear frontrunner, a number of candidates are expected to enter the race.

    These include labour minister Kim Moon-soo, former PPP leader Han Dong-hoon, Daegu mayor Hong Joon-pyo, and Ahn Cheol-soo, a politician who made his name in the tech industry. Experts predict there could be ten candidates in the ruling party’s primary.

    South Korea’s polarisation across political, social, gender and generational lines has intensified in recent years. Lee Jae-myung was even stabbed in the neck in 2024 by a man hoping to prevent him from “becoming president”, resulting in Lee undergoing emergency surgery.

    This division has become even more pronounced since Yoon’s declaration of martial law, with tensions spilling over online and on the streets. The crisis has provided both ends of the political spectrum with an opportunity to solidify their positions, further entrenching this divide.

    During the street protests following the martial law decree, the majority of women in their 20s and 30s took the lead in advocating for Yoon’s impeachment, while many men in the same age group rallied against it.

    As South Korea prepares to elect its next leader, the urgency of uniting a deeply fractured society has never been greater. National unity has long been a central goal for South Korean political leaders, but heightened social divisions are threatening the country’s wellbeing.

    This is being compounded by a range of other pressing issues, including the world’s lowest birth rate, a high suicide rate and soaring housing prices. These paint a sobering picture of the challenges ahead.

    Yoon Walker 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 lies ahead for South Korea after the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol? – https://theconversation.com/what-lies-ahead-for-south-korea-after-the-impeachment-of-president-yoon-suk-yeol-254082

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Sudan’s war isn’t nearly over – armed civilian groups are rising

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Mohamed Saad, Researcher, Charles University

    Sudan’s war, now entering its third year, has taken another unexpected turn. In March 2025, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), also known as the Janjaweed, withdrew from Khartoum, abandoning the presidential palace and airport.

    This retreat marks a significant contrast to the paramilitary group’s earlier victory when troops stormed the capital in April 2023.

    The fall of Khartoum is a turning point. But, based on my research into Sudan’s political turmoil over the past three decades, I don’t believe recent developments mark the war’s final chapter.

    What began as a power struggle between two military factions is now transforming into a much wider conflict, marked by deepening fragmentation and the rise of armed civilian groups. Across the country, new militias are emerging, many formed by civilians who once had no part in the war.

    The army encouraged civilians to fight, but now it faces a growing number of independent armed groups. In cities and rural areas alike, civilians have taken up arms.

    Some are fighting alongside the army, answering calls from the military leadership, including army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, to defend their neighbourhoods and families. Others have formed self-defence units to protect against looting and violence. Some have joined breakaway militias that have their own agendas.

    These groups don’t share a single goal. Some fight for self-defence, others for political power. Some for revenue and wealth. Others are seeking ethnic control – Sudan’s population has 56 ethnic groups and 595 sub-ethnic groups. This is what makes Sudan’s war even more dangerous: fragmentation is creating multiple mini-wars within the larger conflict.

    How the Rapid Support Forces lost Khartoum

    Several key factors forced the RSF to retreat from Khartoum after it claimed control of the Sudanese capital city two years earlier.

    • Internal fractures: The RSF, built on tribal loyalty, struggled to hold together as the war dragged on. Many factions felt sidelined by its leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

    • Civilian resistance: The RSF’s reliance on brutality backfired, alienating even those who might have supported them. Instead of consolidating control, they turned civilians into enemies. The RSF relied on terror – looting, mass killings and sexual violence. Instead of gaining control, they provoked fierce resistance. Armed civilians, originally taking up arms in self-defence, have become an informal militia network working against the RSF.

    • Foreign intervention: Reports suggest Egyptian airstrikes and tactical support helped the army take Khartoum. Additionally, Turkish-made Bayraktar drones weakened RSF positions. With supply lines cut, the RSF had no choice but to retreat.

    Khartoum was not just a battlefield defeat for the RSF. It was a turning point in how the war is fought – it’s no longer a military struggle but a battle involving armed civilians across Sudan.

    Based on reports from humanitarian organisations, conflict monitors and local testimonies, a clearer picture has emerged of a growing number of armed groups operating across Sudan. These groups have formed in response to the escalating conflict.

    Recent analyses highlight that arms trafficking and intensified community mobilisation have accelerated within the past two years.



    Read more:
    Omar al-Bashir brutalised Sudan – how his 30-year legacy is playing out today

    Neighbourhood defence units have emerged in urban areas like El-Gezira in central Sudan, El-Fasher in North Darfur, Al-Dalang in South Kordofan, El-Obeid in North Kordofan, Babanusa in West Kordofan and Khartoum. They were initially formed to protect residential zones from the RSF but have since expanded their roles and increasingly operate outside the oversight of the army.

    Tribal and regional militias have also become more prominent, particularly in Darfur and Kordofan. In these regions, entrenched ethnic and political rivalries have intertwined with the current war. Some of these militia groups have aligned with the army. Others remain independent, pursuing their own agendas, which include securing territory.

    In Darfur, growing anger at Hemedti’s favouritism towards his own tribe (Rizeigat) led to defections. Internal divisions within the RSF have played a major role in its recent losses. Some former RSF fighters have formed their own militias. The RSF was never a unified force, but a tribal alliance dominated by the Dagalo family and Rizeigat elites. Initially, gold revenues secured loyalty, but as the war has dragged on, internal fractures have deepened.

    Another ethnic-linked group is the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North. It has expanded its control in Kordofan and Blue Nile, two resource-rich regions in southern Sudan. The group allied with the RSF to push its own agenda, which includes securing greater autonomy for these regions and promoting a secular political framework that challenges Khartoum’s Islamist-leaning governance. Other ethnic militias also operate in eastern Sudan, supported by neighbouring countries such as Eritrea, further escalating the situation.

    Islamist-linked militias are also on the rise. The main example of these groups is El Baraa Ibn Malik Brigade, which emerged as a key player supporting the army against the RSF. Reports link the group to remnants of the Omar al-Bashir regime (1993-2019) – the dissolved Popular Defence Forces. This was a paramilitary group established in the mid-1980s to defend Arab tribes and support the military. It flourished under the al-Bashir regime.

    What next?

    While the RSF’s retreat from Khartoum is a major victory for the Sudanese army, it doesn’t mean stability is returning. Instead, Sudan is now facing a dangerous new reality: the rise of civilian militarisation.

    If not reined in, these groups could evolve and establish de facto warlord-run territories where local commanders wield unchecked power. This would undermine any prospects for centralised governance in Sudan.



    Read more:
    Sudan is burning and foreign powers are benefiting – what’s in it for the UAE

    With militias multiplying and no clear political solution, Sudan risks becoming a battlefield of warring factions.

    Meanwhile, international mediators are struggling to find a solution while foreign interference continues. The United Arab Emirates, a major RSF backer, still supports Hemedti financially, ensuring he remains active in Sudan’s gold trade.

    Mohamed Saad 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. Sudan’s war isn’t nearly over – armed civilian groups are rising – https://theconversation.com/sudans-war-isnt-nearly-over-armed-civilian-groups-are-rising-254100

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: South Africa’s coalition government is crumbling: why collapse would carry a heavy cost

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Vinothan Naidoo, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Administration, University of Cape Town

    South Africa’s multi-party government of national unity (GNU), which emerged in the wake of the May 2024 elections, marked a turning point in the country’s political history. It took South Africans back to the 1990s, when the country showed that political opponents could find common cause.

    The formation of the government of national unity expressed the hope that the country could do it again.

    But just nine months into its term, the good will and pragmatism which marked its formation have worn thin. A major budget impasse between the two major actors, the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA), threatens the coalition.

    South Africans have long been accustomed to viewing the world of politics, governance and bureaucracy through the lens of a top-down “strong” state – a vicious apartheid state, an East Asia style developmental state, or a collusive “predatory state”.

    But as recent analyses we co-authored with others have detailed,
    the vision of a top-down politically cohesive state no longer fits South Africa’s realities.

    The government of national unity promised the hope that the country was embracing an approach that is key to success for almost all inclusive constitutional democracies. That is – abandon “all or nothing” confrontation, and instead pursue pragmatic bargains to achieve mutually agreeable policy outcomes.

    At the most basic level, the government of national unity achieved this, at least for a while. The sharing of cabinet ministries between multiple parties created a diverse platform for executive power-sharing that was not dictated by a single dominant party, and which prevented the risks of parties building institutional fiefdoms.

    In our view, failure to overcome deeply ingrained political differences could set off a downward spiral in the country.

    Achievements on the governance front

    On governance, the government of national unity created the space to pursue two sets of gains.

    The first comprises the potential benefit of bringing together unlikely bedfellows.

    The former opposition parties brought into a power-sharing arrangement were bound to be performance-driven, given the country’s long deteriorating government performance and ethical integrity. They had made “good governance” and criticism of the ANC central to their political brands.

    New “outsider” eyes brought into formerly cloistered and factionalised ANC-run departments created the possibility of a new urgency to perform.

    It’s too soon to tell whether this is happening, but anecdotal evidence suggests there are some green shoots.

    The second governance gain comprises the crucial task of building a capable and professional state bureaucracy. The challenges include being able to pay the public sector wage bill, fostering a culture of delivery, and consolidating the bloated network of government departments.

    Based on their party manifestos and public utterances, members of the government all aim to professionalise the public service.

    Detailed technical work is already happening on issues such as training and competency assessment, transferring powers of appointment from politicians to senior public servants, and instituting checks in the recruitment and selection process. The National Assembly’s recent adoption of the Public Service Commission Bill forms part of this agenda.

    But a prolonged legal dispute between the DA and ANC over the latter’s policy of “deploying” party members into state employment risks scuppering progress. It also leaves a key question unanswered: what role, if any, should political parties have in the recruitment and selection of public servants?

    Policy

    The government of national unity has struggled to create effective mechanisms to translate agreement on a broad agenda of policy priorities into specific outcomes. This came at a higher cost than expected.

    Still, it has made gains in challenging policy areas. These gains have repeatedly been undermined by the perverse determination of sections within both the ANC and the DA to engage in brinkmanship.

    On health, both parties agree on the principle of universalising access. They differ on how to achieve this. But at least one seemingly intractable sticking point has been resolved. Both sides agree that private medical aid schemes need to be retained as part of a broader strategy of pursuing health system reform.

    On basic education, the public spat over the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill overshadows the potential to agree on balancing the autonomy of school governing bodies with the oversight role of provincial departments.



    Read more:
    South Africa has a new education law: some love it, some hate it – education expert explains why

    On land expropriation, the emotive rhetoric which followed the signing of the Expropriation Bill and the unwelcome and toxic intervention of international actors has overshadowed technical concerns which can be resolved.

    On pro-growth policies: Operation Vulindlela, a joint Presidency and National Treasury initiative to unblock constraints in targeted economic sectors, has made significant strides. It has laid the groundwork for new rounds of growth-supporting infrastructural reforms and has the potential to build cohesion in the government of national unity. However, the DA’s attempt to lobby for a greater role in the strategic oversight of Operation Vulindlela in exchange for supporting the budget risks souring relations with the ANC.

    What now?

    A thriving inclusive society depends on powerful actors visibly committed to co-operation.

    For all of the challenges confronting the government of national unity, it was built on a foundation of pragmatism. For the sake of South Africa’s future, it remains vital to build on this foundation. Obsolete top-down governing approaches must go. Pathways to performance must be lifted above political grandstanding. Constructive solutions should supersede ideological rigidity. South Africa has done it before. It can do it again.

    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. South Africa’s coalition government is crumbling: why collapse would carry a heavy cost – https://theconversation.com/south-africas-coalition-government-is-crumbling-why-collapse-would-carry-a-heavy-cost-254302

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: ‘Delusional’ Treaty Principles Bill scrapped but fight for Te Tiriti just beginning, say lawyers and advocates

    By Layla Bailey-McDowell, RNZ Māori news journalist

    Legal experts and Māori advocates say the fight to protect Te Tiriti is only just beginning — as the controversial Treaty Principles Bill is officially killed in Parliament.

    The bill — which seeks to redefine the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi — sparked a nationwide hīkoi and received more than 300,000 written submissions — with 90 percent of submitters opposing it.

    Parliament confirmed the voting down of the bill yesterday, with only ACT supporting it proceeding further.

    The ayes were 11, and the noes 112.

    Social media posts by lawyer Riana Te Ngahue (Ngāti Porou), explaining some of the complexities involved in issues such as the Treaty Principles Bill, have been popular. Image: RNZ/Layla Bailey-McDowell

    Riana Te Ngahue, a young Māori lawyer whose bite-sized breakdowns of complex issues — like the Treaty Principles Bill — went viral on social media, said she was glad the bill was finally gone.

