NewzIntel.com

Category: Reportage

  • MIL-OSI Global: Alberta has long accused Ottawa of trying to destroy its oil industry. Here’s why that’s a dangerous myth

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ian Urquhart, Professor Emeritus, Political Science, University of Alberta

    “Alberta is a place soaked in self-deception.” Those words began Alberta-based journalist Mark Lisac’s 2004 book aimed at shattering the myths that have unhelpfully animated too much of Alberta’s politics over the past few decades.

    Current and former Alberta politicians are once again embracing and treating separatist grievances seriously. That means it’s time once again to highlight and challenge political misconceptions that have the potential to destroy Canada.

    Oil is the root of one such myth. The misconception? That Ottawa perenially opposes the oil and gas sector and is determined to stop its continued growth. The National Energy Program (1980), the Northern Gateway pipeline project (2016), the Energy East Pipeline (2017) and the proposed greenhouse gas pollution cap allegedly prove Ottawa’s hostility.

    Notably missing from these grievances is the Keystone XL pipeline and the Trans Mountain Expansion Project. Ottawa supported these projects aimed at transporting Alberta oilsands crude to foreign markets. The federal government even purchased the Trans Mountain project from Kinder Morgan in 2018 — not to kill it, but to build it.



    Read more:
    Justin Trudeau’s risky gamble on the Trans Mountain pipeline

    As for Keystone XL, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney thanked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for supporting the project. This doesn’t fit the separatist narrative, so it’s largely ignored.

    Oilsands booster

    No one should dispute the National Energy Program’s devastating impact on Alberta’s conventional oil and gas sector 40 years ago. But the oilsands, not conventional oil, propelled Canada to its position as the world’s fourth largest oil producer.

    Has Ottawa facilitated or obstructed the spectacular post-1990 growth of oilsands production?

    The record shows that, since the mid-1970s, Ottawa has facilitated and supported the oilsands sector. The federal government helped keep the Syncrude project alive in 1975 when it took a 15 per cent interest in Canada’s second oilsands operation.

    Ironically, Ottawa’s enthusiasm for more, not less, petroleum from the oilsands also appeared in 1980 via the National Energy Program (NEP), the devil in Alberta’s conservative catechism. What most accounts of the NEP don’t mention is that Ottawa offered tax benefits to oilsands companies while stripping them from conventional oil producers.

    Furthermore, the NEP’s “made-in-Canada” pricing effectively guaranteed Syncrude would receive the world price for its production. At $38 per barrel, Syncrude received more than double what conventional producers received. If the NEP was harsh on conventional oil producers, it helped create a golden future for the oil sands.

    In the mid-1990s, Ottawa helped propel the post-1995 oilsands boom. The industry-dominated National Task Force on Oil Sands Strategies sought federal tax concessions to promote oilsands growth. The federal government delivered them in its 1996 budget, despite Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s general concern with cutting the deficit.

    Again, these measures clearly contradict the myth of federal opposition to the oil industry.

    Generous emissions caps

    Ottawa’s policy favouritism towards the oilsands didn’t end there. It has consistently animated the federal government’s treatment of the oilsands in its climate change policies.

    The federal Climate Change Plan for Canada (2002) treated oil and gas leniently. Its measures for large industrial emitters bore a striking resemblance to the climate change policy preferences of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Suncor and Syncrude, the two leading oilsands producers, estimated these federal proposals would add a pittance, between 20 and 30 cents, to their per barrel production costs.

    Justin Trudeau’s response to Alberta’s 2015 oilsands emissions cap also underlined Ottawa’s favouritism, not hostility, to the dominant player in Canada’s oil patch.

    Rachel Notley’s NDP government set this cap at 100 million tonnes of GHG per year, plus another 10 million tonnes allowed to new upgrading and co-generation facilities. This cap was a whopping 39 million tonnes or 55 per cent higher than what the oilsands emitted in 2014.

    This generous cap contributed to a tremendous increase in oilsands production. Healthy profits became record profits in 2022. Ottawa embraced Alberta’s largesse, incorporating the province’s cap into its post-2015 climate policies.

    Furthermore, Ottawa increased its leniency towards the oilsands by exempting new in-situ (non-mining) oilsands projects in Alberta from the federal Impact Assessment Act. This exemption applies until Alberta’s emissions cap is reached. Canada’s latest National Inventory Report on greenhouse gas emissions reported record oilsands GHG emissions of 89 million tonnes in 2023, still 11 million tonnes shy of the 100 million tonne threshold.

    Weaponizing myths

    Finally, we have today’s proposed national cap on greenhouse gas emissions. Alberta is apoplectic about the cap. But whether or not it’s intentional, Premier Danielle Smith’s outrage feeds into secessionist sentiment by seemingly misrepresenting the cap’s impact on oil and gas production.

    Smith and her environment minister use the work of the Parliamentary Budgetary Officer (PBO) to nurture their “Ottawa hates oil” narrative. They claim the officer’s analysis of the cap’s economic impact showed it “will cut oil and gas production by five per cent, or more than 245,000 barrels per day.”

    This is simply not true.

    In fact, the PBO concluded that, with the cap, oilsands production “is projected to remain well above current levels” — 15 per cent higher than in 2022. The proposed federal emissions cap, like the Alberta NDP’s cap of a decade ago, is higher than current oilsands emissions levels. The PBO concluded the proposed ceiling for oilsands emissions would be six per cent higher than 2022 emissions.

    Ottawa’s proposed cap, in fact, continues its decades-long support of the oilsands.

    Myths are central to our being. When I tell my grandsons about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I hope to inspire curiosity, imagination and interest in their grandmother’s Irish heritage.

    But in politics, fanciful stories can be dangerous. Some weaponize myths, using the fictions at their core to encourage followers to let falsehoods rule their behaviour. That seems to be playing out yet again in Alberta. We must demand better from the political class.

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

    – ref. Alberta has long accused Ottawa of trying to destroy its oil industry. Here’s why that’s a dangerous myth – https://theconversation.com/alberta-has-long-accused-ottawa-of-trying-to-destroy-its-oil-industry-heres-why-thats-a-dangerous-myth-255908

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How Donald Trump’s assault on universities echoes earlier American conservative ideas

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Michael Williams, Professor of International Politics, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

    Fifty years ago, the American philosopher and conservative thinker James Burnham wrote his most infamous book, The Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism.

    Burnham argued that liberalism — which he associated with unbridled individualism and excessive belief in human progress — was eroding the foundations of the West’s social orders and, equally importantly, its geopolitical power.

    In an ironic twist, it’s not liberals ushering in the decline of America in contemporary times. Burnham’s acolytes in Donald Trump’s administration are busy doing that work.

    Influence on the American right

    It is easy to recognize Burnham’s ideas in the arguments and actions of the Trump administration.

    In both The Suicide of the West and his previous 1941 bestseller, The Managerial Revolution, Burnham argued that liberalism’s individualism weakened social bonds and national allegiance. At the same time, it promoted the rise of a new class of experts that eroded democracy and individual rights under the guise of acting for the common good.

    This “new class” of highly educated, managerial elites had come to dominate virtually all aspects of life, from business and bureaucracy to commerce, culture and education.

    Ruling through their claims to expertise, Burnham argued that these elites spread relativistic liberal values that undermined social cohesion and national confidence, sapping the West’s ability to define and defend its fundamental values.

    If these trends continued, he warned, the West would not long survive. Burnham exercised an important influence on the American right from the 1950s through the 1970s, and near the end of his life received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan. Yet by the 1990s, his ideas had fallen out of fashion and few remembered his warnings.

    Rediscovered by radical conservatives

    Recently, however, Burnham’s provocative ideas have resurfaced as one of the most important intellectual lineages underpinning American radical conservatism and its attacks on “elite institutions.”

    In his writings, and those of his followers such as Samuel Francis, a range of political and intellectual figures have found the ideological ammunition needed to launch their crusade against liberalism in order to save the West — or in the case of the U.S., to “Make America Great Again.”



    Read more:
    Why the radical right has turned to the teachings of an Italian Marxist thinker

    JD Vance’s attack on Europe’s democratic credentials, Elon Musk’s DOGE determination to “deconstruct” the administrative state and the Trump administration’s assaults on elite universities all reflect Burnhamite ideas.

    Risk bringing about America’s decline

    There is considerable irony in this situation. Most obviously, Burnham was wrong about the self-inflicted death of the West. Contrary to his predictions, liberalism did not lead to the erosion of western global power.

    Far from collapsing, the United States and its allies fought the Cold War to a victorious conclusion and by the turn of the 20th century emerged with a power and dominance that Burnham could scarcely have imagined. Liberalism was the reigning ideology. American and western commerce, culture, science and technology dominated the world.

    Yet the greatest irony is that Burnham’s followers risk bringing about the very situation he sought to avoid – the decline of America and its dominant status.

    Nowhere is this clearer than in the attack on elite universities, where no one should not be misled by charges of antisemitism.

    Important as addressing antisemitism is, this framing distracts from the ways that the right’s attack on universities are part of its wider assault the foundations of “new class” power.

    Tech leadership, geopolitical dominance

    In this broader campaign, leading illiberal zealots in the Trump administration are pursuing policies that will damage the foundations of American power far more than liberalism ever did.

    Most obviously, the attacks on universities threaten U.S. technological leadership, since research universities remain an indispensable site of basic research, innovation and next-generation training — something especially vital at a time when the country’s leadership in these areas is challenged in ways unseen for nearly half a century.



    Read more:
    Three scientists speak about what it’s like to have research funding cut by the Trump administration

    At the same time, assaults on academic freedom threaten the considerable cultural power and prestige that, as Burnham was well aware, are vital areas of geopolitical struggle.

    Finally, these policies undermine the American ability to attract the best and the brightest from around the world — a capacity that has long underpinned its dominance in science and innovation, and ultimately its global influence.

    Diminished intellectual capital

    One might be tempted to say: fine, if America no longer values its intellectual capital, other countries can reap the benefit by attracting the expertise it shuns. To some degree, this may be true.

    But no western country or group of countries – such as the EU – possesses the institutional research capacity, network density and depth of funding found until now in the U.S.

    At best, a more fragmented, diffuse and less impactful situation is likely to occur, with America weakened and the benefits gained by others unlikely to make up the balance. The West as a whole is likely to emerge weaker rather than stronger.

    Geopolitical decline

    Recognizing these negative outcomes does not require treating elite universities as paragons of virtue or viewing higher education as beyond reproach. Nor are today’s Burnhamites completely delusional. Increased inequality, economic dislocation and the death of local industries have followed in the footsteps of liberal globalization.



    Read more:
    How Commonwealth universities profited from Indigenous dispossession through land grants

    Cultural divides are significant, even if they are often polarized for political purposes. But addressing such issues demands serious engagement, not simplistic accusations of elite decadence and divisive political rhetoric. Crucially, it requires seeing elite (and other) universities as sources of global power as well as sites of education.

    The conservative columnist Irving Kristol once said that politics is a struggle over “who owns the future.”

    Materially and ideologically, Burnham’s contemporary followers are making sure that America will no longer be on the winning side of this struggle. Their efforts to “make America great again” misunderstand important parts of what made it great in the first place. The most likely outcome will be the decline, not the recovery, of America.

    The Conversation

    Michael Williams receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

    Rita Abrahamsen receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)

    – ref. How Donald Trump’s assault on universities echoes earlier American conservative ideas – https://theconversation.com/how-donald-trumps-assault-on-universities-echoes-earlier-american-conservative-ideas-255470

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The attack on public broadcasting is part of a growing threat to press freedom and democracy

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Lorry-Ann Austin, Assistant Professor, Social Work and Human Services, Thompson Rivers University

    In a disturbing parallel between two countries, President Donald Trump’s recent attack on the two largest public broadcasters in the United States mirrors threats to Canada’s own public broadcaster that were recently dodged by the electoral defeat of Conservative Pierre Poilievre.

    These attacks are part of a larger authoritarian move to slander and disempower a free and independent press.

    In the grab to reclaim power from the people, authoritarians and the oligarchs who support them recoil from criticism and dissent, demanding that all people support government positions regardless of the rationality of their claims.

    While they may come for the media first, other institutions are also targeted, including those that nurture critical thinking and uphold the rule of law.



    Read more:
    Yale scholars’ move to Canada can prompt us to reflect on the rule of law

    Essential to democracy

    The news media are a key pillar of democracy and a vigilant monitor of human rights. Often identified as the Fourth Estate, the press is tasked with keeping political power in check while informing people about events beyond their own experiences. This function makes it a prime target for authoritarian assault.

    Both Poilievre and Trump have long attacked the integrity of journalists as they worked to undermine public trust in the media. They both denigrate reporters and limit media accessibility.

    With accusations of fake news and attempts to discredit journalists as leftist and partisan propaganda pedlars, Poilievre and Trump’s call to defund public broadcasters seems aimed at silencing criticism and obscuring oversight of their actions.

    Public broadcasters like PBS, NPR and CBC/Radio-Canada provide vital links to news and life-saving information in times of crisis. They inform regions that no longer have access to local corporate news and they educate the public and strengthen its culture.

    Public broadcasters receive public funding through government legislation, but make no mistake, these are not state propaganda machines as some politicians allege.

    CBC/Radio-Canada, PBS and NPR are all governed by broadcasting acts within their respective nations. CBC/Radio-Canada’s editorial independence is protected by the federal Broadcasting Act. In the U.S., the federal Public Broadcasting Act assures PBS and NPR have “maximum freedom …from interference with, or control of, program content or other activities.”

    These media outlets are publicly funded but their editorial independence is enshrined in law.

    Tracking media coverage

    My exploration of the framing practices of public broadcasters, mainstream corporate media and alternative news agencies in Canada and the U.S. lends support to the expressed independence of publicly funded broadcasters.

    This research tracked press coverage of debates about sexual orientation and gender expression in schools over a 10-year period — from Trump’s initial declaration to seek the Oval Office in 2015 to his return to power in November 2024.

    From an initial sample of close to 38,000 news stories, 60 were randomly selected and subjected to multimodal critical discourse analysis.

    A third of these stories were produced by publicly funded news agencies. Findings suggest that while they consistently use polarizing conflict language to present debates to the public — just as corporate and alternative media outlets do — the majority of the publicly funded news accounts I examined adhered to the principles of fact-based reporting.

    These principles include accuracy and objectivity in reporting as well as the inclusion of a balance of perspectives on a given event, and the maintenance of a non-partisan approach to coverage.

    Only one story produced by a public broadcaster in the U.S. represented propaganda in its attempt to persuade the audience to agree with the biased argument presented within. It was an educational video debunking claims that critical race theory was being taught in schools.

    None of the content produced by public broadcasters represented examples of movement journalism, which rejects objectivity in favour of activism to promote human rights and social change.

    No draining on public coffers

    While these findings cannot be extended to all content produced by public broadcasters, they do suggest these news agencies adhere to requirements of non-partisan coverage.

    Without evidence, Poilievre and Trump claim the public broadcasters in their nations are biased against conservative politics. They also claim that they’re a drain on tax revenues, and that cutting their funding will represent significant tax savings.

    This also fails to hold up to a fact check. CBC/Radio-Canada received less than 0.28 per cent of the money allocated in the 2024 federal budget. In the U.S., federal tax dollars allocated to NPR and PBS represent 0.0001 per cent of the federal budget.

    Given the lack of evidence supporting accusations of partisan bias and the minuscule savings that would come from defunding, something else must be driving the assault on public broadcasting.

    It’s likely no coincidence that Trump’s most recent attack on the media coincided with World Press Freedom Day. It’s a day that asserts the importance of a free and independent press in democracy, and the need to protect the ability of journalists to report the truth without fear or interference.

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

    – ref. The attack on public broadcasting is part of a growing threat to press freedom and democracy – https://theconversation.com/the-attack-on-public-broadcasting-is-part-of-a-growing-threat-to-press-freedom-and-democracy-255855

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Pope Leo XIV faces limits on changing the Catholic Church − but Francis made reforms that set the stage for larger changes

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Dennis Doyle, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, University of Dayton

    Newly elected Pope Leo XIV appears at the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on Thursday, May 8, 2025. AP Photo/Andrew Medichini

    Cardinal Robert Prevost of the United States has been picked to be the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church; he will be known as Pope Leo XIV.

    Attention now turns to what vision the first U.S. pope will bring.

    Change is hard to bring about in the Catholic Church. During his pontificate, Francis often gestured toward change without actually changing church doctrines. He permitted discussion of ordaining married men in remote regions where populations were greatly underserved due to a lack of priests, but he did not actually allow it. On his own initiative, he set up a commission to study the possibility of ordaining women as deacons, but he did not follow it through.

    However, he did allow priests to offer the Eucharist, the most important Catholic sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, to Catholics who had divorced and remarried without being granted an annulment.

    Likewise, Francis did not change the official teaching that a sacramental marriage is between a man and a woman, but he did allow for the blessing of gay couples, in a manner that did appear to be a sanctioning of gay marriage.

    To what degree will the new pope stand or not stand in continuity with Francis? As a scholar who has studied the writings and actions of the popes since the time of the Second Vatican Council, a series of meetings held to modernize the church from 1962 to 1965, I am aware that every pope comes with his own vision and his own agenda for leading the church.

    Still, the popes who immediately preceded them set practical limits on what changes could be made. There were limitations on Francis as well; however, the new pope, I argue, will have more leeway because of the signals Francis sent.

    The process of synodality

    Francis initiated a process called “synodality,” a term that combines the Greek words for “journey” and “together.” Synodality involves gathering Catholics of various ranks and points of view to share their faith and pray with each other as they address challenges faced by the church today.

    One of Francis’ favorite themes was inclusion. He carried forward the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that the Holy Spirit – that is, the Spirit of God who inspired the prophets and is believed to be sent by Christ among Christians in a special way – is at work throughout the whole church; it includes not only the hierarchy but all of the church members. This belief constituted the core principle underlying synodality.

    Pope Francis with the participants of the Synod of Bishops’ 16th General Assembly in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on Oct. 23, 2023.
    AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia

    Francis launched a two-year global consultation process in October 2022, culminating in a synod in Rome in October 2024. Catholics all over the world offered their insights and opinions during this process. The synod discussed many issues, some of which were controversial, such as clerical sexual abuse, the need for oversight of bishops, the role of women in general and the ordination of women as deacons.

    The final synod document did not offer conclusions concerning these topics but rather aimed more at promoting the transformation of the entire Catholic Church into a synodal church in which Catholics tackle together the many challenges of the modern world. Francis refrained from issuing his own document in response, in order that the synod’s statement could stand on its own.

    The process of synodality in one sense places limits on bishops and the pope by emphasizing their need to listen closely to all church members before making decisions. In another sense, though, in the long run the process opens up the possibility for needed developments to take place when and if lay Catholics overwhelmingly testify that they believe the church should move in a certain direction.

    Change is hard in the church

    A pope, however, cannot simply reverse official positions that his immediate predecessors had been emphasizing. Practically speaking, there needs to be a papacy, or two, during which a pope will either remain silent on matters that call for change or at least limit himself to hints and signals on such issues.

    In 1864, Pius IX condemned the proposition that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church.” It wasn’t until 1965 – some 100 years later – that the Second Vatican Council, in The Declaration on Religious Freedom, would affirm that “a wrong is done when government imposes upon its people, by force or fear or other means, the profession or repudiation of any religion. …”

    A second major reason why popes may refrain from making top-down changes is that they may not want to operate like a dictator issuing executive orders in an authoritarian manner. Francis was accused by his critics of acting in this way with his positions on Eucharist for those remarried without a prior annulment and on blessings for gay couples. The major thrust of his papacy, however, with his emphasis on synodality, was actually in the opposite direction.

    Notably, when the Amazon Synod – held in Rome in October 2019 – voted 128-41 to allow for married priests in the Brazilian Amazon region, Francis rejected it as not being the appropriate time for such a significant change.

    Past doctrines

    The belief that the pope should express the faith of the people and not simply his own personal opinions is not a new insight from Francis.

    The doctrine of papal infallibility, declared at the First Vatican Council in 1870, held that the pope, under certain conditions, could express the faith of the church without error.

    The limitations and qualifications of this power include that the pope be speaking not personally but in his official capacity as the head of the church; he must not be in heresy; he must be free of coercion and of sound mind; he must be addressing a matter of faith and morals; and he must consult relevant documents and other Catholics so that what he teaches represents not simply his own opinions but the faith of the church.

