The Highland Council has launched a new facility at the Nairn Household Waste Recycling Centre (HWRC), enabling householders to donate working electrical and electronic items for reuse.
Residents can now bring old, unused, or unwanted items such as mobile phones, laptops, tablets, toasters, air fryers, and TVs to the Nairn HWRC, provided they are still in good working order.
These items will be collected by ILM Highland, a social enterprise based in Alness that specialises in electrical recycling. ILM Highland will test and clean the donated items before offering them for sale in their retail shop and online. Proceeds from these sales support ILM’s home improvement services, which assist some of the most vulnerable members of the community.
This initiative is supported by a £135,000 grant from the Scottish Government’s Recycling Improvement Fund (Small Grant Scheme), awarded to The Highland Council and ILM Highland to promote circular economy practices for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) across the region.
Councillor Graham MacKenzie, Chair of the Communities and Place Committee, said: “This new reuse facility is the first of its kind in Scotland, and I am grateful for the funding from the Scottish Government’s Small Grants Fund, which has enabled the Council and our partner ILM Highland to deliver this valuable new service. Increasing opportunities for the public in Highland to donate unwanted tech items for reuse is hugely important. It helps reduce carbon emissions, preserve precious metals, and create jobs—contributing to the growing circular economy for electrical devices.”
Martin MacLeod, CEO at ILM Highland, said: “We’re proud to be working in partnership with The Highland Council to launch this new reuse facility in Nairn. At ILM Highland, we’re passionate about extending the life of electrical items and reducing unnecessary waste. By giving residents a convenient way to donate working appliances and tech, we can divert valuable resources from landfill and make them available to households who need them most. Every item reused helps to support our wider mission of tackling digital exclusion and delivering essential home improvement services across the Highlands. It’s a win for people, the planet, and the local community.”
David Gunn, Manager (Recycling Improvement Fund) Operations at Zero Waste Scotland, said: “It’s fantastic to see recycling and reuse being made more accessible to rural communities through this new service. By supporting households across the Highlands to recycle their electrical items, whether broken or in working order, this initiative is not only helping to reduce waste but also playing a vital role in Scotland’s journey towards a more circular economy.”
In addition to the Nairn facility, the funding will support the introduction of reuse facilities at three other Household Waste Recycling Centres in the coming months. These sites will allow for the separation and collection of domestic appliances suitable for reuse.
The grant also covers the purchase of a new van for ILM Highland, which is being used to provide monthly waste electrical and electronic equipment collections in communities with limited access to recycling centres—further boosting recycling and reuse efforts across the region.
Before donating smart devices, householders are advised to:
Back up your data – Save photos, contacts, and documents to the cloud, a personal computer, or an external drive.
Delete personal data – Wipe all data and remove SIM or memory cards.
Reset the device – Log out of all accounts and restore the device to factory settings.
For opening hours and more information about the Nairn HWRC, please visit https://bit.ly/nairnhwrc
Palestinians in northern Gaza reported one of the worst nights of Israeli bombardment in weeks after the military issued mass evacuation orders on Monday, while Israeli officials were due in Washington for a new ceasefire push by the Trump administration.
A day after U.S. President Donald Trump urged an end to the 20-month-old war, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected at the White House for talks on a Gaza ceasefire, Iran, and possible wider regional diplomatic deals.
But on the ground in the Palestinian enclave there was no sign of fighting letting up.
“Explosions never stopped; they bombed schools and homes. It felt like earthquakes,” said Salah, 60, a father of five children, from Gaza City. “In the news we hear a ceasefire is near, on the ground we see death and we hear explosions.”
Israeli tanks pushed into the eastern areas of Zeitoun suburb in Gaza City and shelled several areas in the north, while aircraft bombed at least four schools after ordering hundreds of families sheltering inside to leave, residents said.
At least 25 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Monday, health authorities said, including 10 people killed in Zeitoun.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which says Palestinian militants embed among civilians. The militant groups deny this.
The heavy bombardment followed new evacuation orders to vast areas in the north, where Israeli forces had operated before and left behind wide-scale destruction. The military ordered people there to head south, saying that it planned to fight Hamas militants operating in northern Gaza, including in the heart of Gaza City.
NEXT STEPS
A day after Trump called to “Make the deal in Gaza, get the hostages back”, Israel’s strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer, a confidant of Netanyahu’s, was expected on Monday at the White House for talks on Iran and Gaza, an Israeli official said.
In Israel, Netanyahu’s security cabinet was expected to convene to discuss the next steps in Gaza.
On Friday, Israel’s military chief said the present ground operation was close to having achieved its goals, and on Sunday, Netanyahu said new opportunities had opened up for recovering the hostages, 20 of whom are believed to still be alive.
Palestinian and Egyptian sources with knowledge of the latest ceasefire efforts said that mediators Qatar and Egypt have stepped up their contacts with the two warring sides, but that no date has been set yet for a new round of truce talks.
A Hamas official said that progress depends on Israel changing its position and agreeing to end the war and withdraw from Gaza. Israel says it can end the war only when Hamas is disarmed and dismantled. Hamas refuses to lay down its arms.
The war began when Hamas fighters stormed in to Israel on October 7 2023, killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took 251 hostages back to Gaza in a surprise attack that led to Israel’s single deadliest day.
Israel’s subsequent military assault has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza health ministry, has displaced almost the entire 2.3 million population and plunged the enclave into a humanitarian crisis.
More than 80% of the territory is now an Israeli-militarized zone or under displacement orders, according to the United Nations.
The first blockbuster movie sent waves of panic and awe through audiences. “Jaws” – the tale of a killer great white shark that terrorizes a coastal tourist town – captured people’s imaginations and simultaneously created a widespread fear of the water.
To call Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece a creature feature is trite. Because the shark isn’t shown for most of the movie – mechanical difficulties meant production didn’t have one ready to use until later in the filming process – suspense and fear build. The movie unlocked in viewers an innate fear of the unknown, encouraging the idea that monsters lurk beneath the ocean’s surface, even in the shallows.
And because in 1975 marine scientists knew far less than we do now about sharks and their world, it was easy for the myth of the rogue shark as a murderous eating machine to take hold, along with the assumption that all sharks must be bloodthirsty, mindless killers.
But in addition to scaring many moviegoers that “it’s not safe to go in the water,” “Jaws” has over the years inspired generations of researchers, including me. The scientific curiosity sparked by this horror fish flick has helped reveal so much more about what lies beneath the waves than was known 50 years ago. My own research focuses on the secret lives of sharks, their evolution and development, and how people can benefit from the study of these enigmatic animals.
The business end of sharks: Their jaws and teeth
My own work has focused on perhaps the most terrifying aspect of these apex predators, the jaws and teeth. I study the development of shark teeth in embryos.
Small-spotted catshark embryo (Scyliorhinus canicula), still attached to the yolk sac. This is the stage when the teeth begin developing. Ella Nicklin, Fraser Lab, University of Florida
Sharks continue to make an unlimited supply of tooth replacements throughout life – it’s how they keep their bite constantly sharp.
Hard-shelled prey, such as mollusks and crustaceans, from sandy substrates can be more abrasive for teeth, requiring quicker replacement. Depending on the water temperature, the conveyor belt-like renewal of an entire row of teeth can take between nine and 70 days, for example, in nurse sharks, or much longer in larger sharks. In the great white, a full-row replacement can take an estimated 250 days. That’s still an advantage over humans – we never regrow damaged or worn-out adult teeth.
Magnified microscope image of a zebra shark (Stegostoma tigrinum) jaw. They have 20 to 30 rows of teeth in each jaw, each a new generation ready to move into position like on a conveyor belt. Humans have only two sets! Gareth Fraser, University of Florida
Interestingly, shark teeth are much like our own, developing from equivalent cells, patterned by the same genes, creating the same hard tissues, enamel and dentin. Sharks could potentially teach researchers how to master the process of tooth renewal. It would be huge for dentistry if scientists could use sharks to figure out how to engineer a new generation of teeth for human patients.
Extraordinary fish with extraordinary biology
As a group, sharks and their cartilaginous fish relatives – including skates, rays and chimaeras – are evolutionary relics that have inhabited the Earth’s oceans for over 400 million years. They’ve been around since long before human beings and most of the other animals on our planet today hit the scene, even before dinosaurs emerged.
Sharks have a vast array of super powers that scientists have only recently discovered.
Their electroreceptive pores, located around the head and jaws, have amazing sensory capabilities, allowing sharks to detect weak electrical fields emitted from hidden prey.
CT scan of the head of a small-spotted catshark (Scyliorhinus canicula) as it hatches. Skin denticles cover the surface, and colored rows of teeth are present on the jaws. Ella Nicklin, Fraser Lab, University of Florida
Their skin is protected with an armor of tiny teeth, called dermal denticles, composed of sensitive dentin, that also allows for better drag-reducing hydrodynamics. Biologists and engineers are also using this “shark skin technology” to design hydrodynamic and aerodynamic solutions for future fuel-efficient vehicles.
Fluorescent skin of the chain catshark (Scyliorhinus retifer). Gareth Fraser, University of Florida
Some sharks are biofluorescent, meaning they emit light in different wavelengths after absorbing natural blue light. This emitted fluorescent color pattern suggests visual communication and recognition among members of the same species is possible in the dark depths.
Tagging programs and their “follow the shark” apps allow researchers to learn more about these animals’ lives and where they roam – highlighting the benefit of international collaboration and public engagement for conserving threatened shark populations.
Sharks under attack
Sharks are an incredible evolutionary success story. But they’re also vulnerable in the modern age of human-ocean interactions.
Sharks are an afterthought for the commercial fishing industry, but overfishing of other species can cause dramatic crashes in shark populations. Their late age of sexual maturity – as old as 15 to 20 years or more in larger species or potentially 150 years in Greenland sharks – along with slow growth, long gestation periods and complex social structures make shark populations fragile and less capable of quick recoveries.
Take the white shark (Carcharodon carcharias), for example – Jaws’ own species. Trophy hunting, trade in their body parts and commercial fishery impacts caused their numbers to dwindle. As a result, they received essential protections at the international level. In turn, their numbers have rebounded, especially around the United States, leading to a shift from critically endangered to vulnerable status worldwide. However, they remain critically endangered in Europe and the Mediterranean.
“Jaws” was filmed on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts. After careful management and the designation of white sharks as a prohibited species in federal waters in 1997 and in Massachusetts in 2005, their populations have recovered well over recent years in response to more seals in the area and recovering fish stocks.
You might assume more sharks would mean more attacks, but that is not what we observe. Shark attacks have always been few and far between in Massachusetts and elsewhere, and they remain rare. It’s only a “Jaws”-perpetuated myth that sharks have a taste for humans. Sure, they might mistake a person for prey; for instance, surfers and swimmers can mimic the appearance of seals at the surface. Sharks in murky water might opportunistically take a test bite of what seem to be prey.
But these attacks are rare enough that people can shed their “Jaws”-driven irrational fears of sharks. Almost all sharks are timid, and the likelihood of an interaction – let alone a negative one – is incredibly rare. Importantly, there more than 500 species of sharks in the world’s oceans, each one a unique member of a particular ecosystem with a vital role. Sharks come in all shapes and sizes, and inhabit every ocean, both the shallow and deep-end ecosystems.
Most recorded human-shark interactions are awe-inspiring and not terrifying. Sharks don’t really care about people – at most they may be curious, but not hungry for human flesh. Whether or not “Jaws” fans have grown beyond the fear of movie monster sharks, we’re gonna need a bigger conservation effort to continue to protect these important ocean guardians.
Gareth J. Fraser receives funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
AI tools gather information about you from many types of devices, including smartphones.Prostock-Studio/Getty Images
Like it or not, artificial intelligence has become part of daily life. Many devices – including electric razors and toothbrushes – have become “AI-powered,” using machine learning algorithms to track how a person uses the device, how the device is working in real time, and provide feedback. From asking questions to an AI assistant like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot to monitoring a daily fitness routine with a smartwatch, many people use an AI system or tool every day.
While AI tools and technologies can make life easier, they also raise important questions about data privacy. These systems often collect large amounts of data, sometimes without people even realizing their data is being collected. The information can then be used to identify personal habits and preferences, and even predict future behaviors by drawing inferences from the aggregated data.