    “It’s just frustrating that we’ve had to put so much time and energy into something that’s such a huge waste of time and money. I’m glad it’s over, but also disappointed because there are so many other harmful bills coming through — in the environment space, Oranga Tamariki, and others.”

    Most New Zealanders not divided
     Te Ngahue said the Justice Committee’s report — which showed 90 percent of submitters opposed the bill, 8 percent supported it, and 2 percent were unstated in their position — proved that most New Zealanders did not feel divided about Te Tiriti.

    “If David Seymour was right in saying that New Zealanders feel divided about this issue, then we would’ve seen significantly more submissions supporting his bill.

    “He seemed pretty delusional to keep pushing the idea that New Zealanders were behind him, because if that was true, he would’ve got a lot more support.”

    However, Te Ngahue said it was “wicked” to see such overwhelming opposition.

    “Especially because I know for a lot of people, this was their first time ever submitting on a bill. That’s what I think is really exciting.”

    She said it was humbling to know her content helped people feel confident enough to participate in the process.

    “I really didn’t expect that many people to watch my video, let alone actually find it helpful. I’m still blown away by people who say they only submitted because of it — that it showed them how.”

    Te Ngahue said while the bill was made to be divisive there had been “a huge silver lining”.

    “Because a lot of people have actually made the effort to get clued up on the Treaty of Waitangi, whereas before they might not have bothered because, you know, nothing was really that in your face about it.”

    “There’s a big wave of people going ‘I actually wanna get clued up on [Te Tiriti],’ which is really cool.”

    ‘Fight isn’t over’
     Māori lawyer Tania Waikato, whose own journey into social media advocacy empowered many first-time submitters, said she was in an “excited and celebratory” mood.

    “We all had a bit of a crappy summer holiday because of the Treaty Principles Bill and the Regulatory Standards Bill both being released for consultation at the same time. A lot of us were trying to fit advocacy around summer holidays and looking after our tamariki, so this feels like a nice payoff for all the hard mahi that went in.”

    Tania Waikato, who has more than 20 years of legal experience, launched a petition calling for the government to cancel Compass Group’s school lunch contract and reinstate its contract with local providers. Image: Tania Waikato/RNZ

    She said the “overwhelming opposition” sent a powerful message.

    “I think it’s a clear message that Aotearoa as a whole sees Te Tiriti as part of this country’s constitutional foundation. You can’t just come in and change that on a whim, like David Seymour and the ACT Party have tried to do.

    “Ninety percent of people who got off their butt and made a submission have clearly rejected the divisive and racist rhetoric that party has pushed.”

    Despite the win, she said the fight was far from over.

    “If anything, this is really just beginning. We’ve got the Regulatory Standards Bill that’s going to be introduced at some point before June. That particular bill will do what the Treaty Principle’s Bill was aiming to do, but in a different and just more sneaky way.

    ‘The next fight’
    “So for me, that’s definitely the next fight that we all gotta get up for again.”

    Waikato, who also launched a petition in March calling for the free school lunch programme contract to be overhauled, said allowing the Treaty Principles Bill to get this far in the first place was a “waste of time and money.”

    “Its an absolutely atrocious waste of taxpayers dollars, especially when we’ve got issues like the school lunches that I am advocating for on the other side.”

    “So for me, the fight’s far from over. It’s really just getting started.”

    ACT leader David Seymour on Thursday after his bill was voted down in Parliament. Image: RNZ/Russell Palmer

    ACT Party leader David Seymour continued to defend the Treaty Principles Bill during its second reading on Thursday, and said the debate over the treaty’s principles was far from over.

    After being the only party to vote in favour of the bill, Seymour said not a single statement had grappled with the content of the bill — despite all the debate.

    Asked if his party had lost in this nationwide conversation, he said they still had not heard a good argument against it.

    ‘We’ll never give up on equal rights.”

    He said there were lots of options for continuing, and the party’s approach would be made clear before the next election

    Kassie Hartendorp said Te Tiriti Action Group Pōneke operates under the korowai – the cloak – of mana whenua and their tikanga in this area, which is called Te Kahu o Te Raukura, a cloak of aroha and peace. Image: RNZ

    Eyes on local elections – ActionStation says the mahi continues
     Community advocacy group ActionStation’s director Kassie Hartendorp, who helped spearhead campaigns like “Together for Te Tiriti”, said her team was feeling really positive.

    “It’s been a lot of work to get to this point, but we feel like this is a very good day for our country.”

    At the end of the hīkoi mō Te Tiriti, ActionStation co-delivered a Ngāti Whakaue rangatahi led petition opposing the Treaty Principles Bill, with more than 290,000 signatures — the second largest petition in Aotearoa’s history.

    They also hosted a live watch party for the bill’s second reading on Facebook, joined by Te Tiriti experts Dr Carwyn Jones and Tania Waikato.

    Hartendorp said it was amazing to see people from all over Aotearoa coming together to reject the bill.

    “It’s no longer a minority view that we should respect, but more and more and more people realise that it’s a fundamental part of our national identity that should be respected and not trampled every time a government wants to win power,” she said.

    Looking to the future, Hartendorp said Thursday’s victory was only one milestone in a longer campaign.

    Why people fought back
    “There was a future where this bill hadn’t gone down — this could’ve ended very differently. The reason we’re here now is because people fought back.

    “People from all backgrounds and ages said: ‘We respect Te Tiriti o Waitangi.’

    “We know it’s essential, it’s a part of our history, our past, our present, and our future. And we want to respect that together.”

    Hartendorp said they were now gearing up to fight against essentially another version of the Treaty Principles Bill — but on a local level.

    “In October, people in 42 councils around the country will vote on whether or not to keep their Māori ward councillors, and we think this is going to be a really big deal.”

    The Regulatory Standards Bill is also being closely watched, Hartendorp said, and she believed it could mirror the “divisive tactics” seen with the Treaty Principles Bill.

    “Part of the strategy for David Seymour and the ACT Party was to win over the public mandate by saying the public stands against Te Tiriti o Waitangi. That debate is still on,” she said.

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What the Supreme Court’s ruling on man wrongly deported to El Salvador says about presidential authority and the rule of law

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jean Lantz Reisz, Clinical Associate Professor of Law, Co-Director, USC Immigration Clinic, University of Southern California

    People hold signs on April 4, 2025, supporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

    The Supreme Court on April 10, 2025, unanimously upheld the lower court order directing the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego García, a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.

    The Supreme Court also directed the lower court to clarify aspects of the order.

    “The order properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego García’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,” the Supreme Court order states.

    It is undisputed that the Trump administration made a mistake.

    The Justice Department admitted to deporting Abrego García to a maximum security prison in El Salvador even though an immigration judge in 2019 ordered that he not be deported. The judge did so under an immigration law called “withholding of removal,” which is a protection, like asylum, for people facing persecution in their home country.

    But the Trump administration has said a court cannot order it to fix its mistake and bring Abrego García back to the United States.

    According to the Trump administration, such an order would be “constitutionally intolerable.” The government has compared the court order to return Abrego García to an order to “‘effectuate’ the end of the war in Ukraine or return hostages from Gaza.”

    Abrego García should not have been deported

    Abrego García received this protective legal status six years ago. That’s when he proved to the court he was highly likely to be persecuted by the government or gangs in El Salvador due to a specific reason, as required under immigration law.

    Unlike asylum or refugee status, the status known as “withholding of removal” is not a pathway to citizenship. It allows a person to live and work in the U.S. indefinitely and not be deported to their country of nationality if they face persecution there.

    The government states it arrested and deported Abrego García on March 15 because he is a gang member. When Abrego García appealed his deportation, the federal district and appellate courts determined that the government provided no credible evidence of gang membership.

    That’s important, because the government failed to follow proper procedure to deport Abrego García based on gang membership. When someone is in “withholding of removal” status, the law requires the government to reopen immigration proceedings based on new evidence and seek to formally terminate the legal withholding status.

    Abrego García should have been notified of the government’s desire to deport him, and he should have had the opportunity to make his case at a court hearing. His summary deportation to El Salvador likely violated his right to due process under immigration law and the Constitution.

    Balance of powers are at stake

    The government did not follow the law, but it argues that the court cannot do anything about it.

    The crux of the government’s position is that a court does not have the power to order the release of a person in a foreign prison. That would interfere with the separation of powers among the executive and judicial branches. The president has the sole power to conduct foreign relations with El Salvador, and the government has argued that ordering the return of Abrego García interferes with that power.

    Prisoners watch as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem visits the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 26, 2025.
    Alex Brandon/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

    The court cannot order the Salvadoran government to do anything, but it can order the U.S. government to take steps to return García Abrego if he was unlawfully arrested and deported. That’s because the judiciary has the power to determine whether the president’s actions are lawful.

    The district court’s order was based on its determination that the president has likely violated immigration law and the Constitution in arresting and deporting Abrego García. The appellate court agreed.

    The Supreme Court has now said the order to facilitate Abrego García’s return is proper. But the high court also said the district court judge should further clarify its order, being mindful of the president’s authority when it comes to conducting foreign relations.

    Who is detaining Abrego García?

    The Salvadoran government seems to be imprisoning Abrego García at the request of the U.S. government.

    Trump administration lawyers have suggested in their briefing to the Supreme Court that there could be reasons under El Salvador law for Abrego García’s imprisonment. The government has not identified any reasons and has not provided any evidence that Abrego García is charged with a crime in El Salvador, or that he is being held under Salvadoran law.

    The Department of Homeland Security routinely contracts with local jails and for-profit prison corporations to temporarily house immigrant detainees in the U.S. The government has reportedly agreed to pay El Salvador US$6 million to imprison certain U.S. immigrant detainees for one year. The details of this agreement are not known.

    Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, has said that the Salvadoran megaprison is “one of the tools in our tool kit that we will use.”

    The district and appellate courts determined in this case that the U.S. is using the Salvadoran prison like any other detention facility. Under those circumstances, the U.S. government, not El Salvador, has ultimate control over Abrego García.

    The Supreme Court ruled that the government should facilitate Abrego García’s return.
    Drew Angerer/Getty Images

    As an immigration law scholar, I believe that the government can take steps to return Abrego García.

    In fact, other appellate courts have ordered the government to return immigrants who had been removed from the U.S. but later won their appeals of their removal orders. Those people were not in foreign prisons.

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has created a formal policy for aiding the return of immigrants who were deported while their appeals were pending and then subsequently won their appeals.

    The government has argued that those situations are different. Here, it claims the court cannot demand the return of Abrego García, who is imprisoned in another country. The problem with the government’s argument is that it is the Trump administration that put Abrego García in a foreign prison.

    The Trump administration has also argued that Abrego García is not entitled to return to the U.S.. It has argued that even though it was a mistake to deport him to El Salvador under his withholding of removal status, Abrego García could have been removed to another country and has no right to return to the U.S..

    This would be true if Abrego García voluntarily left the U.S. or was deported to a country other than El Salvador, but that is not what happened. The government removed Abrego García to El Salvador in violation of U.S. law.

    The White House’s position in this matter is troubling because the president is supposed to enforce the law, not circumvent it.

    As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a separate statement published with the order and joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson: “The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.”

    What steps the government will take to return Abrego García is unclear. The Supreme Court’s decision leaves open the question of how far the court can go to enforce his return.

    Jean Lantz Reisz 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. What the Supreme Court’s ruling on man wrongly deported to El Salvador says about presidential authority and the rule of law – https://theconversation.com/what-the-supreme-courts-ruling-on-man-wrongly-deported-to-el-salvador-says-about-presidential-authority-and-the-rule-of-law-254037

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why are so many second-generation South Asian and Chinese Canadians planning to vote Conservative?

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Emine Fidan Elcioglu, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto

    After months of political decline, the Liberal Party of Canada is showing signs of recovery, buoyed, some suggest, by a surge of national pride in the face of Donald Trump’s tariff war and threats to Canadian sovereignty.

    But this apparent rebound obscures a more surprising political shift: the growing appeal of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) among immigrants and their children.

    Traditionally, immigrant and visible minority communities have supported the centrist Liberal Party. In the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), where over half of all residents identify as “visible minority” (the category used by stats can), Chinese and South Asian Canadians have long formed a key part of the Liberal base.

    Yet recent polling tells a different story. An October 2024 survey found that 45 per cent of immigrants had changed their political allegiances since arriving in Canada, with many now leaning Conservative.

    Meanwhile, another national survey from January 2025 found that a majority of East Asian (55 per cent) and South Asian (56 per cent) respondents expressed support for the Conservative Party, far outpacing support for the Liberals or the NDP.

    Nationally, racialized citizens now make up over 26 per cent of Canada’s population, with South Asians and Chinese Canadians the two largest groups.