    The Marian doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption offer examples of the importance of consultation. The Immaculate Conception, proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854, is the teaching that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was herself preserved from original sin, a stain inherited from Adam that Catholics believe all other human beings are born with, from the moment of her conception. The Assumption, proclaimed by Pius XII in 1950, is the doctrine that Mary was taken body and soul into heaven at the end of her earthly life.

    The documents in which these doctrines were proclaimed stressed that the bishops of the church had been consulted and that the faith of the lay people was being affirmed.

    Unity, above all

    One of the main duties of the pope is to protect the unity of the Catholic Church. On one hand, making many changes quickly can lead to schism, an actual split in the community.

    In 2022, for example, the Global Methodist Church split from the United Methodist Church over same-sex marriage and the ordination of noncelibate gay bishops. There have also been various schisms within the Anglican communion in recent years. The Catholic Church faces similar challenges but so far has been able to avoid schisms by limiting the actual changes being made.

    On the other hand, not making reasonable changes that acknowledge positive developments in the culture regarding issues such as the full inclusion of women or the dignity of gays and lesbians can result in the large-scale exit of members.

    Pope Leo XIV, I argue, needs to be a spiritual leader, a person of vision, who can build upon the legacy of his immediate predecessors in such a way as to meet the challenges of the present moment. He already stated that he wants a synodal church that is “close to the people who suffer,” signaling a great deal about the direction he will take.

    If the new pope is able to update church teachings on some hot-button issues, it will be precisely because Francis set the stage for him.

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

    – ref. Pope Leo XIV faces limits on changing the Catholic Church − but Francis made reforms that set the stage for larger changes – https://theconversation.com/pope-leo-xiv-faces-limits-on-changing-the-catholic-church-but-francis-made-reforms-that-set-the-stage-for-larger-changes-256181

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How the Take It Down Act tackles nonconsensual deepfake porn − and how it falls short

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Sylvia Lu, Faculty Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan

    The Take It Down bill, co-authored by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, easily passed both houses of Congress. President Trump is expected to sign it into law. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

    In a rare bipartisan move, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Take It Down Act by a vote of 409-2 on April 28, 2025. The bill is an effort to confront one of the internet’s most appalling abuses: the viral spread of nonconsensual sexual imagery, including AI-generated deepfake pornography and real photos shared as revenge porn.

    Now awaiting President Trump’s expected signature, the bill offers victims a mechanism to force platforms to remove intimate content shared without their permission – and to hold those responsible for distributing it to account.

    As a scholar focused on AI and digital harms, I see this bill as a critical milestone. Yet it leaves troubling gaps. Without stronger protections and a more robust legal framework, the law may end up offering a promise it cannot keep. Enforcement issues and privacy blind spots could leave victims just as vulnerable.

    The Take It Down Act targets “non-consensual intimate visual depictions” – a legal term that encompasses what most people call revenge porn and deepfake porn. These are sexual images or videos, often digitally manipulated or entirely fabricated, circulated online without the depicted person’s consent.

    The bill compels online platforms to build a user-friendly takedown process. When a victim submits a valid request, the platform must act within 48 hours. Failure to do so may trigger enforcement by the Federal Trade Commission, which can treat the violation as an unfair or deceptive act or practice. Criminal penalties also apply to those who publish the images: Offenders may be fined and face up to three years in prison if anyone under 18 is involved, and up to two years if the subject is an adult.

    A growing problem

    Deepfake porn is not just a niche problem. It is a metastasizing crisis. With increasingly powerful and accessible AI tools, anyone can fabricate a hyper-realistic sexual image in minutes. Public figures, ex-partners and especially minors have become regular targets. Women, disproportionately, are the ones harmed.

    These attacks dismantle lives. Victims of nonconsensual intimate image abuse suffer harassment, online stalking, ruined job prospects, public shaming and emotional trauma. Some are driven off the internet. Others are haunted repeatedly by resurfacing content. Once online, these images replicate uncontrollably – they don’t simply disappear.

    In that context, a swift and standardized takedown process can offer critical relief. The bill’s 48-hour window for response has the potential to reclaim a fragment of control for those whose dignity and privacy were invaded by a click. Despite its promise, unresolved legal and procedural gaps can hinder its effectiveness.

    NBC News gives an overview of the Take It Down Act.

    Blind spots and shortfalls

    The bill targets only public-facing interactive platforms that primarily host user-generated content such as social media platforms. It may not reach the countless hidden private forums or encrypted peer-to-peer networks where such content often first appears. This creates a critical legal gap: When nonconsensual sexual images are shared on closed or anonymous platforms, victims may never even know – or know in time – that the content exists, much less have a chance to request its removal.

    Even on platforms covered by the bill, implementation is likely to be challenging. Determining whether the online content depicts the person in question, lacks consent and affects the hard-to-define privacy interests requires careful judgment. This demands legal understanding, technical expertise and time. But platforms must reach that decision within 24 hours or less.

    On the other hand, time is a luxury victims do not have. But even with the 48-hour removal window, the content can still spread widely before it is taken down. The bill does not include meaningful incentives for platforms to detect and remove such content proactively. And it provides no deterrent strong enough to discourage most malicious creators from generating these images in the first place.

    This takedown mechanism can also be subject to abuse. Critics warn that the bill’s broad language and lack of safeguards could lead to overcensorship, potentially affecting journalistic and other legitimate content. As platforms may be flooded with a mix of real and malicious takedown requests – some filed in bad faith to suppress speech or art – they may resort to poorly designed and privacy-invasive automated monitoring filters that tend to issue blanket rejections or err on the side of removing content that falls outside the scope of the law.

    Without clear standards, platforms may act improperly. How – and even whether – the FTC will hold platforms accountable under the act is another open question.

    Burden on the victims

    The bill also places the burden of action on victims, who must locate the content, complete the paperwork, explain that it was nonconsensual, and submit personal contact information – often while still reeling from the emotional toll.

    Moreover, while the bill targets both AI-generated deepfakes and revenge porn involving real images, it fails to account for the complex realities victims face. Many are trapped in unequal relationships and may have “consented” under pressure, manipulation or fear to having intimate content about them posted online. Situations like this fall outside the bill’s legal framing. The bill bars consent obtained through overt threats and coercion, yet it overlooks more insidious forms of manipulation.

    Even for those who do engage the takedown process, the risks remain. Victims must submit contact information and a statement explaining that the image was nonconsensual, without legal guarantees that this sensitive data will be protected. This exposure could invite new waves of harassment and exploitation.

    Loopholes for offenders

    The bill includes liability-evasive conditions and exceptions that could allow distributors to escape liability. If the content was shared with the subject’s consent, served a public concern, or was unintentional or caused no demonstrable harm, they may avoid consequences under the Take It Down Act. If offenders deny causing harm, victims face an uphill battle. Emotional distress, reputational damage and career setbacks are real, but they rarely come with clear documentation or a straightforward chain of cause and effect.

    Equally concerning, the bill allows exceptions for publication of such content for legitimate medical, educational or scientific purposes. Though well-intentioned, this language creates a confusing and potentially dangerous loophole. It risks becoming a shield for exploitation masquerading as research or education.

    Getting ahead of the problem

    The notice and takedown mechanism is fundamentally reactive. It intervenes only after the damage has begun. But deepfake pornography is designed for rapid proliferation. By the time a takedown request is filed, the content may have already been saved, reposted or embedded across dozens of sites – some hosted overseas or buried in decentralized networks. The current bill provides a system that treats the symptoms while leaving the harms to spread.

    In my research on algorithmic and AI harms, I have argued that legal responses should move beyond reactive actions. I have proposed a framework that anticipates harm before it occurs – not one that merely responds after the fact. That means incentivizing platforms to take proactive steps to protect the privacy, autonomy, equality and safety of users exposed to harms caused by AI-generated images and tools. It also means broadening accountability to cover more perpetrators and platforms, supported by stronger safeguards and enforcement systems.

    The Take It Down Act is a meaningful first step. But to truly protect the vulnerable, I believe that lawmakers should build stronger systems – ones that prevent harm before it happens and treat victims’ privacy and dignity not as afterthoughts but as fundamental rights.

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

    – ref. How the Take It Down Act tackles nonconsensual deepfake porn − and how it falls short – https://theconversation.com/how-the-take-it-down-act-tackles-nonconsensual-deepfake-porn-and-how-it-falls-short-255809

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: India-Pakistan: escalating conflict between two nuclear powers

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor

    This article was first published in The Conversation UK’s World Affairs Briefing email newsletter. Sign up to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.

    Once again, India and Pakistan are locked in conflict over Kashmir. A diplomatic crisis that started with a terrorist attack that killed 26 tourists, all but one of them Indian, became a fortnight of cross-border skirmishes and pugilistic posturing from New Delhi and Islamabad. India responded on May 7 with Operation Sindoor, a series of airstrikes apparently aimed at what India said were terrorist training camps, in which at least 31 people were reportedly killed. Pakistan has vowed revenge and launched its own deadly attacks. And so an old emnity is rekindled.

    India and Pakistan have been at loggerheads over Kashmir virtually since partition in 1947. Its mixed population, its geography and, importantly, its history as what was known as a “princely state”, virtually guaranteed it. Princely states, which were not administered by the British Raj were given the choice of joining either independent India or the newly created Pakistan. Kashmir, ruled over by the Hindu maharaja Hari Singh, eventually joined India.

    Hari Singh reportedly did so with some misgivings. The state he ruled over had a majority population of Muslims. But when the first conflict broke out at the end of 1947, with an invasion by Pakistani tribesmen looking to take control of Kashmir, he called on India for assistance and signed a deal temporarily incorporating the state into India pending a plebiscite – which never took place.

    The first India-Pakistan war ended in 1949 with a UN-mandated ceasefire. A border was drawn through the state giving India roughly two-thirds control over Jammu and Kashmir, with Pakistan controlling the other third. Both sides have claimed the whole territory ever since.

    Violence has broken out periodically in the intervening decades, characterised since the 1980s by insurgencies, which India routinely accuses Pakistan of backing – an accusation which Pakistan routinely denies. Groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) have carried out terror attacks in both Kashmir and India, including LeT’s 2008 Mumbai massacre in which 166 people were killed.

    Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

    Now the situation which the rest of the world has worried about for years, a conflict between two neighbouring nuclear armed powers, has begun to escalate with fears it might spiral out of control. Natasha Lindsteadt, an expert in international security, takes a look at the military – and nuclear– capabilities and policies of the two countries.

    She writes that India has a far larger military (it’s ranked as one of the world’s top five military nations by Military Watch magazine, with Pakistan ranked ninth). The two countries have a roughly comparable nuclear arsenal. But while India has a “no first use” policy, Pakistan has never committed itself in this way, arguing it needs its nuclear arsenal to counter India’s larger conventional forces.

    But even a small nuclear exchange between the two could kill more than 20 million people, writes Lindsteadt.



    Read more:
    Why are India and Pakistan on the brink of war and how dangerous is the situation? An expert explains

    Part of the problem seems to be a complete lack of communications at the highest level. US president, Donald Trump, initially appeared reluctant to get involved, saying that he is “sure they’ll figure it out one way or the other … There’s great tension between Pakistan and India, but there always has been.” He is since reported to have offered to step in, an offer apparently politely rejected by New Delhi.

    “What is needed now is robust, real-time crisis communication between the two nations,” write security experts Syed Ali Zia Jaffery of the University of Lahore and Nicholas Wheeler of the University of Birmingham. The problem is that there is no mechanism for that.

    And as we know from the Cuban missile crisis, when the US and Soviet Union came very close to a nuclear exchange, it’s all too easy for mistakes to be made which could escalate a conflict between two nuclear powers into a conflagration.

    After that crisis, the two leaders involved, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Krushchev, set up a communications link (which became known as the “hotline”) to enable direct communications. As Jaffery and Wheeler point out, this served to keep the rival powers from further dangerous confrontation (it even helped in bringing about arms treaties when Ronald Reagan was in the White House and Mikhail Gorbachev was in the Kremlin.



    Read more:
    Why a hotline is needed to help bring India and Pakistan back from the brink of a disastrous war

    For a deeper dive into the crisis and the long history of conflict between India and Pakistan, here are five essential reads, carefully curated for you by my colleague Matt Williams, senior international editor at The Conversation in the US.



    Read more:
    India-Pakistan strikes: 5 essential reads on decades of rivalry and tensions over Kashmir

    Netanyahu’s Gaza plan

    In the Middle East, meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are planning to move in large numbers into Gaza with a plan to occupy the whole of the territory. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has described the move as a “forceful operation” which will destroy Hamas and rescue its remaining hostages. The remaining population of 2.1 million Palestinian civilians will be moved “to proect it”.

    With more than 50,000 people dead in Gaza since the conflict began in October 2023, you have to say Israel’s attempts to protect civilians have been decidedly unsuccessful.

    Leonie Fleischmann, senior lecturer in international politics at City St George’s, University of London, sees this as Israel’s next step towards clearing Gaza of Palestinians, something she says Netanyahu’s far-right enablers have been pushing for all along. But she also sees parallels with what is happening in the West Bank, where Israel is gradually annexing land occupied by Palestinians and mandated by the Oslo accords of the 1990s as part of a future Palestinian state.

    The recent Louis Theroux documentary film showed the terrible circumstances under which Palestinians live on the West Bank, juxtaposing that with the determination of extreme Zionists to take over what they see as the land of their forefathers.

    Fleischmann notes that this week, Israeli cabinet minister Bezalel Smotrich approved plans for construction on land in an area which, if given to settlers, would effectively cut the West Bank in two. This would, she says, “bury any remaining hope for a two-state solution”. Rather chillingly, Smotrich is quoted as saying: “This is how you kill the Palestinian state.”



    Read more:
    Israeli plan to occupy all of Gaza could open the door for annexation of the West Bank

    Where would Palestinians go under Netanyahu’s plan? Well, if the Israeli prime minister shares Donald Trump’s vision of redeveloping Gaza as some sort of Middle Eastern “riviera”, they’d be dispersed into countries such as Egypt and Jordan.

    This idea is a non-starter, writes Scott Lucas of University College Dublin. Lucas, a Middle East expert who has written regularly for us about Israel and Gaza and answered our questions about the situation. He says Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has definitively ruled out accepting a mass exodus of Palestinians via the Rafah crossing at Gaza’s southern end. And Jordan is equally unwilling to accept any more Palestinian refugees. Apart from anything else, it already has about 3 million.

    As Lucas writes: “Any Arab government that takes in Gazans, even amid a humanitarian crisis, would be tacitly burying the idea of a Palestinian state. That would break a 77-year-old principle and resurrect the Nakba – the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948.”

    Israel is unlikely to get much international support for such a move either, Lucas adds. Donald Trump is preoccupied with other things and, even if he weren’t, the rest of the international community would hardly stand for what would probably be seen as an act of ethnic cleansing on a massive scale.



    Read more:
    What does Netanyahu’s plan for ‘conquering’ Gaza mean for Israel, Palestine and their neighbours? Expert Q&A

    But what do ordinary Israelis think of their government’s plans for Gaza? For most Israelis the paramount factor is their security. So far the Netanyahu government’s actions in Gaza had enjoyed majority suppport for that reason and in the hope that somehow the conflict might lead to getting the remaining hostages home.

    But the latest plan to take Gaza completely could scupper any hope of repatriating the hostages. And there are signs that many Israelis are getting tired of the constant crisis and conflict. There appears to be a growing appetite for peace.

    Or so writes Yuval Katz of Loughborough University, who grew up in Israel but left eight years ago to pursue an academic career. He was recently home for the first time in two years and spent time contacting peace groups. Here is what he found.



    Read more:
    Israel’s peace movement offers a ray of hope amid the pain of Gaza conflict

    World Affairs Briefing from The Conversation UK is available as a weekly email newsletter. Click here to get updates directly in your inbox.

    – ref. India-Pakistan: escalating conflict between two nuclear powers – https://theconversation.com/india-pakistan-escalating-conflict-between-two-nuclear-powers-256277

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Ontario Chief Coroner reports raise concerns that MAID policy and practice focus on access rather than protection

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Trudo Lemmens, Professor of Health Law and Policy, University of Toronto

    The Ontario Coroner’s reports cover two aspects of medical assistance in dying (MAID): waiver of final consent, and same- or next-day provision of MAID. (Shutterstock)

    The Chief Coroner for Ontario recently released two new reports of its interdisciplinary MAID Death Review Committee: on Same or Next Day Provision of MAID and on Waiver of Final Consent.

    The MAID Death Review Committee — of which I am a member — reviews cases of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) that are selected by the coroner’s MAID team for the common issues they raise. The review helps inform policy recommendations.

    Committee reports contain case summaries and summaries of committee discussions, and the Chief Coroner’s recommendations. The newly released reports appear to confirm what is argued in several chapters in our recently co-edited volume, Unravelling MAiD in Canada: Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide as Medical Care, and in other publications: Canada’s MAID law, policy and practice focuses excessively on promoting access to death, not on protection.

    Some of the cases suggest a troubling prioritizing of ending patients’ lives with MAID rather than a precautionary approach. In my opinion, they reveal an urgent need for more rigorous legal and professional standards. Committee members’ starkly contrasting views on the ethics of some of the practices, which can be gleaned from the anonymous summaries of the committee’s discussions, are striking.

    Most assisted dying laws or policies in other countries prohibit same-day provision of MAID and waiving of final consent.
    (Shutterstock)

    Access over protection

    The topics of the reports illustrate how Canada’s MAID law reform has prioritized access over protection. Most assisted dying laws or policies in other countries prohibit same-day provision of MAID and waiving of final consent. Many impose a reflection period to protect patients against rushed and desperate decision-making, for example following a devastating diagnosis.

    Before 2021, Canada’s MAID law had a 10-day reflection period, which could be shortened by request. This was removed in the 2021 expansion of MAID, which also removed the safeguard of a reasonably foreseeable natural death.

    At the time, concerns that removing the 10-day reflection period could lead to rushed decisions were dismissed, with a hypothetical example involving same-day MAID provision being described as “absurd.” An official report now documents the practice.

    Waiver of final consent, which was also introduced in 2021, moves Canada clearly away from unambiguous or clear consent, which the Supreme Court emphasized as a key safeguard in its 2015 Carter decision — the decision that declared an absolute criminal law prohibition on euthanasia and assisted suicide to be unconstitutional.

    A waiver enables track 1 patients (those with a reasonably foreseeable death) who are at risk of losing capacity to receive MAID at a specific time in the near future. In contrast, with an advance request for MAID, a patient authorizes someone else to request MAID on their behalf in the future, when they have lost capacity and specified conditions are met.

    Québec recently introduced advanced requests, and Health Canada has organized public consultations on the topic, seemingly considering it. But it remains prohibited under the Criminal Code. Rightly so, since it raises unique ethical, legal and professional challenges.

    The coroner’s report on waiver of final consent includes cases, and notes on case discussions, that demonstrate the fine line between flexible use of such waivers and circumventing the prohibition of advance request. In some cases, it appears that different guidance documents of the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers have been combined to facilitate MAID: guidance on waiver of final consent and on dementia.

    In a journal publication, my co-authors and I warned that combining these guidance documents, which we consider to be obfuscating, could lead to advance requests for MAID even though they remain prohibited under the criminal code.

    Case reports

    Take the case of Mr. A. Distressed by short-term memory loss and a diagnosis of an onset of Alzheimer’s disease, he signed a waiver scheduling MAID 3.5 years later. Some, but not all, members of the committee opined that scheduling it so much in advance was incompatible with a track 1 approval, since it revealed that he was not approaching his death, not in an advanced state of irreversible decline of capability and could hardly be considered to suffer intolerably at the time of approval.

    The MAID provider ended up not using the waiver for Mr. A’s consent for MAID. However, his MAID death remains problematic due to concerns about how the provider accepted he was able to provide final consent.

    Less than a year after signing the waiver, he was hospitalized after a fall. He was deemed delirious, confused and had hallucinations. During “a period of cognitive improvement” the MAID provider deemed him capable of confirming final consent and provided MAID based on the original assessment.

    Family pressures, such as caregiver burnout, need to be sufficiently investigated.
    (Shutterstock)

    Informed consent concerns also arose in the case of 80-year-old Mrs. B, who told a first MAID assessor she preferred palliative care because of personal and religious values. When a palliative care physician noticed her husband’s “caregiver burnout,” he requested hospice care for Mrs. B, which was rejected.

    Her husband then contacted a second MAID assessor, who approved her for MAID and who rejected the first assessor’s request to talk to Mrs. B. the next day. A third assessor confirmed the second assessor’s approval and Mrs. B received MAID the same day.