As an assistant professor of cybersecurity at West Virginia University, I study how emerging technologies and various types of AI systems manage personal data and how we can build more secure, privacy-preserving systems for the future.
Generative AI software uses large amounts of training data to create new content such as text or images. Predictive AI uses data to forecast outcomes based on past behavior, such as how likely you are to hit your daily step goal, or what movies you may want to watch. Both types can be used to gather information about you.
Generative AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini collect all the information users type into a chat box. Every question, response and prompt that users enter is recorded, stored and analyzed to improve the AI model.
OpenAI’s privacy policy informs users that “we may use content you provide us to improve our Services, for example to train the models that power ChatGPT.” Even though OpenAI allows you to opt out of content use for model training, it still collects and retains your personal data. Although some companies promise that they anonymize this data, meaning they store it without naming the person who provided it, there is always a risk of data being reidentified.
ChatGPT stores and analyzes everything you type into a prompt screen. Screenshot by Christopher Ramezan, CC BY-ND
Predictive AI
Beyond generative AI assistants, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok continuously gather data on their users to train predictive AI models. Every post, photo, video, like, share and comment, including the amount of time people spend looking at each of these, is collected as data points that are used to build digital data profiles for each person who uses the service.
The profiles can be used to refine the social media platform’s AI recommender systems. They can also be sold to data brokers, who sell a person’s data to other companies to, for instance, help develop targeted advertisements that align with that person’s interests.
Many social media companies also track users across websites and applications by putting cookies and embedded tracking pixels on their computers. Cookies are small files that store information about who you are and what you clicked on while browsing a website.
One of the most common uses of cookies is in digital shopping carts: When you place an item in your cart, leave the website and return later, the item will still be in your cart because the cookie stored that information. Tracking pixels are invisible images or snippets of code embedded in websites that notify companies of your activity when you visit their page. This helps them track your behavior across the internet.
This is why users often see or hear advertisements that are related to their browsing and shopping habits on many of the unrelated websites they browse, and even when they are using different devices, including computers, phones and smart speakers. One study found that some websites can store over 300 tracking cookies on your computer or mobile phone.
Here’s how websites you browse can track you using cookies or tracking pixels.
Data privacy controls – and limitations
Like generative AI platforms, social media platforms offer privacy settings and opt-outs, but these give people limited control over how their personal data is aggregated and monetized. As media theorist Douglas Rushkoff argued in 2011, if the service is free, you are the product.
Many tools that include AI don’t require a person to take any direct action for the tool to collect data about that person. Smart devices such as home speakers, fitness trackers and watches continually gather information through biometric sensors, voice recognition and location tracking. Smart home speakers continually listen for the command to activate or “wake up” the device. As the device is listening for this word, it picks up all the conversations happening around it, even though it does not seem to be active.
Some companies claim that voice data is only stored when the wake word – what you say to wake up the device – is detected. However, people have raised concerns about accidental recordings, especially because these devices are often connected to cloud services, which allow voice data to be stored, synced and shared across multiple devices such as your phone, smart speaker and tablet.
If the company allows, it’s also possible for this data to be accessed by third parties, such as advertisers, data analytics firms or a law enforcement agency with a warrant.
Privacy rollbacks
This potential for third-party access also applies to smartwatches and fitness trackers, which monitor health metrics and user activity patterns. Companies that produce wearable fitness devices are not considered “covered entities” and so are not bound by the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act. This means that they are legally allowed to sell health- and location-related data collected from their users.
Concerns about HIPAA data arose in 2018, when Strava, a fitness company released a global heat map of user’s exercise routes. In doing so, it accidentally revealed sensitive military locations across the globe through highlighting the exercise routes of military personnel.
Smart speakers can collect information even when they’re sleeping. recep-bg/Getty Images
Such partnerships can expand corporate and government reach into everyday consumer behavior. This one could be used to create detailed personal profiles on Americans by linking their consumer habits with other personal data. This raises concerns about increased surveillance and loss of anonymity. It could allow citizens to be tracked and analyzed across multiple aspects of their lives without their knowledge or consent.
Some smart device companies are also rolling back privacy protections instead of strengthening them. Amazon recently announced that starting on March 28, 2025, all voice recordings from Amazon Echo devices would be sent to Amazon’s cloud by default, and users will no longer have the option to turn this function off. This is different from previous settings, which allowed users to limit private data collection.
Changes like these raise concerns about how much control consumers have over their own data when using smart devices. Many privacy experts consider cloud storage of voice recordings a form of data collection, especially when used to improve algorithms or build user profiles, which has implications for data privacy laws designed to protect online privacy.
Implications for data privacy
All of this brings up serious privacy concerns for people and governments on how AI tools collect, store, use and transmit data. The biggest concern is transparency. People don’t know what data is being collected, how the data is being used, and who has access to that data.
Companies tend to use complicated privacy policies filled with technical jargon to make it difficult for people to understand the terms of a service that they agree to. People also tend not to read terms of service documents. One study found that people averaged 73 seconds reading a terms of service document that had an average read time of 29-32 minutes.
Data collected by AI tools may initially reside with a company that you trust, but can easily be sold and given to a company that you don’t trust.
AI tools, the companies in charge of them and the companies that have access to the data they collect can also be subject to cyberattacks and data breaches that can reveal sensitive personal information. These attacks can by carried out by cybercriminals who are in it for the money, or by so-called advanced persistent threats, which are typically nation/state- sponsored attackers who gain access to networks and systems and remain there undetected, collecting information and personal data to eventually cause disruption or harm.
While laws and regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union and the California Consumer Privacy Act aim to safeguard user data, AI development and use have often outpaced the legislative process. The laws are still catching up on AI and data privacy. For now, you should assume any AI-powered device or platform is collecting data on your inputs, behaviors and patterns.
Using AI tools
Although AI tools collect people’s data, and the way this accumulation of data affects people’s data privacy is concerning, the tools can also be useful. AI-powered applications can streamline workflows, automate repetitive tasks and provide valuable insights.
But it’s crucial to approach these tools with awareness and caution.
When using a generative AI platform that gives you answers to questions you type in a prompt, don’t include any personally identifiable information, including names, birth dates, Social Security numbers or home addresses. At the workplace, don’t include trade secrets or classified information. In general, don’t put anything into a prompt that you wouldn’t feel comfortable revealing to the public or seeing on a billboard. Remember, once you hit enter on the prompt, you’ve lost control of that information.
Remember that devices which are turned on are always listening – even if they’re asleep. If you use smart home or embedded devices, turn them off when you need to have a private conversation. A device that’s asleep looks inactive, but it is still powered on and listening for a wake word or signal. Unplugging a device or removing its batteries is a good way of making sure the device is truly off.
Finally, be aware of the terms of service and data collection policies of the devices and platforms that you are using. You might be surprised by what you’ve already agreed to.
This article is part of a series on data privacy that explores who collects your data, what and how they collect, who sells and buys your data, what they all do with it, and what you can do about it.
The Conversation will be hosting a free webinar on practical and safe use of AI with our tech editor and an AI expert on June 24 at 2pm ET/11am PT. Sign up to get your questions answered.
Christopher Ramezan receives funding from the Appalachian Regional Commission.
Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region
2025 edition of “Hong Kong as an Information Society” now available This publication presents statistics compiled from a variety of data sources relevant to the development of an information society in Hong Kong, including the recent developments in information and communication technology services, the external trade of information and communication technology goods and services, and the use and penetration of information technology in the business, household and government sectors. Analyses of the demand for manpower in the information technology field and development of relevant educational programmes are also provided.
Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region
The Secretary for Housing, Ms Winnie Ho, will depart for a visit to Lisbon, Portugal, tomorrow night (July 1). She will attend the International Forum on Urbanism on July 2 and speak at the forum on the various housing initiatives implemented by the Housing Bureau and the Hong Kong Housing Authority in recent years to enhance people’s livelihoods, encourage upward mobility, and promote innovative construction technologies, as well as the “Well-being design” guide launched last year.
During her stay in Lisbon, she will meet with relevant local officials. She will also officiate at a business luncheon co-organised by the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Development Office under the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau and the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Brussels, to share Hong Kong’s experiences in enhancing the quantity, speed, efficiency and quality of public housing construction by embracing various innovative rapid construction technologies and construction robotics, and continuously enhancing smart public estate management to build a more pleasant living environment for its residents. She also invited over 20 construction trade representatives from Hong Kong and the Mainland, including construction companies and consultant companies participating in the construction of public housing, Light Public Housing and transitional housing, to attend the luncheon. They will share in person with the participants Hong Kong’s experience in applying and promoting innovative construction technologies, such as Modular Integrated Construction (MiC), Multi-trade integrated Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MiMEP) and construction robots, and take this opportunity to strengthen connections between the Hong Kong and Portuguese trades and explore opportunities. Ms Ho will also call on the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the Portuguese Republic.
Ms Ho will depart for Barcelona, Spain, on the evening of July 3 (Lisbon time) to visit local social housing projects, meet with relevant government officials to learn about housing issues there and their policies implemented, and promote Hong Kong’s housing ladder that encourages upward mobility, as well as the application of innovative construction technologies in Hong Kong’s public housing developments and management, the concepts of the “Well-being design” guide, and more.
Ms Ho will return to Hong Kong on the morning of July 6. During her absence, the Under Secretary for Housing, Mr Victor Tai, will be the Acting Secretary for Housing.
A steering committee meeting for the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) was held at Palazzo Chigi today, called and chaired by the Minister for European Affairs, the NRRP and Cohesion Policy, Tommaso Foti. The purpose of the meeting, attended by the Ministers and Undersecretaries in charge as well as by representatives from ANCI [National Association of Italian Municipalities], UPI [Union of Italian Provinces] and the Conference of Regions and Autonomous Provinces, was to verify progress of the 40 objectives linked to the payment request for the eighth instalment of Italy’s NRRP, worth EUR 12.8 billion.
Following a detailed review, the steering committee acknowledged the implementation status of the 12 milestones and 28 targets required for the eighth instalment, which include reforms and investments that are strategic for the nation’s growth, involving 13 administrations.
The most significant measures include: digitalisation of the Guardia di Finanza [Italian Finance Police], with innovative IT systems to fight economic crime; more than 1,000 language and methodology courses for school teachers; the launch of projects to update school curricula in over 8,000 schools and guide students towards STEM skills; completion of culture and tourism enhancement projects by supporting approximately 2,000 small and medium-sized enterprises; redevelopment of around 50 historical parks and gardens.
Regarding the eighth instalment, implementation of measures was also verified linked to: 1,400km of rail infrastructure being equipped with the European Rail Traffic Management System; coverage of an advanced and integrated monitoring and forecasting system to identify hydrogeological risks for 90% of the surface area in southern regions; marine habitat protection and coastal observation work; improving the energy efficiency of public housing; with regard to universities, funding 5,000 research projects of national interest, hiring approximately 2,300 new researchers, allocating more than 550 research grants, and providing financing for research projects on rare and severely debilitating diseases.
Among the strategic reforms that have been carried out, the reduction in payment delays by central and local government authorities, regional authorities, autonomous provinces and national health service bodies is particularly significant.
A steering committee meeting for the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) was held at Palazzo Chigi today, called and chaired by the Minister for European Affairs, the NRRP and Cohesion Policy, Tommaso Foti. The purpose of the meeting, attended by the Ministers and Undersecretaries in charge as well as by representatives from ANCI [National Association of Italian Municipalities], UPI [Union of Italian Provinces] and the Conference of Regions and Autonomous Provinces, was to verify progress of the 40 objectives linked to the payment request for the eighth instalment of Italy’s NRRP, worth EUR 12.8 billion.
Following a detailed review, the steering committee acknowledged the implementation status of the 12 milestones and 28 targets required for the eighth instalment, which include reforms and investments that are strategic for the nation’s growth, involving 13 administrations.
The most significant measures include: digitalisation of the Guardia di Finanza [Italian Finance Police], with innovative IT systems to fight economic crime; more than 1,000 language and methodology courses for school teachers; the launch of projects to update school curricula in over 8,000 schools and guide students towards STEM skills; completion of culture and tourism enhancement projects by supporting approximately 2,000 small and medium-sized enterprises; redevelopment of around 50 historical parks and gardens.
Regarding the eighth instalment, implementation of measures was also verified linked to: 1,400km of rail infrastructure being equipped with the European Rail Traffic Management System; coverage of an advanced and integrated monitoring and forecasting system to identify hydrogeological risks for 90% of the surface area in southern regions; marine habitat protection and coastal observation work; improving the energy efficiency of public housing; with regard to universities, funding 5,000 research projects of national interest, hiring approximately 2,300 new researchers, allocating more than 550 research grants, and providing financing for research projects on rare and severely debilitating diseases.
Among the strategic reforms that have been carried out, the reduction in payment delays by central and local government authorities, regional authorities, autonomous provinces and national health service bodies is particularly significant.
The founding members of Black Sabbath were awarded the Freedom of the City of Birmingham at a ceremony in the Council House on Saturday.
At the ceremony, the original band members of Terence “Geezer” Butler, Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, and Bill Ward were presented with their Freedom of the City scrolls and medals by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Councillor Zafar Iqbal.
The Freedom of the City honour is the one of the oldest traditional ceremonies in the country and recognises people’s exceptional service to the city.
This honour recognises Black Sabbath’s significance to the cultural and musical identity of Birmingham, their strong association with the city and continued influence as pioneers of heavy metal in both Birmingham and beyond.
As part of the Freedom of the City, each band member received the title of Honorary Freeman and an engraving of their names on the Freedom of the City marble board was also unveiled at the ceremony.
The scrolls were produced by local company Hilton Studios and the medals were produced by Jewellery Quarter based business Fattorini.
The medal design was created by competition winner Toby Williams, a student studying in the School of Jewellery at Birmingham City University.
Toby’s winning design was inspired by the themes of industry and community, reflecting the people of Birmingham
Black Sabbath formed in Aston in 1968, going on to create eight albums and selling over 75 million albums worldwide. They are considered pioneers of the heavy metal genre and are one of the most commercially successful heavy metal bands.
They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, awarded a Lifetime Ivor Novello Songwriting Award in 2015 and were presented with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.
Speaking on receipt of the award, Terence “Geezer” Butler said: “This is a great working class city, and we’re all working class, from Aston. We weren’t given a chance when we started out, but Birmingham has always been behind us. People used to make fun of our accents, but we’re all proud Birmingham people and we love this city. It’s one of the greatest cities ever, it’s given the world so much and we’re proud to be here.”
Tony Iommi added: “It’s a great thing to receive. Birmingham is our home, and we love what Birmingham has done for us. We’ve got the bridge and the bench, things like that. We’re very grateful.”
Ozzy Osbourne said: “I first put an advert in a music store in town. If these guys hadn’t come to my door, I wouldn’t be sitting here now. It seems to have flown by so quickly. It’s amazing. I think about my dad, who went into debt to buy me a microphone. If only he could be here now. I think he would be very proud. I’m a Brummie and I always will be a Brummie. Birmingham Forever!”
Bill Ward added: “It’s completely overwhelming. I’m so proud to be an Astonian. That’s where I got my attitude. It was a blessed – and cursed! – to meet Tony when I was 15, and I’m so proud that I got to know Geezer and Ozzy. They’re my brothers. I love them very much and we love our city very much.”
The engravings in the Council House building joins Black Sabbath bridge on Broad Street as a permanent tribute to the band and their accomplishments.
Cllr Sharon Thompson, Deputy Leader of the city council said “From the streets of Aston to global success, the ceremony has been a fitting celebration of their achievements and connection to our city, showcasing the band’s incredible career as pioneers of heavy metal and recognising their continued legacy as part of Birmingham’s rich musical identity.
Black Sabbath are global ambassadors of our city, and their music continues to inspire musicians across the world, so it has been wonderful to recognise the band with this honour.”
Councillor Zafar Iqbal, Lord Mayor of Birmingham: “It is a pleasure to pronounce Terence “Geezer” Butler, Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, and Bill Ward as Freemen of the City of Birmingham.
The Freedom of the City is one of the oldest civic honours and given in recognition of exceptional service to Birmingham.
Conferring these honours on Black Sabbath’s founding members, who are proud Brummies, is a fitting tribute to the band, marking their importance to Birmingham’s cultural landscape and the pride of our city as their hometown.
Professor David Mba, Vice Chancellor, at Birmingham City University, said: “We’re proud that our University – and particularly the iconic School of Jewellery – has played such an instrumental role in this special recognition of a very special band.
“The creation of these remarkable medals is a golden demonstration of how BCU – as rooted in Birmingham as Black Sabbath themselves – continues to answer the call of the city, standing alongside willing partners like the City Council.
“Congratulations to Ozzy, Geezer, Tony and Bill. We hold great pride in your peerless representation of Birmingham on a global stage.”
Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian – People’s Republic of China in Russian –
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
KABUL, June 30 (Xinhua) — A total of 2,997 Afghan families (10,661 people) returned home from neighboring Iran and Pakistan on Sunday, the Afghan High Commission for Repatriates’ Issues said on Monday.
The report said the refugees entered Afghanistan through the Torkham, Spin Boldak and Abresham border crossings. Most of the migrants returned from Iran through the Islam Qala checkpoint.
More than 1.2 million Afghans will return from neighboring Iran and Pakistan in 2025, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The Afghan interim government has repeatedly called on Afghan refugees to return home from abroad to contribute to the reconstruction of their war-torn homeland. –0–
Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian – People’s Republic of China in Russian –
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
BEIJING, June 30 (Xinhua) — China is expected to see 953 million passenger train trips during the summer travel season that starts Tuesday, state-owned China Railways Corp. said Monday.
This figure is 5.8 percent higher than the number of passenger trips by rail in the summer of 2024, according to KZhD data.
The summer travel rush is usually a busy season for the rail network as students return home and families head out on trips.
This year’s summer tourist rush will last 62 days from July 1 to August 31, and the average daily passenger volume by rail during this period is expected to be about 15.37 million person-times, the railway operator said.
In order to meet the growing demand, railway authorities will open additional routes, and the number of passenger trains running throughout the country will reach 11,500 per day, KZhD reports. -0-
Source: State University of Management – Official website of the State –
On June 27, the Graduation Ceremony of the students of the Pre-University of the State University of Management took place in the concert hall of the State University of Management.
Vice-Rector of the State University of Management Dmitry Bryukhanov congratulated the students on completing their studies and wished them successful admission to the university.
“Thank you to the parents, grandparents, and, of course, the teachers who helped the children not only to master scientific knowledge, but also to become worthy people. Over the years, GUU has become your home. All this would not have been possible without the help of teachers under the sensitive guidance of Marina Yuryevna. The admission campaign began on June 20, just the day before GUU earned a high place in the National Employment Ranking. We hope that on September 1 you will become students of the first management university in the country. See you at GUU,” concluded Dmitry Bryukhanov.
Also, together with the director of the Pre-University of the State University of Management, Marina Grigorieva, the vice-rector presented gold medals to 11 graduates.
Another 13 students received silver medals, and three students wrote the Unified State Exam for 100 points. In total, 114 students graduated from the Pre-University this year.
In addition, Marina Yuryevna presented letters of gratitude to the parents of graduates.
“Thank you very much for supporting us these two years, for your wonderful children and for always being there. Graduation from Pre-University is just the beginning. There is still admission ahead, higher education and so on. Dear children, may your road to success be straight and all your dreams, even the most incredible ones, come true,” Marina Yuryevna wished.
In turn, the parents prepared a video for the song “Mother Earth,” and 15 pairs of graduates performed a complex choreographic number, full of grace and sadness.
Let us recall that the Pre-University of the State University of Management began its work in 2020. Training is provided free of charge in three profiles: socio-economic, humanitarian and technical (IT-focused).
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Fourth Financing for Development (FfD4) Conference Opening Session: Keynote Speech by DMD Nigel Clarke
Seville, Spain
June 30, 2025
Good morning, everyone.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today, on behalf of the International Monetary Fund. It is a great honor to join you here at the Fourth Financing for Development Conference.
This conference comes at a particularly challenging moment. Once again, the resilience of the world economy is being tested. Uncertainty has been escalating, as major policy shifts reshape countries priorities. Despite progress on trade talks and the scaling back of some tariffs, trade policy uncertainty indicators remain off the charts.
This has major implications for developing countries, for whom risks have grown: downside risks to short-term and longer-term growth prospects. Risks of tightened financing conditions. And yes, risks to their development agenda—including due to cuts in overseas development assistance.
That is why this conference is so important—and so timely. It provides an opportunity to take decisive and necessary steps to accelerate development progress.
And these steps must be taken at both the individual country level and the international community level.
With that in mind, and with this opportunity in our hands, let me stress three critical priorities, one at the country level, and two at the international level.
First priority, at the country level: implement strong domestic reforms. In an uncertain economic environment, the work to advance development must begin at home. Let me point to two sets of critical reforms within this first priority.
One, domestic revenues remain the bedrock of country-led efforts for sustainable growth and development. Many countries can boost the resources available to them by broadening the tax base and improving compliance.
And two, by building strong public financial management systems, they can redirect spending to sectors like health, education, well-targeted social safety nets, and growth- enhancing public investments.
Second priority, at the international level: ensure that the support to development is coordinated and tailored. Development partners must help with policy advice, capacity building, and financial support. And to be effective, that assistance should be tailored to countries’ individual circumstances and challenges. Indeed, while developing countries share many characteristics, there are differences in their economic conditions.
The needs of the poorest and most fragile countries, in particular—who are often hit hardest by global shocks—demand our attention, and for these countries concessional financing remains of critical importance.
Third priority, also at the international level: address debt vulnerabilities. The risk of a systemic debt crisis seems broadly contained for now. But many countries are struggling with high interest costs and refinancing needs that constrain their ability to finance critical development spending and build resilience.
That is why the international community must further improve debt restructuring processes to ensure that countries with unsustainable debt have access to timely and sufficiently deep debt relief.
We have already seen progress under the Common Framework and at the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable. And the recently published Sovereign Debt Restructuring Playbook is an important resource for countries considering seeking a restructuring. But there is still work to be done.
The IMF is doing its part to support developing countries.
Through our tailored policy advice, we help our members make their economies more vibrant and more resilient. We will continue to strengthen our analysis and guidance on monetary, fiscal, exchange rate, and financial sector policies.
Through our capacity development, we will continue to help equip our members with the tools and expertise to chart their own path, working closely with other development partners.
Through our lending instruments, we provide financial support to our members when they need it. Last Fall, we reformed our concessional lending framework, to double its lending capacity while restoring its self-sustainability. And we will continue to explore ways to strengthen our precautionary facilities and ensure our programs are well-designed.
The Fund also actively contributes to addressing debt challenges. We provide technical support to individual restructuring. With the World Bank, we are advancing the work at the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable and are implementing the “three-pillar approach” to help countries with sustainable debt and strong reform agendas, but where high debt service crowds out productive spending.
Simply put: the IMF will continue to help our members achieve economic and financial stability—a prerequisite for reaching their development objectives.
And as we work together this week, we will remain a trusted partner and champion for the international development agenda. Together, we can help bring our members towards a brighter future.
KABUL – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) welcomes a contribution of US$1.7 million from the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) for early action supporting communities in Afghanistan before the drought gets worse and families are pushed to the brink.
Thanks to this contribution, nearly 8,000 families in Faryab Province will receive cash to help them prepare for the worsening drought and avoid forcing them to resort to extreme coping mechanisms. All families will receive US$150 and women-headed households and others with a family member with disability will receive an additional US$30.
“Acting ahead of predicted hazards to prevent or reduce humanitarian impacts on communities is more important than ever, when humanitarian action globally and in Afghanistan is lacking funding and we need to make most out of every dollar,” said Isabelle Moussard Carlsen, Head of Office for OCHA Afghanistan. “The CERF has taken a leading role helping the humanitarian community act early.”
More than one third of the rural population of Faryab is already experiencing crisis or emergency levels of acute food insecurity while the region is faced with an escalating drought.
In Afghanistan erratic extreme weather patterns are becoming the norm. Last year, every province in Afghanistan experienced an environmental shock, notably devastating floods and recurring droughts.
“Every farming family in Faryab sees the drought is worsening and knows already that the next harvest will suffer. Our data shows the same. Acting early and supporting these vulnerable families now saves lives and saves money,” said John Aylieff, WFP’s Country Director in Afghanistan.
CERF has been an outstanding partner to WFP’s operations, supporting rapid, effective and principled humanitarian action in Afghanistan. From 2022 to 2024, CERF contributed more than US$33 million through WFP, saving lives across some of the country’s most vulnerable communities.
# # #
The United Nations World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters, and the impact of climate change.
KABUL – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) welcomes a contribution of US$1.7 million from the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) for early action supporting communities in Afghanistan before the drought gets worse and families are pushed to the brink.
Thanks to this contribution, nearly 8,000 families in Faryab Province will receive cash to help them prepare for the worsening drought and avoid forcing them to resort to extreme coping mechanisms. All families will receive US$150 and women-headed households and others with a family member with disability will receive an additional US$30.
“Acting ahead of predicted hazards to prevent or reduce humanitarian impacts on communities is more important than ever, when humanitarian action globally and in Afghanistan is lacking funding and we need to make most out of every dollar,” said Isabelle Moussard Carlsen, Head of Office for OCHA Afghanistan. “The CERF has taken a leading role helping the humanitarian community act early.”
More than one third of the rural population of Faryab is already experiencing crisis or emergency levels of acute food insecurity while the region is faced with an escalating drought.
In Afghanistan erratic extreme weather patterns are becoming the norm. Last year, every province in Afghanistan experienced an environmental shock, notably devastating floods and recurring droughts.
“Every farming family in Faryab sees the drought is worsening and knows already that the next harvest will suffer. Our data shows the same. Acting early and supporting these vulnerable families now saves lives and saves money,” said John Aylieff, WFP’s Country Director in Afghanistan.
CERF has been an outstanding partner to WFP’s operations, supporting rapid, effective and principled humanitarian action in Afghanistan. From 2022 to 2024, CERF contributed more than US$33 million through WFP, saving lives across some of the country’s most vulnerable communities.
# # #
The United Nations World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters, and the impact of climate change.
Part of the appeal of the 2023 horror flick, M3gan, was that its titular antagonist managed to be two of the scariest villains of the genre in one – a killer robot, and a child’s doll come to life.
After nine-year-old Cady (Violet McGraw) tragically lost her parents, her roboticist aunt Gemma (Allison Williams of Get Out fame) brought M3gan home to help her niece with the traumatic transition. M3gan was to be Cady’s teacher, playmate and above all, protector. In classic horror style, she soon embarked on a murderous rampage in the name of “protecting” her ward.
The film was an instant cult hit, dubbed a “camp classic” thanks to M3gan’s TikTok dance moves and determination to destroy the nuclear family.
In M3gan 2, in cinemas from today, the filmmakers have leaned into that campiness even more. But, as horror expert Adam Daniel explains that doesn’t completely neutralise the terror. Instead, it reformulates it, offering a cathartic release that makes the subject matter more digestible.
If you’re looking for more traditional jump scares, 28 Years Later has you covered. Danny Boyle has returned to the franchise with this instant-classic of the zombie genre, which muses on both post-Brexit Britain and our collective experiences of the COVID pandemic. In this film, Europe has contained a “rage virus” to Britain. There are French boats on quarantine patrols, Swedish soldiers mocking remaining mainlanders and St George’s flags burning.
For COVID storytelling expert Lucyl Harrison: “The film ushers in a new age of ‘Vi-Fi’” (that’s virus fiction) “without succumbing to pulpy pandemic storytelling”. Ralph Fiennes offers a typically strong performance as the “mad” Dr Kelson, the only person determined to commemorate the virus’s ever-mounting dead.
I confess, I’m a bit of a baby when it comes to horror. So, I’ll need to follow up any zombie fare with something a little more comforting. My choice for this week is The Ballad of Wallis Island, which romcom giant Richard Curtis has dubbed “one of the great British films of all time”.
It takes place on the fictional Wallis Island, home to millionaire Charles (Tim Key), an almost obsessive fan of former folk-rock duo played by Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan. Invited to the island to play a private gig, they must face their musical and romantic past, all under the gaze of an ecstatic Charles.
The film was made in just 18 days on a tight budget in a typical Welsh summer – a doctor was on hand to stop the actors getting hypothermia when they filmed in the sea. It reminded our reviewer of another British comedy classic, Victoria Wood’s sitcom Dinnerladies, with its breadcrumb trail of slipped in details that provide laughter in the moment but which return to make the audience think twice.
When Poor Things won the Golden Globe for best picture last year, director Yorgos Lanthimos thanked everybody, from the cast and crew to his hero Bruce Springsteen. But one person who didn’t get a mention was Alasdair Gray, the Scottish artist and writer who wrote the novel the film was based on.
Now Gray is rightly being celebrated at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. The unseen paintings in the new show Alasdair Gray: Works from the Morag McAlpine Bequest come from a donation of works he made after the death of his wife in 2014.
Highlights of the show include his original artwork for his novel Poor Things and the streetscape Gray called “my best big oil painting”, depicting Cowcaddens in Glasgow.
Pride month is coming to an end, but you can enjoy the movies in our Hidden Gems of Queer Cinema series year round. These articles highlight brilliant films that should be more widely known and firmly part of the canon of queer cinema. I’d particularly recommend Saving Face (2004), complicated romcom that tenderly depicts the experiences of queer Asian people.
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.
Part of the appeal of the 2023 horror flick, M3gan, was that its titular antagonist managed to be two of the scariest villains of the genre in one – a killer robot, and a child’s doll come to life.
After nine-year-old Cady (Violet McGraw) tragically lost her parents, her roboticist aunt Gemma (Allison Williams of Get Out fame) brought M3gan home to help her niece with the traumatic transition. M3gan was to be Cady’s teacher, playmate and above all, protector. In classic horror style, she soon embarked on a murderous rampage in the name of “protecting” her ward.
The film was an instant cult hit, dubbed a “camp classic” thanks to M3gan’s TikTok dance moves and determination to destroy the nuclear family.
In M3gan 2, in cinemas from today, the filmmakers have leaned into that campiness even more. But, as horror expert Adam Daniel explains that doesn’t completely neutralise the terror. Instead, it reformulates it, offering a cathartic release that makes the subject matter more digestible.
If you’re looking for more traditional jump scares, 28 Years Later has you covered. Danny Boyle has returned to the franchise with this instant-classic of the zombie genre, which muses on both post-Brexit Britain and our collective experiences of the COVID pandemic. In this film, Europe has contained a “rage virus” to Britain. There are French boats on quarantine patrols, Swedish soldiers mocking remaining mainlanders and St George’s flags burning.
For COVID storytelling expert Lucyl Harrison: “The film ushers in a new age of ‘Vi-Fi’” (that’s virus fiction) “without succumbing to pulpy pandemic storytelling”. Ralph Fiennes offers a typically strong performance as the “mad” Dr Kelson, the only person determined to commemorate the virus’s ever-mounting dead.
I confess, I’m a bit of a baby when it comes to horror. So, I’ll need to follow up any zombie fare with something a little more comforting. My choice for this week is The Ballad of Wallis Island, which romcom giant Richard Curtis has dubbed “one of the great British films of all time”.
It takes place on the fictional Wallis Island, home to millionaire Charles (Tim Key), an almost obsessive fan of former folk-rock duo played by Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan. Invited to the island to play a private gig, they must face their musical and romantic past, all under the gaze of an ecstatic Charles.
The film was made in just 18 days on a tight budget in a typical Welsh summer – a doctor was on hand to stop the actors getting hypothermia when they filmed in the sea. It reminded our reviewer of another British comedy classic, Victoria Wood’s sitcom Dinnerladies, with its breadcrumb trail of slipped in details that provide laughter in the moment but which return to make the audience think twice.
When Poor Things won the Golden Globe for best picture last year, director Yorgos Lanthimos thanked everybody, from the cast and crew to his hero Bruce Springsteen. But one person who didn’t get a mention was Alasdair Gray, the Scottish artist and writer who wrote the novel the film was based on.
Now Gray is rightly being celebrated at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. The unseen paintings in the new show Alasdair Gray: Works from the Morag McAlpine Bequest come from a donation of works he made after the death of his wife in 2014.
Highlights of the show include his original artwork for his novel Poor Things and the streetscape Gray called “my best big oil painting”, depicting Cowcaddens in Glasgow.
Pride month is coming to an end, but you can enjoy the movies in our Hidden Gems of Queer Cinema series year round. These articles highlight brilliant films that should be more widely known and firmly part of the canon of queer cinema. I’d particularly recommend Saving Face (2004), complicated romcom that tenderly depicts the experiences of queer Asian people.
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.
Nato leaders agreed to ramp up defence spending to 5% of their countries’ economic output by 2035 at a summit in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25. US president Donald Trump, who has spent months saying Europe should take more responsibility for its own security, described the pledge as “a monumental win for the US” and a “big win” for western civilisation.
A few months earlier, in March, the EU also launched its long-awaited white paper on defence. This provides a blueprint for improving Europe’s readiness to respond to military threats by 2030. On top of the fact that global military spending has surged in the past ten years, these developments indicate that the world’s largest nations now prioritise military over economic diplomacy.
One of the main ideas behind military diplomacy is that increased defence spending acts as a deterrent to future conflicts. The nuclear arms race between the US and Soviet Union during the cold war provides some support for this argument. The prospect of mutual destruction was so great that it acted as a deterrent to nuclear war.
But is increased defence spending really the necessary price for greater peace and prosperity? My research on interactions between firms, geopolitics and the political economy of defence indicates that this is no “big win” for society or economic productivity.
Deterrence requires a level of brinkmanship if it is to work. But as American economist Thomas Schelling pointed out in his 1960 book, The Strategy of Conflict, the problem with brinkmanship is that it relies on deliberately allowing a situation to get somewhat out of hand, with the intention of forcing the other party to back down.
This can result in strategic blunders. Efforts by the former US president, Richard Nixon, to engineer such a situation in 1969 by threatening to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam failed to gain credibility with the Soviets and North Vietnamese. This undoubtedly helped convince North Vietnam that it could survive the war and locked the US into a much longer conflict.
The recent confrontation between Israel and Iran also showed that brinkmanship can produce situations where there are significant casualties and no clear long-term resolution. Iran has long recognised that keeping itself near the threshold of nuclear weapons capability would offer a deterrent against external threats.
But this strategy created many opportunities for error. Israel claimed that Iran was too close to building a nuclear weapon and, alongside the US, launched strikes that they say inflicted significant damage on Iranian nuclear enrichment capabilities and military leadership.
Beyond this, it is unclear just how much military spending is needed to deter aggression. Nato allies have now committed to a big increase in defence spending – thanks largely to pressure from Trump.
However, even Nato’s previous objective that countries commit 2% of their national income to defence has proved unattractive for many governments. This has even been the case in post-conflict areas such as the Balkans, where Nato has had a heavy involvement.
A costly alternative
Boosting defence spending falls short on delivering economic prosperity, too. Analysing US military spending in the Vietnam war, economist Les Fishman noted in 1967 that military diplomacy was far more costly than its economic equivalent.
Military production requires continuously high levels of investment to maintain technological progress. This sucks public investment from other parts of the economy.
That’s not to say defence spending has an entirely negative effect on the economy. Studies have found evidence that US federal funding of military research and development results in significant increases in private business research in sectors such as chemicals and aerospace.
And, over the past decade, the value of venture capital deals in the US defence industry has grown 18-fold. This far outstrips sectors such as energy and healthcare. But such investment in military-related research and development is also often acknowledged as inefficient and not necessarily the best way to boost productivity.
Fishman pointed out that the Marshall Plan, which provided substantial economic aid to western Europe after the second world war, had a far higher return for the US.
Economic stabilisation kept the Soviet Union at bay for relatively small outlay compared to the Vietnam war, where casualties were of such a magnitude that it made any cost-benefit analysis meaningless.
Boosting defence spending also represents a lost opportunity to invest in more socially beneficial projects. This will worsen the climate crisis.
According to a study shared with the Guardian in May, the initial rearmament planned by Nato alone could have increased greenhouse gas emissions by almost 200 million tonnes a year. The expanded defence commitment will only increase this further.
Unlike defence, where the repurposing of civilian technologies for military uses carries a cost to society, many green investments involve beneficial substitutions that reduce the cost of a green transition.
The substitution of conventional fossil fuel heating and transport systems with heat pumps and electric vehicles, for example, is far more socially beneficial than repurposing civilian satellites for missile systems.
A final point is that military diplomacy is itself geopolitically destabilising. US efforts to contain communism in Asia during the 1950s and 1960s are a good example. Not only did such efforts see China align its trade with other communist states, it also ensured that self-reliance became a cornerstone of China’s economic strategy.
This all suggests that the current drive for deterrence-based military spending carries with it a huge cost for society that could ultimately prove economically wasteful and geopolitically destabilising.
Damian Tobin 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.
Nato leaders agreed to ramp up defence spending to 5% of their countries’ economic output by 2035 at a summit in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25. US president Donald Trump, who has spent months saying Europe should take more responsibility for its own security, described the pledge as “a monumental win for the US” and a “big win” for western civilisation.
A few months earlier, in March, the EU also launched its long-awaited white paper on defence. This provides a blueprint for improving Europe’s readiness to respond to military threats by 2030. On top of the fact that global military spending has surged in the past ten years, these developments indicate that the world’s largest nations now prioritise military over economic diplomacy.
One of the main ideas behind military diplomacy is that increased defence spending acts as a deterrent to future conflicts. The nuclear arms race between the US and Soviet Union during the cold war provides some support for this argument. The prospect of mutual destruction was so great that it acted as a deterrent to nuclear war.
But is increased defence spending really the necessary price for greater peace and prosperity? My research on interactions between firms, geopolitics and the political economy of defence indicates that this is no “big win” for society or economic productivity.
Deterrence requires a level of brinkmanship if it is to work. But as American economist Thomas Schelling pointed out in his 1960 book, The Strategy of Conflict, the problem with brinkmanship is that it relies on deliberately allowing a situation to get somewhat out of hand, with the intention of forcing the other party to back down.
This can result in strategic blunders. Efforts by the former US president, Richard Nixon, to engineer such a situation in 1969 by threatening to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam failed to gain credibility with the Soviets and North Vietnamese. This undoubtedly helped convince North Vietnam that it could survive the war and locked the US into a much longer conflict.
The recent confrontation between Israel and Iran also showed that brinkmanship can produce situations where there are significant casualties and no clear long-term resolution. Iran has long recognised that keeping itself near the threshold of nuclear weapons capability would offer a deterrent against external threats.
But this strategy created many opportunities for error. Israel claimed that Iran was too close to building a nuclear weapon and, alongside the US, launched strikes that they say inflicted significant damage on Iranian nuclear enrichment capabilities and military leadership.
Beyond this, it is unclear just how much military spending is needed to deter aggression. Nato allies have now committed to a big increase in defence spending – thanks largely to pressure from Trump.
However, even Nato’s previous objective that countries commit 2% of their national income to defence has proved unattractive for many governments. This has even been the case in post-conflict areas such as the Balkans, where Nato has had a heavy involvement.
A costly alternative
Boosting defence spending falls short on delivering economic prosperity, too. Analysing US military spending in the Vietnam war, economist Les Fishman noted in 1967 that military diplomacy was far more costly than its economic equivalent.
Military production requires continuously high levels of investment to maintain technological progress. This sucks public investment from other parts of the economy.
That’s not to say defence spending has an entirely negative effect on the economy. Studies have found evidence that US federal funding of military research and development results in significant increases in private business research in sectors such as chemicals and aerospace.
And, over the past decade, the value of venture capital deals in the US defence industry has grown 18-fold. This far outstrips sectors such as energy and healthcare. But such investment in military-related research and development is also often acknowledged as inefficient and not necessarily the best way to boost productivity.
Fishman pointed out that the Marshall Plan, which provided substantial economic aid to western Europe after the second world war, had a far higher return for the US.
Economic stabilisation kept the Soviet Union at bay for relatively small outlay compared to the Vietnam war, where casualties were of such a magnitude that it made any cost-benefit analysis meaningless.
Boosting defence spending also represents a lost opportunity to invest in more socially beneficial projects. This will worsen the climate crisis.
According to a study shared with the Guardian in May, the initial rearmament planned by Nato alone could have increased greenhouse gas emissions by almost 200 million tonnes a year. The expanded defence commitment will only increase this further.
Unlike defence, where the repurposing of civilian technologies for military uses carries a cost to society, many green investments involve beneficial substitutions that reduce the cost of a green transition.
The substitution of conventional fossil fuel heating and transport systems with heat pumps and electric vehicles, for example, is far more socially beneficial than repurposing civilian satellites for missile systems.
A final point is that military diplomacy is itself geopolitically destabilising. US efforts to contain communism in Asia during the 1950s and 1960s are a good example. Not only did such efforts see China align its trade with other communist states, it also ensured that self-reliance became a cornerstone of China’s economic strategy.
This all suggests that the current drive for deterrence-based military spending carries with it a huge cost for society that could ultimately prove economically wasteful and geopolitically destabilising.
Damian Tobin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi on Sunday called on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to recognize Israel and the United States as the initiators of the “aggression” against Iran.
In a letter addressed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and UNSC President Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Araghchi urged the Council to fulfill its responsibility in maintaining international peace and security, according to the official IRNA news agency.
He accused Israel of deliberately targeting residential buildings, civilians, and civilian infrastructure, describing the attacks as a “flagrant breach” of the UN Charter and a “blatant violation” of international law.
Araghchi said Israel and the United States had also targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities — safeguarded by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — in “grave violation of the UN Charter, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as the IAEA’s instruments and resolutions.”
The Iranian foreign minister emphasized that the UNSC should hold the “aggressors” accountable and act to prevent the recurrence of such “crimes.”
On June 13, Israel launched major airstrikes on several areas in Iran, including nuclear and military sites, killing senior commanders, nuclear scientists, and numerous civilians. Iran responded with multiple waves of missile and drone attacks on Israel.
On June 22, U.S. forces bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities. In retaliation, Iran struck the U.S. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
After 12 days of fighting, a ceasefire between Iran and Israel was reached on Tuesday.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Press release
Over 4,000 school-based childcare places this September
Nearly 200 school-based nurseries planning to open this September, with next wave of rollout – backed by almost £370 million – to launch in the Autumn.
Thousands of families across the country will soon benefit from new childcare places in local schools closer to where they live, as the government’s school-based nurseries rollout is on track to deliver over 4,000 places this September.
Nearly 200 schools with spades in the ground, that are planning to open in just two months’ time, have reported they are set to exceed the government’s initial projections on places, meaning more high-quality, accessible and affordable childcare options for parents.
Thanks to the brilliant work from school and early years leaders, these new school-based nursery places and thousands more across the provider sector are set to be available in time for working parents to take up the 30 government-funded hours, saving them up to £7,500 on average every year.
On top of cash back in parents’ pockets, the upcoming milestone will break down barriers to opportunity for families by enabling more parents to return to work – increasing choices for parents, and life chances for children. According to a recent government survey, of the 2,723 respondents who are planning to increase their childcare hours in September, over half (1,425) are intending to up their work hours too.
With savings from the government’s free breakfast club rollout – which has already delivered over two million meals – and school uniform cap, this rises to up to £8,000 for working parents who also have school-aged children, every year.
As part of its Plan for Change, delivering on its promise of high-quality childcare to the children who need it most is a government priority. That’s why schools were chosen in places currently underserved by the market, to increase choices for parents that need it, in their local area. On average, 20 places will be available per site – and up to 6,000 new places in total across the 300 schools taking part in the first phase of the rollout.
Last month, the government announced almost £370 million of further funding to support the future of the programme, with the next phase due to launch in the Autumn.
School-based nurseries, private, voluntary and independent nurseries, as well as childminders, all have an important role to play in the government’s mission to get tens of thousands more children school ready every year and put more cash in working parents’ pockets.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said:
Giving every child the best start in life is my number one priority, and making sure hard-working parents are able to benefit from this rollout is a promise made, and promise kept.
Every corner of the early years sector has a vital role to play, and the progress made so far, in the face of an enormous inherited delivery challenge, is testament to their dedication to children and families up and down the country.
This September is only the beginning. This government has a clear Plan for Change to get tens of thousands more children school ready each year so that every child, from any background, gets the opportunities they need to get on in life.
Alongside the benefits to family finances, high-quality early education builds children’s confidence, social skills, and prepares them for school. That’s why the government is backing programmes to provide early years educators with the bespoke tools, training and resources they need to help young minds to thrive.
Already, 11,000 primary schools are registered to deliver the Nuffield Early Language Intervention, and 800 more settings have been recruited to the Maths Champions professional development programme. In the coming days, the Education Secretary will set out the government’s vision for Reception and next phase of action on school readiness.
Minet Infant and Nursery School in Hayes is one of the nearly 200 schools set to roll out new early years places from this September. Headteacher Wayne Wathen-Howell said:
We’re proud to be opening a new nursery right here in our school – it’s a big moment for our community.
Parents have told us how important it is to have affordable, high-quality childcare close to home, and this new nursery will make a real difference. Not only will it help families balance work and family life, it also gives our youngest children the best possible start in a familiar, supportive environment.
Being based on a school site means children can settle in early, build confidence, and feel ready for the step into Reception. We’re excited to welcome them through our doors this September.
Next year, the government will work with the sector to go further and faster, increasing funding to over £9 billion, building on £75 million already delivered to help providers grow places, and a record uplift to the Early Years Pupil Premium.
The founding members of Black Sabbath were awarded the Freedom of the City of Birmingham at a ceremony in the Council House on Saturday.
At the ceremony, the original band members of Terence “Geezer” Butler, Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, and Bill Ward were presented with their Freedom of the City scrolls and medals by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Councillor Zafar Iqbal.
The Freedom of the City honour is the one of the oldest traditional ceremonies in the country and recognises people’s exceptional service to the city.
This honour recognises Black Sabbath’s significance to the cultural and musical identity of Birmingham, their strong association with the city and continued influence as pioneers of heavy metal in both Birmingham and beyond.
As part of the Freedom of the City, each band member received the title of Honorary Freeman and an engraving of their names on the Freedom of the City marble board was also unveiled at the ceremony.
The scrolls were produced by local company Hilton Studios and the medals were produced by Jewellery Quarter based business Fattorini.
The medal design was created by competition winner Toby Williams, a student studying in the School of Jewellery at Birmingham City University.
Toby’s winning design was inspired by the themes of industry and community, reflecting the people of Birmingham
Black Sabbath formed in Aston in 1968, going on to create eight albums and selling over 75 million albums worldwide. They are considered pioneers of the heavy metal genre and are one of the most commercially successful heavy metal bands.
They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, awarded a Lifetime Ivor Novello Songwriting Award in 2015 and were presented with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.
Speaking on receipt of the award, Terence “Geezer” Butler said: “This is a great working class city, and we’re all working class, from Aston. We weren’t given a chance when we started out, but Birmingham has always been behind us. People used to make fun of our accents, but we’re all proud Birmingham people and we love this city. It’s one of the greatest cities ever, it’s given the world so much and we’re proud to be here.”
Tony Iommi added: “It’s a great thing to receive. Birmingham is our home, and we love what Birmingham has done for us. We’ve got the bridge and the bench, things like that. We’re very grateful.”
Ozzy Osbourne said: “I first put an advert in a music store in town. If these guys hadn’t come to my door, I wouldn’t be sitting here now. It seems to have flown by so quickly. It’s amazing. I think about my dad, who went into debt to buy me a microphone. If only he could be here now. I think he would be very proud. I’m a Brummie and I always will be a Brummie. Birmingham Forever!”
Bill Ward added: “It’s completely overwhelming. I’m so proud to be an Astonian. That’s where I got my attitude. It was a blessed – and cursed! – to meet Tony when I was 15, and I’m so proud that I got to know Geezer and Ozzy. They’re my brothers. I love them very much and we love our city very much.”
The engravings in the Council House building joins Black Sabbath bridge on Broad Street as a permanent tribute to the band and their accomplishments.
Cllr Sharon Thompson, Deputy Leader of the city council said “From the streets of Aston to global success, the ceremony has been a fitting celebration of their achievements and connection to our city, showcasing the band’s incredible career as pioneers of heavy metal and recognising their continued legacy as part of Birmingham’s rich musical identity.
Black Sabbath are global ambassadors of our city, and their music continues to inspire musicians across the world, so it has been wonderful to recognise the band with this honour.”
Councillor Zafar Iqbal, Lord Mayor of Birmingham: “It is a pleasure to pronounce Terence “Geezer” Butler, Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, and Bill Ward as Freemen of the City of Birmingham.
The Freedom of the City is one of the oldest civic honours and given in recognition of exceptional service to Birmingham.
Conferring these honours on Black Sabbath’s founding members, who are proud Brummies, is a fitting tribute to the band, marking their importance to Birmingham’s cultural landscape and the pride of our city as their hometown.
Professor David Mba, Vice Chancellor, at Birmingham City University, said: “We’re proud that our University – and particularly the iconic School of Jewellery – has played such an instrumental role in this special recognition of a very special band.
“The creation of these remarkable medals is a golden demonstration of how BCU – as rooted in Birmingham as Black Sabbath themselves – continues to answer the call of the city, standing alongside willing partners like the City Council.
“Congratulations to Ozzy, Geezer, Tony and Bill. We hold great pride in your peerless representation of Birmingham on a global stage.”
Members reappointed to National Park Authority and National Landscape boards
Members will continue protecting England’s landscapes through the North York Moors National Park Authority and the Cotswolds Conservation Board.
A series of reappointments have been made to the boards of the North York Moors National Park Authority (NPA) and the Cotswolds Conservation Board.
Abida Nayyar has been reappointed to the North York Moors NPA for a second term of four years, from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2029.
Katherine Chesson and Ellie Fujioka have both been reappointed to the Cotswolds Conservation Board for a second term of three years, from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028.
All reappointments have been made in accordance with the Governance Code on Public Appointments published by the Cabinet Office. All appointments are made on merit and political activity plays no part in the selection process.
England’s National Parks and National Landscapes are home to some of our most important habitats and wildlife. The overall role of a board member is to contribute to the leadership, scrutiny, and direction of the National Park Authority or Conservation Board, and further its statutory purposes.
La Virgen de la Puerta behind a glass window at the pinnacle of the church.Caitlin Cipolla-McCulloch
Leo XIV, the first pope born in the United States, is also claimed by the Peruvian people whom he served for over two decades as one of their own.
Then known as Robert Francis Prevost, he lived and worked in the cities of Trujillo and Chiclayo in northern Peru. In Chiclayo he served as bishop from 2015-2023. Trujillo is a few hours south of Chiclayo, where the pope lived for a decade.
His ministry there is particularly exciting to me because I also lived in northern Peru, during a service year with the Marianist Family between my undergraduate experience at the University of Dayton and my first year of full-time ministry. The Marianist Family was founded in response to specific needs in postrevolutionary French society. Composed of lay people and vowed religious sisters, brothers and priests, it emphasizes devotion to Mary and a communal lifestyle as a distinctive way of living out one’s Roman Catholicism.
About a two-hour bus ride away from Trujillo lies the mountainous town of Otuzco, where I lived with other members of the Marianist Family – a place that would later become a significant focus of my research as a lay Marianist and Mariologist. An image of Mary – La Virgen de la Puerta – now housed in a shrine church, has been venerated and revered in the community for over 300 years.
The shrine church of La Virgen de la Puerta.
The majority of those who maintain a devotional relationship with this image, both local or from the surrounding villages, are part of the Catholic religious majority in Peru. But some other Peruvians – including non- Catholics, some members of the LGBTQ+ community, and others who are marginalized, such as former prisoners and migrants – also revere her. Many of the devotees do not live near Otuzco but maintain a spiritual relationship with La Virgen de la Puerta.
The founding of Otuzco
The Augustinians – the religious congregation of brothers and priests that Leo XIV is a member of – settled in Otuzco in 1560.
As part of the founding of the town, the Augustinian Fathers placed the town under the protection of Mary, the mother of Jesus. They acquired a Spanish image, a statue of Mary made mostly of wood, and selected Dec. 15 to celebrate her locally. This tradition has continued since 1664, about 100 years after the Augustinian Fathers settled in Otuzco.
A Virgen de la Puerta procession in the evening in the streets of Otuzco. Caitlin Cipolla-McCulloch
During one particular threat to their safety, around 1670, they took this image into the streets in procession to protect their town. They placed this image of Mary above the door of the church in the center of town and called the image “Nuestra Señora de la Puerta” – transliterated into English: “Our Lady of the Door.”
Contemporary pilgrimage in Otuzco
In modern times, the fiesta of La Virgen de la Puerta is lavishly celebrated in the town of Otuzco, where thousands of faithful descend upon the mountain community for the multiday fiesta patronal, a festive celebration that honors the patron saint to whom a site is dedicated or entrusted.
The fiesta patronal of La Virgen de la Puerta begins annually on Dec. 14, with the principal day observed on Dec. 15, and concludes on Dec. 16.
During the days of the fiesta, the road between Trujillo and Otuzco is transformed into a pilgrimage route. The purpose of the journey can vary from pilgrim to pilgrim, yet it often reflects a deeply personal act of devotion.
Some pilgrims arrive from Otuzco, Trujillo and neighboring villages, while others travel long distances – in Peru or from abroad – to honor La Virgen de la Puerta. Some pilgrims journey the roughly 50 miles (over 80 kilometers) between Trujillo and Otuzco on foot.
I personally made this journey with a group of fellow pilgrims, the very people I was living among and ministering with during my service year in Peru. My pilgrimage involved a backpack with basic medical supplies for the group. After an overnight walk to Otuzco in camping pants, a T-shirt, hat and sneakers, I arrived before the image of Mary with quarter-size blisters on my feet.
La Virgen de la Puerta procession through the streets of Otuzco. Caitlin Cipolla-McCulloch
Some pilgrims, unlike me, mark the final kilometers of their journey by advancing to the shrine through the streets on their knees.
Devotion outside Otuzco
In addition to the thousands who descend on the town of Otuzco each year for the celebration, there are those who are deeply devoted to La Virgen de la Puerta but do not or cannot make the journey to the shrine. Their celebrations take place at times at a great distance from Otuzco.
Among them are members of the LGBTQ+ community, who to this day remain marginalized in broader Peruvian and Catholic culture. Although members of the LGBTQ+ community reside throughout Peru, the neighborhood of Cerro El Pino in Lima has historically been the site of a festive celebration in honor of La Virgen de la Puerta, which many community members observe.
Differing communities come with differing needs to La Virgen de la Puerta. The LGBTQ+ community in this particular neighborhood believes she has protected them throughout their history. During the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, when over 10% of the male population in Lima was infected by HIV, members of this community sought the protection of La Virgen de la Puerta for their physical health. Although some people died from AIDS, others continued to participate in the rituals of the fiesta to honor her protection over time, even amid their suffering. They wore special costumes, sang and performed the dances that have been part of the fiesta patronal for over 300 years.
Francisco Rodríguez Torres is a Peruvian photographer who lives in the capital city, Lima, but has roots in the northern region where the image of La Virgen de la Puerta is located. He is one of those who has documented the activities of the fiesta patronal both in Otuzco and in Lima in his text La Mamita de Otuzco.
He writes both about the local faithful as well as those who venerate the image from a distance. In his Spanish language text, he has documented that La Virgen de la Puerta is considered a mother by groups who find themselves on the margins of society. These groups include those who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, the poor, former prisoners and migrants. They “hope to find in her gaze a consolation,” he explains.
Devotees bring their special petitions before La Virgen de la Puerta: They ask for her support in making decisions and for their everyday needs. Some even pray for miraculous healing.
Echoing this sentiment of finding hope in La Virgen de la Puerta, Pope Francis, during his apostolic journey to Peru, crowned La Virgen de la Puerta and gave her the title of Mother of Mercy and Hope. In his address during a special prayer service in Trujillo on Jan. 20, 2018, Francis recounted that La Virgen de la Puerta has defended and protected all of her children throughout history.
Leo, following the example of Francis, has focused on the importance of dialogue and peace. In his first message from the balcony upon being announced pope he said that members of the Catholic Church must build “bridges, dialogue, always open to receive like this square with its open arms, all, all who need our charity, our presence, dialogue and love.”
I believe that La Virgen de la Puerta – a source of mercy and hope for all her devotees, regardless of whether they have been historically marginalized or excluded – offers an example to the world community of the greater unity with one another that Leo XIV is seeking to prioritize.
Caitlin Cipolla-McCulloch 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.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Katherine LeMasters, Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Colorado Boulder
The people most impacted by Colorado’s fentanyl criminalization bill have divergent views on the role of the legal system in curbing the opioid epidemic.Erik McGregor/GettyImages
Colorado passed the Fentanyl Accountability and Prevention Bill in May 2022. The legislation made the possession of small amounts of fentanyl a felony, rather than a misdemeanor.
Felonies are more likely than misdemeanors to result in a prison sentence.
In 2023, lawmakers in 46 states passed legislation similar to Colorado’s. They introduced more than 600 bills related to fentanyl criminalization and enacted over 100 other laws to attempt to curb the opioid epidemic.
Possession of small amounts of ketamine, GHB and other criminalized drugs is also a felony in Colorado.
I’m an assistant professor of medicine, social epidemiologist and community researcher who studies mass incarceration as a public health threat. I am a member of the Right Response Coalition, which advocates for community rather than criminal-legal responses to behavioral health needs in Colorado. Recently, my work has focused on how increasing criminal penalties for fentanyl possession in Colorado affects the individuals and communities most impacted by such laws.
Our team conducted 31 interviews with Colorado policymakers, peer support specialists, law enforcement, community behavioral health providers and people providing behavioral health in prisons and jails to explore a variety of perspectives on Colorado’s Fentanyl Accountability and Prevention Bill and the role of the criminal-legal system in addressing substance use and overdose.
Most of our interviewees agreed that criminalization alone wouldn’t solve the opioid epidemic.
“You can’t incarcerate yourself to sobriety,” said a rural law enforcement officer. “You can’t incarcerate yourself out of the drug problem in America.”
People recently released from incarceration are more likely to overdose than the general public because their tolerance is greatly reduced following forced abstinence and there are not enough community-based treatment options. Erik McGregor/GettyImages
All 31 of the participants in our study supported policies to prevent fentanyl overdoses. However, most thought that use of police and incarceration as avenues to do so was misguided.
“It just seems like there’s no getting away from [the police], they’re everywhere,” said an urban peer support specialist. “I got arrested by the same cops, I don’t know how many times. And then it makes you want to try to be avoidant or run because they’re not going to help you.”
Participants worried that the policy has an inadvertent chilling effect, deterring individuals from calling 911 when an overdose occurs.
“Most people with substance abuse are not trying to report anything or get help for fear of going to jail,” one rural provider said. “It’s so stigmatized that everyone’s just scared to do that.”
Study participants worried that the Colorado fentanyl criminalization bill will deter people from reporting an overdose for fear of being arrested. Spencer Platt/GettyImages
Participants largely thought that counties were using incarceration as a default treatment setting and that it wasn’t an ideal solution.
“[I] don’t want to see [people] incarcerated, but I don’t want ‘em to die either,” said an urban peer support specialist.
Colorado’s fentanyl bill did more than just increase penalties. It also provided additional funding for a state naloxone program and required that all jails provide medications for opioid use disorder.
Along with increasing penalties, Colorado’s bill increased access to naloxone, an opioid-reversal drug. Hyoung Chang/GettyImages
Based on our study’s findings, my study co-authors and I believe increased criminal penalties should not be the solution for linking individuals to treatment. Instead, there should be more investment in long-term community solutions.
One such solution is Denver’s Substance Use Navigation Program. The program sends behavioral health specialists to emergency calls to prevent legal involvement when someone is experiencing distress related to mental health, poverty, homelessness or substance use. In many cases, those individuals are then routed to services rather than jails.
Our findings also lead us to believe there is a need for more participatory policymaking processes when it comes to fentanyl legislation, and that policymakers should more closely work with the people who will be most impacted by new legislation. Most of our participants agree.
“[I] don’t think that [the] state realized how difficult it is,” said a rural provider about giving medication-assisted treatment in jail, an increasing need as more people are arrested for fentanyl possession. “They probably should come here and visit us.”
Katherine LeMasters received funding from the Colorado Department of Human Services, Behavioral Health Administration. Katherine LeMasters is part of the Right Response Coalition.
The foods and scents we associate with our childhoods can provide a meaningful source of comfort and connection.zeljkosantrac/E+ via Getty Images
Walking around my neighborhood in the evening, I am hit by the smells of summer: fresh-cut grass, hamburgers grilling and a hint of swimming pool chlorine. These are also the smells of summers from my adolescence, and they remind me of Friday evenings at the community pool with my friends and our families gathered around picnic tables between swims. The memories always brings a smile to my face.
As a social psychologist, I shouldn’t feel surprised to experience this warm glow. My researchfocuses on nostalgia – a sentimental longing for treasured moments in our personal pasts – and how nostalgia is linked to our well-being and feelings of connection with others.
Triggered by sensory stimuli such as music, scents and foods, nostalgia has the power to mentally transport us back in time. This might be to important occasions, to moments of triumph and – importantly – moments revolving around close family and friends and other important people in our lives.
As it turns out, this experience is good for us.
How the concept of nostalgia evolved
For centuries, nostalgia was considered unhealthy.
In the 1600s, a Swiss medical student named Johannes Hofer studied mercenaries in the Italian and French lowlands who longed desperately for their mountain homelands. Witnessing their weeping and despondency, he coined the term nostalgia and attributed it to a brain disease. Other thinkers of the time echoed this view, which persisted through the 18th and 19th centuries.
However, early thinkers made an error: They assumed that nostalgia was causing unpleasant symptoms. It may have been the reverse. Unpleasant experiences, such as lonelinessand grief, can arouse nostalgia, which can then help people cope more effectively with these hardships.
While nostalgia is a universal experience, it is also deeply personal. The moments for which we are each nostalgic and the stimuli that might trigger our nostalgic memories can vary from one person to the next depending on the experiences that each of us have. But people within the same culture may find similar stimuli to be nostalgic for them. In a 2013 study, for instance, my team found that American participants rated pumpkin pie spice as the most nostalgia-evoking scent out of a variety of options.
Many nostalgia-inducing scents vary from person to person, but pumpkin pie spice may be one of the most evocative scents in the U.S. Redjina Ph/Moment via Getty Images
The nostalgic power of scents and foods
In 1922, the French novelist Marcel Proust wrote about the strength of scents and foods to elicit nostalgia. He vividly described how the experience of smelling and eating a tea-soaked cake mentally transported him back to childhood experiences with his aunt in her home and village. This sort of experience is now often referred to as the Proust effect.
Science has confirmed what Proust described. Our olfactory system, the sensory system responsible for our sense of smell, is closely linked to brain structures associated with emotions and autobiographical memory. Smells combine with tastes to create our perception of flavor.
Foods also tend to be central to social gatherings, making them easily associated with these memories. For instance, a summer barbecue might feel incomplete to some without slices of juicy watermelon. And homemade pumpkin pie may be an essential dessert at many Thanksgiving tables. The watermelon or pie may then serve as what are known in social psychology as social surrogates, foods that serve as stand-ins for valued relationships due to their inclusion at past occasions with loved ones.
My research team and I wanted to know how people benefited from feeling nostalgic when they encountered the scents and foods of their pasts. We began in 2011 by exposing study participants to 33 scents and chose 12 of them for our study. Participants rated some scents, such as pumpkin pie spice and baby powder, as highly evocative of nostalgia, while rating others – such as money and cappuccino –as less evocative.
Those who experienced more nostalgia when smelling the scents experienced greater positive emotions, greater self-esteem, greater feelings of connection to their past selves, greater optimism, greater feelings of social connectedness and a greater sense that life is meaningful.
We came to similar conclusions when we studied nostalgia for foods. Foods seemed to be more strongly linked to nostalgia than either scents or music when comparing the amount of nostalgia our participants experienced for foods to what previous research participants experienced for scents and songs. More recently, we found that nostalgic foods are comforting and that people find nostalgic foods comforting because those nostalgic foods remind them of important or meaningful moments with their loved ones.
For some, a summer barbecue wouldn’t be complete without the smell and taste of juicy watermelon. GMVozd/E+ via Getty Images
Balancing benefits and trade-offs
Although nostalgia can be associated with foods that should be eaten only in moderation – such as burgers and cookies – there are other ways to channel our nostalgia through foods.
We can have nostalgia with healthy foods. For instance, orange slices remind me of halftime at childhood soccer matches. And many people, including our research participants, feel intense nostalgia around watermelon. Other researchers have found that tofu is a nostalgic food for Chinese participants.
But when nostalgia does involve consumption of unhealthy foods, there are still other ways to experience it without the health trade-offs. We found that participants experienced the benefits of food-evoked nostalgia just from imagining and writing about the foods – no consumption necessary. Other researchers have found that drawing comforting foods can enhance well-being. Even consuming less healthy foods more mindfully helps people enjoy their food while reducing their caloric consumption.
Once seen as detrimental to our health, nostalgia provides us with an opportunity to reap numerous rewards. With nostalgic foods, we might be able to nourish both our bodies and our psychological health.
Chelsea Reid 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.
When you lose your health insurance or switch to a plan that skimps on preventive care, something critical breaks.
The connection to your primary care provider, usually a doctor, gets severed. You stop getting routine checkups. Warning signs get missed. Medical problems that could have been caught early become emergencies. And because emergencies are both dangerous and expensive, your health gets worse while your medical bills climb.
As gerontologyresearchers who study health and financial well-being in later life, we’ve analyzed how someone’s ties to the health care system strengthen or unravel depending on whether they have insurance coverage. What we’ve found is simple: Staying connected to a trusted doctor keeps you healthier and saves the system money. Breaking that link does just the opposite.
And that’s exactly what has us worried right now. Members of Congress are debating whether to make major cuts to Medicaid and other social safety net programs. If the Senate passes its own version of the tax-and-spending package that the House approved in May 2025, millions of Americans will soon face exactly this kind of disruption – with big consequences for their health and well-being.
And those who buy their own coverage may find that they can no longer afford the premiums. In 2024, average premiums on the individual market exceeded more than US$600 per month for many adults, even with subsidies.
Medicaid was established in the 1960s, explains a scholar of the program’s history.
Consequences of becoming uninsured
Health insurance is more than a way to pay medical bills; it’s a doorway into the health care system itself. It connects people to health care providers who come to know their medical history, their medications and their personal circumstances.
When that door closes, the effects are immediate. Uninsured people are much less likely to have a usual source of care – typically a doctor or another primary care provider or clinic you know and trust. That relationship acts as a foundation for managing chronic conditions, staying current with preventive screenings and getting guidance when new symptoms arise.
Researchers have found that adults who go uninsured for even six months become significantly more likely to postpone care or forgo it altogether to save money. In practical terms, this means they’re less likely to be examined by someone who knows their medical history and can spot red flags early.
Our research team analyzed how their experiences changed when they lost, and sometimes later regained, a regular source of care during those six years.
Many of the participants in this study had multiple chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
Those who didn’t see the same provider on a regular basis were far less likely to feel heard or respected by health care professionals. They had fewer medical appointments, filled fewer prescriptions and were less likely to follow through with recommended treatments.
Their health also deteriorated considerably over the six years. Their blood pressure and blood sugar levels rose, and they had more elevated indicators of kidney impairment compared with their counterparts who had regular care providers.
The longer they went without consistent health care, the worse these clinical markers became.
Warning signs
Preventive care is one of the best tools that both patients and their health care providers have to head off major health problems. This care includes screenings like cholesterol and blood pressure checks, mammograms, PAP smears and prostate exams, as well as routine vaccinations. But most people only get preventive care when they stay engaged with the health care system.
Our research team also examined what happened to preventive care based on whether the participants had a regular doctor. We found that those who kept seeing the same providers were almost three times more likely to get basic preventive services than those who did not.
Over time, these missed preventive care opportunities can add up to a big problem. They can turn what could have been a manageable issue into an emergency room visit or a long, expensive hospital stay.
For example, imagine a man in his 50s who no longer gets cholesterol screenings after losing insurance coverage. Over several years, his undiagnosed high cholesterol leads to a heart attack that could have been prevented with early medication. Or a woman who skips mammograms because of out-of-pocket costs, only to face a late-stage cancer diagnosis that might have been caught years earlier.
Waiting too long to deal with a health condition can mean you make a trip to the emergency room, increasing the cost of care for you and others. FS Productions/Tetra images via Getty Images
Shifting the costs
Patients whose conditions take too long to be diagnosed aren’t the only ones who pay the price.
We also studied how stable care relationships affect health care spending. To do this, we linked Medicare claims cost data to our original study and tracked the medical costs of the same adults age 50 and older from 2014 to 2020. One of our key findings is that people with regular care providers were 38% less likely to incur above-average health care costs.
These savings aren’t just for patients – they ripple through the entire health care system. Primary care stability lowers costs for both public and private health insurers and, ultimately, for taxpayers.
But when people lose their health care coverage, those savings disappear.
Emergency rooms see more uninsured patients seeking care that could have been handled earlier and more cheaply in a clinic or doctor’s office. While hospitals are legally required to provide emergency care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay, much of the resulting cost goes unreimbursed.
Hospitals foot the bill for about two-thirds of those losses. They pass the other third along to private insurance companies through higher hospital fees. Those insurers, in turn, raise their customers’ premiums. Larger taxpayer subsidies can then be required to keep hospitals open.
It contributes to the health care stability our research shows is critical for good health. Medicaid makes it possible for many Americans with serious medical conditions to have a regular doctor, get routine preventive services and have someone to turn to when symptoms arise – even when they have low incomes. It helps prevent health care from becoming purely crisis-driven.
As Congress considers cutting Medicaid funding by hundreds of billions of dollars, we believe that lawmakers should realize that scaling back coverage would break the fragile links between millions of patients and the providers who know them best.
Jane Tavares receives funding from the SCAN Foundation, the RRF Foundation for Aging, and Milbank Memorial Fund .
Marc Cohen receives funding from the SCAN Foundation, the RRF Foundation for Aging and Milbank Memorial Fund .
On May 22, 2025, the House of Representatives narrowly approved the tax, spending and immigration bill. The legislation, which passed without any support from Democrats, is designed to reduce federal Medicaid spending by requiring anyone enrolled in the program who appears to be able to get a job to either satisfy work requirements or lose their coverage. It’s still unclear, however, whether Senate Republicans would support that provision.
As I explain in my book, “Living Off the Government? Race, Gender, and the Politics of Welfare,” work requirements place extra burdens on low-income families but do little to lift them out of poverty.
Work requirements for TANF
TANF gives families with very low incomes some cash they can spend on housing, food, clothing or whatever they need most. The Clinton administration launched it as a replacement for a similar program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, in 1996. At the time, both political parties were eager to end a welfare system they believed was riddled with abuse. A big goal with TANF was ending the dependence of people getting cash benefits on the government by moving them from welfare to work.
Many people were removed from the welfare rolls, but not because work requirements led to economic prosperity. Instead, they had trouble navigating the bureaucratic demands.
TANF is administered by the states. They can set many rules of their own, but they must comply with an important federal requirement: Adult recipients have to work or engage in an authorized alternative activity for at least 30 hours per week. The number of weekly hours is only 20 if the recipient is caring for a child under the age of 6.
The dozen activities or so that can count toward this quota range from participating in job training programs to engaging in community service.
Some adults enrolled in TANF are exempt from work requirements, depending on their state’s own policies. The most common exemptions are for people who are ill, have a disability or are over age 60.
To qualify for TANF, families must have dependent children; in some states pregnant women also qualify. Income limits are set by the state and range from US$307 a month for a family of three in Alabama to $2,935 a month for a family of three in Minnesota.
Complying with these work requirements generally means proving that you’re working or making the case that you should be exempt from this mandate. This places what’s known as an “administrative burden” on the people who get cash assistance. It often requires lots of documentation and time. If you have an unpredictable work schedule, inconsistent access to child care or obligations to care for an older relative, this paperwork is hard to deal with.
What counts as work, how many hours must be completed and who is exempt from these requirements often comes down to a caseworker’s discretion. Social science research shows that this discretion is not equally applied and is often informed by stereotypes.
Some of this decline happened because recipients got jobs that paid them too much to qualify. The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan office that provides economic research to Congress, attributes, at least in part, an increase in employment among less-educated single mothers in the 1990s to work requirements.
Not everyone who stopped getting cash benefits through TANF wound up employed, however. Other recipients who did not meet requirements fell into deep poverty.
Regardless of why people leave the program, when fewer low-income Americans get TANF benefits, the government spends less money on cash assistance. Federal funding has remained flat at $16.5 billion since 1996. Taking inflation into account, the program receives half as much funding as when it was created. In addition, states have used the flexibility granted them to direct most of their TANF funds to priorities other than cash benefits, such as pre-K education.
Lawmakers in Congress and in statehouses have debated whether to add work requirements for Medicaid before. More than a dozen states have applied for waivers that would let them give it a try.
Georgia is currently the only state with Medicaid work requirements in effect, after implementing a waiver in July 2023. The program has experienced technical difficulties and has had trouble verifying work activities.
Other states, including Idaho, Indiana and Kentucky, are already asking the federal government to let them enforce Medicaid work requirements.
Then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson speaks during a news conference in 2017, in Little Rock, Arkansas, calling for Medicaid work requirements. AP Photo/Andrew DeMillo
But most people covered by Medicaid in that age range are already working, and those who are not would likely be eligible for work requirement waivers. An analysis by KFF – a nonprofit that informs the public about health issues – shows that in 2023, 44% of Medicaid recipients were working full time and another 20% were working part time. In 2023, that was more than 16 million Americans.
About 20% of the American adults under 65 who are covered by Medicaid are not working due to illness or disability, or because of caregiving responsibilities, according to KFF. This includes both people caring for young children and those taking care of relatives with an illness or disability. In my own research, I read testimony from families seeking work exemptions because caregiving, including for children with disabilities, was a full-time job.
The rest of the adults under 65 with Medicaid coverage are not working because they are in school, are retired, cannot find work or have some other reason. It’s approximately 3.9 million Americans. Depending on what counts as “work,” they may be meeting any requirements that could be added to the program.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that introducing Medicaid work requirements would save around $300 billion over a decade. Given past experience with work requirements, it is unlikely those savings would come from Americans finding jobs.
My research suggests it’s more likely that the government would trim spending by taking away the health insurance of people eligible for Medicaid coverage who get tangled up in red tape.
This article was updated on May 22, 2025, with details about the House of Representatives’ passage of the budget bill.
When the computer or phone you’re using right now blinks its last blink and you drop it off for recycling, do you know what happens?
At the recycling center, powerful magnets will pull out steel. Spinning drums will toss aluminum into bins. Copper wires will get neatly bundled up for resale. But as the conveyor belt keeps rolling, tiny specks of valuable, lesser-known materials such as gallium, indium and tantalum will be left behind.
Those tiny specks are critical materials. They’re essential for building new technology, and they’re in short supply in the U.S. They could be reused, but there’s a problem: Current recycling methods make recovering critical minerals from e-waste too costly or hazardous, so many recyclers simply skip them.
Sadly, most of these hard-to-recycle materials end up buried in landfills or get mixed into products like cement. But it doesn’t have to be this way. New technology is starting to make a difference.
A treasure trove of critical materials is often overlooked in e-waste, including gallium in LEDs, indium in LCDs, and tantalum in surface mount capacitors. Ansan Pokharel/West Virginia University, CC BY
As demand for these critical materials keeps growing, discarded electronics can become valuable resources. My colleagues and I at West Virginia University are developing a new technology to change how we recycle. Instead of using toxic chemicals, our approach uses electricity, making it safer, cleaner and more affordable to recover critical materials from electronics.
Even worse, nearly half the electronics that people in Northern America sent to recycling centers end up shipped overseas. They often land in scrapyards, where workers may use dangerous methods like burning or leaching using harsh chemicals to pull out valuable metals. These practices can harm both the environment and workers’ health. That’s why the Environmental Protection Agency restricts these methods in the U.S.
The tiny specks matter
Critical minerals are in most of the technology around you. Every phone screen has a super-thin layer of a material called indium tin oxide. LEDs glow because of a metal called gallium. Tantalum stores energy in tiny electronic parts called capacitors.
All of these materials are flagged as “high risk” on the U.S. Department of Energy’s critical materials list. That means the U.S. relies heavily on these materials for important technologies, but their supply could be easily disrupted by conflicts, trade disputes or shortages.
Right now, just a few countries, including China, control most of the mining, processing and recovery of these materials, making the U.S. vulnerable if those countries decide to limit exports or raise prices.
At West Virginia University’s Department of Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering, I and materials scientist Edward Sabolsky asked a simple question: Could we find a way to heat only specific parts of electronic waste to recover these valuable materials?
If we could focus the heat on just the tiny specks of critical minerals, we might be able to recycle them easily and efficiently.
This equipment isn’t very different from the microwave ovens you use to heat food at home, just bigger and more powerful. The basic science is the same – electromagnetic waves cause electrons to oscillate, creating heat.
In our approach, though, we’re not heating water molecules like you do when cooking. Instead, we heat carbon, the black residue that collects around a candle flame or car tailpipe. Carbon heats up much faster in a microwave than water does. But don’t try this at home; your kitchen microwave wasn’t designed for such high temperatures.
West Virginia University researchers are using this experimental microwave reactor to recycle critical materials from end-of-life electronics. Ansan Pokharel/West Virginia University, CC BY
In our recycling method, we first shred the electronic waste, mix it with materials called fluxes that trap impurities, and then heat the mixture with microwaves. The microwaves rapidly heat the carbon that comes from the plastics and adhesives in the e-waste. This causes the carbon to react with the tiny specks of critical materials. The result: a tiny piece of pure, sponge-like metal about the size of a grain of rice.
This metal can then be easily separated from leftover waste using filters.
So far, in our laboratory tests, we have successfully recovered about 80% of the gallium, indium and tantalum from e-waste, at purities between 95% and 97%. We have also demonstrated how it can be integrated with existing recycling processes.
Many important technologies, from radar systems to nuclear reactors, depend on these special materials. While the Department of Defense uses less of them than the commercial market, they are a national security concern.
We’re planning to launch larger pilot projects next to test the method on smartphone circuit boards, LED lighting parts and server cards from data centers. These tests will help us fine-tune the design for a bigger system that can recycle tons of e-waste per hour instead of just a few pounds. That could mean producing up to 50 pounds of these critical minerals per hour from every ton of e-waste processed.
If the technology works as expected, we believe this approach could help meet the nation’s demand for critical materials.
How to make e-waste recycling common
One way e-waste recycling could become more common is if Congress held electronics companies responsible for recycling their products and recovering the critical materials inside. Closing loopholes that allow companies to ship e-waste overseas, instead of processing it safely in the U.S., could also help build a reserve of recovered critical minerals.
But the biggest change may come from simple economics. Once technology becomes available to recover these tiny but valuable specks of critical materials quickly and affordably, the U.S. can transform domestic recycling and take a big step toward solving its shortage of critical materials.
Terence Musho has received funding from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Allissa V. Richardson, Associate Professor of Journalism, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
Smartphone witnessing helped spur the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles.AP Photo/Ethan Swope
It has been five years since May 25, 2020, when George Floyd gasped for air beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue. Five years since 17-year-old Darnella Frazier stood outside Cup Foods, raised her phone and bore witness to nine minutes and 29 seconds that would galvanize a global movement against racial injustice.
Frazier’s video didn’t just show what happened. It insisted the world stop and see.
Today, that legacy continues in the hands of a different community, facing different threats but wielding the same tools. Across the United States, Latino organizers are raising their phones, not to go viral but to go on record. They livestream Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, film family separations and document protests outside detention centers. Their footage is not merely content. It is evidence, warning – and resistance.
Here in Los Angeles where I teach journalism, for example, several images have seared themselves into public memory. One viral video shows a shackled father stepping into a white, unmarked van as his daughter sobs behind the camera, pleading with him not to sign any official documents. He turns, gestures for her to calm down, and blows her a kiss. In another video, filmed across town, Los Angeles Police Department officers on horseback charge into crowds of peaceful protesters, swinging wooden batons with chilling precision.
In Spokane, Washington, residents form a spontaneous human chain around their neighbors mid-raid, their bodies and cameras erecting a barricade of defiance. In San Diego, a video shows white allies yelling “Shame!” as they chase a car full of National Guard troops from their neighborhood.
The impact of smartphone witnessing has been immediate and unmistakable – visceral at street level, seismic in statehouses. On the ground, the videos helped inspire a “No Kings” movement, which organized protests in all 50 states on June 14, 2025.
Lawmakers are intensifying their focus on immigration policy as well. As the Trump administration escalates enforcement, Democratic-led states are expanding laws that limit cooperation with federal agents. On June 12, the House Oversight Committee questioned Democratic governors about these measures, with Republican lawmakers citing public safety concerns. The hearing underscored deep divisions between federal and state approaches to immigration enforcement.
The legacy of Black witnessing
What’s unfolding now is not new – it is newly visible. As my research shows, Latino organizers are drawing from a playbook that was sharpened in 2020 and rooted in a much older lineage of Black media survival strategies that were forged under extreme oppression.
In my 2020 book “Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest Journalism,” I document how Black Americans have used media – slave narratives, pamphlets, newspapers, radio and now smartphones – to fight for justice. From Frederick Douglass to Ida B. Wells to Darnella Frazier, Black witnesses have long used journalism as a tool for survival and transformation.
Latino mobile journalists are building on that blueprint in 2025, filming state power in moments of overreach, archiving injustice in real time, and expanding the impact of this radical tradition.
Their work also echoes the spatial tactics of Black resistance. Just as enslaved Black people once mapped escape routes during slavery and Jim Crow, Latino communities today are engaging in digital cartography to chart ICE-free zones, mutual aid hubs and sanctuary spaces. The People Over Papers map channels the logic of the Black maroons – communities of self-liberated Africans who escaped plantations to track patrols, share intelligence and build networks of survival. Now, the hideouts are digital. The maps are crowdsourced. The danger remains.
Likewise, the Stop ICE Raids Alerts Network revives a civil rights-era tactic. In the 1960s, organizers used wide area telephone service lines and radio to circulate safety updates. Black DJs cloaked dispatches in traffic and weather reports – “congestion on the south side” signaled police blockades; “storm warnings” meant violence ahead. Today, the medium is WhatsApp. The signal is encrypted. But the message – protect each other – has not changed.
Layered across both systems is the DNA of the “Negro Motorist Green Book,” the guide that once helped Black travelers navigate Jim Crow America by identifying safe towns, gas stations and lodging. People Over Papers and Stop ICE Raids are digital descendants of that legacy. Where the Green Book used printed pages, today’s tools use digital pins. But the mission remains: survival through shared knowledge, protection through mapped resistance.
Five years after George Floyd’s death, the power of visual evidence remains undeniable. Black witnessing laid the groundwork. In 2025, that tradition continues through the lens of Latino mobile journalists, who draw clear parallels between their own community’s experiences and those of Black Americans. Their footage exposes powerful echoes: ICE raids and overpolicing, border cages and city jails, a door kicked in at dawn and a knee on a neck.
Like Black Americans before them, Latino communities are using smartphones to protect, to document and to respond. In cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and El Paso, whispers of “ICE is in the neighborhood” now flash across Telegram, WhatsApp and Instagram. For undocumented families, pressing record can mean risking retaliation or arrest. But many keep filming – because what goes unrecorded can be erased.
What they capture are not isolated incidents. They are part of a broader, shared struggle against state violence. And as long as the cameras keep rolling, the stories keep surfacing – illuminated by the glow of smartphone screens that refuse to look away.
Allissa V. Richardson receives funding from the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