    While detailed racial breakdowns remain rare in Canadian polling, the few available data points suggest a meaningful shift. This pattern also reflects a broader trend: South Asian and Chinese Canadians in the GTA are increasingly politically active, with rising turnout and growing partisan diversification.

    Ramping up outreach

    The Conservative Party, for its part, has taken notice. Under Pierre Poilievre’s leadership, the CPC has actively recruited racialized candidates and ramped up outreach in suburban swing ridings — particularly through ethnic media advertising and messaging focused on economic self-reliance and family values.

    This rightward shift among racialized voters may seem counter-intuitive. The Conservative Party has historically represented white, affluent voters, and under Stephen Harper (who led from 2006 to 2015), implemented policies that curtailed immigration, tightened citizenship rules and cut social programs in ways that disproportionately harmed racialized communities.

    Why, then, would racialized Canadians increasingly turn to the right?

    In a study I recently published, I interviewed 50 Canadian-born children of South Asian, Chinese and white immigrants living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). I argue that this shift is not a contradiction but provides a window into how racialized groups navigate inequality, exclusion and the search for belonging.

    While there are many reasons 2nd-generation racialized Canadians may support the Conservative Party, this study highlights one under-documented explanation. Voting for a right-wing party that represents the interests of white, wealthy citizens can be a way for second-generation South Asian and Chinese Canadians to seek acceptance when power is linked to whiteness..



    Read more:
    Why are brown and Black people supporting the far right?

    The hidden costs of fitting in

    In other words, many of these racialized Canadians don’t vote Conservative because they’re unaware of inequality. They vote Conservative because they’re trying to navigate it.

    Growing up in precariously middle-class households, the young adults I interviewed watched their immigrant parents face deskilling and downward mobility despite arriving in Canada with professional credentials.

    They saw their families pressured to “Canadianize” their names and accents, only to be sidelined by employers who still favoured whiteness.

    And they were raised in a society where multiculturalism celebrates cultural symbols but often ignores structural racism.

    In this context, support for the Conservatives reflects not ignorance of marginalization, but a way to move through it. Aligning with the right becomes a signal of belonging.

    As one young South Asian Canadian man put it:

    “You’ve arrived. You’re a Canadian. So, start voting like one.”

    This desire to belong doesn’t emerge in a vacuum. It’s shaped by racial scripts that reward conformity and penalize dissent — most notably, the model minority stereotype.



    Read more:
    Searching for anti-racism agendas in South Asian Canadian communities

    The price of acceptance

    The model minority stereotype casts Asian Canadians as hardworking and quietly successful. On the surface, it sounds like praise. But in practice, it hides inequality and demands silence in exchange for conditional belonging.



    Read more:
    Model minority blues: The mental health consequences of being a model citizen — Don’t Call Me Resilient EP 9

    That acceptance is fragile. After Sept. 11, 2001, many South Asians, particularly those perceived as Muslim, were quickly recast as dangerous outsiders.

    A similar dynamic resurfaced during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Asian Canadians faced a sharp rise in racial harassment. In both cases, those once celebrated as “model” citizens were suddenly treated as threats.



    Read more:
    The model minority myth hides the racist and sexist violence experienced by Asian women

    In some contexts, political restraint, like staying quiet or avoiding protest, can function as a survival strategy. But that’s not what I observed in this study.

    The second-generation Canadians I interviewed were not politically quiet. They were vocal in their support for the Conservative Party. For them, voting Conservative was a way to assert they already belonged, not by asking for inclusion, but by showing they did not need to. Conservatism became a marker of success, self-reliance and alignment with those at the centre of Canadian life.

    Canada’s official embrace of multiculturalism reinforces this logic. While often praised as a national strength, multiculturalism can obscure how racism really works. Structural barriers are hidden behind feel-good narratives of inclusion.

    Rethinking belonging

    In Canada, ideas about who belongs are often shaped by race, class and respectability. Racialized people must not only prove they are hardworking and law-abiding, but also demonstrate that they’ve “fit in.” For some, voting Conservative becomes a way to show they’ve done just that — a way of saying: “I’m not like them. I’m one of you.”

    But this strategy comes at a cost. In reinforcing the very structures that marginalize them, racialized voters may gain individual recognition while deepening collective exclusion. And in rejecting equity-based platforms, they may forgo the policies that could build a more just society.

    This dynamic isn’t limited to the second generation. A recent CBC survey found that four in five newcomers believe Canada has accepted too many immigrants and international students without proper planning.

    Some immigrants are increasingly expressing exclusionary views, often toward those who arrived more recently. This, too, is a form of aspirational politics. And it shows just how deeply race, precarity and belonging are entangled in Canada today.

    None of this means that racialized Conservative voters are naïve. Their decisions often reflect a clear-eyed understanding of how power works.

    But if we want a fairer political future, we must reckon with the ways race, class and nationalism shape belonging — not just at the ballot box, but in the stories we tell about who gets to be “Canadian.”

    As sociologist Ruha Benjamin reminds us, inclusion shouldn’t be treated as an act of generosity. It’s not about “helping” the marginalized — it’s about understanding that we’re all connected. When fear shapes policy and public goods are stripped away, everyone suffers.

    Emine Fidan Elcioglu 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 are so many second-generation South Asian and Chinese Canadians planning to vote Conservative? – https://theconversation.com/why-are-so-many-second-generation-south-asian-and-chinese-canadians-planning-to-vote-conservative-253820

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Canadian retailers are seeing a surge in domestic sales amid the ‘Buy Canadian’ movement

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Melise Panetta, Lecturer of Marketing in the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University

    In recent months, the “Buy Canadian” movement has gained significant momentum, driven by a collective push to support domestic products and services, strengthen local businesses and reduce reliance on foreign imports.

    Escalating trade tensions and tariff disputes with the United States and threats from U.S. President Donald Trump to annex Canada have played a pivotal role in fuelling this shift toward economic nationalism.

    Though still in its early stages, the movement has already gained strong support from Canadians, with both consumers and businesses prioritizing homegrown products to strengthen the local economy.

    Early results are promising

    The “Buy Canadian” movement is already delivering promising results across the retail sector. Major retailers such as Loblaws Companies have reported a 10 per cent increase in sales of Canadian-made products. Sobey’s parent company Empire also noted a decline in sales of U.S.-sourced goods.

    Importantly, the shift isn’t limited to big retailers or headline product categories. Smaller retailers and established brands are also seeing tangible benefits.

    Ice cream producer Chapman’s, long known for its strong Canadian brand identity, has seen a 10 per cent increase in sales. E-commerce platform giant Shopify has reported a spike in sales for Canadian merchants across a long list of categories including mattresses, row boats, ribbons, armchairs and more.

    Some provinces have pulled U.S. alcohol from store shelves to prioritize selling homegrown options, putting Canadian wineries, breweries and distillers in a position to grow substantially.

    Though more data will emerge in the months ahead, early indications show that Canadians are backing the “Buy Canadian” movement not just in spirit, but with their wallets.

    Helping Canadians choose Canadian

    One of the most noticeable effects of the “Buy Canadian” campaign has been a nationwide effort to make it easier for consumers to identify Canadian-made products.

    Demand for clear labelling has surged, prompting the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to issue a notice to industry urging producers to improve transparency.

    Consumers are becoming increasingly proactive in educating themselves, with searches for “Buy Canadian” related terms skyrocketing in the past few months. Websites such as Madeinca.ca have seen a large uptick in traffic, peaking at 100,000 visits in a single day.

    Retailers have been offering more in-store and online signage highlighting Canadian products. Loblaws has introduced a “Swap & Shop” tool in its Optimum app that helps users find Canadian-made alternatives for items on their shopping list. It has seen a 75 per cent week-over-week growth.

    Home improvement retailer RONA has launched the “Well Made Here” campaign that provides staff training and partners with non-profits to educate consumers about Canadian-made alternatives.

    Celebrity endorsements have also amplified the movement. Actor and comedian Mike Myers showcased the colloquial expression “elbows up” on Saturday Night Live, while Michael Bublé used his platform at the Juno Awards to deliver the message that “Canada is not for sale.”

    #TheMoment ‘Elbows Up’ became a rally cry against Trump (CBC News).

    Pushing the movement forward

    Consumers have been turning to social media to further propel the Buy Canadian movement. Hashtags like #ShopLocalCanada and #MadeInCanada have gained significant traction, with nearly three million posts across major social media channels Facebook and Instagram.

    A newly launched web browser plug-in called Support Canadian is also gaining attention. It works by bringing Canadian products to the top of search results on retailers such as Amazon. In its first week, it attracted 500 users. Although these numbers may appear small, early analytics suggest it could keep over a million dollars inside the Canadian economy.

    Mobile apps designed to help consumers determine the origin of their purchases are gaining popularity. The BuyBeaver app, which crowd-sources product origins, reached 100,000 downloads in just five weeks.

    Meanwhile, OScanAda, which uses AI and barcode scanning to provide detailed insights into Canadian ownership and sourcing, has been downloaded 160,000 times. MapleScan, which currently is ranked second in the shopping category on the Apple App Store, uses AI to scan products and suggest Canadian alternatives.

    Brands are leveraging their Canadian roots

    In response to growing national sentiment, a number of Canadian brands are using marketing strategies to underscore their national identity for consumers.

    Kicking Horse Coffee, for example, has humorously rebranded the Americano as the “Canadiano” in a nod to Canadian pride. Black Diamond recently launched a campaign with the cheeky tagline “Made with 0% American Cheese.”

    Meanwhile, Moosehead Brewery has launched a limited-edition “Presidential Pack” containing 1,961 beers — one for each day of the U.S. presidential term.

    Other companies have modified existing campaigns to better align with the movement. Sobeys recently debuted a new “So Canadian” campaign, a new iteration of its long-running “So.be.it.” campaign.

    Healthy Planet has expanded its #Healthyplanetswap campaign to include #HealthyCanadianSwap, which focuses on providing domestically sourced options.

    Whether through packaging that clearly marks country of origin or marketing campaigns that play on national pride, Canadian brands are leveraging their national identity to resonate with consumers.

    A smart choice in uncertain times

    The early momentum behind the Buy Canadian movement is promising. While Canada was largely spared from Trump’s most recent tariffs under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, the unpredictability of U.S. trade policy and broader global tensions make it more important than ever to build long-term economic resilience at home.

    The early days of the movement show a strong desire among Canadians to support local industries, protect jobs and reinforce national self-sufficiency. Even as higher costs and global disruptions remain real challenges, buying Canadian serves as both a practical and symbolic choice, one that reduces dependency on volatile foreign markets and strengthens the domestic economy.

    This is a pivotal moment. The foundations of the movement are in place, and its early success is encouraging. For the “Buy Canadian” effort to have lasting impact, it needs sustained commitment from consumers, businesses and policymakers alike.

    By continuing to prioritize homegrown goods and services, Canadians can help shield their economy from future shocks and chart a more independent, stable path forward.

    Melise Panetta 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. Canadian retailers are seeing a surge in domestic sales amid the ‘Buy Canadian’ movement – https://theconversation.com/canadian-retailers-are-seeing-a-surge-in-domestic-sales-amid-the-buy-canadian-movement-253502

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Drug pollution in water is making salmon take more risks – new research

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jack Brand, Researcher in Behavioural and Movement Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

    An Atlantic salmon smolt, ready for its seaward migration. Jörgen Wiklund

    “Out of sight, out of mind” is how we often treat what is flushed down our toilets. But the drugs we take, from anxiety medications to antibiotics, don’t simply vanish after leaving our bodies. Many are not fully removed by wastewater treatment systems and end up in rivers, lakes and streams, where they can linger and affect wildlife in unexpected ways.

    In our new study, we investigated how a sedative called clobazam, commonly prescribed for sleep and anxiety disorders, influences the migration of juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) from the River Dal in central Sweden to the Baltic Sea.

    Our findings suggest that even tiny traces of drugs in the environment can alter animal behaviour in ways that may shape their survival and success in the wild.

    A recent global survey of the world’s rivers found drugs were contaminating waterways on every continent – even Antarctica. These substances enter aquatic ecosystems not only through our everyday use, as active compounds pass through our bodies and into sewage systems, but also due to improper disposal and industrial effluents.

    To date, almost 1,000 different active pharmaceutical substances have been detected in environments worldwide.

    Particularly worrying is the fact that the biological targets of many of these drugs, such as receptors in the human brain, are also present in a wide variety of other species. That means animals in the wild can also be affected.

    In fact, research over the last several decades has demonstrated that pharmaceutical pollutants can disrupt a wide range of traits in animals, including their physiology, development and reproduction.

    Pharmaceutical pollution in the wild

    The behavioural effects of pharmaceutical pollutants have received relatively less attention, but laboratory studies show that a variety of these contaminants can change brain function and behaviour in fish and other animals. This is a major cause for concern, given that actions critical to survival, including avoiding predators, foraging for food and social interaction, can all be disrupted.

    Lab-based research has provided useful insights, but experimental conditions rarely reflect the complexity of nature. Environments are dynamic and difficult to predict, and animals often behave differently than they do in controlled settings. That’s why we set out to test the effects of pharmaceutical exposure in the wild.

    As part of a large field study in central Sweden, we attached implants that slowly released clobazam (a common pharmaceutical pollutant) and also miniature tracking transmitters to juvenile Atlantic salmon on their seaward migration through the Dal.

    The Dal is a large river in central Sweden that flows into the Baltic Sea.
    Michael Bertram

    We found that clobazam increased the success of this river-to-sea migration, as more clobazam-treated salmon reached the Baltic Sea compared with untreated fish. These clobazam-exposed salmon also took less time to pass through two major hydropower dams that often delay or block salmon migration.

    To better understand these changes, we followed up with a laboratory experiment which revealed that clobazam also altered how fish group and move together – what scientists call shoaling behaviour – when faced with a predator.

    This suggests that the migration changes observed in the wild may stem from drug-induced shifts in social dynamics and risk-taking behaviour.

    What does this mean for wildlife?

    Our study is among the first to show that pharmaceutical pollution can affect not just behaviour in the lab, but outcomes for animals in their natural environment.

    While an increase in migration success might initially sound like a positive effect, any disruption to natural behaviour can have ripple effects across ecosystems.

    Even seemingly beneficial changes to animal behaviour, like faster passage through barriers, can come at a cost. Changes to the timing of migrations, for instance, might lead fish to arrive at the sea when conditions are not ideal, or expose them to new predators and risks. Over time, these subtle shifts could influence the dynamics of entire populations and threaten the balance of ecosystems.

    Pharmaceuticals are vital for keeping people and animals healthy. But the accumulation of these drugs in rivers and lakes demands smarter approaches to keeping waterways clean.

    One part of the solution is upgrading wastewater treatment plants. Some advanced methods such as ozonation, which involves bubbling ozone gas through wastewater to break down pollutants, can be effective at removing pharmaceuticals. But such advanced treatment systems are often prohibitively expensive to install and out of reach for many regions.

    Another promising avenue is green chemistry: designing drugs that break down more easily in the environment or become less toxic after use. Our team has recently highlighted this as a key step toward reducing pharmaceutical pollution in the environment.

    Stronger regulations and better drug disposal practices can also help to prevent medications from ending up in waterways in the first place.

    There’s no single fix, but by advancing and integrating science, technology and policy, we can help to protect wildlife from the unintended effects of pharmaceutical pollution.

    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.

    Jack Brand receives funding from the Swedish Research Council Formas and the Carl Trygger Foundation.

    Michael Bertram receives funding from the Swedish Research Council Formas, the Kempe Foundations, the Marie-Claire Cronstedt Foundation, the ÅForsk Foundation, and the Baltic Salmon Foundation.

    – ref. Drug pollution in water is making salmon take more risks – new research – https://theconversation.com/drug-pollution-in-water-is-making-salmon-take-more-risks-new-research-254312

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Cancer hijacks your brain and steals your motivation − new research in mice reveals how, offering potential avenues for treatment

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Adam Kepecs, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry, Washington University in St. Louis

    Many patients with late-stage cancer slip into a profound apathy as the disease ravages their bodies − and brains. demaerre/iStock via Getty Images Plus

    A cruel consequence of advanced cancer is the profound apathy many patients experience as they lose interest in once-cherished activities. This symptom is part of a syndrome called cachexia, which affects about 80% of late-stage cancer patients, leading to severe muscle wasting and weight loss that leave patients bone thin despite adequate nutrition.

    This loss of motivation doesn’t just deepen patients’ suffering, it isolates them from family and friends. Because patients struggle to engage with demanding therapies that require effort and persistence, it also strains families and complicates treatment.

    Doctors typically assume that when late-stage cancer patients withdraw from life, it is an inevitable psychological response to physical deterioration. But what if apathy isn’t just a byproduct of physical decline but an integral part of the disease itself?

    In our newly published research, my colleagues and I have discovered something remarkable: Cancer doesn’t simply waste the body – it hijacks a specific brain circuit that controls motivation. Our findings, published in the journal Science, challenge decades of assumptions and suggest it might be possible to restore what many cancer patients describe as most devastating to lose – their will to engage with life.

    Untangling fatigue from physical decline

    To unravel the puzzle of apathy in cancer cachexia, we needed to trace the exact path inflammation takes in the body and peer inside a living brain while the disease is progressing – something impossible in people. However, neuroscientists have advanced technologies that make this possible in mice.

    Modern neuroscience equips us with a powerful arsenal of tools to probe how disease changes brain activity in mice. Scientists can map entire brains at the cellular level, track neural activity during behavior, and precisely switch neurons on or off. We used these neuroscience tools in a mouse model of cancer cachexia to study the effects of the disease on the brain and motivation.

    We identified a small brain region called the area postrema that acts as the brain’s inflammation detector. As a tumor grows, it releases cytokines − molecules that trigger inflammation − into the bloodstream. The area postrema lacks the typical blood-brain barrier that keeps out toxins, pathogens and other molecules from the body, allowing it to directly sample circulating inflammatory signals.

    When the area postrema detects a rise in inflammatory molecules, it triggers a neural cascade across multiple brain regions, ultimately suppressing dopamine release in the brain’s motivation center − the nucleus accumbens. While commonly misconstrued as a “pleasure chemical,” dopamine is actually associated with drive, or the willingness to put in effort to gain rewards: It tips the internal cost-benefit scale toward action.

    Researchers measured effort through two tests.
    Reprinted with permission from XA Zu et al., Science 388:eadm8857 (2025)

    We directly observed this shift using two quantitative tests designed with behavioral economics principles to measure effort. In the first, mice repeatedly poked their noses into a food port, with progressively more pokes required to earn each food pellet. In the second task, mice repeatedly crossed a bridge between two water ports, each gradually depleting with use and forcing the mice to switch sides to replenish the supply, similar to picking berries until a bush is empty.

    As cancer progressed, mice still pursued easy rewards but quickly abandoned tasks requiring greater effort. Meanwhile, we watched dopamine levels fall in real time, precisely mirroring the mice’s decreasing willingness to work for rewards.

    Our findings suggest that cancer isn’t just generally “wearing out” the brain − it sends targeted inflammatory signals that the brain detects. The brain then responds by rapidly reducing dopamine levels to dial down motivation. This matches what patients describe: “Everything feels too hard.”

    Restoring motivation in late-stage disease

    Perhaps most exciting, we found several ways to restore motivation in mice suffering from cancer cachexia − even when the cancer itself continued progressing.

    First, by genetically switching off the inflammation-sensing neurons in the area postrema, or by directly stimulating neurons to release dopamine, we were able to restore normal motivation in mice.

    Second, we found that giving mice a drug that blocks a particular cytokine − working similarly to existing FDA-approved arthritis treatments − also proved effective. While the drug did not reverse physical wasting, it restored the mice’s willingness to work for rewards.

    While these results are based on mouse models, they suggest a treatment possibility for people: Targeting this specific inflammation-dopamine circuit could improve quality of life for cancer patients, even when the disease remains incurable.

    The boundary between physical and psychological symptoms is an artificially drawn line. Cancer ignores this division, using inflammation to commandeer the very circuits that drive a patient’s will to act. But our findings suggest these messages can be intercepted and the circuits restored.

    Cancer treatment can demand tremendous effort from patients.
    FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images

    Rethinking apathy in disease

    Our discovery has implications far beyond cancer. The inflammatory molecule driving loss of motivation in cancer is also involved in numerous other conditions − from autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis to chronic infections and depression. This same brain circuit might explain the debilitating apathy that millions of people suffering from various chronic diseases experience.

    Apathy triggered by inflammation may have originally evolved as a protective mechanism. When early humans faced acute infections, dialing down motivation made sense − it conserved energy and directed resources toward recovery. But what once helped people survive short-term illnesses turns harmful when inflammation persists chronically, as it does in cancer and other diseases. Rather than aiding survival, prolonged apathy deepens suffering, worsening health outcomes and quality of life.

    While translating these findings into therapies for people requires more research, our discovery reveals a promising target for treatment. By intercepting inflammatory signals or modulating brain circuits, researchers may be able to restore a patient’s drive. For patients and families watching motivation slip away, that possibility offers something powerful: hope that even as disease progresses, the essence of who we are might be reclaimed.

    Adam Kepecs receives funding from the National Institutes of Health.

    – ref. Cancer hijacks your brain and steals your motivation − new research in mice reveals how, offering potential avenues for treatment – https://theconversation.com/cancer-hijacks-your-brain-and-steals-your-motivation-new-research-in-mice-reveals-how-offering-potential-avenues-for-treatment-254043

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 at the National Gallery is a remarkable achievement

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Louise Bourdua, Professor of Art History, University of Warwick

    The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew by Duccio (1308-1311). National Gallery of Art, Washington

    I had been looking forward to the National Gallery’s exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 for several reasons.

    First, it was many years in the making. Its curator, Professor Emerita Joanna Cannon of the Courtauld Institute of Art, had been working on it for a decade or so. Duccio, one of the exhibition’s featured artists and one of the greatest Italian painters of the middle ages, had a major show in Siena in 2003. Another featured artist, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, had a smaller exhibition in the same city in 2017.

    Second, the National Gallery’s late medieval Italian paintings had not been seen for two years because of the refurbishment of the Sainsbury Wing. That is, except for a select few displayed in an excellent exhibition on Saint Francis of Assisi in 2023.

    Last, there was the publicity generated by the Metropolitan Museum’s iteration of this show – complete with a tantalising video tour by two of its curators.

    The National Gallery’s take on the most exciting 50 years of Siena’s artistic production makes the most of its ground floor gallery rooms, enabling conversations between objects and medium.

    The exhibition is a remarkable achievement: a pleasure for the eye and commendable for its ability to make medieval religious art accessible.

    Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

    Britain’s love affair with Sienese painting is well documented from the late 19th century at least. But this exhibition focuses on much more than the celebrated four painters – Duccio, Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti and his brother Pietro.

    The wealth of Siena’s visual culture is represented with illuminated manuscripts; sculptures in marble, ivory, terracotta and walnut; reliquaries (containers for holy relics) and croziers (hooked staves) made from gold and enamel; and rugs and silks.

    Panels with protagonists painted in bright reds, blues, pinks and greens with tiny brushstrokes using pigments mixed with egg on gilded backgrounds abound. But there are also frescoes, detached from their original mural setting, yet able to tell the story of their making and meaning.

    Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Annunciation (1344) is defined only by lines brushed on wet plaster using a red pigment (sinoper). This was a common initial step to set the composition, over which another layer of plaster would be applied again with contours painted but now filled with colour.

    In another room, a beautifully modelled painted head of Jesus split into two, carved by Lando di Pietro (1338), is all that remains of a larger crucifix after bombing by allies in the second world war. It is the only known work of the sculptor. He was identified by the personal handwritten prayers concealed within the sculpture, which are displayed next to it.

    The showstoppers

    The curators have managed to do what could not be achieved in Siena in 2003: bring Duccio’s three triptychs into a single venue. The first two are shown just a few metres apart, to enable comparison and close viewing of all sides. Their painted backs and the geometric motifs behind their folding wings enable us to understand them as three-dimensional, portable objects.

    The Crucifixion triptych, bought by Prince Albert in 1845 and lent to the exhibition by King Charles, is not too far from the pair, inviting comparison.

    Duccio’s Healing of the Man Born Blind finds itself reunited with seven of its companions for the first time since 1777. This is the closest reconstruction we’ll ever get of the back predella (a box-like shelf with images that supported the main panels) of Siena cathedral’s enormous double-sided high altarpiece (known as the Maestà), which was carried in procession through the city streets in 1311.

    Originally painted on a massive horizontal poplar plank, the individual episodes depicting Jesus’s ministry were sold on the art market in the 19th century and dispersed across two continents. A ninth panel which probably started the narrative has never been found, although you wouldn’t know it from this display.

    Nothing can distract from close viewing – you’ll want to enjoy it for as long as you can stand. This privileged view is unusual in an exhibition and possibly comes close to that enjoyed by the clergy during processions or pilgrimages in Siena cathedral. A photo montage of the reconstructed altarpiece is tiny and displayed on the wall opposite the reconstructed predella, alongside the panels originally on the front predella.

    The other showstopper is Pietro Lorenzetti’s altarpiece. It’s usually on the high altar of the church of Santa Maria della Pieve in Arezzo, but has been lent by the diocese and placed on a low plinth. This allows us to imagine just how immense Duccio’s Maestà must have been.

    This altarpiece represents the most popular formula created in early 14th-century Siena. These were large polyptychs of five (or seven) vertical panels usually displaying the virgin and child in the centre, surrounded by saints relevant to the locality and patrons.

    Virgin and Child with Saints and the Annunciation (circa 1345 to 1350).
    The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, CC BY-SA

    The Arezzo polyptych is approximately three metres in height and width, with three registers but has lost its predella, having been dismantled and relocated several times. The type was so popular that it, and the Sienese painters who created it, were in demand throughout Tuscany and beyond.

    Each of the objects displayed in this exhibition merits a long look. Since there are over 100, my last reflection will be on another extraordinary reunion: a small gilded glass icon depicting once again the virgin, child and saints above the Annunciation (1347). Its double-sided reliquary frame still contains 17 relics.

    It’s conceived as a miniature altarpiece, imitating the basic shape of the larger Sienese altarpieces on display. It also uses the same materials in addition to glass that has been gilded, incised and painted in red, blue and green.

    Such precious materials and meticulous craft testify to the richness of Sienese art during the first half of the 14th century.

    Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 is at the National Gallery until June 22.

    Louise Bourdua 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. Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 at the National Gallery is a remarkable achievement – https://theconversation.com/siena-the-rise-of-painting-1300-1350-at-the-national-gallery-is-a-remarkable-achievement-253981

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How trustworthy is your fitness tracker score?

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Cailbhe Doherty, Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science, University College Dublin

    PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    Millions of people now start their day with a number — a “readiness” score, a “body battery”“ level or a measure of “strain”“ — delivered by the wearable device on their wrist or finger. But how much trust should we place in these scores?

    Composite health scores are increasingly used by digital fitness trackers to offer a single, daily number that reflects how your body is coping with recent demands. Whether it’s marketed as a measure of energy, recovery or resilience, the idea is the same: combine several internal signals into one clear indicator of how prepared you are to take on the day.

    The concept has clear appeal. It simplifies complex physiological data — things like heart rate, sleep and activity — into an actionable recommendation: push harder, take it easy, rest. But how solid is the science behind these scores? My colleagues and I recently conducted a systematic review of the most widely used composite health scores in wearable devices to find out.

    First, what goes into these scores? Typically, quite a lot – at least on paper.

    Most composite health scores pull data from several biometric signals — measurements from your body that indicate how it’s functioning. These include resting heart rate, heart rate variability (the variation in time between heartbeats), sleep quantity and quality, recent physical activity, and sometimes breathing rate, skin temperature and blood oxygen levels.

    On paper, that’s a rich dataset. These signals reflect how your body responds to stress, recovers overnight and balances exertion with rest. But while the inputs may be rooted in physiology, the final score can be less informative than it appears.

    One issue is sensor accuracy. These devices rely on optical sensors and motion tracking to estimate what’s going on inside your body, such as your sleep stages or daily stress levels.

    Even small inaccuracies in measuring heart rate or movement can distort the score. And since these metrics feed directly into the algorithm that calculates your “readiness” or “strain”, small errors can add up.

    Another challenge is transparency. Most companies don’t disclose how exactly they turn raw data into a final score.

    We don’t know which inputs matter most, how they’re combined or whether they’re adjusted for individual differences such as age or fitness level. Without that clarity, it’s difficult to evaluate how meaningful or personalised the number really is.

    A more subtle issue lies in the way certain physiological signals overlap. For instance, poor sleep is often followed by lower heart rate variability — a common sign of stress or incomplete recovery. But many health scores penalise you for both factors separately: once for the bad sleep and again for the resulting change in heart rate variability.

    Heart rate variability explained.

    This kind of double-dipping can exaggerate the effect of a single “stressor” (things that put pressure on your body or mind), making your body seem more run down than it truly is. It creates the illusion of a sophisticated analysis, but may actually be highlighting the same signal twice.

    Similarly, some scores penalise you for the activity you did yesterday, regardless of how well you’ve recovered from it. If your heart rate variability and resting heart rate suggest you’ve bounced back, that should be reflected in your score. But some algorithms still factor in recent exertion as a negative, even when your body is clearly coping well.

    To make these scores more personalised, many devices compare your daily data to your typical values — your baseline. If your sleep or recovery looks significantly different from your recent average, the score adjusts accordingly.

    That’s a sensible idea in theory. But there’s no standard for how these baselines are calculated. Some devices use seven days of data, others 28. Some exclude outliers; others include them. Each company defines it differently, which makes comparisons between devices impossible and raises questions about consistency.

    Should you stop using your wearable?

    Not at all. Fitness trackers can still offer valuable insights. Watching how your core physiological signals shift over time — from week to week or season to season — can help you spot patterns, improve habits and better understand your body’s response to stress and training.

    The problem is when we treat the daily score as a definitive measure of health. It’s not a diagnosis, and it doesn’t always reflect what’s really happening inside your body. So while it’s fine to glance at your readiness or recovery score, don’t let it dictate your decisions.

    Use your fitness tracker as a guide, but not as your coach, your doctor, or your judge.

    Cailbhe Doherty receives funding from the Health Research Board in Ireland (Grant ID: HRB ILP-PHR-2024-005) and Research Ireland (Grant IDs: 12/RC/2289_P2 and 22/NCF/FD/10949). There are no conflicts of interest to declare.

    – ref. How trustworthy is your fitness tracker score? – https://theconversation.com/how-trustworthy-is-your-fitness-tracker-score-253883

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Lab-grown meat: you may find it icky, but it could drive forward medical research

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By James Hague, Senior Lecturer (in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics and Biophysics), The Open University

    Lab-grown meat causes heated debates. Proponents see benefits for the climate and animal welfare. Opponents worry about a Frankenstein food they regard as risky and unnatural. Whatever your opinion, the technology underpinning cultivated meat is moving fast to create large pieces of muscle tissue.

    The fact that artificial meat starts as a living tissue means that, as it gets bigger and better, the technologies involved could have a huge impact on medical research.

    Lab-grown meat is a sort of engineered tissue. It aims to replicate the meat grown in an animal by dividing a small number of animal cells to create muscle. Meat is mostly made up of muscle cells (myocytes), plus a mix of fat cells (adipocytes) and cells that add structure through materials such as collagen (known as fibroblasts).

    The arrangements and proportions of these cells give meat its overall taste and texture. We call the meat grown in a bioreactor “cultivated meat”. Other common terms are “cultured meat”, “lab-grown meat” and “artificial meat”, and the production process is also called “cellular agriculture”.

    Cultivated meat is real meat grown in bioreactors rather than animals (it’s very different to plant-based products such as soya burgers). Some companies are also trying to grow other animal tissues, such as liver to replace foie gras. Key benefits of cultivated meat include avoiding animal slaughter and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

    The technologies for making cultivated meat were originally designed for growing engineered tissue for applications like organ transplant, regenerative medicine and pharmaceutical testing.

    One day, engineered tissue could be used to give us new livers, help to rebuild tissues damaged in accidents and select personalised treatments for cancers.

    Shared challenges

    Just like muscle, other tissues in the body such as organs also contain cells and things like collagen that give them structure.

    The cells in tissues are carefully organised according to their function. For example, in muscle, the cells are all lined up so they contract in the same direction during movement.

    A big difference between tissues cultivated for meat and those grown for medical applications is this tissue functionality. Cultivated meat does not need to be able to contract like muscle and, once grown, does not need to be kept alive. Meanwhile, engineered tissue for medical applications needs to work just like its counterpart in the body.

    Lab-grown meat is not just for eating…
    Oleksandra Naumenko/Shuttesrstock

    Despite this, some of the lessons learned from cultivated meat growth could be applied to regenerative medicine. Fibroblasts, the “structure” cells, are important during wound healing. Techniques to cultivate muscles and liver could be modified to grow working tissue.

    A shared design challenge when growing cultivated meat and engineered tissue is to control tissue organisation, which is essential to grow large cuts of meat such as steaks, but also for replacement tissue and organs for the body. Possibilities include holding the tissue under tension using tethers, adding scaffolds, and using 3D printing.

    The process of designing ways to control a tissue can take months or years of careful trial and error. Recent computer simulations of tissue growth, including those carried out by myself and colleagues, can help with the difficult task of controlling cell organisation to improve things like texture and production efficiency.

    Developing this control can help to engineer body tissues used in early pharmaceutical testing, which could improve success rates in clinical trials while reducing animal testing. This would be better for trial participants and could help to reduce drug development costs.

    Another major unsolved problem for both cultivated meat and regenerative medicine is how to supply larger tissues as they grow. Smaller tissues can get the oxygen they need from the atmosphere, or grow in a nutrient bath. Steaks are too large for this and would need to be kept alive with vessels similar to arteries to deliver oxygen and nutrients.

    Natural blood vessels form branching networks to supply tissue. Computational techniques can predict this style of network and 3D bioprinting could be used to create similar vessels. Lessons learned by growing networks of vessels in steaks could be directly applied to tissues for regenerative medicine (and vice versa).

    I expect pressure for cheap, cultivated meat will decrease the price of currently expensive technologies, such as 3D bioprinting and bioreactors. This will ultimately benefit medical applications.

    Coming to a shop near you

    As these issues are solved, cultivated meat will become widely available and more like farmed meat. Since cultivated meat will ultimately be indistinguishable from farmed meat, there’s no reason to believe that one should be more or less healthy than the other. Currently, many products are undergoing regulatory processes.

    So far, a few countries have approved cultivated meat products for human consumption, and approval applications are being submitted worldwide. UK regulators recently announced a two-year timeline to approve (or not) cultivated meat for human consumption. Lab-grown meat is already approved for consumption by dogs.

    Overall, there are important links between cultivated meat and cultured tissue applications in medicine. Both applications have similar challenges, and the technologies developed for one field can push forward the other.

    Both fields can benefit animal welfare, removing the need for animal slaughter and reducing the need for animal testing.

    I expect cultivated meat will come to a supermarket near you within the next few years. Whether you want to buy it or not, think about how the technology used to create it could be a step towards better medicines and lab-grown organs for transplant.

    James Hague receives funding from STFC and EPSRC.

    – ref. Lab-grown meat: you may find it icky, but it could drive forward medical research – https://theconversation.com/lab-grown-meat-you-may-find-it-icky-but-it-could-drive-forward-medical-research-253565

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why the autism jigsaw puzzle piece is such a problematic symbol

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aimee Grant, Senior Lecturer in Public Health and Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow, Swansea University

    For decades, a jigsaw puzzle piece has been used to symbolise autism across the world. It has been used for charity logos and awareness ribbons, and even tattooed on to the bodies of well-meaning parents.

    But for many autistic adults, the puzzle piece isn’t just outdated – it’s offensive. Some consider it a hate symbol: a reminder of how autistic people have long been misunderstood, pathologised and excluded from conversations about their own lives.

    The puzzle piece first appeared in 1963, when the UK’s National Autistic Society adopted a logo designed by a non-autistic parent of an autistic child. It featured not just a puzzle piece but the image of a crying child, meant to depict autism as a puzzling condition that caused suffering.

    In 1999, the Autism Society of America introduced a ribbon covered in colourful puzzle pieces. This reinforced the idea that autism was something to be solved. The imagery gained even more prominence when the US-based organisation Autism Speaks, founded in 2005, adopted a blue puzzle piece as its logo.

    One autistic advocate described the symbol as a “red flag” – a warning sign that the person or organisation using it may not fully respect or understand autistic people.

    So why does the puzzle piece provoke such a strong reaction?

    To many, the symbol suggests that autistic people are incomplete, a mystery or a problem in need of fixing. This fits with the medical model of autism, which focuses on deficits and aims to make autistic people behave more like non-autistic people, rather than letting them live authentically.

    From deficit to difference

    Because of these criticisms of the medical model, some autistic people subscribe to a social model of autism. This sees autism not as a problem to be fixed, but as a difference to be understood. According to this view, many of the challenges autistic people face stem not from autism itself, but from a lack of understanding and acceptance in society.

    The social model is followed by a growing group of autism researchers, including through the Participatory Autism Research Collective. In 2022, the Welsh government affirmed its commitment to a social model of disability.

    However, it can be difficult to put this social model of disability in practice in under-resourced healthcare systems.

    It is closely tied to the “double empathy problem”. This is the idea that communication breakdowns between autistic and non-autistic people go both ways. In other words, if autistic people are “puzzling”, it’s often because the wider world hasn’t taken the time to understand them.



    Read more:
    How autistic and non-autistic people can understand each other better

    The neurodiversity movement goes one step further, arguing that neurological differences such as autism, ADHD and dyslexia are natural variations in the human population. Just as biodiversity is good for the environment, neurodiversity is arguably good for society.

    In recent years, several major autism organisations have taken steps to distance themselves from the puzzle piece. The National Autistic Society dropped the symbol in the early 2000s, and the Autism Society of America followed suit in 2023. The academic journal Autism removed the puzzle piece from its cover in 2018, in recognition of its harmful connotations.

    That said, the symbol is still frequently used, appearing in search engines and image databases.

    Why many autistic adults hate the jigsaw puzzle piece symbol.

    Research has found that puzzle piece imagery tends to evoke negative associations such as incompleteness and imperfection, whether it’s connected to autism or not. It’s no surprise, then, that many autistic people ask for something more positive, respectful and inclusive.

    One popular alternative is the rainbow infinity symbol, first developed by autistic advocates in 2005. It represents the diversity of the neurodivergent community, including autistic people.

    The gold infinity symbol, meanwhile, is used specifically to represent autism. The chemical symbol for gold is “Au”, the first two letters of autism.

    The puzzle piece was created in the 1960s by non-autistic people to represent a condition they saw as tragic and mysterious. But today, autistic people are speaking for themselves. The overwhelming message is clear – the puzzle piece doesn’t represent us.

    Aimee Grant receives funding from UKRI, the Wellcome Trust and the Morgan Advanced Studies Institute. She is a non-executive director of Disability Wales.

    – ref. Why the autism jigsaw puzzle piece is such a problematic symbol – https://theconversation.com/why-the-autism-jigsaw-puzzle-piece-is-such-a-problematic-symbol-253807

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Gender equality at the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race has further to go

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andie Riches, PhD Candidate, School of Psychology, Sport and Sensory Science, Anglia Ruskin University

    In rowing, “catching a crab” is when an oar gets stuck in the water, stopping the boat’s momentum. Progress toward gender equality in the Oxford v Cambridge Boat Race has followed a similar rhythm, with periods of forward motion interrupted by moments of tension or pushback.

    This year marks a decade since one period of forward motion, when the women began racing on the same course, on the same day as the men – moving from Henley-on-Thames to the Tideway in London. At the time, the change was heralded as a watershed moment, with some rather boldly and wrongly stating that the move ended what they dubbed one of “the last bastions of gender inequality in sport”.

    The women’s race has become a firmly established part of the event. However, our ongoing research into the experiences of female boat race athletes over the last decade reveals that significant disparities persist.

    As one athlete told us: “Racing on the Tideway was still relatively new when we started, and we were aware of the struggles the women’s team had faced to be recognised and taken seriously.”

    But equality isn’t just about having a place in the race; it’s about having the same support, investment and opportunities as the men. As one rower put it: “We’ve moved forward, but we’re still playing catch-up.”

    Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

    From Henley to the Tideway

    For decades, female rowers were held back by institutional barriers such as unequal funding, media coverage and a lack of sponsorship. Before 2015, the women raced on a two-kilometre stretch at Henley-on-Thames, a separate course from the men’s four-mile route on the Championship Course on the Tideway in London. One rower reflected that racing at Henley felt “secondary”, lacking the same recognition as the men’s race.

    The issue wasn’t the venue. It was the resource disparity, inadequate facilities and lack of media exposure. As one rower described, “We had no showers, no heating, and no space to stretch – just a cold shed. While the men had a better setup next door with basics like kettles and heating.” The lack of visibility at Henley reinforced the perception that the women’s race was secondary, diminishing their accomplishments.

    Even after moving to the Tideway, however, female rowers have faced rough waters, not just from the river itself when the Cambridge women’s boat famously sank, but also from having to challenge public perception.

    Consistent with broader research, our analysis of the media coverage during and after the 2015 women’s event revealed a consistent pattern of focusing on personal stories, emotional moments and the historic nature of the race. This storytelling often came at the expense of recognising the athletes’ performance and competitiveness.

    A 2019 study found that women’s sports received just 3.2% of televised sports news coverage. While coverage has increased in recent years, disparities persist.

    A 2024 Football Supporters’ Association survey found that only 31.8% of the fans felt there was sufficient mainstream media coverage of women’s football. That such calls remain necessary, even amid growing interest, highlights the continued marginalisation of women’s sport.

    This external perception also appears to be evident within the internal environment of the boat clubs. One rower recalled: “It just felt almost like you inconvenienced them to use their space”, referring to the men’s crews.

    This reflects a broader societal issue where women often feel they must justify their presence in spaces where they belong. Hence, the women’s crew not only face the physical challenge of the tideway’s choppy waters, but also an ongoing battle to prove their legitimacy.

    In recent years, rowers challenged the deeply rooted tradition of “weigh-in” with the women’s crews opting not be weighed on the basis that it subjects athletes to a public display of their body weight. Some viewed this as a challenge to a longstanding tradition, while others felt its removal was a positive step for athlete welfare, mental health and body image.

    Other issues also surfaced in 2021 when a former Oxford rower publicly criticised the university’s handling of her sexual assault allegation, arguing that the institution had failed to protect her. The university said at the time it was confident that in all cases it took considerable action to advise and support students who raise such concerns. Though not directly related to the Boat Race, such public cases have caused controversy and raised important questions about the environments in which these athletes train and compete.

    Despite these setbacks, the women’s race has gained momentum. Sponsorship has grown, more people are watching, and for younger rowers, racing on the Tideway is now the norm. In 2015, the women’s Boat Race drew 4.8 million viewers – close to the 6.2 million who watched the men’s race. This highlighted the growing appeal of women’s rowing.

    The race for gender equality in sport, like rowing, is a test of endurance. Short bursts of progress, like moving to the Tideway, are not enough. Lasting change takes continued effort.

    The women’s Boat Race has come a long way, but the journey isn’t over. True equality will only be reached when women’s sport is valued on its own terms, rather than being compared to the men.

    With each race, these women are not just competing for victory on the water but also helping to shape a more equal future for sport. The tide may be turning, but the finishing line in the race for equality is still ahead.

    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. Gender equality at the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race has further to go – https://theconversation.com/gender-equality-at-the-oxford-cambridge-boat-race-has-further-to-go-254111

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What the spiralling trade war means for relations between the US and China

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Harper, Lecturer in International Relations, University of East London

    Donald Trump has partially walked back on his so-called “liberation day” tariffs on nearly all US imports after fears mounted that the move would result in a global recession and much higher borrowing costs for the US government.

    On Wednesday, April 9, a mere 13 hours after his higher rate of “reciprocal tariffs” had come into effect, Trump announced they would be paused for 90 days.

    “I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line, they were getting yippy, you know … a little bit afraid,” Trump said to reporters outside the White House. Markets soared immediately upon hearing the news.

    But at the same time, a volatile new stage in America’s trade war with China has emerged. The White House has excluded China from the pause and has hiked tariffs on all Chinese imports to 125%. This, Trump says, is because Beijing has shown “disrespect” to Washington and global markets.

    Beijing, which has declared it will “fight to the end if the US side is bent on going down the wrong path”, was quick to respond. It has announced duties of 84% on American products and services, and has even floated the possibility of banning the import of Hollywood films.

    What China’s response has shown is that it is no longer the same country as it was in 2017, when Trump managed to obtain some trade concessions from it by imposing tariffs. Beijing seems more willing to strike back at Washington, as well as showing signs of being more proactive in its response to American measures.

    The impact of China’s response has not yet been fully realised, but tariffs have already raised the spectre of increased prices in the US. Many of the clothing and consumer electronics that Americans buy are shipped from China. It’s possible that far from boosting Trump’s popularity, these tariffs may eventually end up reversing it.

    At a fundraising dinner in Washington, less than a day before he shelved plans to hike tariffs on US trading partners, Trump insisted: “I know what the hell I’m doing.” But his subsequent loss of face in pausing tariffs for other countries may mean he has no option but to double down on a tit-for-tat trade war with China.

    China is his administration’s go-to villain, and any delay or reversal in responding to Chinese retaliation will be a humiliation to Trump’s strongman image. This suggests a tumultuous period ahead for relations between China and the US.

    Expect more hostility

    The tariffs will probably have a mobilising effect on the Chinese population. A 2022 survey on public opinion in China found that people born after 1990 are more likely to hold an unfavourable view of the US compared with previous generations. The survey concluded that Trump’s actions during his first term were much more to blame than propaganda.

    Beijing has also traditionally invoked the history of the “unequal treaties” forced upon its ailing Qing dynasty in the late 19th century as a means to mobilise its population against western policies. This has been aided by how the economic demands made by Trump to China are, in the mind of the Chinese leadership, reminiscent of the demands made by the western powers of that period.

    Fears of again falling prey to foreign powers play a significant role in Beijing’s policies, encapsulated by what is known as China’s “never again mentality”. This mentality could be used as a means to unify the Chinese population against an outside enemy, in a way similar to how many US politicians have attempted to cast China as a foe.

    Beijing appears to be banking on the Chinese population’s supposed ability to withstand greater hardships than western consumers as being able to give it a key advantage over Washington. However, with China’s prosperity being a comparatively recent development, this ability will be put to the test.

    Trump’s tariffs against traditional American allies will also play into Beijing’s hands on the international stage. Tokyo has discussed reducing its holdings of American treasuries, while simultaneously bolstering trade ties with China. These moves would have been unthinkable even a year ago – Japan has long been a key US ally and a regional rival of China.

    Equally unthinkable is the possibility that the EU will follow a similar path. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, has called on Brussels to review its relationship with China. Moves aimed at sidelining China may end up isolating the US instead.

    And, perhaps most concerningly, the tariffs may also undermine America’s ability to prevent a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. One of the key factors deterring an invasion was the threat of a 100% tariff on Chinese goods. With Trump’s tariffs on China already exceeding this, Beijing has less incentive to not go after Taipei.

    What liberation day has shown us is that the Chinese-American relationship has entered a stage of protracted competition, a phase that Beijing has been preparing for over the past decade. Faced with a choice between humiliation on the international stage or economic disaster at home, it would appear neither side is willing to back down.

    Tom Harper 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 the spiralling trade war means for relations between the US and China – https://theconversation.com/what-the-spiralling-trade-war-means-for-relations-between-the-us-and-china-254311

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Hopes of a ‘Brexit benefit’ from tariffs were short-lived. Here’s what Trump’s pause means for the UK

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Maha Rafi Atal, Adam Smith Senior Lecturer in Political Economy, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow

    The US has decided – again – to upend the global trading system. With the latest raft of tariffs just beginning to kick in, and after a week in which markets worldwide fell precipitously, the Trump administration announced that it would be suspending high tariffs on nearly 60 countries for 90 days.

    The announcement is only a partial reprieve. High tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China, as well as on global imports of steel, aluminium and automotives, remain, as does a 10% baseline tariff on all imports. US tariffs remain the highest they have been since the Great Depression, at levels unprecedented since the modern trade system was created after the second world war.

    Before the pause, the UK was already in line for the 10% rate – which some commentators described as a Brexit benefit when compared to the EU’s prospective 20%.

    While markets soared on the news of the pause, the damage is was already done. The subsequent rally is recouping some, but not all, losses incurred due to the tariffs already.

    Businesses that had prepared for tariffs by bulk-buying imported components ahead of time will have made cuts elsewhere to pay for it. They will not easily be able to reverse course.

    The implications for the UK of the latest developments are mixed. All the tariffs imposed on direct UK exports to the US (chiefly steel, automotives and aircrafts, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment) remain in place.

    While the US represents the second-largest market for UK goods, the majority of UK exports are in services (like banking and insurance), which the tariffs do not target. If tariffs were to hit direct UK-US goods trade only, the UK would likely be able to weather the shock.

    Unfortunately, that’s not how trade works in the 21st century. Instead, two-thirds of trade takes place in what are known as “global value chains”. These are complex networks through which companies move the component parts of products between their own facilities around the world and those of their subcontractors.

    Many UK businesses supply components that are incorporated by companies overseas into finished goods ultimately destined for the US. When the US imposes tariffs on those goods, UK manufacturers suffer too – even if direct UK exports to the US remain unchanged.

    Global value chains will also reorient in response to trade barriers, as already took place in Asia during Trump’s first term. If businesses reroute their supply chains to avoid the tariff markets, the UK (which is not imposing retaliatory tariffs) could become a “sacrifice zone” (a place where cheaply made, poor-quality or environmentally harmful items are dumped or disposed of, “sacrificing” the wellbeing of local people) for excess supply, undercutting domestic producers.

    Yet choosing not to retaliate is key to the UK’s diplomatic strategy. It hopes to stay close to the US in the hope of preferential treatment.

    The UK’s pursuit of a US trade deal has been politically sensitive since the previous Trump administration.
    JessicaGirvan/Shutterstock

    So far, that strategy is yet to bear fruit. The UK hopes to avoid the tariffs through a US trade deal, an objective that the countries have pursued since the UK left the European Union.

    The US has repeatedly sought access to the UK agrifood market, a demand that has always been refused due to political opposition to importing American beef and chicken.

    The sticky Brexit issue

    Brexit adds to this complexity, as the Windsor framework requires food products sold in Northern Ireland to conform to European Union standards. The more standards in the rest of the UK diverge from those of the EU (as they would have to do to secure a US trade deal), the more onerous the checks in the Irish Sea would become.

    Keir Starmer’s government has also sought to renegotiate parts of the agreement with the EU, seeking tighter economic ties that will require closer regulatory alignment. Pursuing deregulation to meet US trade demands, however, makes that unlikely.

    The tariffs compound this dilemma. If the higher rates return after 90 days, Northern Irish exports to the US will face a lower rate than those from the Republic of Ireland. But US imports to Northern Ireland will be hit with EU tariffs while imports to the rest of the UK will remain tariff-free.

    That will create some opportunities. Businesses might choose to operate in Northern Ireland to access a lower tariff rate on their US exports while also producing goods for the EU market.

    But it also creates risks. With three different tariff regimes in Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, goods flowing across both the Irish Sea and the Irish land border could require additional checks. This would risk the very thing the Windsor Framework was meant to avoid.

    Given these risks, a 90-day reprieve is a window of opportunity. But with US government policy that can change on a dime (or a post), the UK risks being caught between the rival powers of the US and EU – and trampled in the crossfire.

    Maha Rafi Atal is a volunteer organizer with the US Democratic Party.

    – ref. Hopes of a ‘Brexit benefit’ from tariffs were short-lived. Here’s what Trump’s pause means for the UK – https://theconversation.com/hopes-of-a-brexit-benefit-from-tariffs-were-short-lived-heres-what-trumps-pause-means-for-the-uk-254307

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Measles outbreaks in US and Canada show that MMR vaccines are needed more than ever – an expert in children’s health explains

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Helen Bedford, Professor of Children’s Health, UCL

    Heather Hazzan, SELF Magazine

    Measles is one of the most challenging diseases to control. It requires a sustained uptake of well over 90% of two doses of a measles-containing vaccine such as MMR. But since the COVID pandemic, there has been a decline in uptake of routine vaccines in many countries including the US, Canada and Europe, resulting in outbreaks of the disease.

    For instance, despite eliminating measles in 2000, the US experienced an outbreak in April 2025. In Texas, the centre of this outbreak, 57 people were hospitalised and two unvaccinated school-aged children died.

    Canada has also exerienced its largest measles outbreak in 14 years, while last year, England experienced an outbreak of almost 3,000 confirmed cases and one death.

    Before the measles vaccine was introduced in the UK in 1968, virtually every child caught the highly infectious disease and hundreds of thousands of cases were reported each year. In a peak year, there were over 100 measles-related deaths.

    Twenty years after the introduction of a measles-only-vaccine, it was replaced with the combination vaccine MMR which also gives protection against mumps and rubella. The aim of this vaccine is to eliminate all three infections. There has been varying success in achieving this aim.

    Rubella – also known as German measles – is a very mild infection, but can be devastating if caught in the early stages of pregnancy. Fortunately, it is now a rare condition in the UK thanks to MMR.

    In rare cases, mumps can cause complications such as meningitis and hearing loss – but it too is now much less common than pre-MMR vaccine.

    Measles can be fatal and is highly contagious, so it’s much more difficult to control than most other infections. It has a high rate of complications, including pneumonia and inflammation of the brain.

    One vaccine dose gives about 95% protection against infection. But, because measles is so contagious, 95% uptake of two doses is needed to prevent outbreaks. Achieving such high uptake in all communities – and importantly, sustaining this high uptake once reached – is challenging.

    Vaccine hesitancy

    In 1998, research published in the medical journal The Lancet implied a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. This received intense media coverage and, not surprisingly, many parents decided not to have their children vaccinated.

    The research was subsequently discredited and the study formally retracted by The Lancet in 2010. Since then, many studies have found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism, but for some parents, these fears persist.

    Currently in England, vaccine uptake rates are too low. Only 89% of two-year-old children have had their first dose of MMR vaccine, and 83.9% have had two doses by the age of five. This means large numbers of unvaccinated children: more than 10% of children in each year group remain unprotected.

    Vaccine uptake varies widely around the country. In some parts of London, as many as half the children starting school at five years of age have not had the two doses of vaccine needed for best protection.

    Not only are current vaccine uptakes too low to prevent outbreaks of measles, but many years of less-than-optimal vaccine uptake – including among young adults who weren’t vaccinated as infants because of the autism scare – has resulted in a large number of unprotected people. The impact of COVID also resulted in many young children missing their vaccines.

    Many factors affect whether people are vaccinated or not, including how, where and when vaccination services are provided, as well as behavioural and social factors. For example, vaccine hesitancy, defined by the World Health Organization as a “delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccination despite availability of vaccination services”, is frequently blamed for people not getting vaccinated. Research suggests that vaccine hesitancy has increased since the COVID pandemic – even for vaccines such as MMR that have led to the near-eradication of some infectious diseases.

    In England, surveys are conducted regularly to investigate the views of parents of young children regarding vaccination. The most recent survey, conducted in 2023, showed that 84% of parents reported they considered vaccines to be safe – a [reduction from the previous year].

    These findings are reflected in other studies. Since COVID, some parents have reported that the pandemic has affected their views, either making them keener to have their children vaccinated or increasing their concerns about vaccination.

    Given the intense scrutiny and widespread discussion about vaccination that took place during the pandemic, this is not surprising. Unfortunately, due to pressures on general practice and other health services – resulting in a 40% reduction in the number of health visitors in England since 2015 – these trusted sources of advice about vaccination have become less easily available. In this context, people may turn to other sources of less reliable information, such as social media.



    Read more:
    Health misinformation is rampant on social media – here’s what it does, why it spreads and what people can do about it

    Although there is no robust evidence to show that health misinformation would stop a parent who was going to have their child vaccinated from doing so, it can be influential for people with existing concerns.

    Accessing services

    A large study using vaccination records of over ¾ million children born between 2000 and 2020 found that children born in the UK’s most deprived areas were less likely to receive the MMR vaccine. Parents also report having difficulty making or attending appointments as a barrier to vaccination.

    Addressing these obstacles requires a multi-pronged approach, ensuring parents are sent vaccination reminders and are able to attend appointments at suitable times and locations. This may mean holding vaccination clinics at places other than the general practice and at weekends and evenings.

    Work should be done with local communities to establish what works best for them to improve access to immunisation. Opportunistic immunisation is also important: when attending health services for another reason, unvaccinated children could be offered vaccines on the spot.

    Urgent action is needed to improve vaccine uptake – and it requires sustained commitment and increased funding.

    Helen Bedford receives funding from National Institute for Health and Care Research.

    – ref. Measles outbreaks in US and Canada show that MMR vaccines are needed more than ever – an expert in children’s health explains – https://theconversation.com/measles-outbreaks-in-us-and-canada-show-that-mmr-vaccines-are-needed-more-than-ever-an-expert-in-childrens-health-explains-221651

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why financial hardship is more likely if you’re disabled or sick

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By William E. Donald, Associate Professor of Sustainable Careers and Human Resource Management, University of Southampton

    Scharfsinn/Shutterstock

    If you have a long-term health condition or you’re a disabled person in the UK, you might be able to claim a benefit called personal independence payment (Pip). As the name suggests, Pip is designed to help with the additional costs of disability – regardless of employment status.

    But the government recently announced changes to the payment, which will make it harder for people to access support.

    As a disabled person, I know that it costs more to live with disability or illness. It has been calculated that disabled households need an extra £1,010 per month to maintain the same standard of living as non-disabled households. This gap arises from things like transport costs (because of inaccessible public transport), the need for expensive mobility aids, and water, electric and gas costs at home.

    The World Health Organization recommends a minimum indoor temperature of 18°C for healthy people and 20°C for those with chronic conditions. Yet, with soaring energy prices, many disabled people are forced to choose between heating their homes and other disability-related necessities.

    Despite these realities, the maximum annual Pip payment is £9,747.40, well below the additional £12,120 that disabled households typically need annually. Only those qualifying for the highest level of support receive this amount. Most get considerably less.

    So, what is the government’s justification for tightening eligibility? Together with changes to universal credit, it claims it will save £5 billion a year by the end of 2030 and get more people, including sick and disabled people, into work. But will it?

    Government figures from March 2024 show that 24% of people in the UK aged 16 to 64 are disabled. Within this group, the employment rate is 54.2%. For comparison, non-disabled adults of working age have an employment rate of 82%. Even when disabled people are employed, the disability pay gap is 12.7%. This gap reaches 27.9% for autistic workers and 26.9% for those with epilepsy.

    The same figures also show that 42.6% of disabled people are economically inactive. This is sometimes portrayed as people who are capable of working but choose not to. But this does not align with the facts.

    The latest figures on Pip claims show that last year the rate of fraud was so low that the Department for Work and Pensions recorded it as 0%.

    Anyone like me, who has experienced the lengthy and complicated Pip application process, will find these figures unsurprising. Cutting access to Pip will not push this group into employment but will plunge them deeper into financial hardship.

    The Resolution Foundation think tank estimates that up to 1.2 million disabled people could lose between £4,200 and £6,300 per year by 2029-30 due to these changes.

    The government is particularly focused on claimants with mental health conditions, especially younger people. As such, it is crucial to acknowledge the dire state of mental health services in the UK.

    Patients are waiting far longer for mental health treatment than for physical healthcare.
    chayanuphol/Shutterstock

    Eight times as many people wait more than 18 months for mental health treatment compared to physical healthcare.

    This crisis is compounded by broader challenges facing young people, who were disproportionately affected by COVID lockdowns. Three in four university students and recent graduates reported lower levels of wellbeing in September 2021 compared to pre-pandemic levels. These same young people face a competitive labour market, alongside soaring rent, energy and food costs.

    Noble goal but a harmful method

    Nevertheless, supporting disabled people and the long-term sick to access employment is a worthy goal. Government figures suggest 5.6% of disabled people are unemployed. Many of these people want to work. This is also true of many in the economically inactive group who simply cannot.

    The record £1 billion employment support measures announced in chancellor Rachel Reeves’ spring statement to help the disabled and long-term sick into work is obviously welcome.

    But we have to be realistic. Previous government schemes resulted in fewer than one in five people getting work. This highlights the systemic barriers that disabled people face in work beyond their agency. The new approach raises concerns that people might be pressured into unsuitable jobs simply to reduce unemployment figures.

    Even when disabled people find employment, they continue to face discrimination and workplace biases. The legal system places the burden on individuals to challenge unfair treatment and the disability wage gap just exacerbates inequalities.

    While remote work has been a game-changer for many disabled workers, the previous government pressured its own workforce of civil servants back into offices. Many business leaders continue to advocate for the same.

    Cutting Pip will not necessarily reduce the welfare bill. But it will drive more disabled people into poverty. Those with savings will exhaust them, ultimately qualifying for even more means-tested government assistance.

    Others will be priced out of work entirely. Many may end up needing more support from public services like the NHS, as their mental and physical health deteriorates. This means the claim of saving £5 billion a year is also likely flawed.

    So, what needs to change? Here are five ideas.

    1. Reverse Pip cuts and restrictive eligibility criteria. The government must listen to disability charities and ensure that financial support reflects the true cost of living with a disability.

    2. Hold employers accountable. Systemic barriers such as bias in the recruitment process must be removed, the disability pay gap addressed and remote work established as a long-term option.

    3. Increase disabled representation in decision-making. Disabled people must have a seat at the table in government and industry to ensure policies reflect real experiences.

    4. Integrate healthcare and social care. Linked to this, ensure essential utilities such as water, gas and electricity are always affordable for disabled and elderly people – perhaps via a government-backed special tariff.

    5. Pay carers fairly. Carer’s allowance is £83.30 per week for a minimum of 35 hours of care, just £2.38 per hour. This just exacerbates financial insecurity for disabled households.

    If these failures are not addressed, the consequences will be catastrophic. The government’s approach is making life harder, not easier, for disabled people. It is time for real action, not rhetoric and infantilising talk of “pocket money”. Disabled people deserve better. We all do.

    William E. Donald 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 financial hardship is more likely if you’re disabled or sick – https://theconversation.com/why-financial-hardship-is-more-likely-if-youre-disabled-or-sick-253877

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump tariff backflip brings a US trade war with China into the crosshairs

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor

    You have to marvel at Donald Trump’s prescience. After his announcement of America’s new tariffs regime on April 2, “liberation day”, the stock markets plummeted, causing faint hearts around the world to quail. Nerves fluttered particularly hard when bond yields started to rise rapidly this week, suggesting a growing lack of confidence in US 30-year debt – traditionally the gold standard for security.

    “I don’t want anything to go down,” Trump told a reporter at the weekend. “But sometimes, you have to take medicine to fix something.”

    The US president remained bullish on Wednesday morning, taking to his TruthSocial social media platform at 9.37am EDT to proclaim his confidence in US stocks.

    Sound advice, as it turned out (time shown is BST).
    TruthSocial

    And so it proved. Hours later, Trump announced to his followers that he had decided to pause the tariff hikes on all but China while keeping the 10% baseline tariff on all imports. The markets bounced back with alacrity, closing up 9.5% by the end of trading. (Incidentally, Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of TruthSocial, closed up 22.67%.)

    It just goes to show, faith may or may not be able to move mountains, but Donald Trump can certainly move markets.

    Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

    Now it’s all eyes on China to see how the world’s second-largest economy will react to a yet-higher tariff on its exports to the US of 145%.

    Announcing to the world he was targeting China, the US president wrote that he was basing his decision on the “lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets”, and that “hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the days of ripping off the U.S.A., and other Countries, is no longer sustainable or acceptable”.

    But based on Beijing’s initial reaction, it’s unlikely that Xi Jinping will be joining all the other world leaders who Trump says queued up over the past couple of days to “kiss his ass”. The messages from China’s leadership are that two can play at that game, and that Trump’s gambit “will end in failure”.

    China had imposed an immediate 84% tariff on all US exports, while reassuring the White House that the “the door to dialogue is open”.

    China expert Tom Harper of the University of East London believes Xi is now a different, more confident Chinese president than the one who granted some small concessions to Trump when he first imposed tariffs on China in 2017. Harper sees the likelihood of a “tumultuous period ahead for relations between China and the US” – and warns that the Chinese people may be more resilient to the economic shock a trade war brings than the US public.

    Looking back at what China considers a period of humiliation at the hands of western powers (notably Great Britain) in the 19th century, Harper says there’s a strong sense of “never again” in the Chinese psyche, which may well be triggered by this latest US aggression.



    Read more:
    What the spiralling trade war means for relations between the US and China

    But why roll back on the tariffs on the rest of the world? Australian economists James Giesecke and Robert Waschik believe the answer is simple: the harm that would have been done to the US economy. Their modelling suggests that “the US would have faced steep and immediate losses in employment, investment, growth and, most importantly, real consumption, the best measure of household living standards”.

    Giesecke and Waschik conclude the damage would have been serious and long term, increasing US unemployment by two-thirds and reducing US long-term GDP, resulting in a “permanent reduction in US global economic power”.



    Read more:
    This chart explains why Trump backflipped on tariffs. The economic damage would have been huge

    The aim of the Trump administration in introducing tariffs is to stimulate a return of manufacturing to the US – which is why they applied them to goods only while ignoring services. James Scott of King’s College London believes a lot of countries fetishise manufacturing as a sort of deeply ingrained throwback to when “pre-historic experiences of finding food, fuel and shelter dominated all other activities”.

    But most western economies have developed beyond heavy goods manufacturing, for the simple reason that countries with larger and lower-paid workforces are able to produce and ship goods at a fraction of the cost. Tik-Tok user Ben Lau posted this disturbingly funny vision of the return of large-scale manufacturing to the US.

    Scott believes it’s highly unlikely to come to this – and in any case, that it’s pointless to blame globalisation for the loss of US manufacturing jobs when rising productivity in other countries and automation have had much more impact.

    The lesson from history, writes Scott, is that with the retreat of colonialism came the industrialisation of the countries that had been major markets for manufactured goods produced by the western powers. In short, he concludes: “President Trump is mistaken if he really believes that tariffs will bring a new golden age of manufacturing. The world has changed.”



    Read more:
    Trump thinks tariffs can bring back the glory days of US manufacturing. Here’s why he’s wrong

    The diplomatic front

    Iran has had a rough 18 months or so. Its economy is on the floor thanks to western sanctions, the “real” currency rate (the rate you get on the street) is now close to 1 million rials to the US dollar, and large sections of the population are very unhappy with their leadership.

    So, when Iran’s foreign minister arrives in Oman for talks with the US at the weekend, there’s plenty of incentive to strike some kind of deal – even without the US president’s warning that Iran will be in “great danger” if the negotiations fail to deliver an agreement for Tehran to scrap its nuclear programme.

    Ali Bilgic, a Middle East specialist at Loughborough University, writes that while both sides have their reasons for wanting progress at the talks, things are likely to be hampered by a lack of trust on both sides. And it’s no coincidence that while Trump announced the talks after a meeting with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Iranian deputy foreign minister travelled to Moscow this week, where he met his counterparts from China and Russia. With hardliners currently in the ascendancy in Tehran and the Trump-Netanyahu axis very much in evidence in Washington, a lot could go wrong.



    Read more:
    Iran and US to enter high-stakes nuclear negotiations – hampered by a lack of trust

    America’s other allies, Nato, gathered in Brussels at the end of last week for a foreign ministers meeting ahead of June’s summit at The Hague. As Amelia Hadfield – a defence and security policy expert at the University of Surrey – reports, there’s a growing air of urgency among the allies that they need to find a way to avoid a unilateral withdrawal of the US from the alliance, and that they’ll need at least some answers before meeting at The Hague.

    Hadfield walks us through the gradual but growing distance between Washington and the rest of the alliance, which has come to a head under Trump but has been some years in the making.



    Read more:
    Why Nato is struggling to rebuild itself in an increasingly threatening world

    Cry, the beloved country

    Since the incoming Trump administration announced it was freezing most USAID programmes as of January 20 for at least 90 days, vital lifelines keeping many thousands, if not millions, of desperate people in the poorest countries around the world have been cut off.

    One such country is Sudan, where a bitter and bloody civil war has raged for two years, leading to the situation being described by the United Nations as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

    Naomi Ruth Pendle, an expert in humanitarian development at the University of Bath, works closely with aid workers in South Kordofan, a region on the border with South Sudan which is collapsing under the weight of refugees from the civil war – and which faces a bitter famine unless the aid freeze is lifted immediately.

    Her moving account of the plight of the Sudanese people is made more vivid by accounts provided by people working on the ground in South Kordofan, where the aid freeze couldn’t have come at a worse time. January, when the freeze was announced, is usually the best time to increase the flow of humanitarian aid in the region – as the supplies from last year’s harvest begin to dwindle, and just before the rains make roads impassable.

    Pendle writes: “I’m now getting reports from South Kordofan of households not lighting a fire for up to four days at a time, which means the family is not eating. And, as ever, it is the children and the elderly who are particularly vulnerable.”



    Read more:
    USAID: the human cost of Donald Trump’s aid freeze for a war-torn part of Sudan

    I spent a happy year living in Khartoum in the mid-1980s teaching English at the university there. During that time, I was able to travel widely around Sudan and developed an enduring affection for the people and respect for their resilience and ingenuity in the face of often terrible hardships.

    So I found Justin Willis’s account of the decades of conflict that have riven Sudan particularly compelling. Willis, a professor of history at Durham University, looks back through the country’s history – from its foundation through conquest in the 19th century by the Egyptian branch of the Ottoman empire, via British control, to independence. And after independence, pretty much non-stop wars.

    Willis believes that Sudan’s main problem is that its army commanders have always believed they are the natural rulers of the country. The current conflict is between two rival army commanders and their followers.

    The official army, the Sudanese Armed Forces, recaptured Khartoum at the end of March. There have been reports of savage violence against civilians in the fortnight since. Meanwhile, the rival Rapid Support Forces continue to murder with seeming impunity in Darfur in western Sudan – where I once spent an unforgettable week trekking in the extinct volcano, Jebel Marra.



    Read more:
    Sudan civil war: despite appearances this is not a failed state – yet

    World Affairs Briefing from The Conversation UK is available as a weekly email newsletter. Click here to get updates directly in your inbox.

    – ref. Trump tariff backflip brings a US trade war with China into the crosshairs – https://theconversation.com/trump-tariff-backflip-brings-a-us-trade-war-with-china-into-the-crosshairs-254326

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Pierre Poilievre’s proposals on intimate partner violence will do little to stop it

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Walter S. DeKeseredy, Anna Deane Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences, Director of the Research Center on Violence, and Professor of Sociology, West Virginia University

    Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre recently announced that if elected in Canada’s upcoming federal election, his party would enact tougher sentences for anyone accused of intimate partner violence.

    He has also vowed to institute a three-strikes policy for anyone who commits three serious offences, with a minimum 10-year prison sentence with no eligibility for parole.

    The proposed actions include creating a new offence of “assault of an intimate partner,” requiring stricter bail conditions for anyone accused of intimate partner violence and ensuring first-degree murder convictions for anyone who kills their partner.

    There are many steps policymakers who are concerned about victims could take. For example, they could fund a variety of effective prevention programs. However, the approach articulated by Poilievre does not appear to centre the victim, but rather the offender.

    Punishment is often ineffective

    Although government policies in Canada and other countries have emphasized punitive actions towards men who abuse their partners, relatively few of these men are arrested, incarcerated or treated.

    This is due in large part to the fact that most perpetrators are not reported to the police. In fact, one important factor hindering women from reporting their abuse to law enforcement is that officers often express distrust of victims.

    Starting with this survey in 1992, studies repeatedly show that at least one out of every four Canadian female undergraduate students will experience at least one type of sexual assault during their time at university.

    Furthermore, at least 11 per cent of Canadian women in marital or cohabiting relationships are physically abused by their male partners in a year, and in the mid-1990s, there was evidence showing that Canadian men appeared to have higher rates of physical violence towards female intimates than their U.S. counterparts.

    The prevalence of such violence is unlikely to decrease much if all the men who have beaten, raped or killed their partners are arrested and locked up. Decades of research shows that punishment is ineffective in reducing crimes like violence against women.

    Prison and other harsh legal sanctions do not deter abusive men from injuring their female partners any more than they deter the myriad of violent crimes that occur outside domestic or intimate contexts. This has been the conclusion of the majority of deterrence studies conducted in the past 50 years.

    Legal scholar Michelle Alexander and sociologists like Loic Wacquant and Bruce Western have outlined how incarceration can actually increase crime and exacerbate other social problems like unemployment and poverty.

    This information has been available to virtually every Canadian politician for many years, yet they have lacked the political will to act on this information. However, calls to institute more severe sentences often play into public desires to see those accused of crimes punished.

    Improve lives, not punish more

    Violence against women is often a key symptom of structured social inequality. Those who want to reduce it must find ways of reducing social inequality. Governments often compartmentalize social problems like violence against women along bureaucratic lines.

    In other words, some government departments are expected to handle economic issues and find ways to cut spending. However, those working for these departments rarely consider how reductions in unemployment or cuts to social programs and so on affect rates of abuse.

    Rather, the police and courts are often left to respond to male-to-female violence after it has happened. Yet, in real life, jobs, welfare, housing, employment equity, child care, gender inequality and a host of other factors affect the ways men treat women.

    It is time that we move beyond the well-worn path of using after-the-fact approaches to dealing with violence against women.
    (Shutterstock)

    It should be noted that police, courts, prisons and treatment programs play an important role in responding to violence against women. Nevertheless, neither the criminal justice system nor battered women’s shelters should be solely, or even primarily, responsible for dealing with violence against women. Relying only on them to make women’s lives safer is tantamount to “closing the barn doors after the horses have left.”

    Calling the police after a beating, rape or femicide does not prevent the crime from taking place. And although shelters are undoubtedly necessary in our society, shelter workers cannot be expected to solve the problem of woman abuse single-handedly.

    Therefore, it is time that we move beyond the well-worn path of using after-the-fact approaches. Hopefully, if implemented sensitively, what legal professor Leigh Goodmark refers to as a balanced policy approach will result in major reductions in violence against women.

    This approach entails using initiatives such as: putting cash resources directly in the hands of abused women, providing affordable housing and childcare, creating an anti-poverty movement, increased funding for the development and evaluation of community-based prevention programs and encouraging progressive men to be part of the solution.

    Will these strategies make a difference? As criminologist Elliott Currie puts it:

    “We have tried moral exhortation. We have tried neglect. We have tried punishment. We have even grudgingly, tried treatment. We have tried everything but improving lives.”

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

    – ref. Pierre Poilievre’s proposals on intimate partner violence will do little to stop it – https://theconversation.com/pierre-poilievres-proposals-on-intimate-partner-violence-will-do-little-to-stop-it-254014

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –