Source: United States Senator for Michigan Gary Peters
GRAND RAPIDS, MI – U.S. Senator Gary Peters (MI) visited Walker Tool & Die in Grand Rapids to discuss the impact of President Trump’s tariffs on West Michigan manufacturers. During a listening session, Peters heard directly from manufacturers and workers in the region about how Michigan companies are navigating the current tariff policies and what policies would better foster economic success.
“President Trump’s tariffs have caused chaos and instability in our economy, and it’s critical to my job to hear directly from folks on the ground about how it is impacting their business,” said Senator Peters. “It was great to meet with local manufacturers and workers to hear their feedback and discuss how our trade policy can better support Michigan companies while creating good-paying jobs.”
Following the listening session, Peters toured the plant with Walker Tool & Die President Jeff Umlor. Walker Tool & Die produces high-precision metal stamping dies and tooling systems used to produce components of automobiles, appliances, office furniture, aerospace assets, and more.
“I appreciate Senator Peters taking time to visit Walker Tool and Die today to discuss how the changing tariff policy, low-cost country tooling, and labor shortages, among other topics, are impacting our industries,” said Jeff Umlor, President of Walker Tool and Die. “Today’s event brought together a diverse group of manufacturers from across the region to share meaningful insight on the current challenges we face, so Senator Peters can continue to effectively advocate on behalf of the business community here in our state.”
To download photos from Peters’ event at Walker Tool & Die, click here.
In April, Peters took to the Senate floor to speak out against the latest tariffs, calling them a “national sales tax” and highlighting how they fall short of a needed strategy to boost American manufacturing.
Peters, a lifelong advocate for Michigan workers and manufacturing, has also worked to support American innovation and help Michigan businesses compete in a global market. In an effort to outcompete our adversaries like China, Peters recently helped introduce the American Innovation and Jobs Act, bipartisan legislation that would expand and strengthen research and development incentives for American small businesses and startups. Peters also recently introduced the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Reauthorization Act of 2025 to support workers in Michigan and across the country who have lost their jobs due to harmful trade policies.
Peters also helped craft and pass into law the CHIPS and Science Act, which invested $170 billion in research and development for cutting-edge scientific advancements. This law also invested heavily in strengthening our domestic supply chains for critical semiconductor technologies to create good-paying American jobs and keep the U.S. competitive on the world stage. Peters additionally helped pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which will strengthen domestic manufacturing, onshore our supply chains, and create millions of American jobs.
Mexican beauty influencer Valeria Marquez was shot dead during a TikTok livestream.@V___marquez / Instagram
Valeria Marquez, a beauty influencer, was shot dead by a man on May 14 while live streaming on TikTok at her beauty salon in the Mexican city of Guadalajara. The authorities are investigating the case as a suspected femicide, where women or girls are killed on account of their gender.
The killing of Marquez is part of a gender-based violence epidemic that has gripped Latin America for decades. The threat of such violence there is so severe that in 2020, as the world battled COVID, the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, called it a “shadow pandemic”.
The situation in Mexico is especially alarming. A 2021 report by Amnesty International found that at least ten women or girls are murdered in the country every day. The report added that the authorities have largely proved unwilling to take action to stop the killing.
On the surface, Mexico has made significant strides in improving gender equality. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo became the first woman to be elected as Mexico’s president in 2024. There are also several female governors heading powerful Mexican provinces, and female political leadership can be found in great numbers in regional and municipal bodies.
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But despite the visible presence of women in public life, parts of Mexican society remain deeply sexist. Researchers see the prevalence of machismo, a culture that encourages an extreme sense of masculine pride, as having facilitated male dominance over women.
Femicide in Mexico became particularly rife in the 1990s. The introduction of the North American free trade agreement saw many factories producing goods for export set up near Mexico’s border with the US. These factories are known as maquiladoras.
The emergence of maquiladoras created low-skilled job opportunities. And a generation of women sought economic freedom by working in the factories. By 2006, more than half of the workers at maquiladoras were women, largely the result of their comparatively low wage demands.
While this culture shift allowed women greater economic autonomy, it also created deep resentment from some men. A spate of murders were carried out in the Mexican border city Ciudad Juárez in the 1990s, which claimed the lives of roughly 400 women.
Research has established a connection between female employment in the maquiladoras and the consequent rise in femicide in Mexican border towns. Many of the women killed in Ciudad Juárez worked in the maquiladoras.
Some people also point to the fact that the culture of male chauvinism in Mexico – and throughout Latin America more broadly – is pervasive.
When the Mexican government in 2020 established a hotline to report issues of domestic abuse and violence against women in the country, it was flooded by tens of thousands of reports. But when journalists asked the then president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, about this figure he brushed it aside: “90% of those calls that you’re referring to are fake.”
Culture of impunity
Gender-based violence in Mexico and in large parts of Latin America does not exist solely because of the culture of extreme masculinity. It also thrives because of institutional failure to bring the perpetrators to justice.
There are robust laws and regulations to protect women against abuse in Latin America. The inter-American convention on the prevention, punishment and eradication of violence against women, signed in the Brazilian city of Belém in 1994, is a good example.
It was adopted by all countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, formalising violence against women as a violation of their human rights. However, despite the presence of this legal framework, there has not been a corresponding decline in rates of femicide.
Criminal impunity is one of the greatest hindrances to addressing the issue of femicide throughout the region. In Mexico, for example, more than 90% of all crimes go unsolved. And in Brazil, many cases of violence against women go unreported.
When they are reported, the victims and their families often face obstacles in the judicial system. Despite a 39% increase in the number of femicide cases in Brazil from 2019 to 2020, the sentencing for this crime only increased by 24%.
According to a World Bank report from 2023, there is an institutional complicity in perpetrating violence against women in Honduras. The report alleges that the country’s national police force “turn a blind eye to the soaring number of femicides”.
Similarly, according to Diana Portal, of the ombudsman’s office in Peru, femicide in the country is spiralling out of control because the negligent state machinery is incapable of addressing the issue. Consequently, criminals feel they can “rape, disappear or kill a woman without consequence”.
Latin America and the Caribbean has never had a dearth of female public figures. The region has had more than a dozen female leaders as of 2025. Argentina, Brazil and Chile have recently had female heads of state, while Peru, Honduras, Nicaragua and Mexico currently have female presidents. Mexico’s patron saint, Virgen de Guadalupe, is also a woman.
However, the presence of these high-profile figures in public life has not deterred sections of society from targeting women with violence.
Incensed by the culture of impunity and male chauvinism that perpetuates femicide in Latin America, the late Pope Francis denounced the practice. In a visit to Peru in 2018, he said violence against women cannot be treated as “normal”. “It is not right for us to look the other way and let the dignity of so many women, especially young women, be trampled upon.”
Unfortunately, despite the moral homily contained in his message, Latin America has been utterly incapable of addressing this subculture of gender violence.
Amalendu Misra is a recipient of Nuffield Foundation and British Academy fellowships.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Cassie Brummitt, Assistant Professor in Film and Television Studies, University of Nottingham
Sinners, a blues-soaked horror film set in 1930s Mississippi, was preemptively tagged by many film industry insiders as an inevitable flop. But it became a word-of-mouth sleeper hit that continues to draw huge audiences globally, weeks after its release.
On its opening weekend, premium screening formats such as in Imax cinemas accounted for 45% of the film’s ticket sales. Indeed, Imax technology has been central to the marketing of Sinners.
Trailers declared that the film was “shot with Imax cameras” and its cast and crew have discussed their experiences working with this technology in interviews. Director Ryan Coogler even takes us to film school in a ten-minute video where he talks about his love of physical film reels, explaining the differences between seeing Sinners in different aspect ratios – particularly Imax.
Imax is both a filmmaking format and a viewing technology. Imax cameras use large physical film reels and are very unwieldy due to their size, so they’re a rare filmmaking method and are usually only associated with big-budget directors such as Christopher Nolan.
This article is part of our State of the Arts series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry – and celebrate the wins, too.
Sinners was shot using Imax cameras as well as an Ultra Panavision 70 camera. These cameras shoot in a completely different aspect ratio to normal films. The result is a much shallower depth of field and greater image resolution that allowed Coogler and cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw to best “tell the story with the flat horizon of the Mississippi landscape.”
Imax cinema screens are specially designed to display this immersive, high-quality format. But what many people don’t know is that there are different kinds of Imax.
“True” Imax requires massive screens that use a specific aspect ratio (1:43:1) and special film projectors capable of playing the extra-large film reels. There are only two auditoriums in the UK that fit this description – the British Film Institute’s Imax in Waterloo and the Ronson Theatre Imax screen in the Science Museum – and both are in London.
The kind of Imax you’re likely to have experienced in your local cinema uses digital projectors, and often the screens will vary in size – though they are still bigger than average.
Regardless, the ongoing popularity of high-quality formats like Imax is a result of audiences increasingly seeking out the cinema for immersive, “premium” screening experiences.
The draw of Imax in offering a spectacular, high-intensity experience is a big part of why it was central to Sinners’ marketing campaign. Media academic Leora Hadas, in her book Authorship as Promotional Discourse in the Screen Industries, claims today’s movie marketing is largely about giving a film a distinct identity that makes it feel different among the overwhelming number of entertainment options we can choose from.
It makes total sense to play on Imax’s reputation for quality and spectacle in promoting a prestige film like Sinners. But I think it’s also trying to tell us something even more significant about the value of the cinema space for watching films.
The rise of streaming services has led to many changes in audience viewing habits. We can now access a wide range of content for a monthly subscription equal to the cost of a single cinema ticket.
The traditional model the film industry is built on – where a film’s success is judged by how much money it makes in cinemas – is increasingly precarious. This has caused much anxiety for film studios and cinemas alike, as more and more films are released straight to streaming platforms. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos even said recently that making films for the cinema is an “outdated concept”.
Crucially, Imax is a technology that can only be experienced in cinemas. After Sinners opened to an explosive US$58 million (£43 million) at the box office globally, Coogler penned an open letter thanking cinema audiences, saying it was “always a film that we wanted to make for audiences in theaters … to entertain you, and move you in the way only cinema can”.
This letter makes his stance on the value of cinema very clear: “I believe in cinema. I believe in the theatrical experience. I believe it is a necessary pillar of society.”
Coogler’s efforts to promote the “theatrical experience” can encourage us all to celebrate the cinema as a space for entertainment, immersion and art. Clearly, his message has resonated: the BFI Imax screen in London has brought Sinners back due to popular demand.
But the film’s marketing strategy also reveals the underlying vulnerability of an industry fighting to survive in an era of competition from streaming services. Imax technology contributes to Sinners’ identity as a prestige film, but it also creates a narrative around the value of preserving the cinema.
Cassie Brummitt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Edward Armston-Sheret, IHR Fellow, School of Advanced Study, University of London
By July 1858, the English explorer John Hanning Speke had been in Africa for 18 months. His eyes and body were weakened by fever, and he still hadn’t found what he set out to discover – the source of the River Nile.
Squinting through the heat on July 30, however, he spotted a body of water, about four miles away, surrounded by grass and jungle. At first, he could see only a small creek, flanked by lush fertile land used for growing crops and grazing by local people. But he pressed onward, dragging a reluctant donkey through jungle and over dried-up streams.
It wasn’t until August 3 that he could comprehend the full size of the lake. After winding up a gradual hill near Mwanza, located in the north of modern-day Tanzania, Speke was finally able to see a “vast expanse” of “pale-blue” water. He gazed on the lake’s islands and could see the outline of hills in the distance. Speke was arrested by the “peaceful beauty” of the scene. At the same time he was excited – he was convinced that this lake was what he’d been looking for. He was right. The Nile is the lake’s only outlet, and the huge body of water – now known as Lake Victoria – is the world’s second-largest freshwater lake.
Lack of time and money prevented Speke from travelling any further, so he came to understand the lake’s size by speaking to local people. As he didn’t speak any African languages, such conversations had to be translated multiple times. Thankfully, he had Sidi Mubarak Bombay to help him, a key figure in the expedition, who spoke both Hindi (which Speke could understand) and Swahili.
Despite another multi-year expedition from Zanzibar travelling inland to the area, in his own lifetime, Speke struggled to prove his claims. That’s because he only saw part of the lake and was unable to follow the river that flowed out of it the whole way to the coast. He died in 1864 from self-inflicted wounds sustained during a strange shooting incident, shortly before speaking at a debate about the source of the Nile.
But at least he is remembered by history. Bombay and the hundreds of African men and women who made his journey possible have since been largely forgotten. Such people did most of the hard work of exploration, building camps, navigating, cooking food and caring for Speke when he was sick.
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They are not the only ones. As a researcher specialising in the history of geography, I’ve spent almost eight years examining Victorian and Edwardian exploration and learned about the lives and experiences of African and Asian explorers, including Bombay. They included men and women who were formerly enslaved and were either forced into the work, or paid a pittance. Some of the women were forced into sexual relationships and marriages. Many were killed or badly injured in floggings at the hands of their brutal “masters” keen to administer punishment for perceived transgressions.
Their names should be in the pantheon of exploration, but all too often they are either ignored or misrepresented within the historical record. These are just some of their stories.
The illness and suffering Speke endured left a lasting mark on his body. Though he claimed to have fully recovered, his fellow British explorer on the expedition, the eccentric Richard F. Burton, argued in his book The Lake Regions of Central Africa (1860) that Speke had sustained brain damage from sun stroke. In reality, he might have been showing the after effects of malaria and hearing loss. At one stage, a beetle had crawled into his ear, leaving him deaf for a month.
Even so, Speke led a further expedition to Africa to try to prove once and for all that he had “discovered” the source of the Nile.
He also published two books on his journeys. In the front of one, he used an etching of himself (based on a painting) standing before Lake Victoria. A copy of this painting still hangs in the headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society in South Kensington, London.
The image depicts Speke as a heroic and masculine figure. What we don’t see are the men and women who did the hard work of bringing Speke to the lake in the first place.
Sidi Mubarak Bombay was one of the most important figures within Speke’s expeditions. From Speke’s book about the expedition, which included a short biography of Bombay, we know he was born in 1820 near the modern border of Tanzania and Mozambique. His mother died when he was young, yet he remembered life in his village as one of “happy contentment” until, at the age of 12, when he was captured and enslaved by Swahili-speaking merchants.
He was then marched to the coast in chains before being sold at a slave market in Zanzibar. The man who bought him then transported him to India. Eventually, his owner died, and Bombay was freed. He returned to East Africa and enlisted in the Sultan of Zanzibar’s army. There, he met Speke and joined the East African Expedition in February 1857 and was paid five silver dollars a month.
The appointment changed Bombay’s life. The expedition was led by Burton, who had become famous for travelling to Mecca and Medina disguised as a Muslim pilgrim. Bombay became a key member of the expeditionary party.
Not only did he translate both Burton and Speke’s orders, but he also negotiated with local leaders for food, shelter and safe passage through their territory and cared for the explorers when they were sick. Bombay developed an active interest in the expedition’s work. In his book, Speke wrote that “by long practice, he has become a great geographer”.
When Speke returned to Zanzibar in 1860 for his next expedition, Bombay was one of the first men he recruited. He stayed with the expedition on its multi-year journey from Zanzibar to Cairo. Bombay went on to work for other European explorers, including Henry Morton Stanley who searched for the “lost” explorer David Livingstone, and Verney Lovett Cameron, who sought to investigate the lakes and rivers of Africa.
With Lovett Cameron, Bombay crossed equatorial Africa from coast to coast, completing much of the journey on foot. Even Victorian geographers recognised Bombay’s contribution, and he eventually received an award and pension from the Royal Geographical Society.
Anonymous labour and explorers’ violence
Bombay was a remarkable man. But Speke’s explorations also depended on many people we know far less about.
Both of Speke’s journeys to Lake Victoria were huge undertakings, involving hundreds of people. Much of the hard work was carried out by Nyamwezi porters from the central region of modern-day Tanzania. These men often worked on the pre-existing trade routes that connected the lake regions to the east African coast.
They carried the explorers’ supplies, basic equipment, trade goods and food. Explorers’ accounts often describe these people in racially offensive ways. Even so, their private letters also show their reliance on them.
An image from Speke’s book Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, illustrated by James Grant, showing ‘Speke’s faithfuls’. Wiki Commons
On his journey to Lake Victoria, Speke struggled to recruit enough porters and complained: “I cannot move independently of the natives, and now the natives are not to be got for love or money [sic]. This alone has detained me here four whole months doing nothing.”
Alongside the porters, Speke also employed Swahili-speaking men from Zanzibar. These men often had their origins in East Africa and had often been enslaved in childhood. In his published account, Speke portrayed them in terms that drew on colonial tropes about childlike Africans.
In one letter to the British consul in Zanzibar, sent on December 12 1860, he was more positive, saying that such men do “all the work and do it as an enlightened and disciplined people”. These contrasting assessments perhaps reflect Speke’s varying mood. However, the different way he wrote in public might also be part of an effort to emphasise the difficulty of the journey and his leadership qualities.
Yet explorers sometimes struggled to maintain control over the parties they led. One problem was the fact that, once away from the coast and the power of the Zanazibari state, expedition members could easily slip away. Understandably, porters were more likely to leave an expedition when conditions became bad and food scarce.
Violent punishments were also a common feature of expeditions in this region. The explorers did not invent them – such punishments were also used by Arabic or Swahili-speaking merchants travelling in the area – but they showed little hesitation in using them. In his book on their 1856-59 expedition, Burton boasted that the expedition’s porters referred to him as “the wicked white man”.
Porters referred to Richard F. Burton as ‘the wicked white man’. Hulton Archive
On Speke’s second expedition to Lake Victoria, his Scottish companion Grant described how one man “roared for mercy” when he was flogged 150 times after stealing cloth to buy food. In a letter to the Royal Geographical Society on February 17 1861, Speke wrote that this was the maximum number of lashes he would give out “for fear of mortal consequences”.
Later expeditions, such as those led by the Welsh-American explorer Henry Morton Stanley were even more violent.
During the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition (1887-89), Stanley decided to divide the party, leaving a “rear column” behind. Conditions in this group soon deteriorated, due to food shortages and disease. The column’s leader, the explorer Major Edmund Bartlott, carried out a string of violent punishments. One Sudanese porter was executed, while a Zanzibari man was flogged so many times that he died of the injuries.
Bartlott was only stopped from carrying out further acts of violence when he was killed by an African man fearful that he was about to attack his wife.
Women and girls on African expeditions
When Speke’s final expedition arrived in Cairo in 1863, having travelled from Zanzibar, the party also contained four young women who were photographed there. Their presence shows that African women often formed part of explorers’ expeditionary parties.
Sometimes the women joined voluntarily, often as the partners of porters. Others were enslaved women and girls purchased by other expedition members. One of the girls photographed in Cairo was named Kahala. Along with an older girl named Meri, she had been “given” to Speke by the queen mother of the African Kingdom of Buganda during Speke’s extended stay in the country.
Women and girls in Speke’s party in Cairo, from his Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, 1863. CC BY-SA
Speke’s relationship with Meri took a remarkable turn. In an unpublished draft of his book, now held at the National Library of Scotland, he described her as “18 years or so” and “in the prime of youth and beauty”.
The manuscript also implies that their relationship had a sexual dimension, although it’s unclear if this was consensual. On April 12 1862, Speke claimed that he spent the night “taming the silent shrew” – alluding to a play by William Shakespeare in which a husband torments his strong-willed wife into submission. Even in his highly edited published account, Speke described himself as a “henpecked husband”.
His account then described the breakdown of their relationship in early May 1862. The breakup, Speke wrote in the unpublished draft of his book, “nearly drove my judgement from me” and left him with a “nearly broken … heart.” After this, Meri apparently showed “neither love, nor attachment for me”, suggesting she had shown some before this.
Speke eventually “gave” the younger girl, Kahala, to Bomaby because “she preferred playing with dirty little children to behaving like a young lady”. At first, Kahala was unhappy about this transfer and tried to run away. But she was soon found and returned to the party. She then stayed with the expedition to Cairo and travelled with Bombay when he returned to Zanzibar.
It was not unusual for women to try to join expeditionary parties. Explorers often had concerns about the presence of unmarried women within their ranks. For instance, in his book To The Central African Lakes and Back (1881) Joseph Thomson, who led an expedition to the Lake Regions of central Africa between 1878 and 1880, reported finding a woman in the expedition’s camp who was trying to reach the coast.
On the advice of the expedition’s experienced African headman James Chuma (who, like Bombay, became involved in multiple expeditions), Thomson forced the woman to marry one of the expedition’s porters. The woman does not seem to have been happy with this arrangement. While she stayed with the expedition for a while, she slipped away when they neared the coast.
We only know the names of a small fraction of the women involved in such expeditions. Grant wrote a book on their journey that gives further details about women in the party.
In it he noted that several of the porters travelled alongside female partners who were “generally carrying a child each on their backs, a small stool … on their heads, and inveterately smoking during the march. They would prepare some savoury dish of herbs for their men on getting into camp, where they lived in bell-shaped erections made with boughs of trees”.
Such passages give us only a tantalising glimpse of these women. We’re left without a detailed knowledge of their names or lives. But we do know that they contributed to these expeditions in important ways.
Isabella Bird and Ito
More well known are the stories of the growing number of British women who became explorers in the Victorian era. Foremost among them was Isabella Bird.
Isabella Bird wearing Manchurian clothing from a journey through China. New York Public Library
Born in 1831 to an upper-middle class family and less than 5ft tall, Bird did not begin her career as an explorer until middle age. She was also disabled. At the age of 18, Bird had a “fibrous tumour” removed from the base of her spine and afterwards lived with chronic back pain. She travelled, often on horseback, to every continent of the world except Antarctica. Bird was also one of the first women admitted to the then all-male Royal Geographical Society in 1892.
Bird’s gender and disability shaped how she travelled. Unable to walk for long distances, she often rode cross-saddle, rather than the more traditionally feminine side-saddle, which she found painful. In some places, she faced specific hostility because she was a woman.
Yet, in other ways, Bird’s journeys had shared similarities with those made by men. Like them, she often depended on local people during her journeys. When she travelled through Japan in 1878, she relied on the services of an 18-year-old Japanese man named Itō Tsurukichi. He played a vital role in her journey across the country, arranging much of her travel, translating conversation with local people and explaining what she was looking at.
In Bird’s published accounts, her descriptions of Tsurukichi are often laced with racial prejudice. She often referred to him as a “boy” and was disparaging about his physical appearance. Her perspective on him did soften a little, however, as their journey continued. She was impressed by his qualities as a translator and the fact that he was continually trying to improve his linguistic skills.
Tsurukichi’s essential role was also illustrated when Bird attended a Japanese wedding to which he was not invited. She complained that it was like being “deprived of the use of one of her senses”.
Bird’s account also raises questions of who the leader of their journey through Japan was. “I am trying to manage him, because I saw that he meant to manage me,” she wrote in her book Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880). Bird also reported an incident where a Japanese boy thought “that Ito was a monkey-player, ie. the keeper of a monkey theatre, I a big ape, and the poles of my bed the scaffolding of the stage!”
Bird viewed the child’s misunderstanding as amusing, but it does suggest that some outsiders thought Tsurukichi was leading the party. He was clearly a skilled guide and translator, and he went on to become one of the foremost tour guides in Japan, taking numerous western travellers around the country.
Like Burton and Speke, Bird often depended on guides on her journeys. Sometimes, she led much larger groups. In such situations, others cooked her food, packed her tent, and translated conversations with local people.
When she travelled in China in the 1890s, Bird was carried across much of the country in an open chair on the shoulders of three separate groups of chair-bearers. She often didn’t record the names of the men who did such work and only described their labour in quite general terms – though she did photograph some of them and her chair.
However little men like Bombay and Tsurukichi are remembered, it is at least possible to recover their names.
Scott and Antarctica – exploration in an unpopulated land
In the early 20th century, the exploration of Antarctica was a thoroughly masculine affair. Some women did apply to join Antarctic expeditions, such as those led by Ernest Shackleton, but their applications were turned down. Antarctic expeditions were also less ethnically diverse than those in the Arctic. In the north, explorers often relied on the skills and labour of Indigenous people. There were also Black explorers, including Matthew Henson, an African-American man who claimed to be one of the first men to stand on the North Pole.
Antarctica presented a unique challenge: it is unpopulated, and when British explorers made their first attempts to explore its interior in the early 20th century, they had no idea what to expect.
In contrast to diverse expeditions elsewhere in the world, Antarctic expeditions were comparatively homogenous undertakings. British expeditions, led by Robert Falcon Scott and Shackleton, mostly employed white men from within the British empire. Sledging journeys in Antarctica were quite egalitarian compared with expeditions in Africa and Asia. Sledging often required upper and middle-class officers and scientists to work collaboratively with working class sailors, who often pulled sledges forward by sheer force of muscle.
Shackleton, Scott and Edward Wilson before their march south during the Discovery expedition in 1902. Sledges visible in the background. National Library of New Zealand
On the British National Antarctic Expedition, Scott completed a long sledge journey to the Polar Plateau with stoker William Lashly and petty officer Edgar Evans. The men cooked, ate, slept and laboured together. Scott, an officer, found the experience revealing, learning much about the working-class men’s experiences in the Royal Navy. Antarctic explorers were more willing to acknowledge the manual labour that made their expeditions possible than Burton, Speke or Bird, partly because this work was done by white men.
Some working-class sailors – such as Edgar Evans, Tom Crean, or William Lashly – did achieve a certain degree of celebrity. But others figures are overlooked. On Scott’s expedition he employed two men from within the Russian empire to help care for and train the expedition’s ponies and huskies: Dmitrii Girev and Anton Omelchenko. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the expedition’s assistant zoologist, noted that they “were brought originally to look after the ponies and dogs on their way from Siberia to New Zealand. But they proved such good fellows and so useful that we were very glad to take them on the strength of the landing party”.
Girev, from the far east of Russia specialised in looking after the expedition’s Siberian huskies, while Omelchenko, born in Ukraine, specialised in caring for the ponies who would haul Scott’s supplies towards the South Pole. They therefore played a vital role in the expedition. In their accounts, Scott and Cherry-Garrard referred to these adult men using the infantilising term “boys” – thereby stripping them of their status as full and equal members of the expeditionary party.
Even among the British expedition members, there were still significant disparities in how labour on polar expeditions was rewarded or reported. Working-class men, mostly sailors drawn from the Royal Navy, did much of the hard, unglamorous work. They were also paid much less than officers and scientists.
On Scott’s two Antarctic expeditions, much of the day-to-day work at base camp – such as cooking, cleaning, and collecting ice to melt into drinking water – was carried out by working-class sailors.
On his final expedition, the explorers spent the winter in a small hut on Ross Island. One man, Thomas Clissold, worked as the expedition’s cook. Frederick Hooper, a steward who joined the shore party, swept the floor in the morning, set the table, washed crockery and generally tidied things. “I think it is a good thing that in these matters the officers need not wait on themselves,” Scott commented in his diary. “It gives long unbroken days of scientific work and must, therefore, be an economy of brain in the long run.”
He had adopted a similar approach on his first expedition, which left some sailors frustrated. “We don’t have any idea of what has been done in the scientific work, as they don’t give us any information,” James Duncan, a Scottish shipwright on the British National Antarctic Expedition (1901-1904) complained in his diary. “It’s rather hard on the lower deck hands.”
Even memorials to Antarctic explorers perpetuate many of the heroic myths of exploration. If you walk around London today, you might stumble on the statue of Scott in Waterloo Place or one of Shackleton outside the headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society in South Kensington. Such statues embody much of what we often get wrong about exploration, depicting explorers as solitary. Expeditions were collective projects, and many of the people involved haven’t had their contributions fully recognised.
In many parts of the world, expeditions were large, diverse undertakings. Yet many of the people who did most of the work have been forgotten. My research seeks to put them in the spotlight and recover something of their lives and experiences.
Expeditions are extreme situations in which human bodies are pushed to (and sometimes beyond) their limits. Because of this, they vividly illustrate the various ways humans depend on each other – for care, food, shelter, transport and companionship. Today, human societies are more complex and interdependent than ever. Though often in less extreme or dramatic ways, like explorers, we all depend on other people for survival.
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Edward Armston-Sheret has received funding from the Institute of Historical Research (via the Alan Pearsall Fellowship in Naval and Maritime History), the Royal Historical Society, The Royal Geographical Society, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (via the Techne Doctoral Training Partnership).
A viral social media post suggested a large fries and large coke was an effective migraine treatmentKrakenimages.com/Shutterstock
Whether it’s one or two coffees to get us going in the morning or a bar of chocolate after a stressful day, many of us self-medicate when we’re tired, stressed or sad. But when we have a headache, most of us head straight for the painkillers.
Lately, though, a viral hack has been making the rounds: that a large Coca-Cola and fries can stop a migraine in its tracks.
And oddly enough, it’s not total nonsense.
The caffeine in Coca-Cola acts as a vasoconstrictor, meaning it narrows blood vessels. This helps counteract the dilation of blood vessels that occurs during a migraine – a key trigger for pain.
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When vessels widen, they can press on and activate nearby pain-sensitive nerves, especially those of the trigeminal system, which carries sensory information about touch, pain and temperature from the head and face to the brain, leading to that familiar throbbing headache. That’s why caffeine is often included in over-the-counter headache medications.
Meanwhile, the sugar and salt in Coke and fries may help restore balance to blood sugar and electrolytes, both of which can be disrupted during a migraine attack.
But to really understand why this combo might work, we need to unpack what’s actually happening during a migraine.
The four stages of migraine
Migraines can be sparked by a wide range of factors: hormonal shifts, stress, skipped meals, certain foods, even changes in the weather or visual overstimulation. But, once one begins, it follows a specific pathway that makes it distinct from other types of headaches.
A migraine is no ordinary headache. It’s a full-body experience with four distinct stages – two of which occur before the pain even hits. That means there’s a window in which to stop the episode in its tracks, and many migraineurs (people who suffer from migraines) already self-medicate by doing just that.
Prodrome
Prodrome is the first stage, which can begin hours or even days before the headache. You might feel tired, irritable, or unusually low in mood. Most people who get migraines are surprisingly bad at spotting this phase, even though it’s the best time to intervene.
During prodrome, people often crave certain things. Many migraineurs report yawning more, which helps regulate dopamine, or seeking out hugs and affection, which boost serotonin. Others might drink ice water to calm their autonomic nervous system. Others still might reach for the large Coke and fries.
These responses aren’t random. All of these are unconscious attempts to rebalance the neurological systems that go haywire during a migraine. Irregular serotonin, dopamine and nervous system function are all known contributors to migraines.
And that brings us to arguably the ultimate migraine hack: chocolate. While it’s sometimes blamed as a trigger, chocolate is rich in compounds that help raise serotonin levels.
Because low serotonin is a known factor in migraine onset, a craving for chocolate might be your brain’s way of correcting a chemical imbalance. For some people, a bit of chocolate in the early stages may help ward off an attack.
Aura
Aura comes after the prodrome phase, and it’s when some people experience visual disturbances like flashing lights, or odd sensations like pins and needles. About 80% of migraine sufferers don’t experience the aura phase, but the same wave-like changes happen inside their brains.
These symptoms come from a burst of electrical activity in the brain that is subsequently suppressed, which alters blood flow and causes the constriction of blood vessels. Whether a person notices these effects depends on the structure and sensitivity of their cerebral cortex.
The brain relies on a stable supply of blood for nutrients and oxygen — but direct contact with blood is toxic to brain tissue. That’s why we have the blood-brain barrier, a filter that protects brain cells.
The pain comes next. The body takes vascular changes in the brain seriously and headache pain is one way it warns us that something could be wrong. Any disruption to blood flow – too little or too much – is potentially dangerous. A blocked vessel can lead to ischemic stroke, while a ruptured vessel causes hemorrhagic stroke.
The pain phase begins when earlier blood vessel constriction gives way to a rebound dilation. This sudden widening of vessels activates pain receptors — and voilà: the familiar, throbbing pain of migraine – and it can be debilitating.
For many people who suffer from migraines, once the pain hits, food is the last thing on their mind. That’s why many turn to triptan medications instead of fast food, which rebalance serotonin and histamine (another regulator of blood flow) once the migraine is underway.
Postdrome
Postdrome kicks in after the worst of the head pain subsides. This migraine hangover is more than just feeling worn out, though – it’s a distinct phase of a migraine attack. Known medically as the postdrome phase, it follows up to 80% of migraine attacks and can bring symptoms strikingly similar to a traditional hangover: nausea, fatigue, dehydration, body aches and mental fog.
For many people, this lingering phase can be just as disruptive as the migraine itself, making recovery a drawn-out and exhausting process. It can take days or even weeks to transition through all four phases of a migraine.
Still, prevention is better than cure and recognising the early signs of a migraine, then responding in ways that support the brain’s neurobiology, can make a huge difference.
Migraines are complex, personal and frustratingly unpredictable. But knowledge is power. And while no single solution works for everyone, recognising the prodrome phase and supporting your nervous system before pain sets in may be your best shot at heading off an attack.
Whether it’s recognising the craving for chocolate as a biological warning sign, sipping iced water, getting a hug, or yes – even reaching for a Coke and fries – these small interventions have roots in brain science. They reflect our body’s efforts to protect itself. Developing your personal treatments based on how your brain responds can help you stay one step ahead of the pain.
Amanda Ellison 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.
Lichens on stone, those “still explosions” as the great American poet Elizabeth Bishop named them, remain unseen to most, which is remarkable when you consider how commonplace they are. It seems these ecologically and culturally significant whatever-they-ares unfairly fall victim to something akin to plant blindness, a known phenomenon and tendency of people to overlook plants, which many of us – when we first encounter lichens – identify them as, even though that’s not what they are at all.
Part of the problem is that they’re not studied in schools because they’re awkward outsiders and are not perceived to fit in with the objectives of the science curriculum. So I was surprised to see lichens leap into the public imagination following the Just Stop Oil protest at Stonehenge at the summer solstice in June, 2024.
Just Stop Oil protesters spray an orange substance onto Stonehenge stones. Just Stop Oil
Much of the outrage seemed to be in reaction to a quote from one of the protesters about the stones being inert: “It’s time for us to think about what our civilisation will leave behind – what is our legacy? Standing inert for generations works well for stones – not climate policy.” Inert? “Well, what about the rare lichens growing on them?”, was the response from some people, seeing them as separate from the stone, and for others more important even.
English Heritage, the current custodians of Stonehenge, talked about the stones as being “testament to the desire of people – from prehistoric times to today – to connect with nature, the Earth, the Sun and the Moon, as well as crucially, each other”. And this very publication printed a response suggesting we should care more about the effects of climate change on our cultural heritage rather than the inconsequential actions of the Just Stop Oil protesters.
What’s more, a senior druid said he sympathised with the group’s message but was critical of their actions at the sacred site, warning against additional measures to protect the stones, given the summer solstice is the only day in the year that people can “connect with the stones and have a proper relationship”.
Relationship – a word that is often only reserved for connections between people, or people and animals, or animals and other animals, not people and what would otherwise be something seen – in western eyes at least – as abiotic, or non-living, lifeless, inert stones. Or are they?
For a lichenologist specialising in saxicolous (or stone) lichens, what’s particularly interesting to me is what lichens have to say about stone and its inertness, its lifelessness, the sweeping “abiotic” label that western thinking assigns to it.
This is because lichens are transforming our understanding of stone in both ecological and cultural contexts, and this could have major implications not only for the conservation of our cultural heritage, but also the broader field of conservation and how we understand and relate to the natural world.
The Insights section is committed to high-quality longform journalism. Our editors work with academics from many different backgrounds who are tackling a wide range of societal and scientific challenges.
What exactly is a lichen?
To start with, how we see lichens themselves is changing. Trying to agree on a definition of lichens that pushes them into one of science’s neat little cubby holes has proved as difficult as trying to distinguish stone from rock. A symbiotic association between a fungus (a mycobiont) and a photosynthetic partner, usually an alga or a cyanobacterium (a photobiont), is where we’d got to. And to accommodate our Linnaean classification system of living things we’ve treated them as we would a single species, naming them after the fungus.
But the reality is, whereas all those other living things are assigned a single species name to sit at the end of a single branch of Darwin’s tree of life, lichens recline over several, perhaps many branches, giving us the side-eye. They simply don’t fit. This has led some researchers to consider alternative ways of seeing them, including recently defining them as complex ecosystems due to the presence of additional microorganisms, including fungi and bacteria. This sea change has been challenged, however, and the debate about “lichenhood” looks like it will go on as it has done since the mid-1860s.
More than their biology
The notion that lichens are ecosystems, or perhaps become ecosystems, really appeals to my geographer sensibilities. It frees the lichen from species-scale thinking yet doesn’t overshadow the symbiosis that also defines certain relationships involved. What we see and define as a lichen, can in fact become more complex over time.
One of the arguments against the idea that they are ecosystems is that it would require us to include the mineral, soil or plant substratum that the lichen grows on. As scientist William Sanders writes, “For most biologists, a lichen removed from its substratum is still a lichen.”
I spend a lot of time looking at stone-dwelling lichens through a lens and under a microscope, and to me the co-habitational interplay between the stone, the lichen’s hyphae (or thread-like anchors) and its thallus (or main body) are intimate and dynamic, and ultimately a relationship that defines the lichen itself.
Lichens become more than their biology, mainly because they are in situ for such an extensive length of time and even often incorporate their substrate into their main body. Depending on the environment, individuals can colonise rock and stone for decades, centuries, thousands of years even; it’s been proposed that some of the oldest found in northern Alaska are in the range of 10-11,500 years old. And so, they blur the boundary between the biotic (living) and the abiotic (non-living), which occur on a continuum when you escape a species-scale view.
Verrucaria baldensis is an endolithic lichen that embeds in stone. At the surface of the stone, it can leave pits where its fruiting bodies detach. I call it the Moon Lichen because that’s exactly what it looks like up close; the surface of the Moon, the pits becoming craters. But when you look at it from above, or even in cross-section to see how it embeds in the stone, you’d be forgiven for thinking it had vanished, or was actually mainly stone. The relationship between the biology and the geology becomes so close that there seems good reason to consider the two together when observing it.
Verrucaria baldensis, a lichen that submerges in stone and is reminiscent of the Moon’s surface. Nicholas Carter, CC BY
The moment stone is quarried or exposed in some other way, colonisation of its surface begins, by cyanobacteria, algae and so on. This means that when that stone finds its way into a wall, a building, a monument or sculpture somewhere it has already started transforming, metamorphosing into something that acts alive. And so, at the surface, the stone is taking in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and replacing it with oxygen, contributing to our net zero aspirations.
And when a lichen forms on it, in time, that stone becomes part of the lichen, and so contributing to the biodiversity of the site. We don’t see it, or think about it even, but it’s happening. We just need to start seeing stone differently, dynamically, more than the mineral. For a Unesco World Heritage Site like Blenheim Palace, where I’ve been conducting lichen surveys and whose vision is partly to enhance the ecological value of the site, seeing stone in this way is highly beneficial.
Arguably, much of how we define something depends on our relationship with it and how we choose to see it. How we value the living in relation to the non-living plays out in how we define lichens; we need to acknowledge the importance and value of both. In doing so, we are altering our perception of stone and our relationship with it. For there to be effective conservation, we need to value stone and other non-living entities because of the close relationships involved.
The reverse situation also occurs. In the field of heritage conservation, stone, the abiotic, relocated by humans, is often valued over and above the biotic, for example lichens, which can be found colonising and occupying it. We tend to want to preserve rather than conserve stone when it comes to cultural monuments and structures, so huge sums of money are spent on cleaning historic buildings and sculptures, including on the use of biocides, many of which can be dangerous for human health and the environment.
Metaphors for resistance and resilience
It’s when we start to understand the cultural contributions as well as the ecological and conservation benefits of lichens to heritage that we start to lean towards and come up with more effective nature-based solutions in relation to the deterioration of stonework.
After all, lichens occur in our folklore, and have stories to tell, and so bring a flavour of intangible cultural heritage, as well as sometimes protecting stone surfaces from other deteriorative agents. What’s interesting here is that heritage scientists have often talked about stone in human terms, when diagnosing decay for example. So stone forms blisters and has a memory even, storing past traumas related to environmental pollution.
And lichens are also influencing a cultural and artistic re-evaluation of stone, such that contemporary artists and writers are exploring the symbiotic relationships lichens have with stone, viewing them as metaphors for resistance, resilience and interconnection. In this way, lichens highlight stone’s living narrative, bridging biology and geology in relation to the human condition.
There’s an interesting parallel to draw here in terms of life defined by relationships. A developing theme in anthropology focuses on the intra-actions among humans and the mineral world. In her article on this, Nadia Breda’s ethnography discovers a European form of animism that “attributed subjectivity, intentionality, ability and agency to non-humans, revealing an interspecies network of relationships hidden by the western naturalistic worldview”.
In the company of the Piave, an Italian river where water and stones were described by old gatherers as living beings, Breda signposts an anthropology of life where “stones are living in this moving world of humans, stones and water” in a world where “life is not an intrinsic property of objects but a condition of being dependent on the context, and vitality is not a property of isolated individuals, but of the total field or relationships in which they are interacting.”
By observing lichens and listening to voices outside of a western perspective, we see stone as something more than lifeless, a way of reconnecting with the natural world – which we desperately need.
We form relationships and emotional attachments to the biological world with relative ease, but we need to nurture these connections with physical elements too, and not just when they hold cultural or symbolic significance. As such, we need to advocate for soil integrity, for example, as much as for saving endangered species. Ethical debates such as rights and conservation should not just focus on the biological, and what we see as the physical must be spoken about in terms of moral obligations.
Stone is significant to lichens as well as many human cultures, representing more than inert matter, carrying meaning, history and spiritual significance. Focusing too rigidly on a binary distinction obscures the integrated nature of ecosystems and diminishes these broader environmental and human connections, which can offer valuable insights into sustainability and environmental stewardship. This is less about making distinctions, but building more connections.
Nicholas Carter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The pressure of decarbonising industrial sectors is weighing on workers.
The UK’s Labour government seeks a low-carbon and homegrown energy supply by 2030. The scale and pace of this transformation is unprecedented in the country’s power sector, and will involve building twice as much transmission infrastructure (pylons, cables, substations) in the next five years as was built over the last decade.
Much of the workforce will be drawn from the construction sector, which employs 2.3 million people. Construction forms the dominant supply chain to the 17 major infrastructure projects involved in an overhaul of the electricity grid that will connect new wind farms in the North Sea and northern Scotland to homes and businesses across Great Britain.
The workers “on the tools” who will carry out much of this transformation are struggling. The latest analysis from the Office for National Statistics suggests that the suicide risk of construction workers is three times higher than the male national average. Scholars of construction project management have identified a toxic workplace culture in the industry, citing aggressive market competition and demanding performance metrics.
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This is a problem that is largely being ignored. When planners at the National Energy System Operator assessed the UK’s capacity to build a clean power sector by 2030, they considered the absolute number of workers needed, the skills required and how employment is changing in the sector.
Their assessment failed to consider the broader implications for workforce mental health and wellbeing of such a quick and comprehensive upgrade – but it is people who are going through a rapid transition, not just infrastructure.
Construction workers already endure long hours and stress due to tight deadlines. A rapid transition to green power will substantially increase their workload, unless managed carefully.
Our report, published July 2024, looked into wellbeing and suicide in the construction industry. We concluded that the UK government, major infrastructure owners such as National Grid and their supply chain partners who provide specialist design and construction services, must work together to solve this problem.
Major infrastructure owners offer mental health services, such as confidential counselling, legal advice and financial guidance, to help their own employees manage personal or work-related issues. But most workers on the tools are not directly employed by these owners. Most are self-employed, or hired by construction firms, of which 99% are small- and medium-sized enterprises.
More than 96% of construction firms have fewer than 15 employees. Smaller suppliers of specialist trade skills, like electrical and mechanical installation, have fewer employment protections and more compressed schedules, and are even less likely to have the capacity to provide these services.
Some infrastructure owners and big construction companies extend their health and wellbeing services to these smaller suppliers. However, in an industry that is dominated by competitive tendering, which favours suppliers that keep costs low, it is no surprise that uptake has been low.
Owners of infrastructure assets like electricity pylons and substations can drive workplace improvements by adopting procurement models that prioritise suppliers that are offering measures to improve worker wellbeing.
Research from one of us (Jing Xu) and fellow project management expert Yanga Wu, has shown that the top-down prescriptive approach traditionally applied to health and safety in construction does not work for wellbeing. This requires a bottom-up approach, that makes it easy for workers to tell managers what they are struggling with and what they think would help.
The construction sector also faces a shortage of workers and skills required for the green transition. The industry training board forecasts that the industry must attract the equivalent of 50,300 extra workers a year to meet expected levels of work over the next five years.
In the power sector, however, there is the additional complication of an ageing workforce, as well as differences in employment conditions between permanent and contract staff. Key expertise is at risk of being lost with retirements. Older workers often face additional pressure, not only to meet performance targets but also to compensate for gaps in expertise, and all within a fast-paced environment.
To improve mental health and wellbeing among a diverse workforce requires engaging with workers directly and ensuring their voices are heard. This involves more than upgrading technical skills. Research to better understand how organisations can care for their workforce in the context of increasing pressures due to achieving net zero is also vital.
Further research and collaboration with infrastructure owners and major construction contractors could help manage the risks and provide valuable insights for other sectors that will need to follow suit, such as heating, transport and agriculture.
It is imperative to consider what a transition means: the technical transition of replacing outmoded technology, as well as the social transition, which prioritises not only skills but workplace mental health. Without a focus on both policy and people, clean power will not be delivered.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Oestrogen and progesterone are the primary sex hormones in females, playing powerful roles throughout life – from puberty and periods to pregnancy and eventually menopause.
During adolescence, these hormones surge, kick-starting the menstrual cycle. In adulthood, they fluctuate month to month, driving ovulation and menstruation. But between the ages of 45 and 55, their levels start to decline.
This signals the beginning of perimenopause – the transitional phase leading to menopause, which is officially marked when a woman has gone 12 consecutive months without a period. After that, hormone levels settle at a lower, steady baseline, ushering in the postmenopausal stage.
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Oestrogen and progesterone don’t just affect the reproductive system, they also act directly on the brain. Both hormones can cross the blood-brain barrier and influence neural function. Oestrogen tends to excite brain activity, enhancing alertness and mood, while progesterone is more calming and balancing.
When these hormone levels begin to fluctuate during perimenopause, they can disrupt many of the systems they regulate, especially in the brain. Common symptoms like hot flushes, night sweats, memory problems, mood swings, poor sleep and even depression are not just nuisances. They’re signs that the central nervous system is being affected.
These neurological symptoms can have a domino effect on physical and mental health. In fact, research shows thatwomen are more likely than men to experience frailty and cognitive decline in later life – a trend that may be linked to the hormonal shifts around menopause.
That’s why it’s so important to approach menopause as a whole-body, whole-brain experience and not just a reproductive event.
Experiences of menopause
Along with colleagues from Nottingham Trent and Northumbria universities, I conducted research that explored how women describe their personal experiences of menopause. The findings were eye opening.
When asked to sum up menopause in one word, participants offered responses like:
“Anxiety.” “Horrific.” “Bizarre.” “Depression.” Many expressed frustration at the lack of clear, trustworthy information and a feeling of isolation. One woman said: “I don’t know what my body is capable of doing from one minute to the next … the pain, it’s just horrible.”
Another described overwhelming fatigue: “I haven’t got the energy I had when I was young.” While others reported profound mental health struggles: “I had this thing where I hated myself”, “I would have a rage within me, which wasn’t me normally”, “I had depressive episodes and was very poorly.” One participant reported that she was “feeling overwhelmed and panicked about doing anything, even leaving the house”.
These stories reveal the reality behind the statistics – menopause can be deeply destabilising, and for some women, life altering.
The more symptoms women experience, the more their quality of life can be affected. But there is hope. Research shows that higher levels of physical activity are linked to fewer and less severe menopausal symptoms.
That’s why our research team has taken our findings beyond the lab. Through public events and workshops, we’re helping women learn about how nutrition, brain health, and exercise can support them through the menopausal transition. And the impact goes beyond biology: gaining knowledge has been shown to boost self-confidence and help women feel more in control and less alone.
There’s still much to learn about the full impact of menopause on the brain and body, but one thing is clear: supporting women through this major life stage is not optional – it’s essential.
By continuing to share knowledge, break taboos and support one another, we can change the story of menopause from one of confusion and isolation to one of empowerment, understanding and resilience.
Jessica Piasecki receives funding from The Royal Society and MyAge. She is affiliated with Power Group — National Institute of Women’s Health and Performance and Relative Energy .Deficiency-Sport (RED-S) interest group
The line between entertainment and advertising is increasingly blurred thanks to social media. People no longer just consume content, they experience it – laughing, sharing and commenting. And brands have caught on.
The days when people sat through a 30-second TV ad because they had no choice are long gone. Now they can quickly swipe past anything that feels too much like selling.
Instead of posting directly to consumers, brands increasingly engage with each other. They crack jokes, offer praise and even poke fun at competitors. Brands are becoming more human in their interactions – especially with each other.
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Brand “banter” doesn’t feel like an ad (even though it has a commercial purpose). It can feel unscripted, human and weirdly fun, cutting through in a way traditional advertising can’t.
Our research shows that consumers are more likely to notice and engage with these interactions. The content feels less like marketing and more like shared digital culture. It can feel unexpected and entertaining, and invites audiences into a “moment”.
Humour, especially online, is a powerful emotional hook. It invites people to share the content – great news if you have a product to sell. In a noisy digital world where brands compete for eyeballs, humour helps to get people’s attention.
But it also fosters emotional connection, and can make brands feel human-like to consumers. When we see brands behaving playfully or being especially complimentary towards each other, our research shows they are more like to engage and remember them. It turns passive scrolling into active participation.
A good example is the Duolingo Death meme. The brand’s chaotic cartoon owl faked its death on Instagram and the result was viral engagement.
The post was liked by more than 2.1 million people. Other brands such as Walmart, FedEx, Kellogg’s and Five Guys joined in. Even pop star Dua Lipa paid tribute on X. What felt like spontaneous chaos was actually a smart, strategic move that tapped into meme culture, humour and community trends.
The same can be said for the caterpillar cake battle between supermarket Aldi and Marks & Spencer. This public brand-to-brand feud over their respective cakes exploded into a public spectacle and legal action from M&S. Despite being locked in a trademark row, Aldi and M&S ribbed each other with witty social media posts.
But rather than harming either brand, the playful roasting humanised them, drawing attention and affection from consumers.
In on the joke
Our research also found that when brands talk to each other, (rather than just talking at consumers), it can be an effective marketing device. These exchanges are more engaging than traditional brand-to-consumer posts because they feel unexpected and unscripted.
We found that people don’t just enjoy the interactions. They walk away with more positive feelings towards the brand and are more likely to buy from them. These interactions break the “fourth wall” of advertising and let consumers feel like they’ve been let in on a joke.
Humour often works by violating expectations. But whether consumers find something funny or awkward depends on how we interpret that violation. And there’s a catch: it needs to feel benign rather than malign.
American fast food chain Wendy’s is renowned for its sharp-witted social media presence, often engaging in playful jabs at competitors like McDonald’s. But one post, in response to McDonald’s promise to use fresh beef in all of its quarter pounders, apparently went too far.
Wendy’s posted: “So you’ll still use frozen beef in MOST of your burgers in ALL of your restaurants? Asking for a friend.” While many customers found the remark humorous, others viewed it as mean-spirited and unprofessional.
So banter – when it verges on being aggressive – can risk alienating consumers who prefer respectful brand interactions.
Of course, the line between clever and cringe-worthy is thin. When brands try too hard to be funny or provocative, they risk being perceived as inauthentic, self-serving or out-of-touch. Worse, they can alienate audiences or trivialise serious issues. The performative nature of online branding means that missteps are both public and memorable.
And brands must be self-aware. It’s crucial that they understand their brand purpose and identity, their “cool” factor, and who their real customers are.
As brands seek their place in a saturated landscape, characterised by constant content overload and fleeting consumer attention, these moments of humour and light-hearted engagement can serve as relief valves. But they’re also strategic tools. Brands are using playfulness to build emotional connection, cultural relevance and visibility in an overcrowded digital space.
So the next time a brand makes you laugh, pause and consider: Was it just a joke, or was it also a very clever move?
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.
A 115-year-old Surrey woman named Ethel Caterham has officially been handed the title of the oldest living human alive.
Many people reading this news may wonder what Caterham’s secret is.
While it isn’t usually a good idea to take health and longevity advice from supercentenarians (as they’re often the exception rather than the rule), there are some lifestyle pointers that we can take from research on groups of long-lived people that might help us increase our chances of living a longer life.
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1. Physical activity
Physical activity is good for you – who knew? Research shows that people who are more physically active each day tend to live longer, healthier lives. One study found that going from no physical activity to about 75 minutes per week of brisk walking increased life expectancy by about two years.
But perhaps less well known is just how bad inactivity is for your health and longevity. It’s a tad difficult to explain, but the positive effects of exercise are actually different from the negative effects of inactivity. That means that you can have a positive influence on your health by being both more active and avoiding being inactive.
Yet as good as structured exercise is for you, it can’t by itself offset the harms of inactivity and sitting all day. Research even shows that being sedentary is associated with higher risk of premature death from any cause.
If you want to live longer, you should try to avoid sitting for long periods of time if possible. Practical tips for this include standing up every 30 minutes, going to see someone in the office instead of calling or emailing them and standing on public transport during commuting. This, plus the aim to do about 30 minutes moderate exercise most days will help maximise your odds of a long, healthy life.
2. Eat your veggies
The advice many kids dread: eat your vegetables if you want to live a long time.
A recent study that followed around 100,000 people over a 30 year period found that people who made it to 70 years of age in good health (meaning they had no chronic diseases) typically ate more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and legumes, and fewer trans-fats, red or processed meats, fried foods and sugary foods. Importantly, this study doesn’t say that you must be a vegan, or never eat red meats – it only identifies trends within diets associated with healthy ageing.
When and how much you eat may also play a role when it comes to ageing. Research on caloric restriction and intermittent fasting in animals has shown both can increase lifespan. Our preliminary work in humans has also shown that following a fasting diet for three weeks can cause similar, positive metabolic shifts that match what we’ve seen in animals that will live longer. However, larger studies over longer time-frames are needed to establish effects on healthspan and lifespan in humans.
In a study of about 500,000 British people, irregular sleep patterns were associated with a 50% higher risk of early death compared to those with regular sleep patterns. Shift workers showed higher risk for strokes, and nurses who worked rotating shifts for decades were less healthy and had earlier deaths at retirement compared to nurses who didn’t work shifts.
While this data suggests that good quality, regular sleep is important for good health, how much sleep you need and when you should go to bed appears to be highly individualistic. This makes giving population-wide recommendations difficult – which is why the NHS recommends adults get between 7-9 hours sleep.
Possibly linked is the effect of social connections. Those that live more socially active lives also tend to live longer. In fact, people over 65 who are socially active daily are three times more likely to live for five more years compared to those that almost never engage in social activities.
It’s a common finding that strong social networks appear to enhance longevity. This may be due to the way social connections help us alleviate stressors in our lives.
The role of genetics
While there are many lifestyle habits we can change, one thing we can’t control when it comes to our lifespans is genetics. Some research suggests that naturally-occurring mutations in genes associated with longevity are more common in long-lived people.
Although it’s hard to tease out the role of genetics versus lifestyle when it comes to lifespan, current predictions suggest that longevity is between 20-40% related to genetics.
But good genetics aren’t everything. Although Ethel Caterham has made it to the remarkable age of 115 – and one of her sisters lived to be 104 – Caterham’s two daughters pre-deceased her at 71 and 83 years of age.
And even if you do win the genetic jackpot and follow a good lifestyle, you would still be very lucky to make it to Caterham’s grand old age of 115. Cells mutate, clots form, biological luck runs out. Still, if you want to maximise your odds of living longer and staying as healthy as possible, aim to be more physically active each day, eat a good diet, get a good night’s sleep and keep stress levels low.
Bradley Elliott receives funding from the Physiological Society, the British Society for Research on Ageing, the Altitude Centre, and private philanthropic individuals, and has consulted for industry and government on longevity research. He is on the Board of Trustees of the British Society for Research on Ageing.
When we think about the future of food, it’s unlikely that crickets, meal worms or grasshoppers come to mind. But believe it or not, insects might just be one of the most promising answers to two big global problems: feeding a growing (and ageing) population and fighting climate change.
As the world’s population heads towards 10 billion by 2050, we’re going to need a lot more food – and especially more protein.
In Ireland, where our research was based, this matters even more because our population is ageing. Older adults need more protein to stay healthy and independent as they age, but often they don’t eat enough of it.
At the same time, we also have to take care of the planet. Producing traditional protein sources like beef, pork and chicken uses up a lot of land, water and energy – and creates a lot of greenhouse gases.
So, where do insects fit in?
Insects are packed with high-quality protein. They also contain good fats, vitamins and minerals like iron and zinc. Some species are just as nutritious, if not more so, than chicken or beef.
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Even better, they’re much more sustainable. Insects need very little space, water, or food to grow, and they produce far fewer greenhouse gas emissions. For example, crickets need 12 times less feed than cattle to produce the same amount of protein.
This makes them a great option for countries like Ireland which wants to cut down on its environmental impact while still providing healthy food for everyone, including older adults who need extra protein to prevent muscle loss and frailty.
Despite all the good things about insect protein, most people in Ireland aren’t exactly rushing out to eat a cricket sandwich. I led a research project, conducted by Sarah Mae Crosse, Aoife Finlay and Sarah Dooley, which looked at what Irish adults think about eating insects. We found that while some people are open to the idea, many still say “no thanks”.
The main reasons? Disgust, fear of the unknown and not knowing how to cook or prepare them. People also worry about taste and texture. One participant said: “It’s just weird – it makes my stomach turn,” while another admitted they’d be okay with it “as long as I don’t see any legs sticking out”.
Increasing appeal
The way insects are served also makes a big difference. People are much more willing to try insect protein when it’s ground up into a powder and added to foods they already like, like protein bars, pasta, bread, or burgers. In this form, it’s just another ingredient and it doesn’t look like a bug anymore.
Another big factor is education. When people learn about how insect protein can help the environment and support healthy ageing, they’re more likely to give it a go. In our student-led focus groups, some participants changed their minds after hearing about the benefits. “I didn’t realise it was so high in protein or that it’s good for the planet,” one said. “I’d try it now, especially if it tasted okay.”
Getting more people on board with insect protein isn’t just about making it tasty – it’s also about trust. Clear rules and food safety standards from the government can help people feel more confident about trying something new. Plus, supermarkets and food producers need to make these products easy to find and affordable.
Schools, colleges and community groups can play a big role too. Cooking demos, taste tests and education campaigns can make insect protein seem less weird and more like a smart, forward thinking choice. As more people try these foods and share their experiences, the idea of eating insects could go from gross to normal.
It might take time, but insects could become an important part of the Irish diet. They’re good for our health, especially as we get older, and they’re good for the planet too. The key is helping people understand the benefits, get over the “ick” factor and find ways to enjoy them in everyday meals.
With the right mix of science, education and smart marketing, we might all be munching on insect powered protein foods before long.
Catherine Norton receives funding from government funding, research council grants and industry.
With thanks to Sarah Mae Crosse, Aoife Finlay and Sarah Dooley, undergraduate students at the University of Limerick, who conducted this research.
Source: United States Senator for Massachusetts Ed Markey
Washington (May 15, 2025) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) today joined Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and 28 of their Senate colleagues in introducing a resolution calling on the Trump Administration to use all diplomatic tools at its disposal to bring an end to the blockade of food and lifesaving humanitarian aid to address the needs of civilians in Gaza. In their resolution, the Senators express grave concern about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including the imminent starvation of tens of thousands of children.
On March 2, 2025, the Israeli Government began blocking all food and emergency aid—including food, medicine, infant formula, fuel, and other lifesaving humanitarian supplies—from reaching Palestinian civilians in Gaza. In the same month, all 25 World Food Program (WFP)-supported bakeries in Gaza closed, wheat flour and cooking fuel ran out, and food parcels distributed to families—with two weeks of food rations—were depleted. According to the United Nations, about 10,000 children have been identified as suffering from acute malnutrition since January 2025.
Joining the resolution are Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Angus King (I-Maine), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
The Senators’ resolution is supported by Anera, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, J Street, and Oxfam America.
“In Gaza today, children are starving, hospitals are collapsing, and families are in a state of desperation. This resolution is a call to conscience, a moment of moral reckoning. Will the world be complicit in Gaza’s collapse, or part of its recovery? We call on the U.S. government in the strongest terms to act swiftly, using all the leverage at its disposal, to urgently permit humanitarian organizations to deliver aid into Gaza. This resolution is a critical step in the right direction,” said Sean Carroll, President and CEO, Anera.
“The crisis in Gaza has reached a breaking point, with over two months of a total blockade cutting off food, water, fuel, and medical supplies. More than two million Palestinians are trapped, starving, and facing a potential famine that could claim thousands of lives. It’s encouraging to see Senator Welch and his colleagues introduce a resolution highlighting this urgent humanitarian suffering. Congress and the Trump Administration must use every diplomatic tool available to demand the immediate, full reopening of Gaza’s borders to deliver life-saving aid,” said Hassan El-Tayyab, Legislative Director for Middle East Policy, Friends Committee on National Legislation.
“This resolution comes at a moment of moral reckoning, as conditions in Gaza have become even more unbearable,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, President, J Street. “Children are surviving on one meal every few days. To deliberately starve civilians is immoral. To use water, fuel, food as tools of war is unconscionable. Humanitarian aid must immediately be allowed to enter Gaza unconditionally.”
“The more than two-month-long siege, with no aid being allowed to enter, has now pushed nearly the entire population in Gaza to the brink of starvation. Every day, parents wake up and spend their days searching for something to feed their children – often coming back with nothing. Humanitarian organizations know how to reach the people who most urgently need food, water, medical care, and other lifesaving essentials when we have supplies and can do our work safely, but right now we can’t. We are in a race against time, and we need action from U.S. leaders to allow us to do our jobs, keep pushing for a permanent, immediate ceasefire, humanitarian access and an end to the siege, and a return of all hostages and unlawfully detained prisoners,” said Abby Maxman, President and CEO, Oxfam America.
Read and download the full text of the resolution.
In 1954, the Finnish artist Tove Jansson was commissioned by the Evening News in London to draw comic strips about the Moomintrolls. The strip was syndicated by hundreds of newspapers, introducing the Moomins to an international audience and marking a dramatic turning point in her career.
Between 1954 and 1959, Tove Jansson drew 21 comics, some in collaboration with her brother Lars Jansson, who continued to draw the comic strip until 1975.
The success of the Moomin in the Evening News brought Tove Jansson economic security and helped her with the mortgage of her studio in Helsinki. However, over time, the assignment also became a burden on her creative work – a time-consuming and demanding obligation.
Perhaps because of this personal conflict, the comics often explore themes such as the struggle of artistic creation, the role of the artist and the value of art. Jansson had previously created humorous and satirical commentaries on the art world in various artists’ magazines in Finland, but here she places the Moomin at the heart of the creative process.
Unlike the novels and picture books, the Moomin comic strips were created for adults and can be described as satire. Jansson uses the compact format to comment on society, including the art world. The growing conflict in her own life, between the Moomintrolls and her artwork, is brought into focus in the comic strips.
This is part of a series of articles celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Moomins. Want to celebrate their birthday with us? Join The Conversation and a group of experts on May 23 in Bradford for a screening of Moomins on the Riviera and a discussion of the refugee experience in Tove Jansson’s work. Click here for more information and tickets.
The theme of the purpose of art and artistic creation is playfully introduced in one of the first comic strips, Moomin and the Brigands. Here Moomin and his friend Sniff embark on a quest for fortune. They engage in several schemes, including capturing rare creatures and selling them to the zoo, marketing magic rejuvenation potions and creating modern art.
While visiting a Hemulen (a really uptight counterpart to the Moomintrolls who love rules), Moomin and Sniff accidentally break several precious items in her home. Among the broken objects is a large statue of Rebecca at the Well, which falls from its pedestal and shatters. Rebecca at the Well is a classic biblical motif, which often portrays a model of feminine virtue, symbolising divine guidance and exemplifying ideals of hospitality and moral character.
The friends awkwardly attempt to reassemble the statue by gluing it together. The result is a strangely angular and expressive piece of art, referencing fragmented cubist portraits. Cubism, which emerged around 1907 to 1908, aimed to represent reality in a radically new way by bringing together subjects and figures, resulting in objects that appear fragmented and abstracted.
Sniff immediately sees the potential of the new Rebecca. “She’s more modern now,” he exclaims joyfully. The friends carry the statue to an enthusiastic art dealer who sells it for £500 in his gallery.
The episode with the deconstructed Rebecca is, of course, a funny caricature of the trend-sensitive art market. But the shattered statue with its intricate shapes was also a commentary on the debates about the “incomprehensible” and “obscure” nature of modernist art in Nordic countries during the time.
The destruction of the Rebecca can also be seen as an act of iconoclasm – the breaking of icons or monuments – or rather, a parody of it. While usually associated with vandalism, here, the iconoclastic act leads to the creation of something new. This expresses a desire for renewal and a liberation from restrictive conventions. It is, however, worth noting that Rebecca retains her symbol of virtue – the water jug – even after this pivotal encounter.
Drawing on the work of French philosopher and anthropologist Bruno Latour, iconoclasm can be understood as both destructive and constructive – an ambiguity that also applies to Jansson’s interpretation of the motif.
Later in the story, the money offered by the modernist Rebecca lures Moomin to the field of the arts. For a brief moment, he assumes the role of a painter and wholeheartedly embodies the romanticised ideal of the poor, misunderstood artist.
Moomin dons a Rembrandtian black velvet beret, but despite this, appears lost and bewildered in his new role, muttering: “I only want to live in peace and plant potatoes and dream!”
In a scene of self-parodying metafiction, he is blinded by his oversized beret and ends up tumbling down a cliff, abruptly ending his artistic career.
Tove Jansson’s Moomin comic strips for the Evening News use satire to explore artistic creation, the role of the artist, and the art world.
Through Moomintroll’s and Sniff’s pursuit of fame and fortune via the accidental modernist deconstruction of Rebecca, Jansson satirises romantic notions of the artist, the commercialisation of art and the professions surrounding artistic production. These themes are deeply connected to Jansson’s own experiences as an artist and author, constantly balancing between various professional and artistic demands, between children’s books, public obligations and painting.
Elina Druker is employed as a professor and researcher at Stockholm University, Sweden.
Keir Starmer became the first British prime minister to visit Albania since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1921. During the visit, he announced that the UK plans to set up “return hubs” for asylum seekers whose claims are rejected by the UK.
Just days after announcing his plans to reduce legal migration to the UK, this move on irregular migration is more evidence of the prime minister’s concern about losing voters to anti-immigration Reform UK.
Before meeting with Albanian prime minister Edi Rama to sign a strategic partnership agreement between the two countries, Starmer said that the UK has begun formal talks with several countries to set up return migration hubs to send asylum seekers abroad. The specifics are yet to be announced, but it has been reported that these would probably be in the western Balkans.
The plan has drawn comparison to the Conservative government’s Rwanda scheme, but is different in a number of ways.
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Under the Rwanda scheme, people who arrived in the UK illegally would have been sent straight to Rwanda where their asylum claims would be processed. If accepted, they’d be offered asylum in Rwanda, not the UK. Starmer cancelled the plan in one of his first moves as prime minister.
With Labour’s plan, people would only be sent to another country if their asylum claim is rejected and they’ve exhausted all legal options to stay in the UK. The rationale is that they would not be able to disappear into the informal economy and illegal actives in the UK after an asylum claim was not successful.
The goal of both plans is to act as a deterrent to irregular migration, and to cut the high cost of hosting undocumented migrants and asylum seekers in the UK, which has become a major political issue.
The return hubs plan also has the approval of the UN refugee agency, which condemned the legality of and the practically of the Rwanda scheme.
However, it has already hit a roadblock. Albania was one of the UK’s preferred options for a return migration hub. But during a joint press conference with Starmer, Rama said thatAlbania will not take part in such a scheme.
This is probably because a similar set-up with Italy has so far been unworkable, legally and politically .
Under the Italy-Albania migration agreement signed in November 2023, Albania is meant to play host to two Italian processing centres, where they planned to send asylum seekers intercepted at sea. But after facing numerous legal challenges, Italy is instead using them as repatriation facilities to hold those whose claims have already been rejected while they await deportation.
Partnership with Albania
The UK has maintained a successful returns arrangement with Albania, set up by the last government.
In 2022, Albanians accounted for over one-third (around 12,500) of all small boat entries, more than any other country. Arrivals from Albania have dropped by 95% in the last three years. And the number of Albanians returned to the country has more than doubled in the last two years, with 5,294 Albanians returning in 2024.
The two countries set up a joint task force to tackle organised crime networks that were facilitating the illegal entry of Albanian nationals to the UK. Starmer began his visit at the Port of Durres, where British and Albanian law enforcement officials are stationed as part of the Joint Migration Task Force with Albania.
Starmer indicated that the task force will be expanded to include the other western Balkan countries. This is because the western Balkan route is one of the main migratory paths into Europe. It was estimated that in 2023, 100,000 people used this route to come to the UK.
The visit, which comes days after Albania’s parliamentary election, shines a light on some of the political tensions between the UK and Albania.
The Albanian diaspora community in the UK in recent years has expressed feeling stigmatised and targeted due to inflammatory rhetoric of the last government.
Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, called Albanians “criminals” while claiming migrants were “invading” the UK. Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister, posted videos telling police to find Albanians and “lock them up” and “deport” them.
In 2024, Albanians made up the highest percentage (13%) of foreign nationals in UK prisons, with over 1,272 people in custody. Along with Albanians, Polish (9%), Romanian (7%), Irish (6%) and Jamaican (4%) nationals account for around 12% of the overall prison population.
Rama, who just won the election, was fully aware of voters’ sentiment towards the UK. There have also been protests in the country against the current migration arrangement with Italy. Any new agreement, particularly with the UK, could be politically damaging for the Albanian government.
This visit could be a turning point for mending relations. Starmer declared that his government is fully committed to strengthening ties with Albania, and signed a strategic partnership agreement, with a focus defence and security.
Starmer and Rama both said that the partnership will expand at the UK-Western Balkan Summit that Starmer will host in London in autumn, and it will include increasing trade, economics investment, education and managing migration.
Andi Hoxhaj does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Jonathan Jackson – Illinois (1st District)
This week, Congressman Jonathan L. Jackson honored the Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexis M. Herman.
“My dear friends, we have gathered in this sacred hour not to weep without hope, but to give thanks—profound thanks—for a life that rose like a song from the rough soil of history. A life shaped by struggle, sustained by faith, and sanctified by service. We are here to remember, with grateful hearts, the Honorable Secretary Alexis Herman.
She was a builder of bridges. She laid down tracks not of steel, but of freedom. She walked by her dear friend and my father, Reverend Jesse Jackson, as he lifted high a dream that many thought impossible—that an African American could aspire to be the president of this land. Children of slaves and those of slaveholders might move together toward a more perfect union. Alexis Herman helped hammer the nails and tie the rails.
She understood something deep and necessary: that we could not simply resist the present—we had to build a future together. She walked in boardrooms and marched in communities. She spoke the language of labor and of liberation. She understood that work is sacred, that dignity is not reserved for the wealthy, and that policy must also have a conscience.
So let us not say goodbye, but say fair you well. Fair you well, Secretary Herman. You ran your race. You kept the faith. You believed in us before we believed in ourselves.”
Source: United States Senator for Arkansas Tom Cotton
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContact: Caroline Tabler or Patrick McCann (202) 224-2353May 16, 2025
Cotton, Colleagues Introduce Legislation to Bring Effective Regulation to Horse Racing
Washington, D.C. — Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) today introduced the Racehorse Health and Safety Act (RHSA), which protects the health and welfare of racing horses and improves the integrity and safety of horse racing. Congressman Clay Higgins (Louisiana-03) has introduced companion legislation in the House.
“The RHSA will provide horse owners and racetracks flexibility, while also bringing safe and effective regulation to the horseracing industry,” said Senator Cotton.
“Government overreach is impacting industries across our nation with rules in places where they have no business being,” said Congressman Higgins. “The well-intentioned disaster of HISA proved that enforcing uniformed rules in horse racing plagues the industry with confusion and disruption. This legislation is rooted in science and draws from industry experts. It is of horsemen, by horsemen, and for horsemen. We must push back against federal oppression and protect the horse racing industry and the beautiful animals we love.”
Full text of the legislation may be found here.
The Racehorse Health and Safety Act would:
Repeal the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA);
Grant states the right to enter into the interstate compact, which is a contract between multiple states to develop nationwide rules governing scientific control and racetrack safety for horse racing;
Establish the Racehorse Health and Safety Organization (RHSO), which will regulate the horse racing industry;
Establish three Scientific Medication Control Committees (SMCCs) to draft recommended rules for each breed.
Headline: ICYMI: Governor Stein Announces More Than 700 New Jobs Coming to North Carolina
ICYMI: Governor Stein Announces More Than 700 New Jobs Coming to North Carolina lsaito
Raleigh, NC
This week Governor Josh Stein and the North Carolina Department of Commerce announced two new economic development projects, bringing more than 700 jobs to North Carolina. Genentech and Prolec GE build on North Carolina’s strong reputation in the life sciences and advanced manufacturing industries. Governor Stein and Secretary Lee Lilley also attended the Select USA Investment Summit in Maryland to highlight North Carolina’s attractive business environment and encourage companies to expand their operations in the state.
“I am excited to see that more than 700 new jobs are coming to North Carolina,” said Governor Josh Stein. “Companies recognize that our strong economy and talented workforce are an asset to their operations, and that is why they are eager to invest here.”
“Genentech and Prolec GE’s investments in North Carolina demonstrate our state’s high-powered business climate,” said Commerce Secretary Lee Lilley. “Our state’s investments in our workforce and infrastructure are paying off, and companies see the value in calling North Carolina home.”
Governor Stein announced this week that Genentech, one of the world’s premier biotechnology companies, will invest $700 million to build a new manufacturing plant in Holly Springs, creating 420 jobs. The average salary for new positions will be $119,833 as compared to the average wage in Wake County of $76,643, although wages vary depending on the position. This project is expected to grow North Carolina’s economy by more than $3 billion. For every dollar the state invests it is projected to receive $3.30 in state revenue.
The Governor also announced that Prolec-GE Waukesha, Inc., one of the nation’s largest manufacturers of power transformers, will add 330 new jobs as it invests $140 million to build a second manufacturing facility in Goldsboro. This project will build a new state-of-the-art manufacturing plant at the company’s existing site to support a growing demand for power grid capacity across the country. Although wages vary by position, the average salary for new positions will be $71,912. This project is expected to grow North Carolina’s economy by more than $1.05 billion. For every dollar the state invests it is projected to receive $2.06 in state revenue.
Governor Stein is committed to creating a North Carolina that is safer and stronger with opportunity for everyone. North Carolina was recently ranked in the top 10 states for economy and growth by U.S. News and World Report, with the 7th best economy and the 5th best growth in the nation. The Governor’s budget proposal seeks to continue that progress by investing $256 million in workforce development and including free community college for students pursuing credentials in high-demand fields. In 2025, the State of North Carolina has announced more than 2,600 new jobs facilitated by grants and incentives.
Source: Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Pavel Doroshenko, Marina Malyutina, Victoria Motorenko, Victoria Boginskaya and Marina Grigorenko
SPbGASU became a stop on the route of the international patriotic expedition “Unconquered”. The expedition’s partner is the All-Russian student project “Your Move”, which is part of the presidential platform “Russia – the Land of Opportunities” and is implemented by the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs (Rosmolodezh) with the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.
Expedition of friendship and creation
As explained by Pavel Doroshenko, a representative of the directorate of the all-Russian student project “Your Move”, the patriotic expedition “Unconquered” was launched in Russia as part of the Year of the Defender of the Fatherland in honor of the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. The selection of participants took place through the platform of the project “Your Move”. More than 2.5 thousand applications were received, each was studied in detail, after which 60 participants were admitted to the expedition during a personal interview.
“During the two-week expedition, students will travel more than five thousand kilometers, visit 14 cities in Russia and Belarus. Travel, communication, and the educational program are filled with meetings with interesting speakers and various events. The time spent together will allow students to become friends, learn about opportunities for self-development, outline plans for joint work and the creation of public projects,” Pavel Doroshenko specified.
Vice-Rector for Youth Policy at SPbGASU Marina Malyutina reported that our university is pleased to join the project “Your Move” and the patriotic expedition “Unconquered”, as it considers them important in the comprehensive education of young people, their advancement in professional and social activities, and the formation of a civic position.
“It is significant that the program began at our university, and this is not surprising, because the results of our graduates’ work are visible throughout Russia: starting from the 19th century, our engineers, architects, and builders created the cities where we live, which educate us, which we preserve and protect, and which we are proud of. It is important to emphasize that our university combines academic tradition with modern trends in Russian science, so it can be said about us that we preserve our traditions, our history, and create the future,” Marina Malyutina noted.
Irina Peretokin, a second-year student at the construction faculty and a representative of the SPbGASU volunteer club, said that volunteers participate in various events at both the university and federal levels and not only complete assigned tasks, but also help organize events.
“The Unconquered Project is a socially significant project aimed at developing patriotism. We consider it our duty to promote such events and participate in them, because they are necessary to strengthen the correct civic position and realize the potential of modern youth,” Irina explained.
Great opportunities for young people
Opening the plenary session, Marina Malyutina emphasized that the activities of our university are aimed at forming a full-fledged student personality, which has both professional and project competencies, as well as soft skills.
“The ecosystem of youth policy of SPbGASU includes various initiatives at all levels: the world, the country, the university, the faculty, the student environment. The Center for Student Entrepreneurship and Career of our university closely cooperates with the industry, organizes joint events and competitions, develops entrepreneurial competencies and creates conditions for further employment of students and graduates. Through the platform “Russia – the Country of Opportunities”, students successfully participate in the international engineering championship CASE-IN. We support the project “Startup as a Diploma” and the TIM movement. The youth policy of SPbGASU takes into account the needs of the region: students participate in the improvement of small towns, designing spaces and objects for them. Thus, we create conditions in which students can try themselves in various directions and choose their own,” the vice-rector noted.
At the plenary session
Director of the St. Petersburg State Budgetary Institution “Youth Spaces “PROSTO”” Victoria Motorenko agreed that today students have huge opportunities, and now is the best time to try to find the right direction for themselves.
“All industries offer enormous opportunities for self-realization of a specialist. There are many options for development in public life. “PROSTO” is the flagship project in the field of work with youth of the Government of St. Petersburg. We work in two directions. The infrastructure one involves a network of free modern and fully equipped youth spaces. Now there are seven of them, this year we plan to open 15 more and cover all districts of St. Petersburg. The spaces have areas from one hundred to one thousand square meters. Each has comfortable workplaces, high-speed Internet, all the necessary office equipment, so, for example, you can print, laminate, order a meeting room for free. In the intellectual direction, we focus on the development of youth entrepreneurship, competencies in the field of information technology, creative industries, fine arts, design. We are constantly expanding cooperation. Today we have already discussed common ground with SPbGASU,” said Victoria Motorenko.
Find something you enjoy doing
The founder of the YARUS design center, member of the Union of Architects of Russia Victoria Boginskaya called student time ideal for finding an occupation to your liking and, using her own example, told how, having professional competencies and a desire to develop, you can turn an idea into your own company.
“Today, the state provides great opportunities not only for students, but also for young people. In 2018, I completed my Master’s degree at the University of Yaroslavl and realized that I didn’t want to just draw projects, but also build, including something useful for the city. I asked myself: what do I need to do for this? While searching for an answer, I saw grant competitions. I applied and won 100 thousand rubles to implement my idea. Cool! Thanks to the grants, I got the opportunity to implement my idea and subsequently expand the level and geography of implementation. With the grant, I also published a book on the methodology for designing improvements in the Arctic zone and, as I found out today, I consulted students of St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering on this topic. This is how grants can introduce you to successful professional activity,” noted Victoria Boginskaya.
Deputy Director of the Competence Center for Urban Environment Development and Smart City, graduate of SPbGASU Marina Grigorenko reminded that many students are worried about their professional future, their income, and industrial practices and internships help them avoid uncertainty, after which employment is possible. The organization builds such cooperation with students and graduates.
“Our team is young, the architects are young professionals. We are engaged in a variety of activities, one of the important aspects of which is working with young people. There are 36 small towns in the Leningrad Region; unfortunately, there is a large outflow of young people to St. Petersburg. Among the reasons for this is the lack of leisure and places for recreation. Taking into account the comments, we not only improve parks, embankments, public spaces, but also support educational activities, within the framework of which we organize competitions and implement the best submitted projects. We have already held three architectural competitions, 350 people took part in them, seven were invited to the bureau as part of the expert council, 18 projects have been implemented. There are also competitions, the winners of which receive grants,” said Marina Grigorenko.
Master classes from a teacher, architect and welding queen
Lecture by Marina Khramova
The expedition participants’ further stay at SPbGASU was equally interesting. Senior lecturer of the Department of Architectural Environment Design Marina Khramova gave a lecture on the architecture of St. Petersburg.
The master classes were conducted by Victoria Boginskaya and the artist, sculptor, and curator of the creation of art objects for public spaces, Alexandra Weld Queen.
Alexandra Weld Queen has gained recognition as a professional, highly skilled welder and has elevated her work to the level of art. Her objects are unique: even a park bench turns into an amazing, but functional creation. “Working with metal, I convey to people certain meanings that help them live, develop, and feel stronger. A durable material, steel allows me to create works for urban spaces that serve people for many years,” she said.
Master class by Alexandra Weld Queen (center) and Victoria Boginskaya
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For more than 80 years, colleges and universities across the country have collaborated with the federal government on research and innovation that has changed the world. UConn is proud of its longstanding relationships with agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, the departments of Energy and Defense, and multitudes of other funders who have enabled the discoveries that define our society.
Connecticut’s workforce and economy, public health, and technological ingenuity are intertwined with the research that takes place in Storrs, at UConn Health in Farmington, and campuses across the state. UConn, like other universities across the nation, carries out critical research in facilities and with the expertise required to move America forward.
This report and website illustrate the impact of UConn’s research enterprise. It outlines the University’s influence on Connecticut, the breakthroughs made in fields from healthcare to national security, and the importance of continued federal financial support.
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An attempt to make assisted dying legal in England in Wales continues to make its way through parliament, with MPs currently scheduled to have a final vote on the bill in June.
The bill has sparked both passionate support and strong opposition, raising vital questions: how would such a law work in practice? Who would deliver it? And what would it cost?
While much attention has focused mostly on the ethics of assisted dying, the government’s recently published impact assessment looks at the practical side and it deserves closer attention.
Of course, we shouldn’t base a decision about life and death solely on financial or logistical grounds. But if assisted dying is to become part of the law in England and Wales, we need to understand how it would work in reality. The report highlights a number of key challenges:
1. The medication question
The assessment draws mainly on data from 11 other jurisdictions, especially Oregon, where assisted dying has been legal for years. It found that the drugs used can lead to prolonged and unpredictable deaths, in part due to inconsistent drug availability.
However, the report doesn’t compare this to Switzerland, where assisted dying must be self-administered and is tightly regulated. There, a single barbiturate is typically used, leading to death within two to ten minutes depending on whether it’s taken orally or via injection. This raises questions about what kind of medications would be used in the UK and how reliably they would work.
2. Opt-outs: who will deliver the service?
Experience from countries like Canada shows that most doctors opt out of providing assisted dying. In Canada, over 5,000 assisted deaths were carried out by just 80 people. Similarly, in the US and New Zealand, entire institutions – especially palliative care services – have opted out.
Kim Leadbeater, the MP sponsoring the bill, has confirmed that it would not oblige hospices to participate. While this protects individual conscience, it may leave patients struggling to find willing clinicians or being discharged home to die.
3. Can the NHS cope with a new service?
The bill assumes the NHS would be responsible for delivering assisted dying. But is the system ready?
Switzerland uses volunteer doctors outside the healthcare system, which may be more sustainable. In the UK, oversight is expected to come from a panel including a senior judge or lawyer, a psychiatrist and a social worker.
However, the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) has raised serious concerns, both about the role psychiatrists would play and whether there are enough professionals to fulfil that role. The RCP currently opposes the bill.
4. Funding: a two-tier system?
The impact assessment suggests assisted dying would be free at the point of delivery. Yet palliative care – the alternative end-of-life support – often receives less than 40% government funding, relying heavily on charity.
Could this create a two-tier system, where assisted dying is fully funded while palliative care remains under resourced?
5. Legal costs and challenges
If passed, the bill could trigger human rights challenges, particularly around mental capacity and access. Legal experts suggest several grounds on which it might be contested and these cases would need to be defended, incurring additional costs.
Families might also seek judicial review of a panel’s decision to permit a request for assisted dying. And public protests outside clinics or hospitals offering the service could require increased policing and security – all of which have financial and social implications.
This bill tackles one of the most morally sensitive issues in society. But if it is to succeed, and be implemented safely, it must be built on more than good intentions.
The government’s impact assessment lays out the many practical hurdles: medication protocols, workforce readiness, conscientious objection, legal protections, and funding disparities. These aren’t technicalities. They’re the framework that would determine whether assisted dying is accessible, safe and ethically delivered.
As the bill progresses, the debate must move beyond principle alone. The future of this legislation – and its real world impact – will depend on how well we address these deeply human, and deeply complex, practicalities.
Suzanne Ost has previously received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy for research that she has conducted.
Nancy Preston receives funding from Horizon Europe but not for her work on assisted dying. She is affiliated with European Association of Palliative Care where she Co-Chairs the Task Force on the role of palliative care professionals in supporting patients and families considering assisted dying.
A hug from a friend. A squeeze of the hand. A steady arm around your shoulders. Many of us are taught to think of touch as comforting – an instinctive way to offer or receive comfort and express a sense of connection.
But comfort is not always the outcome.
For some, that same gesture can feel intrusive – even jarring. In moments of stress or vulnerability, even a caring touch can miss the mark, leaving someone feeling unseen, misunderstood or more alone than before.
As a social-health psychologist, I study how close relationships shape emotional well-being, especially through the ways people give and receive support. Decades of research in psychology and neuroscience show that touch is more than just a physical act – it’s a form of communication. Whether it lands as comforting or off-putting depends on timing, context and the emotional safety of the underlying relationship.
When touch lands well
When touch provides comfort, it’s because it communicates safety, understanding and care. It works best when grounded in clarity, respect and emotional timing.
Trust also matters. Comfort comes most naturally when we feel safe – when we know that someone truly sees us and wants to ease our distress. A hug from a friend after you’ve shared bad news feels good not just because of the gesture itself but because of what it says: “I’m here, and you’re not alone.”
Sitting quietly next to a partner or child after they’ve had a hard day at school and offering them a steady hand and gentle presence can do more than any question or explanation. It provides a moment of connection that says: “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
Over time, attuned touch can do more than provide comfort in the moment – it can strengthen relationships, regulate our stress responses and promote well-being. Recent research highlights how affectionate touch may even support better sleep by reducing stress and increasing feelings of emotional safety. These benefits aren’t limited to romantic or parent-child relationships; many people also find comfort through physical closeness with trusted friends or pets. When it’s offered with care and sensitivity to the moment, touch can build connection, both immediately and over time.
But even in safe relationships, consent and receptivity are essential. Comforting touch should be honest and clear – not ambiguous, not tentative and never assumed. Simple gestures, such as asking “Would a hug help right now?” or offering “It’s OK if you’d rather not” can turn an awkward moment into one that feels safe and seen. And respecting someone’s “no” is just as important as offering touch in the first place. Hearing and honoring that boundary isn’t rejection; it’s attunement.
Ultimately, the most comforting touch communicates care for the person receiving it, not just the intentions of the person offering it. Small shifts in awareness such as paying attention to body language, asking first or simply waiting for the right moment can be the difference between discomfort and feeling understood. When offered with clarity, warmth and respect, physical closeness can do more than just comfort: It can restore.
A pediatrician discusses the importance of teaching kids consent from an early age, including for hugs.
Why touch sometimes backfires
If touch is a form of communication, it can miscommunicate too. A gesture meant to convey comfort might instead land as pressure, intrusion or something you want to escape.
Sometimes the issue is timing. One person reaches out with genuine care, while the other just needs space. A partner’s hand on your shoulder mid-argument might feel more like control than comfort. A hug meant to soothe can instead feel jarring, coming across as emotionally tone-deaf or misaligned.
Research shows that support is effective only when it’s grounded in mutual understanding and appreciation. If the gesture isn’t wanted or the moment is wrong, even well-intended touch can do more harm than good.
People’s attachment styles also shape how they respond to touch. People with avoidant tendencies often find physical closeness intrusive and may pull away from even small gestures. In contrast, people with more anxious attachment styles may crave the closeness of touch but remain on high alert, wondering whether it’s sincere, if it’s enough or if it will still be there in the future.
In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic led many people to renegotiate their comfort with touch and spatial boundaries. For some of us, keeping our distance became comforting – a new kind of safety that we’re not ready to give up just yet. And a handshake or hug might not feel like a return to normal – it might feel like crossing a boundary you didn’t know you’d built.
Ultimately, what makes touch comforting isn’t just the gesture – it’s emotional attunement: how well it fits the moment, the relationship and the person on the receiving end. When that alignment is off, even the most well-meaning touch can fall flat or make things worse.
Like any form of care, how touch is received depends on how, when and why it’s offered. If you want your touch to feel truly supportive, here are a few ways to stay attuned:
Who is this for? Ask yourself: Is this really for them or mostly for me? The most comforting touch comes from meeting another person’s need, not your own.
Notice what’s unspoken. Physical cues – leaning in, pausing or pulling away – can sometimes tell us more than words. Discomfort doesn’t always need to be spoken to be understood.
Offer choice.A simple question like “Would a hug help right now?” is more comforting than reaching out before checking in. And hearing a respectful no doesn’t disrupt connection – it builds trust.
We don’t have to give up on hugs, hand squeezes or reassuring pats. But comfort doesn’t automatically follow from physical closeness – it comes from the understanding and care behind it.
Brian N. Chin 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.
In today’s digital world, people routinely turn to the internet for health or medical information. In addition to actively searching online, they often come across health-related information on social media or receive it through emails or messages from family or friends.
It can be tempting to share such messages with loved ones – often with the best of intentions.
Although there is a fire hose of health-related content online, not all of it is factual. In fact, much of it is inaccurate or misleading, raising a serious health communication problem: Fake health information – whether shared unknowingly and innocently, or deliberately to mislead or cause harm – can be far more captivating than accurate information.
This makes it difficult for people to know which sources to trust and which content is worthy of sharing.
The allure of fake health information
Fake health information can take many forms. For example, it may be misleading content that distorts facts to frame an issue or individual in a certain context. Or it may be based on false connections, where headlines, visuals or captions don’t align with the content. Despite this variation, such content often shares a few common characteristics that make it seem believable and more shareable than facts.
Another marker of fake health information is that it presents ideas that are simply too good to be true. There is something appealingly counterintuitive in certain types of fake health information that can make people feel they have access to valuable or exclusive knowledge that others may not know. For example, a claim such as “chocolate helps you lose weight” can be especially appealing because it offers a sense of permission to indulge and taps into a simple, feel-good solution to a complex problem. Such information often spreads faster because it sounds both surprising and hopeful, validating what some people want to believe.
In a study on vaccine hesitancy published in 2020, my colleagues and I found that controversial headlines in news reports that go viral before national vaccination campaigns can discourage parents from getting their children vaccinated. These headlines seem to reveal sensational and secret information that can falsely boost the message’s credibility.
The pull to share
The internet has created fertile ground for spreading fake health information. Professional-looking websites and social media posts with misleading headlines can lure people into clicking or quickly sharing, which drives more and more readers to the falsehood. People tend to share information they believe is relevant to them or their social circles.
In 2019, an article with the false headline “Ginger is 10,000x more effective at killing cancer than chemo” was shared more than 800,000 times on Facebook. The article contained several factors that make people feel an urgency to react and share without checking the facts: compelling visuals, emotional stories, misleading graphs, quotes from experts with omitted context and outdated content that is recirculated.
Visual cues like the logos of reputable organizations or photos of people wearing white medical coats add credibility to these posts. This kind of content is highly shareable, often reaching far more people than scientifically accurate studies that may lack eye-catching headlines or visuals, easy-to-understand words or dramatic storylines.
How to combat the spread of fake health information
In today’s era of information overload in which anyone can create and share content, being able to distinguish between credible and misleading health information before sharing is more important than ever. Researchers and public health organizations have outlined several strategies to help people make better-informed decisions.
Whether health care consumers come across health information on social media, in an email or through a messaging app, here are three reliable ways to verify its accuracy and credibility before sharing:
Evaluate the source’s credibility. A quick way to assess a website’s trustworthiness is to check its “About Us” page. This section usually explains who is behind the content, their mission and their credentials. Also, search the name of the author. Do they have recognized expertise or affiliations with credible institutions? Reliable websites often have domains ending in .gov or .edu, indicating government or educational institutions. Finally, check the publication date. Information on the internet keeps circulating for years and may not be the most accurate or relevant in the present context.
If you’re still unsure, don’t share. If you’re still uncertain about the accuracy of a claim, it’s better to keep it to yourself. Forwarding unverified information can unintentionally contribute to the spread of misinformation and potentially cause harm, especially when it comes to health.
Questioning dubious claims and sharing only verified information not only protects against unsafe behaviors and panic, but it also helps curb the spread of fake health information. At a time when misinformation can spread faster than a virus, taking a moment to pause and fact-check can make a big difference.
Angshuman K. Kashyap 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.
Miles Taylor, center, a Homeland Security official during the first Trump administration, wrote an op-ed in September 2018 that criticized Trump.AP Photo/Alex Brandon
During President Donald Trump’s first three months in office, his administration has targeted dozens of former officials who criticized him or opposed his agenda.
On their face, such moves appear to be a coordinated campaign of personal retribution. But as political sciencescholars who study the origins of elected strongmen, we believe Trump’s use of the Justice Department to attack former officials who stood up to him isn’t just about revenge. It also deters current officials from defying Trump.
More than revenge
Like all presidents, Trump needs allies who will faithfully implement his policy agenda. For most presidents, this means surrounding themselves with longtime friends.
But to carry out a power grab, incumbent leaders also need allies who will stay silent or, better yet, endorse their attempts to consolidate control.
In El Salvador, for example, President Nayib Bukele’s legislative allies gave him free rein in 2023 to run for president a second time despite constitutional provisions banning reelection.
An audio recording of President Donald Trump talking to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is played in Washington, D.C., on Oct, 13, 2022. Alex Wong/Getty Images
Notably, both men first won political office on their own, without an endorsement from Trump. This means they were less reliant on Trump for access to political power. Therefore, they were more likely to prioritize their loyalty to the Constitution over their loyalty to Trump.
Attacks enforce loyalty
In authoritarian contexts, loyalty is not an intrinsic quality. Authoritarian leaders do not necessarily select those with whom they have long work experience that leads to mutual trust.
For instance, during Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961, the head of intelligence, Johnny Abbes, was plucked from obscurity in Mexico and in 1958 began to lead the dictator’s repression machine.
Instead, the challenge for authoritarian leaders is finding people to do their bidding. And the best people for this job are those who never would have earned their position in politics without the leader’s influence.
Unqualified appointees who can’t ascend to political power based on their merits have little choice but to stick with the leader. These people appear loyal, but only because their careers are tied to the leader staying in power.
A litany of failed politicians
This logic, where people with few career prospects outside of the leader express the most loyalty, explains why Trump has appointed a number of political candidates who have lost elections.
For appointees who can’t win elections, the only shot at power is steadfast alignment with the leader. This dynamic, in turn, provides a strong incentive for these officials to remain loyal, even when the leader breaks the law or orders them to do the same.
When leaders place loyalists in charge of federal law enforcement, attempts to conjure votes for the president out of thin air or to seize ballot boxes in opposition districts are more likely to succeed.
The Trump administration’s attacks on former Republican officials who criticized him, such as Taylor and Krebs, reinforces this dynamic. It sends a signal of future punishment to current Justice Department officials should they speak out against Trump or refuse to carry out illegal orders.
Attacks also target opposition power
Of course, the Trump administration’s political attacks haven’t stopped with officials in his previous administration who have fallen out of favor.
As research on authoritarian regimes shows, the goal of attacking independent institutions this way is to sap their capacity to resist the incumbent government’s attempts to cheat in future elections.
After Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orban, had rewritten his country’s Constitution and reined in the courts, he changed the electoral rules to ensure he won reelection in 2022. Along the way, Orban forced an entire university into exile after failing to subdue it.
In these ways, incumbents’ acts of retribution toward people and organizations that oppose their agenda reinforce loyalty among their allies. They also undermine and weaken their opponents and ultimately facilitate incumbents’ efforts to consolidate power.
Joe Wright has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, and private foundations.
Erica Frantz has received funding from the US Agency for International Development and private foundations.
Life sciences consultancy Cambridge Healthcare Research has chosen Birmingham as the location for its new Research Centre of Excellence, where it plans to create up to 40 research analyst roles.
Life sciences consultancy Cambridge Healthcare Research picks Birmingham as the location for its new Research Centre of Excellence, where it plans to create up to 40 research analyst roles by the end of 2025.
New facility at The Lewis Building in Birmingham’s city centre officially opened by Councillor John Cotton, Leader of Birmingham City Council.
Investment reinforces region’s rise as a dynamic investment alternative to traditional life sciences ‘golden triangle’ of London, Oxford and Cambridge.
The new facility at The Lewis Building in Birmingham’s City Centre was officially opened by Councillor John Cotton, Leader of Birmingham City Council.
Cambridge Healthcare Research’s new Research Centre of Excellence will focus on delivering strategic research projects for a range of UK and international clients operating within the life sciences sector. The facility represents the consultancy’s first office outside of Cambridge and London, reinforcing the West Midlands’ growing reputation as a diverse and dynamic life sciences investment hub. The region’s thriving life sciences sector incorporates a diverse, static population of 4.7 million, four medical schools and the West Midlands Health Tech Innovation Accelerator [WMTHIA], which recently received £4 million additional funding for 2025/26.
The region will seek to capitalise on the growth potential of its life sciences cluster through its flagship Investment Zone. In particular, the 210-hectare Birmingham Knowledge Quarter [B-KQ] will build on the region’s globally recognised strengths in diagnostics, digital and data-driven healthcare, providing a centre of excellence for advanced manufacturing aligned to health and life sciences.
Matteo Perucchini, CEO at Cambridge Healthcare Research, said:
“Combining a deep STEM talent pool, unrivalled connectivity and affordable office space, Birmingham ticked all our boxes when it came to selecting a location for our first office outside of the traditional life sciences ‘golden triangle’.
“We’re looking forward to contributing to the rise of the West Midlands’ life sciences ecosystem while delivering exceptional research projects for our clients from our new Birmingham base.”
The West Midlands Growth Company [WMGC] – the region’s official investment promotion agency – supported the investment.
Councillor John Cotton, Leader of Birmingham City Council, said:
“From companies advancing pioneering drug development to manufacturers of next-generation medical devices, Birmingham has established a reputation as an attractive destination for life sciences focused occupiers.
“As the region’s vision for Birmingham Knowledge Quarter gathers pace, its offer to healthcare innovators will strengthen even further, with companies like Cambridge Healthcare Research exemplifying the innovation taking place here.
“It’s brilliant to be welcoming another new and enterprising company to our city, which will help boost the economy and create jobs for local people.”
Source: The White House
BUILDING LASTING PROSPERITY FOR AMERICA AND OUR ALLIES: Today in Abu Dhabi, President Donald J. Trump announced over $200 billion in commercial deals between the United States and the United Arab Emirates—bringing the total of investment agreements in the Gulf region to over $2 trillion.
President Trump continues to advance the interests of the American people, enhancing market access for American exporters to strengthen our economic and national security.
These deals will significantly expand investment in the United States and U.S. market access in the United Arab Emirates.
The following represent just a few of the many transformative deals secured in the United Arab Emirates:
Boeing and GE Aerospace secured a $14.5 billion commitment from Etihad Airways to invest in 28 American-made Boeing 787 and 777X aircraft powered by GE engines. With the inclusion of the next-generation 777X in its fleet plan, the investment deepens the longstanding commercial aviation partnership between the UAE and the United States, fueling American manufacturing, driving exports, and supporting 60,000 U.S. jobs.
In Oklahoma, Emirates Global Aluminum will invest to develop a $4 billion primary aluminum smelter project, one of the first new aluminum smelters in America in 45 years, that will create a thousand jobs in America, strengthen critical mineral supply chains, and double current U.S. production capacity.
In line with President Trump’s executive order to unleash American energy leadership worldwide, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, and EOG Resources are partnering with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) for expanded oil and natural gas production valued at $60 billion that will help lower energy costs and create hundreds of skilled jobs in both countries.
RTX is partnering with Emirates Global Aluminum and the UAE’s Tawazun Council on a pioneering Gallium project that will help secure and stabilize the United States’ critical mineral supply chain. By diversifying sources of this essential input for semiconductors and defense technologies, the partnership strengthens America’s supply security, supports high-tech manufacturing, and creates jobs across the U.S. critical minerals and defense industrial base.
Qualcomm is expanding its global innovation footprint through partnerships with ADIO and e&. A new Global Engineering Center in Abu Dhabi will focus on AI, data centers, and industrial IoT – advancing the UAE’s digital transformation while supporting U.S. research, engineering jobs and demand for American technologies. Meanwhile, the collaboration with e& accelerates the deployment of advanced connectivity, edge AI, and cloud computing solutions. Together, these efforts strengthen Qualcomm’s leadership in critical technologies, fuel U.S high-tech job creation, and bolster America’s economic and national security.
Amazon Web Services, e&, and the UAE Cybersecurity Council have launched a Sovereign Cloud Launchpad to accelerate public cloud services adoption in the UAE. The initiative is expected to contribute $181 billion to the UAE’s digital economy by 2033 and includes a new UAE cybersecurity technology Innovation center. This collaboration expands demand for U.S.–developed cloud infrastructure and cybersecurity technologies, supporting high-skilled jobs in the United States and reinforcing U.S. leadership in secure digital innovation globally.
These deals lay the foundation for investment, innovation and good-paying U.S. jobs, including in frontier technologies, aerospace, energy, and critical minerals.
Today’s deals strengthen the U.S.-UAE investment and trade relationship and build on the UAE’s landmark commitment to a 10-year, $1.4 trillion investment framework that will contribute to the U.S. boom in AI infrastructure, semiconductors, energy, quantum computing, biotechnology, and manufacturing.
The U.S. and UAE signed an AI agreement today that supports the $1.4 trillion investment commitment secured in March. This includes the UAE committing to invest in, build, or finance U.S. data centers that are at least as large and as powerful as those in the UAE. The agreement also contains historic commitments by the UAE to further align their national security regulations with the United States, including strong protections to prevent the diversion of U.S.-origin technology.
The U.S.-UAE AI agreement strengthens bilateral investment partnerships, ensuring U.S. security interests and dominance in AI while extending the American tech stack to an important strategic partner.
ACCELERATING TRADE AND INVESTMENT IN STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP: The strategic partnership between the United States and the United Arab Emirates has spanned decades and supported the prosperity and security of Americans and Emiratis. This partnership encompasses strategic cooperation in defense, trade, energy, space and diplomacy, reflecting shared interests and mutual respect.
This partnership is particularly significant thanks to the historic achievement of the Abraham Accords announced during President Trump’s first term.
The UAE stands as a significant commercial partner for the United States in the Middle East. Bilateral trade and investment have flourished, with the UAE serving as a hub for American businesses seeking opportunities in the region.
The UAE had $35 billion in foreign direct investments in the United States, supporting over 33,000 American jobs in 2023.
U.S. total goods trade with the UAE was an estimated $34.4 billion in 2024, with a U.S. trade surplus of $19.5 billion, the third largest in the world.
President Trump’s historic visit to the United Arab Emirates is another opportunity to welcome new partnerships in frontier technologies, health and life sciences, mobility, entertainment, and many other fields.
NEVER TIRED OF WINNING: President Trump keeps scoring great deals for the American people, securing over $2 trillion in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations for a more safe and prosperous future.
The $200 billion UAE deals build on the $600 billion in Saudi Arabia and $1.2 trillion in Qatar the President secured on behalf of the American people.
This comes days after President Trump announced the U.S.-UK trade agreement and a joint agreement with China in pursuit of more fair, reciprocal trade that grows good-paying jobs and prosperity in America.
While it took President Biden nearly four years to secure $1 trillion in investments, President Trump achieved this in his first month, with additional investment commitments continuing to roll in.
President Trump is accelerating investment in America and securing fair trade deals around the world, paving the way for a new Golden Age of lasting prosperity for generations to come.
What happens when ethics meet politics? A new generation of political theorists is rethinking classic notions and divides dating back from Ancient Philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment. On the occasion of the eleventh edition of Sciences Po’s Graduate Conference in Political Theory, in May 2025, we spoke with its organisers, Sciences Po School of Research’s PhD students Cloé Artaut, Thomas Charrayre, Sibylle Léonard and Ciara Luxton. From ancient ideals of the just city to contemporary struggles over global justice, they walk us through the Conference’s purpose and programme.
Why did you choose to bring together these two concepts, “ethics” and “politics”, for this eleventh doctoral conference?
Thomas Charrayre: Going back – perhaps in a somewhat textbook-like way – to ancient philosophy, we see that the notions of ethics and politics have long been closely intertwined. For instance, Plato develops the idea of an organic unity between the good life and the just city: a well-organised society was seen as a necessary condition for a happy life, and, conversely, the virtue of citizens as essential to the establishment of justice.
In the modern world, this unity dissipates: we tend to draw a clear line between private and public life, between what we do as individuals and what we do as citizens. We assume that it is possible to act justly even within an unjust society. Our moral imagination is, in fact, full of heroic figures who manage to follow their own ethical code despite living in politically unjust contexts – think, for example, of the Righteous Among the Nations.
This separation between ethics and politics is also reflected in the academic world. We distinguish between ethical philosophy and political philosophy, political theory and political science, as though ethics were solely concerned with right and wrong, while politics dealt only with what is or isn’t possible. Indeed, when we ask for an ethical analysis of a situation, we expect a moral judgement; whereas a political analysis is supposed to describe power dynamics and potential outcomes.
The conference we are organising seeks to revisit these distinctions, which we often take for granted, without necessarily advocating a return to the Greek conception of the good. That is why it revolves around three key areas, all aimed at showing just how blurred the boundary between ethics and politics can be. The first area brings together presentations focused on the historical study of the relationship between ethics and politics, in order to illustrate how this relationship varies depending on context. The second explores the possible need to “moralise” politics – that is, to view it as a domain governed first and foremost by ethical norms. Lastly, the third area features contributions that offer a political critique of moral norms, analysing the political implications of our ethical beliefs.
Participants in the conference come from France, but also from Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Quebec, and the United Kingdom. What does this international perspective bring?
Ciara Luxton: Having spent time in France and elsewhere in Europe as a visiting fellow, Nancy Fraser, our the guest of honour for this edition, has shown how much scholarship can benefit from engagement with ideas that are culturally embedded. Her work demonstrates a deep appreciation both for what is specific to national contexts and for the perspectives that intersect around questions of global justice. Inspired by Nancy Fraser’s example, we have put together panels ranging from the intimate ethics of the body and sexuality to intrinsically collective issues such as planetary justice and climate transition. The international outlook of our conference therefore enriches these reflections on the connections and tensions between ethics and politics.
Intercultural exchange offers us a unique opportunity to challenge our intuitions – often shaped by national and cultural inheritances – and to rethink them in light of other traditions. We have the privilege and the pleasure of welcoming to Sciences Po – an institution that is resolutely international and multilingual – young researchers from far and wide, brought together by a shared language of political and moral theory. The bilingual nature of the event (French–English) facilitates direct and inclusive dialogue between participants, reflecting our shared commitment to advancing research together. Here, political theory takes on a truly global dimension: our conclusions, far from being confined to a single country, engage with the realities of diverse societies. In a connected world, our analyses are interdependent: an idea originating in Quebec can inspire reform in Italy, just as a moral insight from Ireland can cast new light on a political hypothesis from France.
In this way, we are creating a space for exchange among a new generation of scholars, who will continue this dialogue throughout their careers. Together, we will develop new ways of thinking about politics and ethics, experiment with more flexible and inclusive methodologies, and build conceptual tools suited to a globalised world.
Nancy Fraser, Professor of Philosophy at the New School in New York, will be giving a public lecture during your event. She has worked extensively on social justice, feminism, and equality. What perspective will she bring?
Sibylle Léonard: Nancy Fraser is the guest of honour for this edition. She brings a fundamentally critical perspective to the theme of “Ethics and Politics.” Like many feminist theorists, she challenges the classical Enlightenment-era separation between the ethical and political spheres – a division that sees ethics as a matter of individual conscience, while politics is understood as an impersonal domain concerned with government systems, laws, public policy, and quantifiable data such as votes and taxes. I am thinking in particular of Iris Marion Young’s book Justice and the Politics of Difference, which addresses this issue.
In her approach to social justice, Nancy Fraser puts forward the ethical-political norm of parity of participation: everyone must be able to take part, on an equal footing, in social, economic, and political life. This is an ethical norm in that it defines what it means to treat individuals as equals; but it is also – and above all – political, insofar as it demands institutions that can guarantee the real-world conditions for such equality. This demand is expressed through her tripartite conception of justice – redistribution, recognition, and representation – which she sets out in her book Scales of Justice. According to Fraser, these three dimensions are co-constitutive; they cannot be ranked or addressed in isolation. It is their imbrication that enables a nuanced analysis of contemporary injustices.
Thus, against single-issue approaches that fragment social struggles, Nancy Fraser advocates for an integrative way of thinking, at the intersection of theory and practice, ethics and politics. She stands within a critical tradition that combines insights from Marxism, materialist feminism, anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggles, and democratic and ecological theory. The cross-cutting nature of her thought explains its deep resonance with the wide range of topics addressed during this graduate conference.
A highlight of the conference will be Nancy Fraser’s lecture on 19 May, titled “Politics and Ethics in Extremis: A View from Trump’s America.” It will echo her recent analyses of the rise of authoritarian right-wing movements, the impasses of liberal progressivism, and the need to build counter-hegemonic blocs capable of advancing a genuine emancipatory project – themes she explores in her 2019 book The Old Is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born.
What will you take away from organising this major conference?
Cloé Artaut: The Graduate Conference is part of a well-established tradition within Sciences Po’s doctoral programme in political theory. Organising its eleventh edition, in May 2025, has been both a unique and formative intellectual and collective experience for us. We now fully appreciate just how valuable it is to have the opportunity, early in our research careers, to organise an academic event of this scale. It is a real learning experience, and one that reflects an essential aspect of the work of a scholar.
From an organisational point of view, it allowed us to strengthen our skills in scientific coordination, learning how to balance intellectual rigour with logistical constraints and the expectations of participants. On the intellectual front, our aim was to create a space for international and interdisciplinary dialogue around a theme we saw as both classical and timely: the relationship between ethics and politics. Drawing on a line of thinking that dates back to ancient philosophy, as Thomas reminded us, but has undergone many developments in the contemporary era, we wanted to explore how these two concepts – and the links between them – continue to shape our political practices and analyses. This meant building a conference programme that reflected that ambition, giving equal space to both historical approaches and more modern reinterpretations.
While we feel we largely achieved that goal, it was both surprising – and very rewarding – to discover that some of the proposals we received were quite far from what we had initially imagined when drafting the call for papers, yet still highly relevant to our theme. The gap between what we anticipated and what actually emerged proved to be immensely fruitful, allowing us to construct a rich and diverse programme that we are ultimately very proud of!
Following the conference, we are considering coordinating a special journal issue dedicated to the conference theme. This project would allow us to extend the conversation we began, showcase the research presented, and continue fostering dialogue among the young scholars involved.
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Cover image caption: Sibylle Léonard, Cloé Artaut, Ciara Luxton et Thomas Charrayre, PhD students at Sciences Po (credits: Sciences Po)
An attempt to make assisted dying legal in England in Wales continues to make its way through parliament, with MPs currently scheduled to have a final vote on the bill in June.
The bill has sparked both passionate support and strong opposition, raising vital questions: how would such a law work in practice? Who would deliver it? And what would it cost?
While much attention has focused mostly on the ethics of assisted dying, the government’s recently published impact assessment looks at the practical side and it deserves closer attention.
Of course, we shouldn’t base a decision about life and death solely on financial or logistical grounds. But if assisted dying is to become part of the law in England and Wales, we need to understand how it would work in reality. The report highlights a number of key challenges:
1. The medication question
The assessment draws mainly on data from 11 other jurisdictions, especially Oregon, where assisted dying has been legal for years. It found that the drugs used can lead to prolonged and unpredictable deaths, in part due to inconsistent drug availability.
However, the report doesn’t compare this to Switzerland, where assisted dying must be self-administered and is tightly regulated. There, a single barbiturate is typically used, leading to death within two to ten minutes depending on whether it’s taken orally or via injection. This raises questions about what kind of medications would be used in the UK and how reliably they would work.
2. Opt-outs: who will deliver the service?
Experience from countries like Canada shows that most doctors opt out of providing assisted dying. In Canada, over 5,000 assisted deaths were carried out by just 80 people. Similarly, in the US and New Zealand, entire institutions – especially palliative care services – have opted out.
Kim Leadbeater, the MP sponsoring the bill, has confirmed that it would not oblige hospices to participate. While this protects individual conscience, it may leave patients struggling to find willing clinicians or being discharged home to die.
3. Can the NHS cope with a new service?
The bill assumes the NHS would be responsible for delivering assisted dying. But is the system ready?
Switzerland uses volunteer doctors outside the healthcare system, which may be more sustainable. In the UK, oversight is expected to come from a panel including a senior judge or lawyer, a psychiatrist and a social worker.
However, the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) has raised serious concerns, both about the role psychiatrists would play and whether there are enough professionals to fulfil that role. The RCP currently opposes the bill.
4. Funding: a two-tier system?
The impact assessment suggests assisted dying would be free at the point of delivery. Yet palliative care – the alternative end-of-life support – often receives less than 40% government funding, relying heavily on charity.
Could this create a two-tier system, where assisted dying is fully funded while palliative care remains under resourced?
5. Legal costs and challenges
If passed, the bill could trigger human rights challenges, particularly around mental capacity and access. Legal experts suggest several grounds on which it might be contested and these cases would need to be defended, incurring additional costs.
Families might also seek judicial review of a panel’s decision to permit a request for assisted dying. And public protests outside clinics or hospitals offering the service could require increased policing and security – all of which have financial and social implications.
This bill tackles one of the most morally sensitive issues in society. But if it is to succeed, and be implemented safely, it must be built on more than good intentions.
The government’s impact assessment lays out the many practical hurdles: medication protocols, workforce readiness, conscientious objection, legal protections, and funding disparities. These aren’t technicalities. They’re the framework that would determine whether assisted dying is accessible, safe and ethically delivered.
As the bill progresses, the debate must move beyond principle alone. The future of this legislation – and its real world impact – will depend on how well we address these deeply human, and deeply complex, practicalities.
Suzanne Ost has previously received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy for research that she has conducted.
Nancy Preston receives funding from Horizon Europe but not for her work on assisted dying. She is affiliated with European Association of Palliative Care where she Co-Chairs the Task Force on the role of palliative care professionals in supporting patients and families considering assisted dying.
Researchers have long know that environmental factors, such as air pollution and lack of green spaces, are linked to respiratory diseases such as asthma. But the joint impact of these various environmental factors on a person’s risk of developing asthma has, until now, remained unclear.
Our study is the first to reveal the joint impact of multiple environmental factors in urban areas, known as the urban exposome, on the risk of developing asthma. We found that air pollution, lack of green space and areas built primarily from concrete and asphalt are linked with significantly greater risk of developing the condition.
To conduct our study, we analysed data from 349,037 participants from across 14 cohorts in Europe. Participants ranged in age from birth to 70 years old.
We also linked three major external environmental factors – air pollution, the built-up environment (such as the amount of green space a person had access to or the amount of artificial light they were exposed to at night) and ambient temperature – to participants’ home addresses at the beginning of the study.
Participants were then grouped based on their exposure levels to the three major environmental factors. This allowed us to examine how exposure was linked to the onset of asthma and also calculate what a person’s risk of developing asthma would be if exposed to these environmental conditions.
We also accounted for factors that might have affected the results, such as a person’s age, sex, ethnic background, weight, socioeconomic status and whether they smoked (or were exposed to smoke).
We found that adults living in areas with high levels of air pollution had a 13% higher risk of developing asthma compared to people living in low pollution areas. Children living in high pollution areas had an 18% greater risk of developing asthma.
Adults living in areas that lacked green space had a 15% greater risk of developing asthma, while children had a 38% greater risk.
But one of the most significant findings of our study was just how much joint exposure to these environmental factors contributed to new asthma cases in both children and adults.
Three aspects of urban environments have a major influence of asthma risk. Holiday62/ Shutterstock
We found that the most hazardous urban environments were those characterised by high levels of air pollution, limited access to green spaces and those that were built primarily from concrete and asphalt. This increased an adult’s risk of asthma by 27% and a child’s risk of asthma by 35%.
Even areas without high levels of air pollution, but which were built primarily from concrete and asphalt and lacked green spaces, increased asthma risk by as much as 36%.
Urban planning and asthma risk
Our findings are generally consistent with what previous studies have found on the effects of urban environments, air pollution and green space on asthma risk. However, our study is the first to look at asthma incidence in both adults and children.
It’s also the first study to cover the entire life-course and illustrate how multiple aspects of the urban exposome affect asthma incidence in all age groups.
It underscores the critical role that urban environments play in shaping respiratory health. We calculated that a significant proportion of asthma cases – almost 12% – could be directly attributed to urban environments.
Exposure to a combination of air pollution, poor urban planning and extreme temperatures are a significant driver of asthma risk across a person’s lifespan.
With more people moving to cities every year, it’s essential that we rethink how we design and manage urban spaces to prioritise health and wellbeing. Cities can help prevent asthma and improve quality of life by introducing policies that aim to reduce air pollution, expand green spaces and design infrastructure that is more resilient to extreme temperatures.
Zhebin Yu receives funding from Swedish Research Council and Swedish Research Council for Health, Well-being and Welfare.
Erik Melen receives funding from the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation and Region Stockholm. Melen has also received advisory board or lecture fees from ALK, AstraZeneca, Chiesi and Sanofi outside the present study.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Richard Forno, Teaching Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, and Assistant Director, UMBC Cybersecurity Institute, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Reports that prominent American national security officials used a freely available encrypted messaging app, coupled with the rise of authoritarian policies around the world, have led to a surge in interest in encrypted apps like Signal and WhatsApp. These apps prevent anyone, including the government and the app companies themselves, from reading messages they intercept.
The spotlight on encrypted apps is also a reminder of the complex debate pitting government interests against individual liberties. Governments desire to monitor everyday communications for law enforcement, national security and sometimes darker purposes. On the other hand, citizens and businesses claim the right to enjoy private digital discussions in today’s online world.
The positions governments take often are framed as a “war on encryption” by technology policy experts and civil liberties advocates. As a cybersecurity researcher, I’ve followed the debate for nearly 30 years and remain convinced that this is not a fight that governments can easily win.
Understanding the ‘golden key’
Traditionally, strong encryption capabilities were considered military technologies crucial to national security and not available to the public. However, in 1991, computer scientist Phil Zimmermann released a new type of encryption software called Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). It was free, open-source software available on the internet that anyone could download. PGP allowed people to exchange email and files securely, accessible only to those with the shared decryption key, in ways similar to highly secured government systems.
Following an investigation into Zimmermann, the U.S. government came to realize that technology develops faster than law and began to explore remedies. It also began to understand that once something is placed on the internet, neither laws nor policy can control its global availability.
Fearing that terrorists or criminals might use such technology to plan attacks, arrange financing or recruit members, the Clinton administration advocated a system called the Clipper Chip, based on a concept of key escrow. The idea was to give a trusted third party access to the encryption system and the government could use that access when it demonstrated a law enforcement or national security need.
End-to-end encryption and backdoor access explained.
Clipper was based on the idea of a “golden key,” namely, a way for those with good intentions – intelligence services, police – to access encrypted data, while keeping people with bad intentions – criminals, terrorists – out.
Clipper Chip devices never gained traction outside the U.S. government, in part because its encryption algorithm was classified and couldn’t be publicly peer-reviewed. However, in the years since, governments around the world have continued to embrace the golden key concept as they grapple with the constant stream of technology developments reshaping how people access and share information.
Following Edward Snowden’s disclosures about global surveillance of digital communications in 2013, Google and Apple took steps to make it virtually impossible for anyone but an authorized user to access data on a smartphone. Even a court order was ineffective, much to the chagrin of law enforcement. In Apple’s case, the company’s approach to privacy and security was tested in 2016 when the company refused to build a mechanism to help the FBI break into an encrypted iPhone owned by a suspect in the San Bernardino terrorist attack.
At its core, encryption is, fundamentally, very complicated math. And while the golden key concept continues to hold allure for governments, it is mathematically difficult to achieve with an acceptable degree of trust. And even if it was viable, implementing it in practice makes the internet less safe. Security experts agree that any backdoor access, even if hidden or controlled by a trusted entity, is vulnerable to hacking.
For example, rather than embrace a technical golden key, a recent proposal in France would have provided the government the ability to add a hidden “ghost” participant to any encrypted chat for surveillance purposes. However, legislators removed this from the final proposal after civil liberties and cybersecurity experts warned that such an approach would undermine basic cybersecurity practices and trust in secure systems.
In 2025, the U.K. government secretly ordered Apple to add a backdoor to its encryption services worldwide. Rather than comply, Apple removed the ability for its iPhone and iCloud customers in the U.K. to use its Advanced Data Protection encryption features. In this case, Apple chose to defend its users’ security in the face of government mandates, which ironically now means that users in the U.K. may be less secure.
Apple pulled its advanced encryption service from the U.K. market rather than grant the U.K. government backdoor access.
In the United States, provisions removed from the 2020 EARN IT bill would have forced companies to scan online messages and photos to guard against child exploitation by creating a golden-key-type hidden backdoor. Opponents viewed this as a stealth way of bypassing end-to-end encryption. The bill did not advance to a full vote when it was last reintroduced in the 2023-2024 legislative session.
Opposing scanning for child sexual abuse material is a controversial concern when encryption is involved: Although Apple received significant public backlash over its plans to scan user devices for such material in ways that users claimed violated Apple’s privacy stance, victims of child abuse have sued the company for not better protecting children.
Even privacy-centric Switzerland and the European Union are exploring ways of dealing with digital surveillance and privacy in an encrypted world.
The laws of math and physics, not politics
Governments usually claim that weakening encryption is necessary to fight crime and protect the nation – and there is a valid concern there. However, when that argument fails to win the day, they often turn to claiming to need backdoors to protect children from exploitation.
From a cybersecurity perspective, it is nearly impossible to create a backdoor to a communications product that is only accessible for certain purposes or under certain conditions. If a passageway exists, it’s only a matter of time before it is exploited for nefarious purposes. In other words, creating what is essentially a software vulnerability to help the good guys will inevitably end up helping the bad guys, too.
Often overlooked in this debate is that if encryption is weakened to improve surveillance for governmental purposes, it will drive criminals and terrorists further underground. Using different or homegrown technologies, they will still be able to exchange information in ways that governments can’t readily access. But everyone else’s digital security will be needlessly diminished.
Encryption obeys the laws of math and physics, not politics. Once invented, it can’t be un-invented, even if it frustrates governments. Along those lines, if governments are struggling with strong encryption now, how will they contend with a world when everyone is using significantly more complex techniques like quantum cryptography?
Governments remain in an unenviable position regarding strong encryption. Ironically, one of the countermeasures the government recommended in response to China’s hacking of global telephone systems in the Salt Typhoon attacks was to use strong encryption in messaging apps such as Signal or iMessage.
Reconciling that with their ongoing quest to weaken or restrict strong encryption for their own surveillance interests will be a difficult challenge to overcome.
Richard Forno has received research funding related to cybersecurity from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the US Army during his academic career since 2010.
Eating a placenta may not give you the health benefits some people want you to believe it has, but using it as a bandage might.
The placenta is an organ created during pregnancy that provides nutrients to a growing fetus through an umbilical cord. It’s usually large and relatively flat, composed of blood vessels, stem and immune cells, and collagen. It doesn’t look particularly appetizing to most people, and those who have eaten placentas often mention an unpleasant taste or smell.
But in the early 2000s, the practice of mothers eating their placenta after childbirth, claiming health benefits and mood improvement, gained mainstream attention. This trend typically involves putting your placenta into capsules you can take as pills, and there are even companies selling custom-made and do-it-yourself products online.
While some mammals may eat their own placentas due to limited nutritional resources in the wild, the benefits people might get from eating placentas is unclear.
If boiled and dehydrated, the useful components of the placenta may be altered and reduced. If ingested raw, pathogens may remain on the surface of the placenta. In 2016, after a newborn was hospitalized multiple times from an infection potentially resulting from the mother ingesting her placenta, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended mothers avoid taking placenta pills.
I can’t personally speak to the taste of placentas. However, as a bioengineer who designs materials to regenerate injured bones and other tissues, I along with my colleagues have uncovered a much clearer picture of the benefits placentas can offer as a biomaterial to repair wounds – if used properly.
Biomaterials are materials designed to interface with your body to repair damage. If you burned your skin, for example, your doctor may use a biomaterial such as a skin graft to help your body repair the damaged tissue, ideally providing nutrients to the damaged area to promote cell growth.
Researchers have been exploring recycling placentas, which are often thrown away after delivery, as a type of biomaterial to regrow wounded tissue in patients. Because the placenta is rich in nutrients and stem cells that give it antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory and pro-regenerative properties, this organ is a particularly good candidate for medical applications.
Your body normally responds to a wound with inflammation, which is an immune reaction that clears harmful stimuli and pathogens, often resulting in swelling and pain around the injury site.
Unfortunately, sometimes this inflammatory process can get out of hand and lead to chronic wounds and prevent healing. But the active biomolecules within the placenta work withyour immune system to promote repair by reducing inflammation and preventing scar formation.
For example, chronic diabetic foot ulcers are a challenging injury that sometimes never closes and leads to foot amputation. Researchers found that using biomaterials made of parts of the placenta to treat these injuries resulted in a wound closure rate 6.24 times higher than conventional treatments. Researchers have also found that placenta-based biomaterials can reduce scarring after heart injury.
I have used human placentas in my own research to study how they work in a variety of wound repair scenarios. I can take a volunteer patient’s donated placenta and remove factors that may negatively affect healing, such as all cells, blood and other components that may cause inflammation. Then I can take the material that’s left – primarily containing essential growth nutrients and the tissue foundation that cells used to live in – and use it to improvebone ortendon repair.
Moreover, placentas contain stem cells that can also be useful for medicine. These cells are able to turn into various other types of cells of your body. This can be particularly helpful for repairing organs that are difficult to directly harvest cells from, such as the heart, liver and nerves. For example, placental stem cells can be added to an injured heart and become heart cells themselves to aid in repair.
So placentas do have some clear health benefits. But why are they more useful as a biomaterial bandage than as a pill or food, taste considerations aside?
Unlike placenta products that are ingested – pills, dried jerky or raw placenta – biomaterials have undergone rigorous testing to ensure they are safe and effective. They are processed and handled in a controlled laboratory environment and often sterilized to ensure no bacteria or other pathogens can enter the patient. The Food and Drug Administration has approved several placenta-based biomaterials for use in the clinic, including to treat diabetic foot wounds, surgical wounds and tissue replacement.
In contrast, placentas and placenta products eaten at home may not receive proper treatment to kill the many harmful pathogens that may be present during transport. The processing to turn placentas into something ingestible may also damage their beneficial components, leading to increased health risks and reduced benefits. No ingested placenta products have received FDA approval to date.
Eating placentas won’t make you any healthier. But science says applying a lab-processed, placenta-based biomaterial to a recent wound might speed up healing and result in smoother, scar-free skin.
Marley Dewey receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
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