    The case of Mr. C involved a man in his 70s, diagnosed with metastatic cancer, who requested a MAID assessment five days after admission into palliative care. But before he could be assessed, he experienced cognitive decline and “loss of ability to communicate.”

    When the palliative care team told a MAID provider the next day that he had lost capacity to consent, the provider “vigorously roused Mr. C., who opened his eyes and mouthed ‘yes’” when asked if he wanted MAID. After withholding pain medication for 45 minutes, the provider considered him more “alert.” A second MAID assessor confirmed his eligibility after an online assessment, also accepting mouthing yes, and “nodding his head in presumed agreeance” as clear and capable informed consent, and he was euthanized.

    These and some other cases described in the committee reports raise several concerns. They show how MAID has been provided in cases where assessors clearly disagree about the application of access criteria, with two seemingly limited assessments favouring MAID overriding others.

    Some patients received MAID after capacity and informed consent procedures that appear problematic, in the case of Mr. C overriding a capacity assessment by a treating palliative care team. Family pressures, such as caregiver burnout, may also be insufficiently investigated, as in the case of Mrs. B.

    And MAID appears to have been delivered in the case of Mr. C. when the patient appeared otherwise comfortable in palliative care and may not have had capacity to consent.

    The reports also reveal that even patients specifically hospitalized for suicidal ideation and in need of mental health care are offered MAID, as earlier coroner reports already revealed. Some cases appear to stretch the contours of MAID law.

    Starkly differing views

    The committee discussions included in the report further suggest starkly different views among MAID Death Review Committee members, including on standards for assessing capacity for consent.

    As discussed in a recent study I co-authored, most of Canada’s MAID practice is driven by a relatively small group of frequent providers. The study found that there are 1,837 MAID providers in Canada, but up to 336 of these are frequent providers who are likely responsible for the majority of annual MAID deaths. This adds to concerns about arguably overly flexible provision of MAID among these providers.

    Another committee member recently discussed how the report on same- or next-day provisions reveals this practice is disproportionately present in some geographical locations. This suggests, as others have discussed in relation to Québec’s MAID practice, that there may be starkly different professional standards and approaches among providers.

    To date there have been no known cases of criminal or professional sanctions against a MAID provider. However, the Chief Coroner’s reports, as well as media reports, indicate that this does not mean Canada’s MAID practice is exemplary, safe and compliant. When reading these cases, many likely wonder, as I do, what it will take for political, judicial and professional authorities to provide firmer guidance, investigate thoroughly and put a halt to problematic delivery of MAID.

    The United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, after hearing evidence from both the federal government and civil society organizations, recently urged Canada to withdraw track 2 MAID (MAID cases in which the patient’s death is not reasonably foreseeable), not to introduce MAID for mental illness and with advance requests, and to improve MAID monitoring and safeguards.

    The UN committee cited the earlier coroner reports. The two most recent reports, which the UN committee did not have yet at its disposal, clearly confirm the urgent need for a revisiting of our MAID law, and for refocusing on protection, not on further expansion.

    Trudo Lemmens is a member of the Chief Coroner of Ontario MAID Death Review Committee. He has been an expert witness for the Federal Attorney General in the Truchon and Lamb cases. He has been an advisor to the Vulnerable Person Standard. His research is partly funded by a Scholl Chair in Health Law and Policy. He is co-editor of a McGill/Queens University Press book Unravelling MAID in Canada: Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide as Medical Care.

    – ref. Ontario Chief Coroner reports raise concerns that MAID policy and practice focus on access rather than protection – https://theconversation.com/ontario-chief-coroner-reports-raise-concerns-that-maid-policy-and-practice-focus-on-access-rather-than-protection-253917

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: A new pope is chosen: A look back on the jostling for the papacy and the conclave’s history

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Colin Rose, Associate Professor of European and Digital History, Brock University

    Cardinal Robert Prevost of the United States is the new pope, succeeding Pope Francis, and taking the name Pope Leo XIV. He’s been elected following a millennium-old ceremony known as the papal conclave. During the conclave, the 135 eligible Cardinal Electors of the Catholic Church sequestered themselves and elected the new pope in isolation.

    During that time, they had no contact with the outside world and they voted repeatedly, in written ballots and verbal declaration, until one of them achieved a two-thirds majority.

    Every failure brings sighs from the crowds in St. Peter’s Square as the votes, burned with a chemical admixture, send up a plume of inky black smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. White smoke, signalling a new pope has been elected, provokes cheers and celebrations and the beginning of a new papal era, as was the case after the election of Leo on May 8, 2025.



    Read more:
    How the next pope will be elected – what goes on at the conclave

    The history of the conclave, especially during the Italian Renaissance that I teach and research, tells us a lot about how the papacy is both a religious and a political office.

    The pope is at once the supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church as well as the absolute monarch of Vatican City. He is both bishop of Rome and head of state of the smallest sovereign state in the world.

    Politics of the papacy

    In the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, the Vatican was the capital of a much-larger Papal State. This territorial buffer around Rome at its height bordered the territories of Florence, Naples, Milan and Venice, and covered much of northern Italy.

    Popes wielded great influence in the dramatic politics of famous Italian families like the Medici: it was a Medici pope, Clement VII, who helped negotiate the installation of the first Medici duke in Florence.

    Apocryphal accounts persist of Julius II, the so-called “Warrior Pope,” leading a charge over the walls of Bologna in 1506.

    At the same time popes, and Catholic policy, had profound consequences for European and global politics: Clement’s successor Paul III excommunicated England’s King Henry VIII, cementing the English break with Rome in 1538.

    A portrait of Pope Alexander VI Borgia circa 1495.
    (Vatican Museums)

    Alexander VI was more audaciously imperial: he sponsored the treaty that arbitrarily divided the entire world outside of Europe between Spain (his home country) and Portugal in 1494.

    Alexander VI’s historical infamy is perhaps outdone only by his son, Cesare Borgia, made famous by his mention is Niccolo Machiavelli’s book The Prince.

    Becoming pope was a big deal for a cardinal and his family. Leading candidates known as papabili (pope-ables) began strategizing and negotiating even before popes died.

    When a pontiff died, those cardinals abroad began their travels to Rome, construction began on the temporary cells that would house them all during the sequestration and the real work of electing a pope began.

    Enea Silvio Piccolomini left a detailed memoir of his election as Pius II in 1458. In it he describes a process of negotiating, threatening, cajoling and strategizing that make the scheming in the recent movie Conclave look unsophisticated.

    Renaissance Italy wrestled with and ultimately reconciled itself to the political nature of the papacy.

    Many, including popes such as Pius II, expressed discomfort with the political power of the papacy. While it was a clear factor in the schism of European Christendom that led to the emergence of the Protestant churches in the 16th century, in early modern Italy the political power of the papacy was a reality of the diplomatic milieu.

    The empty throne

    The conclave marks a special place in early modern history as a time when ordinary political order was overturned for a brief period known as the sede vacante (the Vacant See).

    The Vacant See was a time when identities were swappable and when, as one Paolo di Grassi told a judge in 1559, “in Vacant See [Romans] are the masters. The People are the Masters.” Di Grassi had, during the Vacant See of November 1559, pursued his own longstanding grudges against his enemies and been involved in at least one armed brawl.

    While they waited for a new pope, Romans and everyone else might have passed the time with another favourite vice: gambling on the conclave’s outcome.



    Read more:
    Who will the next pope be? Here are some top contenders

    European princes and other potentates of the church paid close attention to conclaves, tried to smuggle information in and out and steer the conclave in favour of their preferred candidate.

    In 1730, for instance, Cardinal Lambertini smuggled a letter out of his conclave thanking a benefactor for their donations to his future ordination as Pope Benedict XIV.

    The election held everyone’s attention as a rare and unusually impactful event in the Roman calendar.

    While Rome’s streets thrummed with tension during the chaotic days of a Vacant See, the conclave proceeded serenely and secretly within the Vatican’s walls.

    The use of white smoke to mark the election of a pope only began in the 20th century. During the Renaissance, the sound of bells would be a more effective way to spread the news through Rome, before the new pope was announced to the city and the world.

    Much turns on that announcement now, as much did in previous centuries. The conclave elects both a pope and a head of state. While Vatican City is magnitudes smaller than the Papal State of the past, it remains a sovereign state.

    Papal pronouncements shape not just religious thought but political action, through voting, advocacy and more. The crowds who awaited the announcement of the new pope might be less raucous than Renaissance Romans, but they were nonetheless invested in the results.

    Colin Rose receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

    – ref. A new pope is chosen: A look back on the jostling for the papacy and the conclave’s history – https://theconversation.com/a-new-pope-is-chosen-a-look-back-on-the-jostling-for-the-papacy-and-the-conclaves-history-255492

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Even with Pope Leo XIV in place, US Catholics stand ‘at a crossroads’

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Maureen K. Day, Research Fellow, Center for Religion and Civic Culture and Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

    Parishioners attend a memorial Mass in honor of Pope Francis at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles on April 21, 2025. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

    Shortly after 6 P.M. in Rome, the longed-for sight appeared above the Sistine Chapel: white smoke.

    Over the course of a day and a half, the more than 130 members of the College of Cardinals had come to a decision on who should lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. On May 8, 2025, they elected Cardinal Robert Prevost, who chose the name Leo XIV – becoming the first pope from the United States.

    The Conversation U.S. asked Maureen Day, a researcher at the University of Southern California who has written several books about the contemporary church, to explain what Catholicism looks like in the U.S. at this high-stakes moment.

    How is Catholic identity and practice in the U.S. changing, compared with a generation ago?

    In 1987, the year of the first American Catholic Laity survey, nearly half of American Catholics said that faith was “the most” or “among the most” important parts of their life. Now, only 37% say the same.

    Others are leaving the Catholic Church completely. The General Social Survey, a national survey conducted every year or two since the 1970s, asks people about the faith they grew up with, as well as their present religious identity. According to our analysis of its data, in 1973 only 10% of Americans who grew up Catholic had changed religions, and another 7% had left religion altogether. By 2018, each of those percentages had increased to 18%.

    A Pew Research Center study conducted in 2024 found that for every American who converts to Catholicism, another 8.4 leave. The only reason that Catholicism is able to maintain a relatively steady share of the U.S. population – about 20% – is due to the high percentage of immigrants and migrants who are Catholic.

    So my co-authors and I chose the title of our 2025 book, “Catholicism at a Crossroads,” quite intentionally. The church has been facing a variety of challenges for decades, both nationally and across the globe. It’s not just about disaffiliation, but also issues such as the sexual abuse crises and bishops’ decreasing influence on lay Catholics’ personal decisions.

    The Rev. Athanasius Abanulo celebrates Mass in Lanett, Ala., in 2021. Many international clergy, like Abanulo, are helping to ease a shortage of priests in the U.S.
    AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski

    In response, church leaders have mostly offered minor adjustments, such as encouraging parishes to become more family- or young adult-friendly. They have not yet made larger shifts that could substantially alter some of those trend lines.

    Some of your work focuses on what you call ‘cultural Catholics’ − defined as Catholics who attend Mass less than once per month. How would you describe cultural Catholicism in the U.S. today?

    A big concern of Catholic leaders right now is decreasing Mass attendance, as weekly Mass is an important precept of the Catholic Church. Sunday Mass is a place for Catholics to participate in the sacraments, strengthen their faith and build relationships with other Catholics.

    One of the things Catholic leaders tend to attribute this drop in attendance to is a broader trend of secularism. There might be some merit to this, but it can’t be the whole story. In our analysis of General Social Survey data, for example, the percentage of Protestant Christians who say they attend worship services weekly was 35% in 1950 and 40% in 2023. Among Catholics, however, weekly Mass attendance has declined from 63% to 30% in these same years.

    “Cultural Catholics” who say they attend Mass “a few times a year” or “seldom or never” account for 53% of U.S. Catholics. Many of them demonstrate strong ties to Catholic teachings in other ways. For example, around 70% to 80% of cultural Catholics say that it is “essential” or “somewhat essential” to Catholicism to help the poor, have a devotion to Mary and practice daily prayer.

    There are findings that can lend themselves to either a “glass half empty” or “glass half full” interpretation. For instance, it might be heartening to Catholic leaders to know that 62% of cultural Catholics say it is important that future generations of their family are Catholic – although this is much lower than the 89% among those who attend Mass frequently.

    Sister Maris Stella Vaughan teaches a religion class at St. John Paul II Catholic School in Phoenix, Ariz., in 2020.
    AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills

    And when these cultural Catholics imagine future generations of their family being Catholic, what does that mean? Perhaps it entails simply a few milestones, like receiving baptism, First Communion and possibly Confirmation – the three sacraments that initiate a person into the Catholic faith. The way many cultural Catholics are loosely tethered to the church, without much involvement in parish life, is a great concern for many Catholic leaders.

    What main challenges do you see for the American church under the next pope?

    I would argue that the American church’s biggest challenge is how to heal the factionalism within itself.

    On the one hand, there is a great deal of common ground among the most active Catholics, even with the diversity still found here. According to our analysis, 20% of Catholics are “high commitment”: those who say they attend Mass weekly, are unlikely to leave the faith, and that the church is very important to them. These Catholics are more likely to depart from their political party’s position on an issue if it does not align with Catholic teachings. For example, high-commitment Catholic Republicans are much more likely to support the bishops’ position on making the immigration process easier for families. High-commitment Catholic Democrats, meanwhile, are more likely to be against abortion than are their moderate- or low-commitment counterparts.

    In other words, these high-commitment Catholics tend to be less polarized and could find common cause with one another.

    Catholics pray during Mass at Benedictine College on Dec. 3, 2023, in Atchison, Kan.
    AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

    However, there are more extreme pockets – such as those who called into question the legitimacy of Francis’ papacy – that are more militant about their vision of Catholicism. While these Catholics are few in number, they are very vocal. There are fringe groups that mobilized to try to change the direction of the Catholic Church after Francis’ papacy, which they saw as a series of liberal reforms.

    Within more mainstream Catholicism, there are divides over styles of worship, with media attention on some young Americans flocking to more conservative or traditional parishes. However, sociologist Tim Clydesdale and religion scholar Kathleen Garces-Foley found that young adult Catholics are split: While some are attracted to churches with pastors who demonstrate “orthodoxy,” a similar number prefer “openness.”

    What do you wish more people understood about Catholicism in the U.S.?

    I think the “missing piece” for many is the incredible diversity of U.S. Catholicism, from race and ethnicity to politics and practice. Many Americans tend to associate the religion with one or two issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage, and assume that Catholics are fairly monolithic, both in their demographics and their politics.

    Catholics themselves can also forget – or never learn – that their small slice of Catholicism is not the whole of Catholicism.

    Recognizing and elevating what unites this vast family of Catholics, both personally and collectively, is going to be critical as the church moves forward.

    This article was updated on May 8, 2025 to include Pope Leo XIV’s election.

    The work mentioned in this article was funded largely by the Louisville Institute. Her previous research has received funding from many sources, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

    – ref. Even with Pope Leo XIV in place, US Catholics stand ‘at a crossroads’ – https://theconversation.com/even-with-pope-leo-xiv-in-place-us-catholics-stand-at-a-crossroads-255177

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Even with Pope Leo XIV in place, US Catholics stand ‘at a crossroads’ − a sociologist explains

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Maureen K. Day, Research Fellow, Center for Religion and Civic Culture and Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

    Parishioners attend a memorial Mass in honor of Pope Francis at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles on April 21, 2025. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

    Shortly after 6 P.M. in Rome, the longed-for sight appeared above the Sistine Chapel: white smoke.

    Over the course of a day and a half, the more than 130 members of the College of Cardinals had come to a decision on who should lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. On May 8, 2025, they elected Cardinal Robert Prevost, who chose the name Leo XIV – becoming the first pope from the United States.

    The Conversation U.S. asked Maureen Day, a researcher at the University of Southern California who has written several books about the contemporary church, to explain what Catholicism looks like in the U.S. at this high-stakes moment.

    How is Catholic identity and practice in the U.S. changing, compared with a generation ago?

    In 1987, the year of the first American Catholic Laity survey, nearly half of American Catholics said that faith was “the most” or “among the most” important parts of their life. Now, only 37% say the same.

    Others are leaving the Catholic Church completely. The General Social Survey, a national survey conducted every year or two since the 1970s, asks people about the faith they grew up with, as well as their present religious identity. According to our analysis of its data, in 1973 only 10% of Americans who grew up Catholic had changed religions, and another 7% had left religion altogether. By 2018, each of those percentages had increased to 18%.

    A Pew Research Center study conducted in 2024 found that for every American who converts to Catholicism, another 8.4 leave. The only reason that Catholicism is able to maintain a relatively steady share of the U.S. population – about 20% – is due to the high percentage of immigrants and migrants who are Catholic.

    So my co-authors and I chose the title of our 2025 book, “Catholicism at a Crossroads,” quite intentionally. The church has been facing a variety of challenges for decades, both nationally and across the globe. It’s not just about disaffiliation, but also issues such as the sexual abuse crises and bishops’ decreasing influence on lay Catholics’ personal decisions.

    The Rev. Athanasius Abanulo celebrates Mass in Lanett, Ala., in 2021. Many international clergy, like Abanulo, are helping to ease a shortage of priests in the U.S.
    AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski

    In response, church leaders have mostly offered minor adjustments, such as encouraging parishes to become more family- or young adult-friendly. They have not yet made larger shifts that could substantially alter some of those trend lines.

    Some of your work focuses on what you call ‘cultural Catholics’ − defined as Catholics who attend Mass less than once per month. How would you describe cultural Catholicism in the U.S. today?

    A big concern of Catholic leaders right now is decreasing Mass attendance, as weekly Mass is an important precept of the Catholic Church. Sunday Mass is a place for Catholics to participate in the sacraments, strengthen their faith and build relationships with other Catholics.

    One of the things Catholic leaders tend to attribute this drop in attendance to is a broader trend of secularism. There might be some merit to this, but it can’t be the whole story. In our analysis of General Social Survey data, for example, the percentage of Protestant Christians who say they attend worship services weekly was 35% in 1950 and 40% in 2023. Among Catholics, however, weekly Mass attendance has declined from 63% to 30% in these same years.

    “Cultural Catholics” who say they attend Mass “a few times a year” or “seldom or never” account for 53% of U.S. Catholics. Many of them demonstrate strong ties to Catholic teachings in other ways. For example, around 70% to 80% of cultural Catholics say that it is “essential” or “somewhat essential” to Catholicism to help the poor, have a devotion to Mary and practice daily prayer.

    There are findings that can lend themselves to either a “glass half empty” or “glass half full” interpretation. For instance, it might be heartening to Catholic leaders to know that 62% of cultural Catholics say it is important that future generations of their family are Catholic – although this is much lower than the 89% among those who attend Mass frequently.

    Sister Maris Stella Vaughan teaches a religion class at St. John Paul II Catholic School in Phoenix, Ariz., in 2020.
    AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills

    And when these cultural Catholics imagine future generations of their family being Catholic, what does that mean? Perhaps it entails simply a few milestones, like receiving baptism, First Communion and possibly Confirmation – the three sacraments that initiate a person into the Catholic faith. The way many cultural Catholics are loosely tethered to the church, without much involvement in parish life, is a great concern for many Catholic leaders.

    What main challenges do you see for the American church under the next pope?

    I would argue that the American church’s biggest challenge is how to heal the factionalism within itself.

    On the one hand, there is a great deal of common ground among the most active Catholics, even with the diversity still found here. According to our analysis, 20% of Catholics are “high commitment”: those who say they attend Mass weekly, are unlikely to leave the faith, and that the church is very important to them. These Catholics are more likely to depart from their political party’s position on an issue if it does not align with Catholic teachings. For example, high-commitment Catholic Republicans are much more likely to support the bishops’ position on making the immigration process easier for families. High-commitment Catholic Democrats, meanwhile, are more likely to be against abortion than are their moderate- or low-commitment counterparts.

    In other words, these high-commitment Catholics tend to be less polarized and could find common cause with one another.

    Catholics pray during Mass at Benedictine College on Dec. 3, 2023, in Atchison, Kan.
    AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

    However, there are more extreme pockets – such as those who called into question the legitimacy of Francis’ papacy – that are more militant about their vision of Catholicism. While these Catholics are few in number, they are very vocal. There are fringe groups that mobilized to try to change the direction of the Catholic Church after Francis’ papacy, which they saw as a series of liberal reforms.

    Within more mainstream Catholicism, there are divides over styles of worship, with media attention on some young Americans flocking to more conservative or traditional parishes. However, sociologist Tim Clydesdale and religion scholar Kathleen Garces-Foley found that young adult Catholics are split: While some are attracted to churches with pastors who demonstrate “orthodoxy,” a similar number prefer “openness.”

    What do you wish more people understood about Catholicism in the U.S.?

    I think the “missing piece” for many is the incredible diversity of U.S. Catholicism, from race and ethnicity to politics and practice. Many Americans tend to associate the religion with one or two issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage, and assume that Catholics are fairly monolithic, both in their demographics and their politics.

    Catholics themselves can also forget – or never learn – that their small slice of Catholicism is not the whole of Catholicism.

    Recognizing and elevating what unites this vast family of Catholics, both personally and collectively, is going to be critical as the church moves forward.

    This article was updated on May 8, 2025 to include Pope Leo XIV’s election.

    The work mentioned in this article was funded largely by the Louisville Institute. Her previous research has received funding from many sources, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

    – ref. Even with Pope Leo XIV in place, US Catholics stand ‘at a crossroads’ − a sociologist explains – https://theconversation.com/even-with-pope-leo-xiv-in-place-us-catholics-stand-at-a-crossroads-a-sociologist-explains-255177

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Israel’s peace movement offers a ray of hope amid the pain of Gaza conflict

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Yuval Katz, Lecturer in Communication and Media, Loughborough University

    The first thing I do when going back to Israel for a visit is go for a run. After more than two years abroad, it is a good opportunity to refamiliarise myself with the home I left to pursue my academic career more than eight years ago.

    I knew things would not feel the same. On October 7 2023, Hamas militants breached the fence surrounding the Gaza Strip, killing over 1,000 Israelis and taking more than 200 hostage. It was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and a resounding blow against the founding idea of the state of Israel, which was established as a safe haven for the Jewish people, who have been persecuted for millennia.

    But in the 18 months that have passed since this catastrophic day, I have grown increasingly critical of the path Israel has taken. It has become a path of revenge, in which Israel has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians through ruthless air strikes and ground operations in the Gaza Strip.

    Now, as many government officials openly declare that there are “no innocent people in Gaza”, plans are in the making to cleanse Gaza of Palestinians through “voluntary immigration”. Although it has not been recognised as such by international law (charges of genocide are currently being investigated by the International Court of Justice), the Netanyahu government has been accused of premeditated genocide, carried out by Jews only 80 years after the Holocaust ended.

    Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

    In the meantime, Israelis are frustrated and exhausted. Their security has not improved, and 59 hostages remain in Gaza (only 24 of whom are thought to be alive). Those who returned from captivity alive report that military operations kill rather than save them – many of them urge the government to stop the war.

    During my run, I was amazed by the mesmerising advocacy campaign to release the hostages. Faces of the hostage and their stories are omnipresent across the public sphere – in posters hung on walls and fences, on flags, bumper stickers and slogans sprayed in graffiti on highways.

    One cannot escape the simultaneous presence (absence) of the hostages. When driving across the country, I listened to radio hosts mentioning those left behind in the Gaza tunnels at the beginning of every hour. Lest we forget.

    Yet, with all the yearning to bring them home comes a devastating helplessness. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, whose intelligence failures were responsible for October 7 and the endless war, is still in power – and many ordinary people feel there is little they can do to change this reality.

    Perhaps it was my indefatigable search for hope that led me to an organisation that embodies the alternative to endless cycles of conflict.

    My academic work focuses on how media forms – whether that be popular television shows, digital activism, or mainstream journalism – generate spaces where Palestinians and Jews meet each other. Where they can process their traumas together creatively through art and storytelling in ways that offer new possibilities for a life worth living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

    But I completed collecting the data for my book project before October 7. Now, returning, I felt an urgency to discover whether a vision for peace was still possible amid this unbearable despair.

    Standing together

    The movement, Standing Together, was founded in late 2015 in the wake of a series of violent incidents. Witnessing the incompetence of left-wing parties and human rights organisations to protect Palestinian citizens of the state from growing racism, a few dozen activists decided to organise a joint demonstration for Palestinians and Jews, so they set up a Facebook page to invite people to join.

    Trailer for No Other Land.

    The movement has expanded significantly since then; from a group of roughly 20 activists, it now consists of over 6,000 registered members, operating in 14 local centres across the country and is a leading organiser of political activities on Israeli campuses.

    I visited its headquarters in Tel Aviv – where the movement has expanded from a couple of rooms to a whole floor of an office building, with paid staff managing its data, media content, finances, and student relations.

    I conducted several interviews with Standing Together’s managers in which they indicated that membership and donations have grown exponentially since the war started. They told me many Palestinians and Israelis are looking for a political home to advance a vision of peace, equality and solidarity.

    The activities of Standing Together include operating information booths which also collect humanitarian aid for Gaza and send it across the border. They screen events and movies for members that reflect the harsh reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while offering an alternative to perpetual violence.

    A series of national screenings was dedicated to the Oscar-winning documentary, No Other Land, which depicts the dispossession of the Palestinian community of Masafer Yatta in the West Bank.

    The movie had been banned from commercial screening in Israel, but the filmmakers, peace activists for whom changing the political reality in Masafer Yatta is more important than anything else, have made it free to screen – they want all Israelis to see it.

    It also screened the joint Memorial Day service, a ceremony that has been staged for years now to allow bereaved families from both sides to meet and grieve together and call for a political change in which no more people join this community of pain.

    People who attended a screening of the Israeli-Palestinian memorial day ceremony at a synagogue in the city of Ra’anana at the end of April were attacked by right-wing activists. There was no response or condemnation from government officials.

    As darkness threatens to consume the people of Israel and Palestine with little regard for human life, movements like Standing Together spread light and bring hope.

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

    – ref. Israel’s peace movement offers a ray of hope amid the pain of Gaza conflict – https://theconversation.com/israels-peace-movement-offers-a-ray-of-hope-amid-the-pain-of-gaza-conflict-256030

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Donald Trump has reduced tariffs on British metals and cars, but how important is this trade deal? Experts react

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

    The US president called it a “very big deal”. The UK prime minister said it was “fantastic, historic” day. For sure, Keir Starmer and his team will have been delighted that the UK was first in line to negotiate adjustments to Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs announced on “liberation day” just a few weeks ago. But what might the trade deal between the UK and US actually mean? We asked four economic experts to respond to the Oval Office announcement.

    Wins for the UK are real, but limited

    Maha Rafi Atal, Adam Smith Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Political Economy, University of Glasgow

    The new UK-US trade announcement is less a breakthrough than a careful balancing act – partial, tactical and politically calculated.

    Key UK wins are real but limited. Tariffs on British metals and autos are eased, thanks in part to the UK government acquisition of the Chinese-owned Scunthorpe steelmaking facility, removing a longstanding US objection. But even auto tariffs are only scaled back to the general baseline of 10% and not eliminated.

    Agriculture and tech remain the real stress points. The UK has granted market access to US agricultural products, including beef, but crucially without changing its food safety standards. This sidesteps a domestic political fight and avoids undermining the UK’s Northern Ireland arrangements or its EU alignment. Still, if US beef doesn’t meet those standards, the market access may prove meaningless in practice – setting up future pressure points.

    Perhaps the most notable UK win: it retains its digital services tax on US tech giants. That tax hits Silicon Valley hard, and the US wanted it gone. Instead, the announcement punts this to future talks – holding the line for now, but not securing it permanently.

    This isn’t the long-anticipated UK-US free trade agreement. It’s not a treaty, not comprehensive, and not ratified. It’s a limited, executive-level arrangement with more questions than answers – and more negotiations to come.

    Stronger ties and badly needed growth to come

    David Collins, Professor of International Economic Law, City St George’s, University of London

    This deal is an excellent development that should help restore the UK-US trade relationship to what it was before President Trump took office for the second time. At the time of writing, few details about the arrangement are known. But the 25% tariff on UK steel and aluminium has been removed, as has the tariff rate on most car exports – from 27.5% to 10%

    The lower car rate applies to the first 100,000 vehicles exported from the UK to the US each year. Around 101,000 were exported last year.

    More details are promised in the coming days and weeks. Perhaps they will include an agreement which separates the UK from any restrictions that the US intends to impose on the film industry. In return, the UK might eliminate its digital services tax on the US (which I argue it should never have imposed because it will only raise prices for consumers and generate little revenue).

    But overall, it seems clear that the Labour government has prioritised the UK’s relationship with the EU, evidently seeking as close as possible a connection without formally rejoining. So, while this agreement with Trump is well short of a comprehensive free trade agreement, it is a welcome development that should strengthen Anglo-American ties and bring some badly needed economic growth to both countries.

    Political theatre for both sides

    Conor O’Kane, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Bournemouth

    This announcement is a framework for a trade deal rather than an actual formal completed agreement. Trade deals are detailed, complex and take many months to negotiate.

    The US and the UK are both countries with massive persistent structural trade deficits. It is very unlikely that what has been announced will significantly shift the dial on either country’s structural deficit or growth forecast.

    Jerome Powell, chair of the US Federal Reserve, recently warned that Donald Trump’s tariff policy risked higher inflation and higher unemployment at the same time, what economists call “stagflation”. The president’s announcement will prove a welcome distraction from Powell’s comments.

    The deal should perhaps be viewed as symbolic. Trump’s US tariff policy has been chaotic to date and his administration finally has something they can point to as a win in the aftermath of “liberation day”.

    Of course, a trade deal is also a good news story for the Labour government after disappointing local elections. Prime Minister Keir Starmer can claim economic credibility by being first in line for a trade deal, perhaps cementing the “special relationship”.

    Mini-tariffs on UK cars.
    balipadma/Shutterstock

    However, is the US a reliable partner to sign a trade deal with? During his first term, Trump signed a free trade deal with Mexico and Canada (the 2020 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA – the successor to Nafta). At the time, he said the deal “will be fantastic for all”. But he subsequently reneged on it.

    There is also a wider strategic element to this. First, the US wanted to get a trade deal in place with the UK ahead of what looks like a comprehensive EU-UK trade deal coming down the line. Second, Trump sees the EU as an economic rival. By signing a deal with the UK, he is signalling to other European countries the possibility of a potentially better trading relationship with the US outside of the EU.

    Deal leaves the door open for EU relationship

    Sangeeta Khorana, Professor of International Trade Policy, Aston University

    The agreement is a tactical win for both countries. It eases trade frictions, supports key industries and sets the framework for a broader UK-US free trade agreement without impacting on the UK’s economic reset with the European Union.

    The UK–US agreement, which suspends some of Trump’s recent tariffs, is sector-specific and far from comprehensive. It preserves UK food safety and animal-welfare standards. And it safeguards post-Brexit EU links while allowing the UK to cement its strategic partnership with Washington. Talks will be launched on aerospace, advanced batteries, data flows and services liberalisation within 12 months.

    This is a timely coup, coming so soon after the India deal. The pact represents a strategic diplomatic gain that brings tariff relief (and potentially the associated uncertainty) for key British industries, while also preserving UK’s regulatory alignment with the EU.

    Maha Rafi Atal is sometimes a volunteer organiser for the US Democratic party/candidates and has no party affiliation or involvement in the UK.

    Sangeeta Khorana is Professor and endowed Chair of International Trade Policy at Aston University.

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

    – ref. Donald Trump has reduced tariffs on British metals and cars, but how important is this trade deal? Experts react – https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-has-reduced-tariffs-on-british-metals-and-cars-but-how-important-is-this-trade-deal-experts-react-256240

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Four records that embody the joy of the double album – from the Beatles to Outkast

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Glenn Fosbraey, Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Winchester

    In the summer of 1966, a race was on between two very different opponents. On one side was Bob Dylan, the established and bestselling folk artist. On the other was new act The Mothers of Invention, a genre- (and mind-) bending band led by avant garde composer Frank Zappa. The aim? To release the first “double album” (four-sided LP) in popular music.

    On June 20, Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde prevailed, pipping The Mothers of Invention’s Freak Out! by a single week. But the outcome was largely unimportant – not least because the first double album had actually been released six years prior, in the form of R&B singer Jimmy Clanton’s Jimmy’s Happy/Jimmy’s Blue.

    But the “race” did at least demonstrate there was interest in the double album as a format – and that, with the commercial success of Blonde on Blonde (Freak Out! unsurprisingly failed to trouble the charts), the public weren’t put off by the inflated price of a two-LP set.

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    The double album may have subsequently gone through a rocky patch in the 1970s when “self-indulgent” prog rockers used it to unleash interminable dreary eternities – but it remains a crucial, albeit uncommon, part of pop music. Here are some of the standouts that you may or may not have come across.

    1. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below by Outkast (2003)

    Rumours of a falling out between Outkast members Big Boi and André 3000 were rife in the lead-up to the release of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below in September 2003. The fact thia project was essentially two solo albums stuck together didn’t help matters.

    Roses by Outkast from Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.

    Whatever the circumstances it was recorded under, the result was synapse-popping, gut-reorganising, breathtakingly adventurous music. It’s not perfect and, like many double albums before and since, critics have suggested it would have been better served trimmed down and issued as a single disc. But the benefit of the double album format is that it allows artists the time and freedom to experiment.

    Across its two-and-a-half-hour running time, Big Boi and André push boundaries and create a space for hip hop to embrace its weirdness.

    2. Blinking Lights and Other Revelations by Eels (2005)

    American alt-rock band Eels’ sixth studio album saw songwriter-singer-producer Mark Everett (known as “E”) in reflective mood, taking stock of his entire life up to this point.

    Given that his life had included his sister’s 1996 suicide, his mother’s death from cancer soon after, his father’s alcoholism and the death of his cousin in 9/11, it would have been reasonable to expect one of the most depressing albums of all time. And yet, somehow, it’s anything but.

    Described by the Guardian as “one of the best albums to have arisen out of grief” and by E as “a love letter to life itself, in all its beautiful, horrible glory”, Blinking Lights manages to take all that pain and misery and turn it into something genuinely positive and life-affirming.

    Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living) by Eels from Blinking Lights and Other Revelations.

    Recorded over several years, mostly in E’s Los Angeles basement, the album’s production veers between intricate and lo-fi. E’s singing voice – a unique combination of gruff and tender – is its only constant.

    Having spent 90 minutes going through every conceivable emotion (and perhaps several more besides), we make it to the final line of the final track, Things the Grandchildren Should Know, where E tells us: “If I had to do it all again, then it’s something I’d like to do.”

    After all the struggles, all the devastation and trauma, the fact he still considers life sweet enough to live all over again is goosebump-inducing: an extraordinary moment from an extraordinary album.

    3. Aerial by Kate Bush (2005)

    For whatever reason, the number of double albums released by male artists dwarfs those released by females. Donna Summer, Christina Aguilera and Beyoncé are among the few, and Taylor Swift almost had one with The Tortured Poets Department (technically its 15-song “second instalment” was a separate release from the first). But these are relatively uncommon examples.

    As for a double album that’s been written and produced solely by a female artist – well, replace “uncommon” with “almost non-existent”.

    King of the Mountain by Kate Bush from Aerial.

    “Almost” because in 2005, Kate Bush did it with Aerial. Her first album in over a decade, Aerial saw Bush at her idiosyncratic best. In her hands (and voice), commonplace events are made to sound extraordinary – and they’re sung to a constantly shifting palette of musical styles, ranging from baroque to dance.

    It’s impossible to predict what’s going to come next, and that is joyous. Just to show how nothing is ever perfect, though, two of the tracks feature disgraced Australian entertainer Rolf Harris, whose contributions Bush removed from the 2018 re-issue.

    4. The Beatles/The White Album by The Beatles (1968)

    On May 30 1968, almost exactly one year after the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the fab four returned to Abbey Road studios to begin work on their next album, a self-titled affair which will forever be known as the White Album.

    But where do the most important band in the world go after they’ve just hit a “musically ground-breaking, hyper-influential career high-water mark”? They go bigger, of course.

    Millions of words have already been written about the brilliance of the Beatles, but their prolific artistry around this period still can’t be overstated. When the White Album was released in November 1968, the band had produced a staggering 53 songs in just 18 months, spread across two albums (one a double), a double EP and four chart-topping singles. Thirty of those songs appear on this album, most of them written during the band’s meditation retreat to Rishikesh in India in early 1968.

    While My Guitar Gently Weeps by the Beatles from the White Album.

    It’s the least collegiate of all the Beatles’ albums and Harrison, Lennon and McCartney would often work on their own tracks in three different studios. But it’s also their most experimental and diverse, taking in everything from hard rock and blues-rock to saloon satire, pastoral folk, vaudeville, and avant-garde sound collage.

    Its stark, plain white cover may have been designed to contrast with the colourfully trippy artwork of Sgt. Pepper’s, but it shares its acclaim, regularly making “best album cover of all time” lists.

    The Beatles may have been coming apart as a group when they were making it – and the sound collage track Revolution 9 may make beginning-to-end listens a bit of a challenge – but for many of us, the White Album is still the biggest and best album from the biggest and best band.

    Do you have a favourite double album? We’d love to hear about it. Let us know your pick in the comments below.

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

    – ref. Four records that embody the joy of the double album – from the Beatles to Outkast – https://theconversation.com/four-records-that-embody-the-joy-of-the-double-album-from-the-beatles-to-outkast-255244

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Objective pain score? Here’s the problem with that

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Laurenz Casser, Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow, University of Sheffield

    Nenadmil/Shutterstock

    Are you in pain? Are you sure? On a scale from zero to ten, where zero is no pain at all and ten is the worst pain imaginable, how much pain is it?

    Invitations to rate your pain on some arbitrary scale of numerals, or on a display of smiley faces that range from happy to sad (if you’re a child), remain the standard ways of assessing people’s pain. If a doctor wants to know how much pain their patient is in, that’s how they’ll try to find out. And they do this for good reason: no one knows a person’s pain better than the person whose pain it is.

    And yet, ratings like these have their limitations. After all, people interpret their pains differently. Some make much of very little, giving high ratings to fairly light pains, while others make little of very much, giving low ratings to pretty bad pains. When a patient rates their pain a five out of ten, who’s to say how much pain that five actually stands for (other than the patient)?

    Luckily, we are promised that these problems with subjective pain ratings will soon be a matter of the past. Several labs around the world report that they are on the cusp of releasing the first objective pain measurement technology: devices that will be able to determine the type and intensity of a person’s pain without having to rely on anyone’s rating or interpretation at all.

    These measurement devices differ in their specifics, but converge in kind. They track patterns in so-called “biomarkers” that correlate with pain experiences – such as the activation of certain nerve fibres, pupil dilation, or variations in blood flow – and compare these patterns with lots of data from people in pain. Doing so, these devices are meant to measure how much pain a person is in based on their biomarker profile.

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    The upshots of this technology are expected to be tremendous: more accurate diagnostics, better testing of analgesic drugs, massive savings for the healthcare system, you name it. Objective pain measurement is meant to transform pain management as we know it.

    But there’s a catch, and it’s a big one. Ask yourself: how did anyone ever figure out that these devices actually work? I mean, how can these researchers be sure that these patterns of nerve activation or those variations in blood flow correspond to that much pain? The answer may surprise you.

    To test the accuracy of their devices, pain researchers evaluate their measurements by reference to the only glimpse of people’s pain experiences they have access to: subjective pain ratings. That’s right. The ultimate test for how good an “objective” pain measurement device truly is is to see how it stacks up against people’s subjective ratings – the very ratings that were deemed so problematic that we wanted new ones.

    The reason researchers do this is that they’re caught in a catch-22: to verify that they have accurately measured a person’s pain, they would have to know how much pain the person was in to begin with, which of course they don’t – that’s why they’re developing a measurement device. What they do know, however, is how that person rates their pain, and so that’s all they have to evaluate the accuracy of their measurements with.

    But a device that predicts people’s pain ratings based on their biomarkers is a far cry from an “objective pain measurement” technology. Its measurements can’t tell us how much pain a person is in with any more accuracy, any less bias, or any more authority than a person’s own rating. Why? Because it’s trained on subjective pain ratings we had trouble interpreting in the first place.

    Pain is subjective. There’s no getting away from it.
    guruXOX/Shutterstock.com

    A philosophical issue

    The problem here has nothing to do with technology. It’s not about how sophisticated your algorithms are, how advanced your equipment is, or how much research funding you got. It’s about the philosophical issue that pain is a subjective experience with only one person who has access to it: the person in pain. Linking biomarkers to pain ratings will never make that access more public.

    Should we be disappointed? I’m not so sure. If objective measures of pain existed, and if they were worth their salt, then they would come apart from people’s own assessments of their pain. They’d have to, since they could hardly be any better or any more accurate if they came out just the same.

    But if what I make of my pain and what a device makes of it is different, then whose assessment is the more important one here? And who is my doctor going to take more seriously in guiding their treatment recommendations: the flashy objective pain score or my little subjective rating? I’m glad I won’t have to find out.

    Laurenz Casser receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust.

    – ref. Objective pain score? Here’s the problem with that – https://theconversation.com/objective-pain-score-heres-the-problem-with-that-255063

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: A beginner’s guide to vegan fashion (and how to spot ‘greenwashing’)

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dr Songyi Yan, Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Fashion Management, Manchester Metropolitan University

    Ksw Photographer/Shutterstock

    “Vegan” and “plant-based” are not just food labels anymore; they are fashion’s latest buzzwords. Imagine walking into a high-street fashion store, drawn to a stylish bomber jacket labelled “100% vegan”. You flip the tag, looking for material details, only to find none. Nearby, a luxury handbag proudly announces it’s made from vegan leather. A closer look reveals it’s 56% recycled polyester and 44% polyurethane – basically plastic.

    It’s easy to assume vegan clothes are more ethically and sustainably produced. While it’s evident that vegan leathers avoid animal-derived materials and can support higher animal welfare, labels can be misleading. Many vegan leathers are primarily plastic-based, with environmental consequences that aren’t always communicated clearly.

    Even when made from recycled polyester, these materials still contribute to pollution. They will shed plastic microfibres that persist in landfills and oceans for centuries, and require energy intensive recycling. In some cases, plastic-based vegan leather can be more environmentally damaging than natural alternatives such as vegetable-tanned leather, which is a by-product of the meat industry that biodegrades more easily.

    Fashion’s veganism doesn’t stop with plastics. Material innovations such as cactus leather, mushroom-based mycelium and algae-derived threads promise exciting alternatives to plastic-based and animal-derived fabrics. Brands often use terms such as “plant-based”, “bio-material”, and “100% biodegradable” to attract consumers. Unfortunately, these labels are often vague, inconsistently defined, and can hide potential issues, including synthetic coatings, unclear biodegradability or short product lifespans.

    I’m a researcher in sustainable fashion, focusing on consumer behaviour and sustainability communication. Together with colleagues, I have analysed the websites of 21 innovative materials companies and found that sustainability messaging is often carefully curated and lacking transparency. Vegan alternatives can help brands build an eco image and cut production costs, without necessarily reducing environmental harm.

    Few companies disclose important details such as product durability, recyclability or the conditions needed to biodegrade. Meanwhile, terms like “100% biodegradable” can give the impression that their algae-derived T-shirt will simply decompose in the garden – when, in reality, it requires specific industrial conditions such as sustained high heat, controlled humidity and specialised microbial environments to break down properly. Such miscommunication contributes to “greenwashing”, where marketing sounds greener than the reality.

    Often vegan products are made from plastic polymers.
    TaraPatta/Shutterstock

    To help consumers make informed choices, brand messaging about sustainability needs to be clear and consistent. Terms such as “vegan”, “plastic-free” and “biodegradable” currently lack standardised definitions and aren’t regulated rigorously in markets such as the UK and EU, making them nearly meaningless without verifiable proof. Even upcoming legislation aimed at regulating green claims faces major challenges, as legally binding definitions remain vague.

    This lack of transparency isn’t limited to fashion. I’ve seen a vegan sofa marketed without details about its materials, leaving consumers unaware of plastics and synthetic chemicals involved.

    Similarly, a computer bag is marketed as made from Banbū, a plant-based material derived from bamboo. While the exact composition isn’t disclosed, similar materials often combine natural fibres with synthetic elements for durability. Without full transparency, it’s difficult for consumers to know whether such items are entirely plastic-free or not.

    How to shop smarter

    So, what can we do as consumers? With so much greenwashing and fuzzy language, it’s easy to feel powerless. Here are some practical ways to help you question vague eco-claims:

    Read beyond the label: Don’t stop at buzzwords such as “vegan” or “plant-based”, check what the product is actually made of. Is it 100% natural or blended with plastics like polyurethane? If material details aren’t listed, that’s a red flag.

    Check for trusted certifications: Claims are stronger when backed by certifications. Look out for certifications such as the Global Recycled Standard (GRS), Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), or Cradle-to-Cradle Certified™ help verify claims around recycled content, chemical safety and sustainability across products’ lifecycle.

    Think long-term: A durable product you can use for years is more sustainable than one that’s vegan but only lasts a season. Ask yourself: Will this item stand the test of time? Can it be repaired, reused, or easily recycled once it reaches the end of its wearable life?

    Prioritise transparency: Choose brands that don’t just tell feel-good stories but openly share facts. One good example is Veja – the footwear brand openly discusses its practices with vegetable-tanned leather, admitting it wasn’t durable enough for wide use. While they don’t claim perfection, Veja is relatively honest about their materials, production practices, and sustainability challenges and limitations – that transparency is still quite rare.

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

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

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

    – ref. A beginner’s guide to vegan fashion (and how to spot ‘greenwashing’) – https://theconversation.com/a-beginners-guide-to-vegan-fashion-and-how-to-spot-greenwashing-253770

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How Tove Jansson’s Moomins illustrations taught us to imagine, resist and belong

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amelia Huw Morgan, Senior Lecturer Illustration, Cardiff Metropolitan University

    There is a world beyond our own, where imagination and reality meet, and where, for 80 years, Tove Jansson’s Moomins illustrations have offered readers a way to recognise themselves.

    Before Moomin books began to be published in 1945, early Moomin characters appeared, grumpily, in publications like the Finnish satirical magazine Garm. Jansson had started her career there in 1929. Her witty caricatures led to her making a name for herself, relishing the opportunity to be “beastly to Stalin and Hitler”.

    But as war engulfed the world in the 1940s, Jansson turned away from direct satire. Instead, she took the Moomins to the soft refuge of her newly imagined Moominvalley, to live more safely, simply and happily, where they continued to grapple with serious issues. She later recalled that at the time she “felt that the only thing one could do was to write fairy tales”.

    Cover of the 1950 paperback edition of Finn Family Moomintroll.
    Tove Jansson/Wikimedia

    Since then, her creations have provided a haven where melancholy, joy and wonder can exist side by side. Through their soft, contrary, strange and heavy lightness, the Moomins’ theorise and share wisdom.

    Illustrated children’s books like the Moomins can turn into our forever books. For this reason, children’s literature should always be taken seriously, as former children’s laureate Lauren Child has argued.

    But in today’s publishing world, illustrations often seem designed simply to fatten pages up. They look like something but can feel like nothing.

    Golden age

    During the golden age of illustration between 1890 and 1930, illustrators gave children a new and vital aspect of childhood. They created books that supported young readers as they grew.

    Illustrators like Kate Greenaway and Beatrix Potter who Jansson much admired, took children seriously. They met them unpatronisingly and valued their imaginations.

    Greenaway’s illustrations for songs, parlour games and nursery rhymes, as well as her famous drawings for the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and Potter’s courageous problem-solving animals, charm the child who will one day become an adult.

    Front cover of The Moomins and the Great Flood.
    Tove Jansson/Wikimedia

    Jansson’s tiny ink marks continued this tradition. As you travel through the expanse of Moominvalley, she holds the reader close, transporting them to the Moomins’ consciousness. The texture of her illustrations make them almost tangible.

    Our imaginations become fertile and awake. From the slippery feel of seaweed underfoot to the dim light of a cold room, everything is heightened by the Moomins’ glowing whiteness. Their thoughtful eyes widen to produce subtle emotions.

    Jansson’s techniques are much like the methods used by writers such as Katherine Mansfield (1888 – 1923). She was a pioneering modernist and her work is now praised for its accessible approach to writing short stories. Mansfield threw her readers into her characters’ experiences to feel their feelings and think their thoughts. Mansfield’s astute observations and empathy entwined to sustain sophisticated stories which feel fresh to this day.

    Similarly, Jansson’s drawings refuse to patronise or simplify. They respect the reader’s intelligence, offering stories that enchant and challenge in equal measure.

    Jansson placed her characters between reality and imagination. Her comic strips had spoken to a world of dictators, of vanity and class. This allowed her to form, in Moominvalley, a place also to observe, make comment, fight back, perhaps even ridicule. She kept the satirical qualities but made them more palatable to children as well as adults.

    The UK version of the Polish felt stop motion Moomins animation.

    Texture

    Perhaps the 1977 to 1982 Polish stop-motion Moomin animations captured the texture of Jansson’s world best. In these felted forms, the Moomins remained soft, slightly wobbly and imperfect, just as in the original ink lines.

    The more polished, digital and sharp-edged the Moomins become, the more their truth seems to recede. Commercialisation has pushed the Moomins into the bright, glossy world of merchandise – mugs, theme parks and endless shelf life. But in the rush to perfect and brand them, we risk losing the open, imaginative spaces Jansson drew.

    Her illustrations matter because they are portals, openings into parallel worlds that help us better understand ourselves. Early fairy tales were deliberately sparse and undetailed, leaving space for a child’s imagination to roam freely. Jansson’s illustrations do the same.

    In the penultimate chapter of her second Moomin book Comet in Moominland, Moominmama sings a lullaby to the children who have returned from their adventure:

    Snuggle up close and shut your eyes tight

    And sleep without dreaming the whole of the night

    The comet is gone and your mother is near

    To keep you from harm till the morning is near

    It’s a moment of comfort, of deep protection. A mother willing her children to forget what they’ve seen. But viewed from today’s perspective, in a world saturated with fear, uncertainty and noise, it also raises a question. Should we be lulled into forgetting, or, as Jansson’s illustrations suggest, should we remain half-awake?

    Her drawings never offer perfection. The ink lines wobble and hold tension and gentleness together, just as her stories balance safety with peril. Jansson’s illustrations invite us to embrace the vulnerability and the danger, the wholesome and the pure. They give us space to feel deeply and think clearly, in a world that often discourages both.

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

    – ref. How Tove Jansson’s Moomins illustrations taught us to imagine, resist and belong – https://theconversation.com/how-tove-janssons-moomins-illustrations-taught-us-to-imagine-resist-and-belong-254631

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Keep calm and carry on buying: how Ukrainian consumers are hitting back at Russia

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Cristina Galalae, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, The Open University

    Political conflicts and global tensions always affect people on the ground and across borders. Unable to influence events such as the ongoing war against Ukraine or proposed sweeping US tariffs, people turn to whatever resources are available for defending their livelihoods, institutions and communities.

    This explains the recent surge of boycotts and “buycotts” where consumers swerve a brand or actively support it for political reasons. For example, shoppers across the world are replacing US goods with local alternatives to protect national pride and economies.

    In the early days of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, shoppers were making similar public commitments to boycott Russian products.

    But there are many other ways in which brands and consumers responded to the start of the invasion in 2014. Global and local reactions from brands included donations, divestment, the creation of new products or product names and advertising and social media content linked to the invasion. In turn, consumer responses to these brand initiatives are a form of civic action.

    In a study we undertook (along with our colleagues Carlo Mari, Verónica Martín Ruiz and Lizette Vorster), we analysed how marketing professionals and ordinary consumers create and interpret products and brands explicitly or implicitly acknowledging the war in Ukraine. To do this, we conducted in-depth interviews with marketing managers and consumers and analyses of brand and product imagery.

    Our findings highlight three ways that marketing resources and consumer responses support psycho-social and cultural resilience in war-affected communities.

    1. Using satire to ease symbolic threat

    Humour and satire have long been used for addressing pressing societal issues, and many brands in Ukraine have embraced them in response to the invasion. For example, mayonnaise brand Ukrop Style, marketed by Ukrainian firm Olkom, leant on satire to boost consumer morale.

    The term “Ukrop” (meaning “dill” in Ukrainian) has been used by Russia as a slur against Ukrainians since the beginning of the war. Several “ukrop”-themed products and services then sprang up to reclaim the word and its imagery. It was used in new product names and packaging, as Olkom did.

    Several participants in our study discussed engagement with brands like this to mobilise the public spirit of defiance. For them, the use of humour helped lessen the insult directed at their nation.

    2. National symbols for societal cohesion

    When people perceive that their society and way of life is under threat, they often turn to cultural symbols. These can help to assert connections with others.

    Several brands have incorporated symbolic references to Ukraine in their communication messages, with national flags and designs depicting vyshyvanka
    embroidery (which is specific to traditional Ukrainian shirts).

    A Samsung advert using vyshyvanka, traditional Ukrainian garments and the phrase “Evolution is beautiful” evokes Ukraine’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity and the shared Ukrainian identity built on dignity, freedom and togetherness.

    Samsung taps into Ukrainian national pride.

    3. Promoting the origin of products

    Between 2014 and 2022, Ukraine and Russia continued to trade in consumer goods. During this time, several major retail chains in Ukraine used flags to mark the origin of products.

    These marketing signals kept consumers informed, but potentially also supported boycotts and buycotts. Since 2022, Ukraine’s trade in consumer goods with Russia has ceased. But the labelling of Ukraine-made goods has grown. The Ukrainian ministry of economy has launched a “Made in Ukraine” trademark, encouraging people to support local manufacturers.

    Even when brand boycotts are no longer needed – as is the case with Ukraine and Russia, since the two countries no longer trade – consumers still use their collective power to support their local economy.

    The response of consumers

    Participants in our study shared the view that brand activism and marketing related to political shocks can offer people an outlet for a civic response. It also opens up conversations about the distressing events affecting them and their country.

    Some described these marketing activities as grassroot initiatives by fellow citizens – owners and managers of brands engaging in activism. Others stressed that their willingness to support brand activism is dependent on whether they perceive it as sincere or mere profit-seeking. Few interviewees separated private consumption from political views and actions.

    Brand activism and marketing related to conflict and political shocks could well be a trend that will grow in scale and scope. After all, consumption remains one domain where people have collective power.

    Boy/buycotting movements responding to the US tariffs are gaining momentum, while the #buyforukraine and #shopukrainian initiatives have stood the test of time.

    Brands and governments may be tempted to leverage this social sentiment, but here our research tells a cautionary tale. The consumers we interviewed were savvy in their assessment of the sincerity of brand activism. And they held different views about its appropriateness as a form of civic action.

    Brand activism merely seeking to encourage sales may backfire, evoking consumer cynicism rather than support. For example, brands like Unilever and Pepsi were criticised for appearing to be insincere in their announced suspension of sales and production in Russia.

    At the same time, brand activism increasingly requires careful, nuanced consideration. More widely, consumers are not united on whether companies should take positions on political and social issues. Whether brand activism proves to be this century’s “Keep Calm and Carry On” remains to be seen.

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

    – ref. Keep calm and carry on buying: how Ukrainian consumers are hitting back at Russia – https://theconversation.com/keep-calm-and-carry-on-buying-how-ukrainian-consumers-are-hitting-back-at-russia-256000

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How to make your apology more effective – new research

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Shiri Lev-Ari, Reader in Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London

    pathdoc/Shutterstock

    It can be difficult to find the right words to show you really mean it when you apologise. But there are linguistic cues you can use to get your message across. My recent research suggests that the length of the words that we choose influences how sincere the apology seems.

    Apologies are often described as “cheap talk” – anyone can say they’re sorry, regardless of how they actually feel. But apologies work. Research shows that people feel better and are more likely to cooperate again with someone who wronged them if the person apologised.

    One way to make an apology more persuasive is to make it more costly. When
    apologisers are willing to incur a cost in the form of spending money, effort, or time, their apology is better received.

    A 2009 study found people seemed to be more convinced by apologies that the apologiser had to spend money to deliver than by ones that could be delivered at no cost. Similarly, that study found that apologies are more convincing if the transgressor inconvenienced themselves to deliver the message, such as by showing up to an early class that they are not enrolled in to apologise to their friend rather than apologising at the next convenient opportunity.

    There are other ways to make an effort when you apologise though. A word’s length and commonness affect how hard it is to say or write. Longer words require more articulation. Uncommon words are harder to remember and to say or write. So, if someone wants to express their regret by making greater effort in their apology, they could use longer and less common words.

    At the same time, uncommon words are also harder to understand, meaning they burden the recipient as well as the transgressor. But longer words that are not uncommon aren’t usually harder to understand. They tend to be more distinct than other words, which means they might even be easier to understand. A sophisticated apologiser, then, might select longer but not rarer words – making the apology harder for themselves, but not harder for the recipient.

    Do you always mean it when you apologise?
    Cast Of Thousands/Shutterstock

    I conducted two studies to investigate the role of word length and word commonness in apologies. One analysed real-world apologies, and one tested people’s perceptions of apologies with words of different length and commonness.

    In the first study, I used apology tweets from X (formerly Twitter) written by 25 celebrities and 25 non-celebrities. These apology tweets were compared to other tweets from the same users. My results showed that apology tweets consisted of longer words than the non-apology tweets. They did not differ in word commonness though.

    In a second study I examined whether people perceived apologies with longer or less common words as more apologetic. Participants were presented with triads of apologies that had the same meaning but differed in either word length or word commonness.

    Example one:

    • My action does not show who I am (short, common)

    • My action does not reflect my true self (short, less common)

    • My action does not represent my true character (long, less common)

    Example two:

    • I did not mean to answer in a hostile way (short, common)

    • I did not mean to reply in a combative style (short, less common)

    • I did not mean to respond in a confrontational manner (long, less common)

    Participants were presented with the sentences in the triad in a random order and they ranked them from most to least apologetic. The results showed that participants graded the sentences with longer words as more apologetic than the sentences with short words that were matched for commonness. In contrast, word commonness did not influence how apologetic the sentences seemed.

    The results of the two studies align: people use longer words when apologising and perceive apologies with longer words as more apologetic. But apologies that employ uncommon words don’t seem to have the same effect. In other words, people seem to express their regret by delivering apologies that are harder for them to say or write but not harder for the addressees to understand.

    My research shows how we convey messages not only via the meaning of the words we use but also via the form of the words. It also shows how the form of a word (in this case, its length) can express contextual meaning. That is, the word “character” does not have an apologetic meaning in general, but in the context of an apology, its length symbolises effort and may be interpreted as expressing greater remorse. So if now you cannot stop humming Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word, I am unequivocally and exceedingly remorseful.

    Shiri Lev-Ari receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust.

    – ref. How to make your apology more effective – new research – https://theconversation.com/how-to-make-your-apology-more-effective-new-research-255730

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Girls’ voices are needed to tackle misogyny and the manosphere – but they are being ignored

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Chiara Fehr, PhD Candidate in Gender and Sexuality Studies, UCL

    yunulia/Shutterstock

    The Netflix series Adolescence has sparked important conversations about the role of social media in spreading harmful content. It has widened the public’s understanding of the rampant uptake of digitally disseminated misogyny, the legacies of Andrew Tate and those like him, and the violence perpetuated by the manosphere. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has even supported a plan to show the series to young people in schools.

    But when the term “misogyny” is brought up in reference to the manosphere, girls and women often become abstract representations of victimhood. Their voices are missing. Conversation around Adolescence, as well as wider coverage on the online misogyny, tends to prioritise the opinions, behaviour and experiences of boys and how they can be supported.

    Very little so far has been said about how those victimised feel towards the cultural uptake of misogyny. We need to know how this is playing out in real time in and around schools for girls, and what structures of support are necessary for them.

    The crux of online misogyny lies in the systemic dehumanisation of women and girls. We need this to be a part of the discussion and to find solutions.

    In 2021, in the wake of COVID-19, an Ofsted review explored sexual abuse in schools and colleges. Girls were asked about the types of sexual behaviour they experienced among their peer group. 92% of girls mentioned sexist name calling, and 88% said that they or their peers had received unsolicited explicit pictures or videos.

    Similarly, one of us (Jessica) has carried out research with colleagues on over 600 young people on their experiences of sexual violence online and at school. The research found that 78% of all participants had experienced harms that included misogynistic, sexually harassing or homophobic comments, and image-based sexual abuse.

    For almost all the young people in the study – 98.5% – these experiences had increased during COVID-19.

    The other of us (Chiara), is conducting doctoral research into teenage girls’ online experiences. So far this research has found that most participants had been negatively affected by rhetoric of online misogyny influencers, both online and offline. For most, these negative experiences involved behaviour from their male peers at school.

    Misogyny is normalised as ‘lad banter’.
    Tsuguliev/Shutterstock

    The girls recounted seeing a lot of manosphere content online and hearing discussions at school, which they found “unsettling” and “scary” as they promoted harmful body image and toxic sexual scripts. Much of this related to the standards boys in their schools would set for girls’ appearance.

    The girls also discussed how boys at their school did not understand the seriousness of their misogynist behaviour. “They do it to wind us up, to get a reaction from us … to them it’s all a joke,” one girl said.

    This aligns with previous research by Jessica and her colleagues on manosphere messages and the sharing of nude images in school. Misogyny is legitimised as part of lad banter. “It’s normalised with boys to like to behave that way, I think,” a year-nine girl (aged 13-14) in one study said.

    An everyday reality

    Young people are already very familiar with, and regularly deal with, the mundane reality of misogyny in their everyday lives. They do not need to be shown a television show, like Adolescence, which sensationalises and dramatises misogyny through the murder of a young girl. This show was not intended for educational purposes and would do little to change misogynist attitude of boys while potentially terrify girls.

    When addressing the radicalisation of boys online, the experiences of those who have been victimised need to be included. Young people should be taught to recognise patriarchal power structures and to be critical of online media, so they can better identify manosphere type messaging that legitimises misogyny.

    Unfortunately, although relationships and sex education is now a compulsory subject in UK schools, it is often poorly resourced and low priority. It does not necessarily cover issues such as sexual violence and misogyny, nor does it typically connect the dots to how sexual violence is normalised in digital and non-digital environments. Jessica and colleagues have co-produced relationships and sex education lessons that cover the complexity of online and offline sexual harassment, abuse and misogyny.

    Politicians across the UK need to make a systematic and concerted effort to support and regulate high-quality relationships and sex education. Training for teachers is necessary to address issues of sexual violence in a wider and more comprehensive way.

    Relying on a TV show that sensationalises misogyny and the manosphere, re-centres masculinity and erases the experiences of those victimised including girls and gender diverse youth, will not solve any of the pressing contemporary issues around the influx of digitally exacerbated misogyny.

    Jessica Ringrose receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council

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

    – ref. Girls’ voices are needed to tackle misogyny and the manosphere – but they are being ignored – https://theconversation.com/girls-voices-are-needed-to-tackle-misogyny-and-the-manosphere-but-they-are-being-ignored-254626

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Five evidence-based ways to manage chronic stress – by an expert in behavioural psychology

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tanisha Douglas, Assistant Lecturer in Psychology, , Birmingham City University

    Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock

    Spend too long on social media and you might start to hear the term “cortisol face” used to describe someone with supposedly puffy eyes or cheeks. The phrase describes the physical signs that some believe result from prolonged stress, particularly elevated levels of the hormone cortisol. It’s often used to encourage people to do something about their stress levels.

    Cortisol is a natural hormone that plays an essential role in regulating metabolism, inflammation, blood sugar and, most importantly, the body’s response to stress. When we’re under pressure, cortisol levels rise to help us respond to the challenge at hand. It’s part of the “fight-or-flight” response that has evolved over millions of years to keep us safe.

    But managing stress isn’t just about reducing cortisol — it’s about supporting your body and mind. And because of the wide variety of physical and mental health effects that stress can cause – particularly when it becomes chronic – stress-management strategies should focus on improving overall wellbeing, not just how you look.

    This means creating a toolkit of habits and practices that signal safety to the body, helping it shift out of survival mode. Here are five evidence-based ways to manage stress long term.

    1. Start small — and stick with it

    When life feels overwhelming, the idea of making major changes can be enough to stop us in our tracks. But science shows that meaningful improvement often begins with the tiniest of steps.

    Maybe it’s five minutes of stretching while the kettle boils, switching your phone to “Do Not Disturb” after 9pm, or simply taking a few deep breaths before starting your day.

    The key isn’t intensity — it’s consistency. Like building muscle, stress resilience grows with regular, manageable effort. Start small, and let those early wins build momentum.

    2. Set goals you can actually measure

    Saying “I want to be less stressed” is a good intention — but it’s also vague. How would you know if you succeeded? Instead, try setting clear, specific targets like: “I’ll take a 20-minute walk after dinner on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays,” or “I’ll turn off all screens an hour before bed this week.”

    Specific goals give your brain something to work with. They also make it easier to track your progress — and celebrate it. Achievable goals create confidence, and confidence helps calm the nervous system.

    3. Check in with yourself regularly

    Stress doesn’t stay the same — and neither should your coping strategies. What worked for you during exam season or a tough breakup might not suit your current schedule or state of mind. That’s why it’s important to reflect and recalibrate.

    Ask yourself: What’s been helpful lately? What’s felt like a chore? You don’t need a journal (though it can help). Just a few minutes of honest reflection can show you where to tweak your routine. Think of it as emotional maintenance — like checking your car’s oil, but for your mind.

    4. Don’t underestimate the basics

    The foundations of wellbeing are often the most powerful — and the most overlooked. Regular movement, a good night’s sleep, nourishing food and spending time with people you trust all buffer the effects of stress. But it’s not about perfection – it’s about patterns.

    You don’t need to hit the gym five times a week or cook gourmet meals. Even a short walk, a better breakfast, or texting a friend instead of scrolling social media can nudge your nervous system in the right direction. Small improvements in the basics can create big shifts over time).



    Read more:
    The ‘cortisol belly’ myth: when diet culture is rebranded as ‘wellness’

    5. Tame the voice in your head

    Not all stress comes from outside pressures, some of it comes from how we talk to ourselves. Maybe it’s a voice saying “you’re falling behind” or “you can’t cope.” These thoughts can feel automatic, but they’re often based on distorted beliefs, not facts.

    Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) offers practical tools to spot and challenge these patterns. When you catch a thought like “I always mess things up,” pause and ask: is that really true? What evidence do I have?

    Reframing unhelpful thoughts won’t make stress disappear, but it can change the way you carry it.

    Stress may be a natural part of life, but how we manage it makes all the difference. By understanding the science behind stress and taking small, practical steps to support our wellbeing, we can train our bodies to move out of survival mode and into a state of balance.

    You don’t need a perfect routine or hours of free time — just a willingness to check in with yourself and make space for small, consistent change. Because in a world that rarely slows down, learning how to care for your nervous system is not just self-care — it’s a powerful act of resilience.

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

    – ref. Five evidence-based ways to manage chronic stress – by an expert in behavioural psychology – https://theconversation.com/five-evidence-based-ways-to-manage-chronic-stress-by-an-expert-in-behavioural-psychology-254333

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How Canada can turn tariff tensions into a global affordable housing alliance

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Ehsan Noroozinejad Farsangi, Visiting Senior Researcher, Smart Structures Research Group, University of British Columbia

    Canada is facing a worsening housing crisis. Home prices have exploded, with 45 per cent of Canadians saying they are deeply worried about finding affordable housing.

    The country needs to build an additional 3.5 million homes by 2030 to achieve housing affordability. However, housing supply is lagging well behind that target even as demand continues to rise, driven largely by population growth and immigration.



    Read more:
    Canada’s housing crisis: Innovative tech must come with policy reform

    Into this crisis have come new costs. In March 2025, the United States imposed 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum imports. Canada immediately hit back with its own 25 per cent duties on U.S. steel and aluminum, affecting roughly $12.6 billion of steel and $3 billion of aluminum goods.

    In practical terms, that means higher costs for key building materials like steel beams, aluminum cladding, appliances and machinery.

    Industry groups say these duties will drive up the price of new construction and further erode affordability. In a market already strained, adding tariff charges is like pouring salt on an open wound: it makes every new home more expensive to build and to buy.

    Factory-built housing offers a way forward

    Modern methods of construction, such as modular and prefabricated housing, are a promising answer to the housing shortage. These methods involve large components of houses being produced in factories and assembled at their final location.

    Factory-built housing can be done about 50 per cent faster and up to 35 per cent cheaper than site-built homes.

    Importantly, this speed and affordability do not come at the expense of quality or energy performance. Canadian-built modular homes achieve top efficiency ratings and reach net-zero energy while frequently delivering superior performance compared to site-built homes. They are also greener, as controlled factory processes produce far less waste.

    In Japan, modular factories produce over 15 per cent of all new housing. Sweden’s construction industry heavily relies on prefabricated construction as well; it is present in approximately 84 per cent of detached houses.

    Other countries are rapidly scaling up modern construction methods. Singapore mandates every public housing project to use modular techniques because this enables mass apartment production with efficiency.

    The combination of expensive labour costs and immediate housing needs makes Australia, the United Kingdom and parts of the United States optimal markets for modular construction expansion.

    Canada can lead in modular housing

    Canada has key advantages that make it well suited to expand modular and prefabricated housing. In particular, it has a strong forest products sector for supplying wood panels and engineered timber, a skilled construction and technology workforce and a growing policy drive for lower-carbon building.

    Canadian builders have already shown they can deliver modular housing at scale. Launched in 2020, Canada’s Rapid Housing Initiative committed $1 billion to modular projects, followed by another $1.5 billion in 2021 to quickly house vulnerable populations.

    The Rapid Housing Initiative exceeded its target, creating nearly 4,700 new homes in short order. It proved that factory-built housing can be both fast and high-quality in Canada.

    Canada has the opportunity to build on that success. The 2024 federal budget created a Homebuilding Technology and Innovation Fund aimed at expanding prefabricated housing. It set aside $50 million through Next Generation Manufacturing Canada (to be matched by industry) and up to $500 million in low-cost loans from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation for prefabricated apartment projects.

    Prime Minister Mark Carney has also shown interest in modular and prefabricated housing technologies to create sustained demand.

    Provinces like Ontario and British Columbia are focusing on modular construction to cut red tape and better understand how to expand it. Canada’s National Research Council is also consulting on aligning building codes and inspections for factory-built homes with the help of Canadian universities.

    A global alliance on modular housing

    As Canada faces a deepening housing crisis, it has the opportunity to turn today’s tariff tensions into deeper international partnerships.

    By forming an international affordable housing consortium, Canada could collaborate with countries that have succeeded in modern construction methods, like Sweden, Japan, Australia and Germany, to share knowledge. Together, these nations could harmonize building standards and invest in research.

    Here are five practical moves Canada can take to build this global modular housing alliance:

    1. Create a zero-tariff modular homes club.

    Canada should use the trade tools it already has, like the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, to eliminate most tariffs with the European Union and Asian countries. Canada should negotiate an add-on protocol that lets modular components, such as panels and factory equipment, cross borders without tariffs.

    2. Launch a joint show-home projects in partner countries.

    We propose a “FastBuild 1000 initiative” initiative that would see each member nation commit to building a minimum of 1,000 modular homes. Pilot sites could include Vancouver, Sydney, Hamburg and Osaka — urban centres in countries already familiar with modern construction techniques. Engineers could travel across countries to test how modules fit different climates and design codes, while giving factories steady orders.

    3. Pool global buying power for materials and appliances.

    Canada and its partners could form a modular materials co-operative that bundles steel, engineered timber, heat pumps and windows. The proposed system should leverage economies of scale in factory production to make the final product much cheaper.

    4. Open-source designs and one-click certifications.

    Ottawa’s catalogue of pre-approved housing designs could be expanded into a global online catalogue where partner countries can download and adapt pre-existing designs while keeping the structure safe and secure. Simplified, one-click certification would help speed up approvals across borders.

    5. Create a ‘modular skills passport’ and research and development hub.

    Canadian universities and colleges could train workers through micro-credentials in areas like offsite manufacturing, digital construction, robotics, penalization and on-site assembly. Some countries like Japan have a huge prefabrication industry valued at over $24 billion. Linking research and development would give Canada access to the latest technologies while offering partner countries entry into the Canadian construction sector.

    By investing in this kind of international collaboration, Canada can address its domestic housing crisis while leading a fast, green housing revolution that makes homes affordable worldwide.

    Dr. Ehsan Noroozinejad has received funding from both national and international organizations to support research addressing housing and climate crises. His most recent funding for integrated housing and climate policy comes from the James Martin Institute for Public Policy. He has also been involved in securing funding from NSERC and Mitacs.

    Prof. T.Y. Yang secures funding from national and international organizations to develop innovative solutions for housing and climate crises, with a focus on modern methods of construction. His most recent funding has been from NRCan, NSERC and Mitacs.

    – ref. How Canada can turn tariff tensions into a global affordable housing alliance – https://theconversation.com/how-canada-can-turn-tariff-tensions-into-a-global-affordable-housing-alliance-255829

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Israeli plan to occupy all of Gaza could open the door for annexation of the West Bank

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Leonie Fleischmann, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, City St George’s, University of London

    Israel’s security cabinet has announced a plan to “capture” the whole of the Gaza Strip. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on May 5 the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would remain in the territory indefinitely and take over the administration of humanitarian aid. What his government is referring to as its latest “intensive operation” is likely to result in Israel occupying all of Gaza.

    This development should come as no surprise, given previous rhetoric from members of Netanyahu’s cabinet. But the announcement marks a turning point in official policy that could have significant implications.

    Israel’s far-right has repeatedly advocated for the expulsion of Palestinians and the resettlement of Gaza. In response to Netanyahu’s announcement, the finance minister and leader of the Religious Zionist party, Bezalel Smotrich, said that there will be “no retreat from the territories we have conquered, not even in exchange for hostages”.

    Smotrich envisioned that a successful Israeli incursion would leave Gaza “totally destroyed”, with the Palestinian population left “totally despairing” and wanting to leave the Strip.

    Yair Golan, leader of the Israeli left-of-centre Democrats party, criticised the plans for an all-out occupation of Gaza. He wrote on X on May 5 that the operation was approved “not in order to protect the security of Israel, but in order to save Netanyahu and his government of extremists”.

    Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

    It’s an argument that has consistently been raised against Netanyahu’s response to the October 7 Hamas attacks. The Hostage and Missing Families Forum also criticised the government for sacrificing the lives of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza and spilling the blood of more Israeli soldiers.

    Despite this opposition, it is Israel’s far-right politicians who hold the reins of power and appear to be influencing Israeli government policy when it comes to Gaza.

    The government’s objectives to eradicate Hamas in Gaza, and shore up Netanyahu’s precarious position as prime minister – as well as Trump’s plan to expel Palestinians from Gaza to neighbouring countries – have given them the opportunity to realise their maximalist dreams. This is not only the reoccupation of Gaza, but also the annexation of the West Bank.

    Gaza and the West Bank have notable differences. An all-out war of the kind being waged in Gaza is unlikely in the West Bank, at least at present. But there have been many attempts from various arms of the Israeli system to drive Palestinians from their land there.

    Driving Palestinians from the West Bank

    At the end of 2023, half a million Israelis were reported as living in the West Bank, compared with almost 3 million Palestinians. As of November 2024, the Israeli Peace Now movement recorded 141 settlements that it said were “officially established” by the Israeli government in the West Bank (not including those in East Jerusalem), with a further 224 outposts established without government approval since the 1990s. These are considered illegal according to Israeli law – although only two of these outposts have ever been evicted.

    In 1993, under the sponsorship of the Clinton administration, the Israeli government and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation signed the Oslo Declaration of Principles (also commonly referred to as Oslo Accord 1). This divided the West Bank into three areas: A, B and C. These are not delineated areas, rather – as the Oslo accords map below shows – they differentiate between Palestinian cities and villages and areas under Israeli civil and military control, about 60% of the total of the land area of the West Bank.

    Area C is where the majority of Israeli settlers live, alongside, at present, 200,000 Palestinians. Oslo Accord II mandated the gradual transfer of control of this area to the Palestinians, but this has never happened.

    Map of Areas A B and C after Oslo II.
    Researchgate

    Research by the Norwegian Refugee Council has found that, despite full control of Area C being central for the creation of a viable Palestinian state, there are two separate planning systems in place, one for Israelis and one for Palestinians.

    Israeli Human Rights Organisation, B’Tselem, has criticised Israel’s planning and building policy in Area C as “aimed at preventing Palestinian development and dispossessing Palestinians of their land”. This is achieved through denying permits for Palestinian construction and demolishing Palestinian buildings, while allowing Israeli settlement construction.

    Meanwhile, for decades the Israeli settlers have engaged in intimidation and violent attacks against Palestinians there. This continuing harassment has led to Palestinian communities being displaced. In his recent documentary film, The Settlers, Louis Theroux films and interviews ultranationalist settlers who make it clear they have nothing but contempt for the Palestinians – solely motivated by what they believe to be their God-given right to sovereignty over the Greater Land of Israel.

    As the exclusive authority over Area C of the West Bank, Israel is obliged by international law to protect the Palestinian communities. But a report by Israeli human rights organisation, Yesh Din, dating back to 2006 identified, even then, “a systematic evasion of applying the law to Israeli civilians who harm Palestinians in the West Bank”. The Israeli authorities, according to Yesh Din, “stand idly by” as crimes are committed by the settlers towards Palestinians.

    2025 the ‘year of sovereignty’

    In February 2023, Smotrich was entrusted with administration over civilian life in Area C. He has made no effort to hide his intentions of establishing Israeli sovereignty over the occupied territory.

    Unlike in Gaza, the annexation of territory in the West Bank has been incremental and often under the radar. The Palestinian human rights organisation, Al Haq, claims this amounts to de facto annexation of the West Bank.

    Smotrich this week said the government would move forward with its plans to approve construction in the highly contentious E1 area of the West Bank. This would include the building of enough Israeli settlements to “bring in a million residents”.

    Should it go ahead, it would significantly alter the situation by effectively dividing the West Bank in half and would bury any remaining hope for a two-state solution. In the words of Smotrich: “this is how you kill the Palestinian state”.

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

    – ref. Israeli plan to occupy all of Gaza could open the door for annexation of the West Bank – https://theconversation.com/israeli-plan-to-occupy-all-of-gaza-could-open-the-door-for-annexation-of-the-west-bank-256029

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What does Netanyahu’s plan for ‘conquering’ Gaza mean for Israel, Palestine and their neighbours? Expert Q&A

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, Clinton Institute, University College Dublin

    The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has announced that the Israeli military will launch a new “intensified” offensive in Gaza. In a video posted on X, he said Israel’s security cabinet had approved a plan for “conquering” the Gaza Strip and establishing a “sustained presence” there.

    This announcement was well-received by far-right ministers in the Netanyahu government. Finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has since declared that an Israeli victory in Gaza would see the territory “entirely destroyed” and its residents “concentrated” in the south. From there, they would “start to leave in great numbers to third countries”.

    The plan, which Palestinian militant group Hamas says represents “an explicit decision to sacrifice” Israeli hostages, far exceeds the aims Israel has been pursuing in the war so far. It has drawn widespread criticism, including from the UK, France, EU and UN, as well as from within Israel.

    Middle East expert, Scott Lucas, answered our questions as to what the plan involves and what it means for neighbouring Egypt and Jordan.

    What is Netanyahu’s ultimate plan for Gaza?

    Since March, Netanyahu has been clear that his government’s ultimate plan for Gaza is the “voluntary” emigration of its population.

    It looks like he is using US president Donald Trump’s narcissist thought bubble of Gaza, ethnically cleansed of Gazans in a “Riviera of the Middle East”, as political cover for his ambition and those of his hard-right ministers.

    In January 2024, three months into the military response to Hamas’s cross-border attack on southern Israel, Netanyahu said: “Israel has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population.”

    But by September, unable to “destroy” Hamas despite the killing of almost 35,000 Gazans and the displacement of 1.9 million of the territory’s 2.1 million inhabitants, the government was considering occupation with the removal of all those in northern Gaza.

    Political pressure from inside Israel, as well as from the Biden administration in the US, forced Netanyahu to back away. And in January 2025, pushed hard by Trump, he accepted a six-week phase one ceasefire. This involved Hamas returning some of the hostages in return for Israel releasing many Palestinians detained in its jails.

    However, Netanyahu had no intention of moving to phase two, which would have paved the way for a more permanent end to the war. The hard-right ministers in his government made clear they would leave and withdraw support in the Knesset (parliament) if the war ended before Hamas had been completely destroyed.

    Netanyahu could face early elections and his trial on bribery charges should his government collapse. This left only one possible resolution to the “open-ended” war on Gaza: occupation.

    So at the start of March, Israel renewed its airstrikes and cut off humanitarian aid. It began expanding ground operations, initially with the declaration of a “buffer strip” and then claiming northern Gaza.

    Netanyahu has now announced a “forceful operation” in which Gaza’s population “will be moved, to protect it”. Israeli ground forces will be in the Strip indefinitely. “They will not enter and come out,” he said.

    Will Egypt and Jordan accept displaced Palestinians from the Gaza Strip?

    When Trump first proposed displacing Palestinians from Gaza, the leaders of Egypt and Jordan said they would refuse to allow an exodus of refugees on their territory. Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, said at the end of January: “The deportation and displacement of the Palestinian people from their land is an injustice that we cannot take part in.”

    That position has not changed. Egypt and Qatar reiterated on May 7 that they will persist with mediation to alleviate suffering and promote de-escalation within Gaza. Egypt affirmed that it will not be drawn into any agendas that “do not serve the interests of the Palestinian people”.

    Any Arab government that takes in Gazans, even amid a humanitarian crisis, would be tacitly burying the idea of a Palestinian state. That would break a 77-year-old principle and resurrect the Nakba, the forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948.

    It would also risk unrest from disaffected populations. The Gazans are added to the 5.9 million Palestinians who are refugees in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

    How might Egypt and Jordan respond to increased pressure to house Gazan refugees?

    Trump has previously looked to coerce Egypt and Jordan into accepting Palestinians from Gaza, even threatening to withhold US aid to the two countries.

    But such pressure does not look likely at present. The Trump administration is a chaotic mess. Bent on destroying US agencies, it has gutted the State Department, threatened the military, and undermined intelligence services.

    Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, the real estate developer Steve Witkoff, is now preoccupied with photo opportunities in the Kremlin and informal talks over Iran’s nuclear programme.

    The US government has walked away, leaving Israel to resume the mass killing but abjuring any role beyond that. The UN is not going to back ethnic cleansing. Nor will the EU, China, Russia or the Gulf States.

    Does the depopulation of Gaza now look inevitable?

    Far from it, at least in the sense of Palestinians being relocated from Gaza. In recent weeks, Israel has finally eased its near-total block on exiting Gaza and has allowed hundreds of people to leave.

    But this is not forced removal. It was the Israeli government relenting on urgent cases of those who were trapped in the Strip – dual nationals or their dependents, Gazas needing medical treatment, students, and some people with visas for third countries.

    The depopulation is instead occurring within Gaza. Depopulation through killing, starvation, destruction of healthcare, displacement from housing, and lack of clean water.

    It is depopulation through the reduction of Gazans to nothing more than irritants in the way of Hamas’s quest for survival and the Netanyahu government’s quest for perpetual dominance.

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

    – ref. What does Netanyahu’s plan for ‘conquering’ Gaza mean for Israel, Palestine and their neighbours? Expert Q&A – https://theconversation.com/what-does-netanyahus-plan-for-conquering-gaza-mean-for-israel-palestine-and-their-neighbours-expert-qanda-256150

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: David Attenborough’s Ocean reveals how bottom trawling is hurting sealife in horrifying detail

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Callum Roberts, Professor of Marine Conservation, University of Exeter

    A bottom trawl net hanging to dry in the harbour of Harlingen in the Netherlands, showing the rockhopper rollers on the footrope that contacts the seabed. 365 Focus Photography/Shutterstock

    In one of the most powerful scenes of Sir David Attenborough’s new film Ocean, the audience sees industrial fishing from a fish’s perspective.

    Confronting a bottom trawl net as it thunders across the seabed, terrified fish scatter in desperate but futile attempts to escape the vast net swallowing them. The heavy chain that holds the trawl down sweeps away sponges, corals, seagrass and other seabed life, leaving behind utter devastation.

    Attenborough’s latest nature documentary is a visually magnificent and highly personal meditation on the relationship humans have with the sea. It is the most important part of our world, he says. But we have taken it for granted.

    A century of intensifying and destructive fishing has culminated in bottom trawl nets, some as big as cathedrals and weighing many tonnes, being towed along the seabed to catch fish. To allow them to fish more effectively in areas of rough seabed, which is where most marine life is found, fishers in the 1920s invented “rock-hopper” gear: rollers placed along the foot rope that touches the bottom, allowing the net to bounce over obstacles.

    This innovation followed the trajectory of many fishing methods, which was to become more destructive over time to sustain the size of catches in the face of declining fish stocks.

    Trawler nets are designed to gobble up marine life indiscriminately.
    Anney_Lier/Shutterstock

    Shellfish dredging, another fishing method that destroys as it catches, is shown in a second horrifying scene. To catch scallops, steel dredges armed with spikes (imagine the harrows farmers use to break up soil on ploughed fields) drag along the seabed, smashing and pummelling everything. In minutes, seabed life of astonishing diversity and beauty is erased.

    Together, Attenborough explains, bottom trawling and dredging wreak their havoc across an area of seabed larger than the Amazon rainforest every year.

    Attenborough invites viewers to wonder how on Earth these fishing methods are still allowed when the damage is so obvious. Viewers may be even more surprised, and very probably angry, to learn that most marine protected areas in Europe, and indeed worldwide, permit bottom trawling and dredging within their boundaries.

    To understand why this is the case, we have to go back in time.

    A medieval practice

    We know from the parliamentary records of Edward III in 1376 that fishers in southern England were practising bottom trawling as far back as the 1300s. Long-held traditions are hard to change, even when there is irrefutable evidence that they cause harm.

    It is telling, however, that this early description of trawling is a petition urging the king to ban the method for its reckless destruction of habitat and waste of fish.

    Nevertheless, these fisheries expanded because trawling was an efficient means of landing huge quantities of fish. Trawling’s success came at the expense of what we call marine animal forests, habitats built by animals like oysters, horse mussels and sponges – all swept away to leave behind vacant shifting sands, mud and gravel that predominate over vast swaths of seafloor today.

    A recent estimate has suggested that oyster reefs once covered at least 17,000 square kilometres of European seas – an area the size of Northern Ireland. All of this was gone by the beginning of the 20th century. This ecosystem cannot recover until it is offered protection from trawling and dredging. So, why haven’t we protected it?

    Degraded habitats, profoundly altered by trawling, were what scientists and then conservationists found when they first ventured below water after the invention of scuba diving in the mid-20th century. These early submarine explorers mistook them for natural and wild, failing to see the role industrial fishing had played in their creation.

    Being now occupied almost exclusively by creatures used to the passage of trawls – animals that live fast and die young like worms, prawns and whelks – these habitats were labelled as resilient, and not in need of protection.

    This warped perspective fooled us into thinking that marine protected areas left open to bottom trawling would be fine. In the few cases where protected areas exclude trawling, like around the Isle of Arran in western Scotland, the swift resurgence of seabed life has revealed how wrong this assumption was.

    In only five years, sea-moss, sea-nettles, scallops and brittle stars have reoccupied the seafloor, a transformation that is nevertheless just the beginning of a recovery that will carry on for decades.

    Seabeds protected from trawls and dredges can rebound, like this one off the Isle of Arran. It offers a glimpse of what existed before industrial fisheries.
    Henley Spiers/Blue Marine Foundation

    Giving up the trawl and dredge does not mean an end to fishing, as the film explains. In fact, recovering fish populations in protected areas replenish those in fishing grounds nearby, leading to better and more sustainable catches.

    Calling time on destructive fishing

    Perhaps now, at last, the writing is on the wall for bottom trawling and dredging, because they do a more insidious form of damage we have only recently become fully aware of. The ocean floor is one of the planet’s largest carbon stores. A snowfall of sinking organic matter and sediment accumulates on the seabed, where the carbon it contains is buried for thousands of years.

    Left undisturbed, this carbon is out of harm’s way. But when churned up by the passage of trawls and dredges, some is turned back into CO₂, some of which will end up back in the atmosphere.

    The magnitude of these seabed carbon emissions, and their role in climate change, is hotly debated. Getting more reliable estimates is the mission of a five-year project I lead, the Convex Seascape Survey. One thing is already clear from our research, however: there are places underwater – like peat bogs or permafrost on land – that we should not disturb because they harbour immense quantities of carbon.

    Ironically, these muddy basins have in the past few decades become some of the most intensively fished places in the sea because they are home to valuable prawns, which are among the few species still able to support viable fisheries.

    Any country serious about meeting net zero in time to prevent dangerous climate change must act swiftly to protect its seabed carbon stores. And any country serious about ocean conservation knows that marine protected areas are useless if they don’t exclude trawling and dredging.

    David Attenborough, Silverback Films and the Open Planet Studios team have brought these truths to a mass audience, leaving no space for further evasion and denial. What we need now is action.

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

    Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Callum Roberts receives funding from Convex, the Natural Environment Research Council and the European Research Council. He is on the board of Nekton and Maldives Coral Institute and sits on the Minderoo Natural Ecosystems advisory panel, the Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Science advisory board and the CORDAP science advisory panel.

    – ref. David Attenborough’s Ocean reveals how bottom trawling is hurting sealife in horrifying detail – https://theconversation.com/david-attenboroughs-ocean-reveals-how-bottom-trawling-is-hurting-sealife-in-horrifying-detail-255991

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: We set out to improve literacy among struggling readers in Kenya – what we learnt

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Fridah Gatwiri Kiambati, Post Doctoral research scientist, African Population and Health Research Center

    Literacy – being able to read, write and understand written or spoken language – is a cornerstone of educational achievement. Yet, for millions of children worldwide, acquiring basic literacy skills is a significant challenge.

    This is a result of systemic inequalities, poverty, conflict, displacement and gender disparities. A Unicef report on global literacy levels in 2023 found that 89% of 10-year-olds in sub-Saharan Africa were unable to read or comprehend a basic story.

    In Kenya, the gap in foundational literacy is stark. A nationwide evaluation of over 44,000 children across 1,973 primary schools in 2023 found that three in 10 grade 6 learners aged 11 struggled to read grade 3-level (age 8) texts.

    These numbers highlight the critical need to address reading difficulties in early grades to ensure that learners do not fall behind irretrievably.

    When learners aren’t able to read, they are likely to fall behind in literacy and other learning areas. This is because foundational learning skills – which include literacy (reading) and numeracy (basic maths) – are the building blocks for learning in later years of schooling and for lifelong learning.

    I am an inclusive education researcher. I was involved in the Developing Readers Study. It set out to design and pilot an intervention to improve literacy skills among grade 2 and 3 learners who are furthest behind in reading.

    The study, implemented by the African Population and Health Research Center, was aimed at providing policy-relevant evidence on how support for struggling readers can be formally and systematically incorporated into school timetables and education systems.

    In 13 weeks, more than a third of the learners had become fluent readers.

    The study

    The Developing Readers Study was implemented in 15 schools in Kiambu County, which neighbours the Kenyan capital Nairobi. This was strategic to design, test and refine the intervention before scaling up.

    The intervention started with the preparation of instruction materials. These included a teachers’ guide and assessment booklet, as well as homework packets for the learners. Teachers were trained on how to deliver the structured intervention while accommodating individual learner needs.

    Learners were assessed to identify those with reading difficulties. Out of 2,805 learners from 15 schools screened, 920 (33%) learners had reading difficulties.

    They were then categorised into three groups as per their reading levels at baseline:

    • module 1 for non-readers, who numbered 410 (45%)

    • module 2 for beginning readers, who could read 1-9 correct words per minute (212 learners, or 23%)

    • module 3 for intermediate readers who could read 10-16 correct words per minute (298 learners, or 32%).

    The learners were then taken through remedial lessons for English and Kiswahili for 13 weeks. Each lesson lasted 30 minutes. During the intervention period, teachers received support from curriculum support officers, and quality assurance and standards officers in Kiambu County.

    In addition, these officers observed the lessons to identify the support needed. Cluster meetings were held to gather teacher feedback on the implementation process.

    Parents were also engaged through homework packets. This encouraged a supportive home environment for learning.

    The results

    The study led to significant improvements in literacy outcomes among participating learners over the 13 weeks.

    1. The proportion of non-readers who couldn’t read any correct word per minute reduced from 43.3% (following a few dropouts) to 18.9% at endline. This improvement highlights the power of targeted instruction to transform learning outcomes for struggling readers.

    2. Both boys and girls benefited from the programme. However, girls consistently outperformed boys in tasks like syllable and oral passage reading. These insights highlight the importance of designing interventions that address gender-specific learning needs.

    3. The programme equipped teachers with practical tools and strategies to give learners individual attention according to their needs. By the endline assessment, 92% of teachers were closely following the structured lesson guides, demonstrating increased confidence and competence.

    4. Parents played a pivotal role in the programme’s success. Weekly homework packets provided opportunities for learners to practise reading at home.

    5. Over a third of the learners (37%) advanced to emergent and fluent reading levels, meaning they no longer required remedial support. This progression was particularly notable among younger learners in grade 2, underscoring the value of early intervention.

    The developing readers intervention stands out because it goes beyond addressing literacy challenges at the classroom level. It also brought in education officials, rigorous teacher training and contextualised learning materials.

    Its findings demonstrate that structured, targeted interventions can effectively address foundational literacy gaps. This same model can be used elsewhere.

    What next

    The study provides a roadmap for addressing Kenya’s literacy crisis. Its positive outcomes demonstrate that early, targeted interventions can put struggling readers on the path to success.

    Scaling up this programme offers an opportunity to ensure no child is left behind in acquiring foundational literacy skills.

    To achieve this, policymakers must make sure remedial interventions take place at schools. They must also provide resources for teacher training and promote home-school collaboration.

    With sustained investment and a commitment to evidence-based strategies, Kenya can bridge its literacy gap and pave the way for a brighter future for its learners.

    Fridah Gatwiri Kiambati works for the African Population and Health Research Center. The Developing Readers Study, which this article is based was funded by the Gates foundation.

    – ref. We set out to improve literacy among struggling readers in Kenya – what we learnt – https://theconversation.com/we-set-out-to-improve-literacy-among-struggling-readers-in-kenya-what-we-learnt-253252

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Somaliland’s 30-year quest for recognition: could US interests make the difference?

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Aleksi Ylönen, Professor, United States International University

    More than three decades after unilaterally declaring independence from Somalia, Somaliland still seeks international recognition as a sovereign state. Despite a lack of formal acknowledgement, the breakaway state has built a relatively stable system of governance. This has drawn increasing interest from global powers, including the United States. As regional dynamics shift and great-power competition intensifies, Somaliland’s bid for recognition is gaining new currency. Aleksi Ylönen has studied politics in the Horn of Africa and Somaliland’s quest for recognition. He unpacks what’s at play.

    What legal and historical arguments does Somaliland use?

    The Somali National Movement is one of the main clan-based insurgent movements responsible for the collapse of the central government in Somalia. It claims the territory of the former British protectorate of Somaliland. The UK had granted Somaliland sovereign status on 26 June 1960.

    The Somali government tried to stomp out calls for secession. It orchestrated the brutal killing of hundreds of thousands of people in northern Somalia between 1987 and 1989.

    But the Somali National Movement declared unilateral independence on 18 May 1991 and separated from Somalia.

    With the collapse of the Somali regime in 1991, the movement’s main enemy was gone. This led to a violent power struggle between various militias.

    This subsided only after the politician Mohamed Egal consolidated power. He was elected president of Somaliland in May 1993.

    Egal made deals with merchants and businessmen, giving them tax and commercial incentives to accept his patronage. As a result, he obtained the economic means to consolidate political power and to pursue peace and state-building. It’s something his successors have kept up with since his death in 2002.

    What has Somaliland done to push for recognition?

    Successive Somaliland governments continue to engage in informal diplomacy. They have aligned with the west, particularly the US, which was the dominant power after the cold war, and the former colonial master, the UK. Both countries host significant Somaliland diaspora communities.

    The US and the UK have for decades flirted with the idea of recognising Somaliland, which they consider a strategic partner. However, they have been repeatedly thrown back by their respective Somalia policies. These have favoured empowering the widely supported Mogadishu government to reassert its authority and control over Somali territories.

    This Somalia policy has been increasingly questioned in recent years, in part due to Mogadishu’s security challenges. In contrast, the Hargeisa government of Somaliland has largely shown it can provide security and stability. It has held elections and survived as a state for the last three decades, though it has faced political resistance and armed opposition.



    Read more:
    Somaliland elections: what’s at stake for independence, stability and shifting power dynamics in the Horn of Africa

    As new global powers rise, Somaliland administrations have pursued an increasingly diverse foreign policy, with one goal: international recognition.

    Hargeisa hosts consulates and representative offices of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Taiwan, the UK and the European Union, among others.

    The government has also engaged in informal foreign relations with the United Arab Emirates. The Middle Eastern monarchy serves as a business hub and a destination of livestock exports. Many Somalilanders migrate there.

    Somaliland maintains representative offices in several countries. These include Canada, the US, Norway, Sweden, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Taiwan. Hargeisa has alienated China because it has collaborated with Taiwan since 2020. Taiwan is a self-ruled island claimed by China.

    On 1 January 2024, Somaliland’s outgoing president Muse Bihi signed a memorandum of understanding with Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed for increased cooperation. Bihi implied that Ethiopia would be the first country to formally recognise Somaliland. The deal caused a sharp deterioration of relations between Addis Ababa and Mogadishu.

    Abiy later moderated his position and, with Turkish mediation, reconciled with his Somalia counterpart, President Hassan Mohamud.

    What’s behind US interest in Somaliland?

    The US, like other great powers, has been interested in Somaliland because of its strategic location. It is on the African shores of the Gulf of Aden, across from the Arabian Peninsula. Its geographical position has gained currency recently as Yemeni Houthi rebels strike maritime traffic in the busy shipping lanes. Somaliland is also well located to curb piracy and smuggling on this global trade route.

    The US Africa Command set up its main Horn of Africa base at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti in 2002. This followed the 11 September 2001 attacks.



    Read more:
    Somaliland’s quest for recognition: UK debate offers hint of a sea change

    In 2017, China, which had become the main foreign economic power in the Horn of Africa, set up a navy support facility in Djibouti. This encouraged closer collaboration between American and Somaliland authorities. The US played with the idea of establishing a base in Berbera, which hosts Somaliland’s largest port.

    With Donald Trump winning the US presidential election in 2024, there were reports of an increased push for US recognition of Somaliland. This would allow the US to deepen its trade and security partnerships in the volatile Horn of Africa region.

    Since March 2025, representatives of the Trump administration have engaged in talks with Somaliland officials to establish a US military base near Berbera. This would be in exchange for a formal but partial recognition of Somaliland.

    What are the risks of US recognition of Somaliland?

    Stronger US engagement with Somaliland risks neglecting Somalia.

    Mogadishu depends on external military assistance in its battle against the advancing violent Islamist extremist group, Al-Shabaab. It also faces increasing defiance from two federal regions, Puntland and Jubaland.

    US recognition would reward Hargeisa for its persistent effort to maintain stability and promote democracy. However, it could encourage other nations to recognise Somaliland. This would deliver a blow to Somali nationalists who want one state for all Somalis.

    Aleksi Ylönen is affiliated with the Center for International Studies, Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, and is an associate fellow at the HORN International Institute for Strategic Studies.

    – ref. Somaliland’s 30-year quest for recognition: could US interests make the difference? – https://theconversation.com/somalilands-30-year-quest-for-recognition-could-us-interests-make-the-difference-255399

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How to tell if a photo’s fake? You probably can’t. That’s why new rules are needed

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Martin Bekker, Computational Social Scientist, University of the Witwatersrand

    The problem is simple: it’s hard to know whether a photo’s real or not anymore. Photo manipulation tools are so good, so common and easy to use, that a picture’s truthfulness is no longer guaranteed.

    The situation got trickier with the uptake of generative artificial intelligence. Anyone with an internet connection can cook up just about any image, plausible or fantasy, with photorealistic quality, and present it as real. This affects our ability to discern truth in a world increasingly influenced by images.



    Read more:
    Can you tell the difference between real and fake news photos? Take the quiz to find out

    I teach and research the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), including how we use and understand digital images.

    Many people ask how we can tell if an image has been changed, but that’s fast becoming too difficult. Instead, here I suggest a system where creators and users of images openly state what changes they’ve made. Any similar system will do, but new rules are needed if AI images are to be deployed ethically – at least among those who want to be trusted, especially media.

    Doing nothing isn’t an option, because what we believe about media affects how much we trust each other and our institutions. There are several ways forward. Clear labelling of photos is one of them.

    Deepfakes and fake news

    Photo manipulation was once the preserve of government propaganda teams, and later, expert users of Photoshop, the popular software for editing, altering or creating digital images.

    Today, digital photos are automatically subjected to colour-correcting filters on phones and cameras. Some social media tools automatically “prettify” users’ pictures of faces. Is a photo taken of oneself by oneself even real anymore?



    Read more:
    The use of deepfakes can sow doubt, creating confusion and distrust in viewers

    The basis of shared social understanding and consensus – trust regarding what one sees – is being eroded. This is accompanied by the apparent rise of untrustworthy (and often malicious) news reporting. We have new language for the situation: fake news (false reporting in general) and deepfakes (deliberately manipulated images, whether for waging war or garnering more social media followers).

    Misinformation campaigns using manipulated images can sway elections, deepen divisions, even incite violence. Scepticism towards trustworthy media has untethered ordinary people from fact-based accounting of events, and has fuelled conspiracy theories and fringe groups.

    Ethical questions

    A further problem for producers of images (personal or professional) is the difficulty of knowing what’s permissable. In a world of doctored images, is it acceptable to prettify yourself? How about editing an ex-partner out of a picture and posting it online?

    Would it matter if a well-respected western newspaper published a photo of Russian president Vladimir Putin pulling his face in disgust (an expression that he surely has made at some point, but of which no actual image has been captured, say) using AI?

    The ethical boundaries blur further in highly charged contexts. Does it matter if opposition political ads against then-presidential candidate Barack Obama in the US deliberately darkened his skin?

    Would generated images of dead bodies in Gaza be more palatable, perhaps more moral, than actual photographs of dead humans? Is a magazine cover showing a model digitally altered to unattainable beauty standards, while not declaring the level of photo manipulation, unethical?

    A fix

    Part of the solution to this social problem demands two simple and clear actions. First, declare that photo manipulation has taken place. Second, disclose what kind of photo manipulation was carried out.

    The first step is straightforward: in the same way pictures are published with author credits, a clear and unobtrusive “enhancement acknowledgement” or EA should be added to caption lines.



    Read more:
    AI isn’t what we should be worried about – it’s the humans controlling it

    The second is about how an image has been altered. Here I call for five “categories of manipulation” (not unlike a film rating). Accountability and clarity create an ethical foundation.

    The five categories could be:

    C – Corrected

    Edits that preserve the essence of the original photo while refining its overall clarity or aesthetic appeal – like colour balance (such as contrast) or lens distortion. Such corrections are often automated (for instance by smartphone cameras) but can be performed manually.

    E – Enhanced

    Alterations that are mainly about colour or tone adjustments. This extends to slight cosmetic retouching, like the removal of minor blemishes (such as acne) or the artificial addition of makeup, provided the edits don’t reshape physical features or objects. This includes all filters involving colour changes.

    B – Body manipulated

    This is flagged when a physical feature is altered. Changes in body shape, like slimming arms or enlarging shoulders, or the altering of skin or hair colour, fall under this category.

    O – Object manipulated

    This declares that the physical position of an object has been changed. A finger or limb moved, a vase added, a person edited out, a background element added or removed.

    G – Generated

    Entirely fabricated yet photorealistic depictions, such as a scene that never existed, must be flagged here. So, all images created digitally, including by generative AI, but limited to photographic depictions. (An AI-generated cartoon of the pope would be excluded, but a photo-like picture of the pontiff in a puffer jacket is rated G.)

    The suggested categories are value-blind: they are (or ought to be) triggered simply by the occurrence of any manipulation. So, colour filters applied to an image of a politician trigger an E category, whether the alteration makes the person appear friendlier or scarier. A critical feature for accepting a rating system like this is that it is transparent and unbiased.

    The CEBOG categories above aren’t fixed, there may be overlap: B (Body manipulated) might often imply E (Enhanced), for example.

    Feasibility

    Responsible photo manipulation software may automatically indicate to users the class of photo manipulation carried out. If needed it could watermark it, or it could simply capture it in the picture’s metadata (as with data about the source, owner or photographer). Automation could very well ensure ease of use, and perhaps reduce human error, encouraging consistent application across platforms.



    Read more:
    Can you spot a financial fake? How AI is raising our risks of billing fraud

    Of course, displaying the rating will ultimately be an editorial decision, and good users, like good editors, will do this responsibly, hopefully maintaining or improving the reputation of their images and publications. While one would hope that social media would buy into this kind of editorial ideal and encourage labelled images, much room for ambiguity and deception remains.

    The success of an initiative like this hinges on technology developers, media organisations and policymakers collaborating to create a shared commitment to transparency in digital media.

    Martin Bekker receives funding from the National Research Foundation in South Africa.

    – ref. How to tell if a photo’s fake? You probably can’t. That’s why new rules are needed – https://theconversation.com/how-to-tell-if-a-photos-fake-you-probably-cant-thats-why-new-rules-are-needed-252645

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Fraudulent crowdfunding after the Lapu Lapu tragedy highlights the need for vigilance and oversight

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Jeremy Snyder, Professor, Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University

    Around 100,000 members of Vancouver’s Filipino community and other residents recently gathered to take part in the Lapu Lapu street festival to celebrate Filipino culture. This vibrant community celebration ended in tragedy when a vehicle was driven at high speed through the festival.

    Eleven people were killed in the April 26 attack, and dozens injured in what acting police chief Steve Rai called the “darkest day in the city’s history.”

    There has been an outpouring of community support for the victims, their friends and families, and the Filipino community in Vancouver. This support has taken the form of flowers and messages left at the attack site, vigils and gatherings and religious events.

    And, as is now common following high-profile tragedies, the Lapu Lapu festival attack has been accompanied by a number of crowdfunding campaigns by and for its victims.

    A memorial for the victims of the Lapu Lapu tragedy.
    (J. Snyder), CC BY

    Helping after disaster

    Many of these crowdfunding campaigns are hosted by GoFundMe, which has set up a dedicated hub for these fundraisers. A week after the attack, the 16 campaigns on this hub had raised more than $2.3 million.

    Dozens of other fundraisers on GoFundMe have raised additional money for various causes and groups associated with the tragedy and Vancouver’s Filipino community. Other crowdfunding platforms have also hosted related crowdfunding campaigns.

    Crowdfunding is a way for the public to help those in need in concrete ways while also expressing their shock and sadness over tragic events. People from across the world have taken advantage of crowdfunding’s accessibility to learn about victims and join the outpouring of support.

    This support can be large and consequential. A campaign for Andy Le, a teenager who lost his family at the festival attack, has received more than $500,000 in donations. As a result of this support, Le has in turn pledged to donate half that money to other victims.

    This viral, international support has meant these campaigns are likely able to raise vastly more money than would be possible through traditional, purely local and offline activities.

    Teenager Andy Le, who lost his family in the Lapu Lapu attack, redistributes the funds raised in an online campaign.

    Fraud and fundraising

    But while the online nature of crowdfunding allows for a global response to high-profile tragedies, the relatively impersonal nature of crowdfunding has its downsides. Our research has demonstrated that crowdfunding sometimes attracts fraudulent campaigns.

    High-profile events that spur numerous campaigns and massive financial support are particularly attractive to fraudsters. Unfortunately, this has been the case with the Lapu Lapu festival tragedy. In one case, a GoFundMe campaign fraudulently raised more than $57,000, ostensibly to return the body of “Reyna Dela Peñato” to the Philippines after her death at the festival and to support her sons.

    Separately, the Philippine Consulate General of Vancouver warned of fraudulent campaigns on its behalf that used images from its website.

    Vetting authenticity

    Communities can provide mutual support by detecting these fraudulent campaigns, especially in tight-knit communities like Filipinos in Vancouver. In the case of the fraudulent campaign for “Reyna Dela Peñato,” it was flagged by Raquel Narraway, a Vancouver resident who had been compiling information on fundraisers. Narraway was able to marshal her connections to the local Filipino community to show that the campaign was not genuine.

    GoFundMe does its own vetting as well, identifying some campaigns as “verified” after contacting organizers.

    However, responding to actual and potential fraud creates new burdens on victims to prove their legitimacy to the public and crowdfunding platforms. Local community members are in turn taken away from grieving to investigate these campaigns. These policing activities inject a level of distrust into fundraising that is less present when giving takes place between people with pre-existing connections.

    Growing challenges

    While the problem of fraud in crowdfunding isn’t new, changes to the practice of crowdfunding may make it harder to detect. The advent of large language models or artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT have made it easier for crowdfunding campaigners to edit their campaign narratives to appeal to a wider pool of potential donors.

    Crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe are also pushing AI features directly into their platforms to “enhance” these campaigns and help campaigners “connect with more donors.” These features may be especially appealing to people whose first language is not English, as may be the case with some victims of the Lapu Lapu festival attack.

    While the AI-ification of crowdfunding creates a more level playing field for campaigners, it may also make fraud easier to commit and harder to detect. This will be true if generating fake campaigns is easier using chatbots and if legitimate campaigns use AI and take on a less authentic voice.

    Online crowdfunding isn’t going anywhere, and for many victims of the Lapu Lapu festival attack, it has enabled them to ease some of the burden from that terrible day. However, we should be aware that crowdfunding isn’t a purely beneficial tool for people in need. Without proper oversight, it may develop in ways that are even more problematic.

    Jeremy Snyder receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

    Valorie A. Crooks receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, BC Women’s Health Research Institute and MITACS..

    – ref. Fraudulent crowdfunding after the Lapu Lapu tragedy highlights the need for vigilance and oversight – https://theconversation.com/fraudulent-crowdfunding-after-the-lapu-lapu-tragedy-highlights-the-need-for-vigilance-and-oversight-255934

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Chinese research isn’t taken as seriously as papers from elsewhere – my new study

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Peng Zhou, Professor of Economics, Cardiff University

    My new research suggests there is a stubborn pattern in academic publishing. My co-author and I examined some 8,000 articles published in the world’s most reputable economics journals to study citations, which are where academics cite previously published research in their papers. We found papers whose lead author had a Chinese surname received on average 14% fewer citations than comparable papers written by those with a non-Chinese name.

    This supports similar findings from previous studies in chemistry and other natural sciences, suggesting that citation prejudice is a cross-disciplinary problem.

    In reaching that conclusion, we put our raw findings through every test we could think of to rule out other explanations. Our first thought was that maybe Chinese-authored papers are more recently published on average than non-Chinese-authored papers, and therefore less cited. However the same citation gap holds for papers published in all years.

    Average citations of economic articles by author ethnicity:

    Another obvious guess is that Chinese-authored papers are of lower quality. Some readers will have heard about the issue of China’s “paper mills”, companies which have in recent years been churning out research papers based on fraudulent findings for Chinese universities. There are reports that this may have made some western academics more reluctant to take Chinese research seriously, but these are largely a problem for low-quality journals.

    We only looked at articles published in the top journals (rated as 4 or 4* in the ABS journal rankings). Each paper has gone through a strict process of editorial review, often taking a couple of years, so they are far less likely to have been produced by high-volume paper mills. Additionally, almost half of the Chinese authors in our sample were affiliated outside China, so paper-mill allegations against Chinese authors are not relevant in our observations.

    Alternatively, you may be wondering if Chinese authors’ papers are less citable because of a language barrier in the writing. Again, this shouldn’t be an issue when all these papers which have been strictly quality-assured by peer reviews and editorial reviews. The writing styles of Chinese authors in these journals do not seem significantly different from non-Chinese authors.

    We probed still more possibilities to explain the apparent discrimination, controlling for different factors and so on. But each time, the citation gap persisted – and sometimes became larger.

    Eventually we gave up trying to falsify the hypothesis, and turned to understanding why this ethnic discrimination exists.

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

    Why do economists discriminate?

    Picture the market for ideas as a miniature galaxy. Each paper is like a planet with its own mass, based on its quality, the authors’ stature and the perceived importance of the topic. Citations are like gravity, tugging knowledge towards these planets; the heavier the planet’s mass, the stronger the pull.

    Yet gravity also fades with distance, in this case meaning not kilometres but culture – language, networks and the subtle signals that tell us who feels familiar. It may be that the farther away a scholar seems on the cultural map, the weaker their intellectual pull.

    Our findings show this “cultural distance” at work. Interestingly, the same thing happens in both directions: the ratio of Chinese-authored references is significantly higher in Chinese-authored papers than in non-Chinese-authored papers.

    Our next step was some detective work to deduce who exactly is discriminating. We identified four “suspects”: journal editors, reviewers, publishers, and finally citers.

    If discrimination began with journal editors, they should only be publishing Chinese-led papers of comparably higher quality than other papers they publish. If so, you would expect these superior papers to be cited more, not less, which is at odds with the evidence.

    As for reviewers, most journals adopt a “double-blind” approach where reviewers and authors don’t know each other’s identities. If reviewers don’t know when they’re dealing with a Chinese author, they cannot be discriminating against them. Similarly, publishers are not usually allowed to intervene in editorial decisions, so they cannot be discriminating either.

    This leaves the citers as the main discriminators, those who read academic papers and cite them in their own work. To get a clearer picture of what is happening, we compared three pairs of subgroups: Chinese versus non-Chinese, top economists versus non-top economists, and those with US university affiliations versus non-US affiliations.

    We concluded that non-Chinese top economists from non-US institutions are the ones least likely to cite authors with Chinese surnames. This seems surprising given US rivalry with China, but actually it is a natural consequence. For US economists to study their biggest opponent, you would expect them to cite studies about China –and most are done by Chinese authors.

    Mitigating the discrimination

    One way of reducing the “Chineseness” of authorship is co-authoring with a non-Chinese academic. However in academic writing, a citation convention is that when a paper has over three authors, you only keep the surname of the first author (who is also the lead researcher). For example, a paper written by Zhang, Smith and Armstrong in 2025 will simply become “Zhang et al. (2025)”. Therefore bringing in more non-Chinese academics will make no difference.

    Another way of diluting “Chineseness” is for the lead author to become affiliated with a US institute. Per our study, this reduces the citation bias by 16%. However, obtaining such a US affiliation is not always feasible.

    This led us to conclude that the best way of reducing discrimination is to reduce the amount of author information in citations. For example, journals can request for citations to be by initials (“BG 1957”) or numeric codes (1, 2, 3), as market leaders like Nature already do. Journals can also use a digital object identifier (DOI), for example “10.1234/example.article”, instead of disclosing author names in published references.

    This may not solve the problem of papers not being cited in the first place, but it can reduce the likelihood of subsequent citation bias as readers no longer know the surnames of cited papers.

    Discrimination is self-sabotage. Each time we discount a paper because the surname feels “foreign”, we put the brakes on our own progress. This slows insight, muffles debate and leaves the world poorer in ideas.

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

    – ref. Chinese research isn’t taken as seriously as papers from elsewhere – my new study – https://theconversation.com/chinese-research-isnt-taken-as-seriously-as-papers-from-elsewhere-my-new-study-255794

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Decentralized finance is booming − and so are the security risks. My team surveyed nearly 500 crypto investors and uncovered the most common mistakes

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Mingyi Liu, Ph.D. student in Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology

    When the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was proposed in 2008, the goal was simple: to create a digital currency free from banks and governments. Over time, that idea evolved into something much bigger: “decentralized finance,” or “DeFi.”

    With decentralized finance, people trade, borrow and earn interest on crypto assets without relying on traditional intermediaries. DeFi services run on blockchains, which are essentially digital ledgers, and use “smart contracts” − self-executing code that automates financial transactions. Tens of billions of dollars have poured into the DeFi market.

    But with innovation comes risks. The lack of centralized oversight has made crypto, including decentralized finance, a prime target for hackers and scammers. In 2024 alone, people lost nearly US$1.5 billion due to security exploits and fraud. And unlike traditional finance, there’s usually no way to recover stolen crypto.

    As a computer scientist, I wanted to better understand how people perceive and respond to these risks. So my colleagues and I first conducted in-depth interviews with 14 crypto investors, then surveyed nearly 500 others to validate our findings.

    Our study found that people often made the same mistakes, driven by recurring misconceptions and gaps in security awareness. Here are some of the most important.

    Mistake 1: Thinking the blockchain guarantees security

    Many people told us they thought decentralized finance was secure – but their reasoning wasn’t very convincing. Some seemed to confuse decentralized finance with blockchain technology itself, which is designed to ensure transactions are tamper-resistant through so-called “consensus mechanisms.” One told us that DeFi is secure “because a hacker would have to override an entire blockchain” to steal funds.

    But services on the blockchain are still vulnerable to implementation and design flaws. These include smart contract breaches, in which bad guys exploit bugs in a service’s code, and front-end attacks, where a user interface is altered to redirect funds into a hacker’s wallet. A front-end attack was reportedly to blame for a recent $1.5 billion crypto heist.

    CNBC reports on the record-breaking $1.5 billion crypto theft.

    Mistake 2: Thinking safe keys mean safe funds

    Another common misconception is that DeFi is secure if private keys are well stored. A private key is a secret code that allows someone to access their crypto assets. It’s true that in DeFi – unlike in centralized crypto finance where an exchange holds private keys – users have full control over their own private keys.

    But even with perfect private key management, users can still lose funds by interacting with compromised DeFi platforms. That’s because safeguarding private keys can prevent only direct attacks targeting private key access, such as phishing attempts.

    The people we spoke with also failed to follow best practices for securing their private keys. Using a hardware wallet – a physical device that stores private keys offline – is one of the most secure options for protecting keys from online threats. However, our study found that only a handful of participants actually used hardware wallets.

    Mistake 3: Thinking 2-factor authentication is a silver bullet

    Two-factor authentication, or 2FA, is a standard security mechanism in which two forms of verification are required to access an account. Think being texted a one-time code before you can log into your bank account.

    To prevent account breaches, centralized crypto exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase use two-factor authentication for logins, account recovery and withdrawal confirmations. But while 2FA is crucial to security in the traditional and centralized crypto finance system, it plays a much smaller role in decentralized finance.

    DeFi wallets give users access based on private key ownership rather than identity verification, which means traditional 2FA can’t be used. Instead, only 2FA-like mechanisms are available in DeFi. For instance, multisignature wallets require approval from multiple private key holders. However, if your private key is compromised, attackers can perform wallet operations on your behalf without any additional verification. In addition, even users who adopt 2FA-like measures can’t prevent the security breaches on the DeFi services’ end.

    Unfortunately, our participants were overly confident regarding the effectiveness of 2FA, with one saying, “Two-factor authentication has been one of the best solutions for keeping wallets safe.” In our survey, 57.1% of users relied on 2FA as their only technical countermeasure against rug pulls – scams where project creators suddenly withdraw funds – and 49.3% did so for smart contract exploits. This misplaced trust could lead them to ignore more effective security strategies.

    Mistake 4: Not managing token approvals

    One such effective strategy is revoking token approvals. In DeFi, tokens are digital assets on a blockchain that represent value or rights, and users often need to approve smart contracts to access or spend them. But if you leave these approvals open, a malicious contract – or one that’s been hacked – can drain your wallet. So it’s crucial to routinely check all token approvals you’ve granted to prevent losses caused by fraudulent or hacked DeFi services. Specifically, you should limit spending allowances instead of using the default “unlimited” option, and revoke approvals for apps you no longer use or trust.

    Worryingly, we found that only 10.8% and 16.3% of participants regularly checked and revoked token approvals to protect against rug pulls and smart contract exploits, respectively. In light of this, we recommend that wallet providers introduce a reminder feature to prompt users to review their token approvals periodically.

    Mistake 5: Not learning from past incidents

    Even after they’re hacked or scammed, people often don’t do anything to improve their security practices, we found. Just 17.6% of those who reported being victims of a DeFi scam regularly checked token approvals afterward. Worse, 26% took no action at all after a scam, and 16.4% doubled down by investing even more in other DeFi services.

    Surprisingly, more than half of the victims said their belief in DeFi either stayed the same or grew stronger after the incident. One user who lost $4,700 due to a rug-pull incident said, “My belief in cryptocurrency has grown stronger after that because I made good money from it.” That person added, “An opportunity to make money is something I believe in.” This suggests that DeFi users’ financial motivations can sometimes outweigh their security concerns – and, perhaps, their better judgment.

    There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to DeFi security. But awareness is the first step. To stay safe, crypto investors should use hardware wallets, revoke unused token approvals and continually learn new techniques to protect themselves from evolving threats. Most importantly, they should stay rational and not let the allure of profits cloud their security practices.

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

    – ref. Decentralized finance is booming − and so are the security risks. My team surveyed nearly 500 crypto investors and uncovered the most common mistakes – https://theconversation.com/decentralized-finance-is-booming-and-so-are-the-security-risks-my-team-surveyed-nearly-500-crypto-investors-and-uncovered-the-most-common-mistakes-251305

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –