Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Press release
‘Innovator passports’ set to accelerate cutting-edge NHS care
New ‘innovator passport’ will slash red tape so cutting-edge tech can be rolled out across the NHS quicker under the 10 Year Health Plan.
Digital system will mean companies can innovate faster and patients can get pioneering tech as soon as it’s ready to be rolled out
Will provide major boost to the Life Sciences sector, creating an NHS fit for future under the Plan for Change
NHS patients across the country will get accelerated access to cutting edge technology through a new digital system that will cut red tape and boost life science .
A new ‘innovator passport’ – to be introduced over next two years – will allow new technology that has been robustly assessed by one NHS organisation to be easily rolled out to others.
The move is a key part of the government’s Plan for Change and its 10 Year Health Plan, which will transfer power to patients and transform how healthcare is delivered, creating an NHS fit for future.
For too long, cutting edge businesses deserted working with the NHS and went elsewhere, weighed down by slow timelines and reams of processes. Now, organisations will be able to join up with the NHS quicker than ever before through the removal of needless bureaucracy. Not only is this better for patients, but also for our NHS and economic growth.
A ‘one-stop-shop’ thorough check from the NHS will now allow businesses to get to work as quickly as possible and deliver on what matters most to patients across the country. It means NHS patients will get more effective treatments and support quicker, and the NHS will make the most of its finite assessment resource, all while businesses are given a boost through the government’s industrial strategy.
Treatments including special wound dressings—already reducing surgical site infections by 38% at Barking, Havering & Redbridge University Hospitals—could be adopted more widely, benefiting patients across the country.
At Barts Health Trust in London, the use of antimicrobial protective coverings for cardiac devices cut infections and saved over £103,000 per year. At University Hospitals Dorset, adopting rapid influenza testing reduced bed days and antibiotic use, freeing up vital resources. MedTech Compass will make these innovations, and the evidence underpinning them, clear to buyers within the NHS.
The new passport will eliminate multiple compliance assessments, reducing duplication across the health service. It will be delivered through MedTech Compass, a digital platform developed by DHSC to make effective technologies more visible and widely available.
The initiative builds on the government’s drive to slash waiting lists and ensure people have access to health and care when and where they need it under the Plan for Change.
Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, said:
For too long, Britain’s leading scientific minds have been held back by needless admin that means suppliers are repeatedly asked for the same data in different formats by different trusts – this is bad for the NHS, patients and bad for business.
These innovator passports will save time and reduce duplication, meaning our life sciences sector – a central part of our 10 Year Health Plan – can work hand in hand with the health service and make Britain a powerhouse for medical technology.
Frustrated patients will no longer have to face a postcode lottery for lifesaving products to be introduced in their area and companies will be able to get their technology used across the NHS more easily, creating a health service fit for future under the Plan for Change.
Dr Vin Diwakar, Clinical Transformation Director at NHS England, said:
We’re seeing the impact improvements to technology are having on our everyday lives on everything from smartwatches to fitness trackers – and we want to make sure NHS patients can benefit from the latest medical technology and innovations as well.
The new innovator passports will speed up the roll-out of new health technology in the NHS which has been proven to be effective, so that patients can benefit from new treatments much sooner.
It also forms an important element of the industrial strategy through the upcoming Life Sciences Sector Plan, which will turbocharge Britain’s life sciences sector and cement the UK’s position as a global innovation leader.
MedTech Compass helps speed up decision-making in trusts, allowing technology to scale faster – making it easier for trusts across the country to find, assess, and adopt proven technologies that improve and speed up patient care.
The passports mean that once a healthcare tool has been assessed by one NHS organisation, further NHS organisations will not be able to insist on repeated assessments, reducing the need for local NHS systems to spend their limited resources on bureaucratic processes that have already been completed elsewhere.
The digital system will act as a dynamic best buyer’s guide, making it easier for trusts to compare products side-by-side in one place.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kerrie Sadiq, Professor of Taxation, QUT Business School, and ARC Future Fellow, Queensland University of Technology
The beginning of the financial year means for the first time in Australia the public will see previously unreleased tax reports produced by multinational taxpayers.
These documents, known as country-by-country reports, or CbCR for short, contain information about the tax practices of large Australian businesses and foreign businesses operating in Australia. This information, previously only available to the taxpayer and the Australian Tax Office, will be made public.
Country-by-country reports, announced in the October 2022-2023 budget, were introduced with other measures designed to improve corporate tax behaviour. The reports will be released from this week as part of corporate reporting practices. Multinationals have 12 months to comply.
A fairer tax system
Country-by-country reporting forms part of the government’s multinational tax integrity election commitment package. The aim is to ensure a fairer and more sustainable tax system. Large firms will be required to publish a statement on their global activities plus tax information for each jurisdiction in which they operate.
Until now, large multinationals only had to prepare annual consolidated financial statements under international financial reporting standards. The traditional reports aggregate results and provide limited geographic reporting information.
Traditional high-level reporting allows multinationals to conceal their country-level activities. This hides questionable tax practices.
Country-by-country reporting allows us to better see where a multinational operates. More importantly, the amount of activity in each jurisdiction is reported. The information provides clues as to whether artificial profit shifting has occurred.
Anyone interested can uncover details about how multinationals structure their global operations. Information may reveal a misalignment between the company’s real economic presence in a country, the profits they book and taxes they pay in that country.
Bringing Australia into line with the EU
Country-by-country reporting is not new. It is the requirement that the information be made public that has changed.
Australian firms have been required to provide such reports to the Australian Tax Office since 2016. However, the information has been confidential.
The new public disclosure law brings Australia in line with large firms operating in the European Union which brought in the change last year.
How country-by-country reporting works
A taxpayer with annual global income above A$1 billion and at least A$10 million of its turnover Australian-sourced will need to produce a report. The obligation to disclose rests with the parent entity no matter where they are located.
Australia’s largest companies, including mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP, biotech firm CSL, and investment bank Macquarie Group, will be among those expected to report, as will foreign tech behemoths such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta.
These tech giants are the same US firms likely to be excluded from the global minimum tax rules under a G7 agreement reached last week. Under the agreement, US multinationals were exempted from paying more corporate tax overseas. Other G7 members gave in to protect their own companies from the US’s threat of retaliation.
Under the law change in Australia, a parent entity will provide its name, the names of all members of the group, a description of their approach to tax, and information about operations in certain countries. Included on the list are countries that attract multinationals due to reduced tax obligations, such as Singapore, Switzerland, and the Bahamas.
Everyone will be able to see where a multinational is operating. They will also see the types of business activities conducted, number of employees, assets, revenue, and taxes paid. Large profits in a country but little business activity and very few employees may raise questions, especially if a country has a low tax rate.
Benefits of better transparency
Access to the extra information will help investors assess the tax and reputational risk of a firm. A multinational that shifts profits to low tax countries may be audited and pay extra tax and penalties.
Increased transparency allows greater scrutiny. In turn, it is hoped multinationals will reduce aggressive tax planning due to potential risk to their reputation.
If multinationals shift less taxable profits out of Australia to low-tax or no-tax jurisdictions, this will lead to Australia receiving a greater share of much needed corporate tax revenue.
Increased tax transparency helps investors and tax authorities to better understand a multinational’s economic and tax geographic footprint. It is also important when it seems that US giants will be excluded from the 15% global minimum tax rules. Transparency by itself, however, does not lead to multinationals paying more corporate taxes.
By its very nature, tax avoidance is legal but pushes the boundaries by going against the spirit of the law. Indeed, many large multinationals argue tax is a legal obligation and is not voluntary. They maintain they pay the tax required of them according to the law.
Undoubtedly, Australia’s new public country-by-country regime is a positive step for tax transparency. As a country initiative, it has been applauded as groundbreaking and world leading. However, it is not a panacea to corporate tax avoidance.
To limit corporate tax avoidance and have multinationals pay more corporate taxes, we must get to the heart of the problem. We must change the law that dictates the way multinationals are taxed.
Kerrie Sadiq currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She has previously received research grants from CPA Australia and CAANZ.
Rodney Brown has previously received research grants from CPA Australia and CAANZ.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
An unpublished conference abstract presented at the ESHRE 41st Annual Meeting in Paris looks at microplastics in human reproductive fluids.
Prof Oliver Jones, Professor of Chemistry, RMIT University, said:
“It is hard to say much at all about this study without knowing the full details of the methods used and the precautions taken against background contamination. All we have to go on is a very brief abstract, not a peer-reviewed paper. Many previous scary-sounding headlines on microplastics in blood and food have turned out to be measurement errors by people unfamiliar with the problems of microplastic measurements1,2 and/or background contamination3. I don’t think lab contamination can be ruled out in this case. The most common plastic found, PTFE, is very widely used in laboratories, including IVF labs, and background contamination makes all forms of microplastic analysis extremely technically challenging.
“Even if we assume no measurement errors, the results are from a total of 51 individuals, so they are far from conclusive (a limitation acknowledged by the authors), and this study does not claim to demonstrate any harm. We would need these findings to be replicated, ideally in other laboratories around the world, before we could tell if this was a one-off event or not. So, while the data are certainly interesting, they are at best preliminary. I don’t think people who may be trying to conceive, either naturally or via IVF, need to be concerned.”
2 Mühlschlegel, P. et al. Lack of evidence for microplastic contamination in honey. Food Additives & Contaminants: Part A 2017, 34 (11), 1982-1989, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28665769/
Dr Channa Jayasena, Associate Professor in Reproductive Endocrinology, Imperial College London, said:
“Microplastics are able to interfere with how cells in different bits of the body speak to each other, and can cause cell damage. Unfortunately, it is no longer a surprise that microplastics find their way into the fluids which are essential for men and women to reproduce. This study was very small, and did not report fertility outcomes in the study participants. But it was well-designed study using state-of-the-art technology to show just how commonly microplastics enter reproductive fluids. They showed that most of the studied samples in men and women contained microplastics. Some previous studies have reported that microplastic exposure is associated with lower-than-normal fertility in men. The results contribute to a growing concern for public health – we don’t know what the impact of all types of microplastics are on reproductive function in men and women. Understanding this will help us understand how big a problem microplastics post for fertility in society.”
Dr Stephanie Wright, Associate Professor in Environmental Toxicology, Imperial College London, said:
“Without information on the sizes of the microplastic particles observed, it is challenging to interpret how meaningful this data is. There is a high potential for samples to become contaminated with microplastic throughout the sampling, laboratory processing, and analysis procedures. If stringent steps to minimise this are taken, other clues such as the size of the particles observed can be used to rule out such contamination, with there being a greater likelihood for smaller particles ( 0.01 mm) being absorbed and redistributed around the body. It is not a surprise that microplastics have been found – they are everywhere, even in the lab – but the data provided do not support that they are there as a result of human exposure as opposed to methodological artefact and must be interpreted with caution at this early stage.”
Prof Fay Couceiro, Professor of Environmental Pollution, and Head of the Microplastics Research Group, University of Portsmouth, said:
“As this is not peer reviewed and there is no detailed methodology it is difficult to give specific information on quality etc. Here are some general comments:
“The study is very interesting and considering the global reduction in fertility rates, looking at possible causes is very topical and timely. As the authors state, finding microplastics is not that surprising as we have found them in lots of other areas of our bodies. Presence is also not the same as impact and the authors are clear that while they have found microplastics in the reproductive fluids of both men and women, we still don’t know how they are affecting us. As a preliminary study the work is interesting, but more information is required on numbers of microplastics found, sizes, method blanks and any plastics used during the medical procedures before any real conclusions can be made. I look forward to reading the full article once it is ready. (A method blank is when you run the experimental steps, but with clean water, and then analyse that to see if you have any microplastics in it. This would let you know if there is any external contamination, and if the microplastics in the samples are from the reproductive fluid, or introduced from the digestion and analysis steps. It would be very unusual not to see any microplastics in the blanks if they are looking below 10 micrometres in size range. At that size, microplastics are in the air and very hard to get away from. If they only analysed larger particles then you tend to find less in your method blanks, but it is common practice to give these in a full paper so that people can see if the number you are finding in your samples is higher than in the blanks.)
Does the press release accurately reflect the science?
“To the extent of which data is available it does, it is clear this is only looking at the presence of microplastics and not impacts.
Is this good quality research? Are the conclusions backed up by solid data?
“Very hard to judge without more in depth information on methods, numbers found in blanks, size ranges of microplastics etc.
Is there enough data available to be able to judge the quality of this work?
“At this stage I would say no – as above the methods really need to be more detailed. Microplastics are everywhere and even with the best methods you find some in the blanks at the smaller sizes (less than 10 um). They say they looked in the containers but the method blank data is missing as are the actual numbers found, e.g. is it 10 microplastics per ml of SF? Is 10 significantly greater than what was found in the method blank? Size range is also very important and not mentioned anywhere I can see.
Is this a peer-reviewed journal publication or more preliminary?
“Preliminary.
How does this work fit with the existing evidence?
“It is expected as microplastics have been found in all bodily fluids/organs tested.
Have the authors accounted for confounders? Are there important limitations to be aware of?
“It is unclear if there is any plastic used in the collection of the samples as I am unfamiliar with the procedures – the storage vessel is glass but is plastic used in the follicular aspiration? Many medical instruments are made from plastic, is that the case here?
What are the implications in the real world? Is there any overspeculation?
“No – they are clear this is just a presence/absence experiment and that further work needs to take place to determine any impacts.”
Abstract title: ‘Unveiling the Hidden Danger: Detection and characterisation of microplastics in human follicular and seminal fluids’ by E. Gomez-Sanchez et al.It will be presented at the ESHRE 41st Annual Meeting in Paris, and the embargo lifted at 23:01 UK time on Tuesday 1 July 2025.
There is no paper.
Declared interests
Prof Oliver Jones: “I am a Professor of Chemistry at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. I conduct research into environmental pollution, including microplastics. I have no conflicts of interest to declare.”
Dr Channa Jayasena: “None.”
Dr Stephanie Wright: “Own research: MRC, NERC, NIHR, Common Seas, Minderoo Foundation, LECO;
To attend scientific meetings: American Chemistry Council – to attend a workshop on microplastic reference materials (2022); Minderoo Foundation – to attend workshops on microplastic measurement in human tissue (2024, 2025);
Current or previous advisory roles or committee membership: ILSI Europe, PlasticsEurope (BRIGID project), Cefic LRI projects advisory roles, have been a temporary member of UK Air Quality Expert Group;
Previous employment in companies: none.”
Prof Fay Couceiro: “I work in the field of microplastics but I was not involved in the study and I am not working with the authors. I am unaware of any conflict of interest.”
With burgers sizzling and classic rock thumping, many Americans revel in summer cookouts – at least until that wayward cousin asks for a “pop” in soda country, or even worse, a “coke” when they actually want a Sprite.
Few American linguistic debates have bubbled quite as long and effervescently as the one over whether a generic soft drink should be called a soda, pop or coke.
The word you use generally boils down to where you’re from: Midwesterners enjoy a good pop, while soda is tops in the North and far West. Southerners, long the cultural mavericks, don’t bat an eyelash asking for coke – lowercase – before homing in on exactly the type they want: Perhaps a root beer or a Coke, uppercase.
As a linguist who studies American dialects, I’m less interested in this regional divide and far more fascinated by the unexpected history behind how a fizzy “health” drink from the early 1800s spawned the modern soft drink’s many names and iterations.
The process of carbonating water was first discovered in the late 1700s. By the early 1800s, this carbonated water had become popular as a health drink and was often referred to as “soda water.” The word “soda” likely came from “sodium,” since these drinks often contained salts, which were then believed to have healing properties.
Given its alleged curative effects for health issues such as indigestion, pharmacists sold soda water at soda fountains, innovative devices that created carbonated water to be sold by the glass. A chemistry professor, Benjamin Stillman, set up the first such device in a drugstore in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1806. Its eventual success inspired a boom of soda fountains in drugstores and health spas.
These flavored, sweetened versions gave rise to the linking of the word “soda” with a sweetened carbonated beverage, as opposed to simple, carbonated water.
Seltzer – today’s popular term for such sparkling water – was around, too. But it was used only for the naturally carbonated mineral water from the German town Nieder-Selters. Unlike Perrier, sourced similarly from a specific spring in France, seltzer made the leap to becoming a generic term for fizzy water.
So how did “soda” come to be called so many different things in different places?
It all stems from a mix of economic enterprise and linguistic ingenuity.
The popularity of “soda” in the Northeast likely reflects the soda fountain’s longer history in the region. Since a lot of Americans living in the Northeast migrated to California in the mid-to-late 1800s, the name likely traveled west with them.
As for the Midwestern preference for “pop” – well, the earliest American use of the term to refer to a sparkling beverage appeared in the 1840s in the name of a flavored version called “ginger pop.” Such ginger-flavored pop, though, was around in Britain by 1816, since a Newcastle songbook is where you can first see it used in text. The “pop” seems to be onomatopoeic for the noise made when the cork was released from the bottle before drinking.
A jingle for Faygo touts the company’s ‘red pop.’
Linguists don’t fully know why “pop” became so popular in the Midwest. But one theory links it to a Michigan bottling company, Feigenson Brothers Bottling Works – today known as Faygo Beverages – that used “pop” in the name of the sodas they marketed and sold. Another theory suggests that because bottles were more common in the region, soda drinkers were more likely to hear the “pop” sound than in the Northeast, where soda fountains reigned.
As for using coke generically, the first Coca-Cola was served in 1886 by Dr. John Pemberton, a pharmacist at Jacobs’ Pharmacy in Atlanta and the founder of the company. In the 1900s, the Coca-Cola company tried to stamp out the use of “Coke” for “Coca-Cola.” But that ship had already sailed. Since Coca-Cola originated and was overwhelmingly popular in the South, its generic use grew out of the fact that people almost always asked for “Coke.”
Due to the growing popularity of soda water concoctions, eventually “soft drink” came to mean only such sweetened carbonated beverages, a linguistic testament to America’s enduring love affair with sugar and bubbles.
With the average American guzzling almost 40 gallons per year, you can call it whatever you what. Just don’t call it healthy.
Valerie M. Fridland 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.
The 1925 Scopes trial, in which a Dayton, Tennessee, teacher was charged with violating state law by teaching biological evolution, was one of the earliest and most iconic conflicts in America’s ongoing culture war.
Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” published in 1859, and subsequent scientific research made the case that humans and other animals evolved from earlier species over millions of years. Many late-19th-century American Protestants had little problem accommodating Darwin’s ideas – which became mainstream biology – with their religious commitments.
But that was not the case with all Christians, especially conservative evangelicals, who held that the Bible is inerrant – without error – and factually accurate in all that it has to say, including when it speaks on history and science.
One hundred years after the trial, and as we have documented in our scholarly work, the culture war over evolution and creationism remains strong – and yet, when it comes to creationism, much has also changed.
Holding to biblical inerrancy, these “fundamentalists” believed in the creation account detailed in chapter 1 of Genesis, in which God brought all life into being in six days. But most of these fundamentalists also accepted mainstream geology, which held that the Earth was millions of years old. Squaring a literal understanding of Genesis with an old Earth, they embraced either the “day-age theory” – that each Genesis day was actually a long period of time – or the “gap theory,” in which there was a huge gap of time before the six 24-hour days of creation.
This nascent fundamentalist movement initiated a campaign to pressure state legislatures to prohibit public schools from teaching evolution. One of these states was Tennessee, which in 1925 passed the Butler Act. This law made it illegal for public schoolteachers “to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”
The American Civil Liberties Union persuaded John Thomas Scopes, a young science teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, to challenge the law in court. The WCFA sprang into action, successfully persuading William Jennings Bryan – populist politician and outspoken fundamentalist – to assist the prosecution. In response, the ACLU hired famous attorney Clarence Darrow to serve on the defense team.
Inside the courtroom, the trial became a verbal duel between Bryan and Darrow regarding science and religion. But as the judge narrowed the proceedings to whether or not Scopes violated the law – a point that the defense readily admitted – it seemed clear that Scopes would be found guilty. Many of the reporters thus went home.
But the trial’s most memorable episode was yet to come. On July 20, Darrow successfully provoked Bryan to take the witness stand as a Bible expert. Due to the huge crowd and suffocating heat, the judge moved the trial outdoors.
The 3,000 or so spectators witnessed Darrow’s interrogation of Bryan, which was primarily intended to make Bryan and fundamentalism appear foolish and ignorant. Most significant, Darrow’s questions revealed that, despite Bryan’s’ assertion that he read the Bible literally, Bryan actually understood the six days of Genesis not as 24-hour days, but as six long and indeterminate periods of time.
American lawyer and politician William Jennings Bryan during the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tenn. Hulton Archive/Getty Image
The very next day, the jury found Scopes guilty and fined him US$100. Riley and the fundamentalists cheered the verdict as a triumph for the Bible and morality.
The fundamentalists and ‘The Genesis Flood’
But very soon that sense of triumph faded, partly because of news stories that portrayed fundamentalists as ignorant rural bigots. In one such example, a prominent journalist, H. L. Mencken, wrote in a Baltimore Sun column that the Scopes trial “serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land.”
The media ridicule encouraged many scholars and journalists to conclude that creationism and fundamentalism would soon disappear from American culture. But that prediction did not come to pass.
Instead, fundamentalists, including WCFA leader Riley, seemed all the more determined to redouble their efforts at the grassroots level.
But as Darrow’s interrogation of Bryan made obvious, it was not easy to square a literal reading of the Bible – including the six-day creation outlined in Genesis – with a scientific belief in an old Earth. What fundamentalists needed was a science that supported the idea of a young Earth.
“The Genesis Flood” and its version of flood geology remains ubiquitous among fundamentalists and other conservative Protestants.
Young Earth creationism
Today, opinion polls reveal that roughly one-quarter of all Americans are adherents of this newer strand of creationism, which rejects both mainstream geology as well as mainstream biology.
AiG’s tourist sites – the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, and the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky – have attracted millions of visitors since their opening in 2007 and 2016. Additional AiG sites are planned for Branson, Missouri, and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
Presented as a replica of Noah’s Ark, the Ark Encounter is a gigantic structure – 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, 51 feet high. It includes representations of animal cages as well as plush living quarters for the eight human beings who, according to Genesis chapters 6-8, survived the global flood. Hundreds of placards in the Ark make the case for a young Earth and a global flood that created the geological strata and formations we see today.
Besides AiG tourist sites, there is also an ever-expanding network of fundamentalist schools and homeschools that present young Earth creationism as true science. These schools use textbooks from publishers such as Abeka Books, Accelerated Christian Education and Bob Jones University Press.
The Scopes trial involved what could and could not be taught in public schools regarding creation and evolution. Today, this discussion also involves private schools, given that there are now at least 15 states that have universal private school choice programs, in which families can use taxpayer-funded education money to pay for private schooling and homeschooling.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kassem Fawaz, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Many apps and social media platforms collect detailed information about you as you use them, and sometimes even when you’re not using them.Malte Mueller/fStop via Getty images
You wake up in the morning and, first thing, you open your weather app. You close that pesky ad that opens first and check the forecast. You like your weather app, which shows hourly weather forecasts for your location. And the app is free!
But do you know why it’s free? Look at the app’s privacy settings. You help keep it free by allowing it to collect your information, including:
What devices you use and their IP and Media Access Control addresses.
Information you provide when signing up, such as your name, email address and home address.
App settings, such as whether you choose Celsius or Fahrenheit.
Your interactions with the app, including what content you view and what ads you click.
Inferences based on your interactions with the app.
Your location at a given time, including, depending on your settings, continuous tracking.
What websites or apps that you interact with after you use the weather app.
Information you give to ad vendors.
Information gleaned by analytics vendors that analyze and optimize the app.
This type of data collection is standard fare. The app company can use this to customize ads and content. The more customized and personalized an ad is, the more money it generates for the app owner. The owner might also sell your data to other companies.
Many apps, including the weather channel app, send you targeted advertising and sell your personal data by default. Jack West, CC BY-ND
You might also check a social media account like Instagram. The subtle price that you pay is, again, your data. Many “free” mobile apps gather information about you as you interact with them.
As an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and a doctoral student in computer science, we follow the ways software collects information about people. Your data allows companies to learn about your habits and exploit them.
It’s no secret that social media and mobile applications collect information about you. Meta’s business model depends on it. The company, which operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is worth US$1.48 trillion. Just under 98% of its profits come from advertising, which leverages user data from more than 7 billion monthly users.
Before mobile phones gained apps and social media became ubiquitous, companies conducted large-scale demographic surveys to assess how well a product performed and to get information about the best places to sell it. They used the information to create coarsely targeted ads that they placed on billboards, print ads and TV spots.
Mobile apps and social media platforms now let companies gather much more fine-grained information about people at a lower cost. Through apps and social media, people willingly trade personal information for convenience. In 2007 – a year after the introduction of targeted ads – Facebook made over $153 million, triple the previous year’s revenue. In the past 17 years, that number has increased by more than 1,000 times.
Five ways to leave your data
App and social media companies collect your data in many ways. Meta is a representative case. The company’s privacy policy highlights five ways it gathers your data:
First, it collects the profile information you fill in. Second, it collects the actions you take on its social media platforms. Third, it collects the people you follow and friend. Fourth, it keeps track of each phone, tablet and computer you use to access its platforms. And fifth, it collects information about how you interact with apps that corporate partners connect to its platforms. Many apps and social media platforms follow similar privacy practices.
Your data and activity
When you create an account on an app or social media platform, you provide the company that owns it with information like your age, birth date, identified sex, location and workplace. In the early years of Facebook, selling profile information to advertisers was that company’s main source of revenue. This information is valuable because it allows advertisers to target specific demographics like age, identified gender and location.
And once you start using an app or social media platform, the company behind it can collect data about how you use the app or social media. Social media keeps you engaged as you interact with other people’s posts by liking, commenting or sharing them. Meanwhile, the social media company gains information about what content you view and how you communicate with other people.
Advertisers can find out how much time you spent reading a Facebook post or that you spent a few more seconds on a particular TikTok video. This activity information tells advertisers about your interests. Modern algorithms can quickly pick up subtleties and automatically change the content to engage you in a sponsored post, a targeted advertisement or general content.
Your devices and applications
Companies can also note what devices, including mobile phones, tablets and computers, you use to access their apps and social media platforms. This shows advertisers your brand loyalty, how old your devices are and how much they’re worth.
Because mobile devices travel with you, they have access to information about where you’re going, what you’re doing and who you’re near. In a lawsuit against Kochava Inc., the Federal Trade Commission called out the company for selling customer geolocation data in August 2022, shortly after Roe v Wade was overruled. The company’s customers, including people who had abortions after the ruling was overturned, often didn’t know that data tracking their movements was being collected, according to the commission. The FTC alleged that the data could be used to identify households.
Information that apps can gain from your mobile devices includes anything you have given an app permission to have, such as your location, who you have in your contact list or photos in your gallery.
If you give an app permission to see where you are while the app is running, for instance, the platform can access your location anytime the app is running. Providing access to contacts may provide an app with the phone numbers, names and emails of all the people that you know.
Cross-application data collection
Companies can also gain information about what you do across different apps by acquiring information collected by other apps and platforms.
The settings on an Android phone show that Meta uses information it collects about you to target ads it shows you in its apps – and also in other apps and on other platforms – by default. Jack West, CC BY-ND
This is common with social media companies. This allows companies to, for example, show you ads based on what you like or recently looked at on other apps. If you’ve searched for something on Amazon and then noticed an ad for it on Instagram, it’s probably because Amazon shared that information with Instagram.
Companies, including Google, Meta, X, TikTok and Snapchat, can build detailed user profiles based on collected information from all the apps and social media platforms you use. They use the profiles to show you ads and posts that match your interests to keep you engaged. They also sell the profile information to advertisers.
Meanwhile, researchers have found that Meta and Yandex, a Russian search engine, have overcome controls in mobile operating system software that ordinarily keep people’s web-browsing data anonymous. Each company puts code on its webpages that used local IPs to pass a person’s browsing history, which is supposed to remain private, to mobile apps installed on that person’s phone, de-anonymizing the data. Yandex has been conducting this tracking since 2017, while Meta began in September 2024, according to the researchers.
What you can do about it
If you use apps that collect your data in some way, including those that give you directions, track your workouts or help you contact someone, or if you use social media platforms, your privacy is at risk.
Aside from entirely abandoning modern technology, there are several steps you can take to limit access – at least in part – to your private information.
Read the privacy policy of each app or social media platform you use. Although privacy policy documents can be long, tedious and sometimes hard to read, they explain how social media platforms collect, process, store and share your data.
Check a policy by making sure it can answer three questions: what data does the app collect, how does it collect the data, and what is the data used for. If you can’t answer all three questions by reading the policy, or if any of the answers don’t sit well with you, consider skipping the app until there’s a change in its data practices.
Remove unnecessary permissions from mobile apps to limit the amount of information that applications can gather from you.
Be aware of the privacy settings that might be offered by the apps or social media platforms you use, including any setting that allows your personal data to affect your experience or shares information about you with other users or applications.
These privacy settings can give you some control. We recommend that you disable “off-app activity” and “personalization” settings. “Off-app activity” allows an app to record which other apps are installed on your phone and what you do on them. Personalization settings allow an app to use your data to tailor what it shows you, including advertisements.
Review and update these settings regularly because permissions sometimes change when apps or your phone update. App updates may also add new features that can collect your data. Phone updates may also give apps new ways to collect your data or add new ways to preserve your privacy.
Use private browser windows or reputable virtual private networks software, commonly referred to as VPNs, when using apps that connect to the internet and social media platforms. Private browsers don’t store any account information, which limits the information that can be collected. VPNs change the IP address of your machine so that apps and platforms can’t discover your location.
Finally, ask yourself whether you really need every app that’s on your phone. And when using social media, consider how much information you want to reveal about yourself in liking and commenting on posts, sharing updates about your life, revealing locations you visited and following celebrities you like.
This article is part of a series on data privacy that explores who collects your data, what and how they collect, who sells and buys your data, what they all do with it, and what you can do about it.
Kassem Fawaz receives funding from the National Science Foundation. In the past, his research group has received unrestricted gifts from Meta and Google.
Jack West 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 November 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter peered through a small hole into the sealed tomb of King Tutankhamun. When asked if he could see anything, he replied: “Yes, wonderful things.” Within months, however, Carter’s financial backer Lord Carnarvon was dead from a mysterious illness. Over the following years, several other members of the excavation team would meet similar fates, fuelling legends of the “pharaoh’s curse” that have captivated the public imagination for just over a century.
For decades, these mysterious deaths were attributed to supernatural forces. But modern science has revealed a more likely culprit: a toxic fungus known as Aspergillus flavus. Now, in an unexpected twist, this same deadly organism is being transformed into a powerful new weapon in the fight against cancer.
Aspergillus flavus is a common mould found in soil, decaying vegetation and stored grains. It is infamous for its ability to survive in harsh environments, including the sealed chambers of ancient tombs, where it can lie dormant for thousands of years.
When disturbed, the fungus releases spores that can cause severe respiratory infections, particularly in people with weakened immune systems. This may explain the so-called “curse” of King Tutankhamun and similar incidents, such as the deaths of several scientists who entered the tomb of Casimir IV in Poland in the 1970s. In both cases, investigations later found that A flavus was present, and its toxins were probably responsible for the illnesses and deaths.
Despite its deadly reputation, Aspergillus flavus is now at the centre of a remarkable scientific finding. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered that this fungus produces a unique class of molecules with the potential to fight cancer.
These molecules belong to a group called ribosomally synthesised and post-translationally modified peptides, or RiPPs. RiPPs are made by the ribosome – the cell’s protein factory – and are later chemically altered to enhance their function.
While thousands of RiPPs have been identified in bacteria, only a handful have been found in fungi – until now.
The process of finding these fungal RiPPs was far from simple. The research team screened a dozen different strains or types of aspergillus, searching for chemical clues that might indicate the presence of these promising molecules. Aspergillus flavus quickly stood out as a prime candidate.
The researchers compared the chemicals from different fungal strains to known RiPP compounds and found promising matches. To confirm their discovery, they switched off the relevant genes and, sure enough, the target chemicals vanished, proving they had found the source.
Purifying these chemicals proved to be a significant challenge. However, this complexity is also what gives fungal RiPPs their remarkable biological activity.
The team eventually succeeded in isolating four different RiPPs from Aspergillus flavus. These molecules shared a unique structure of interlocking rings, a feature that had never been described before. The researchers named these new compounds “asperigimycins”, after the fungus in which they were found.
The next step was to test these asperigimycins against human cancer cells. In some cases, they stopped the growth of cancer cells, suggesting that asperigimycins could one day become a new treatment for certain types of cancer.
The team also worked out how these chemicals get inside cancer cells. This discovery is significant because many chemicals, like asperigimycins, have medicinal properties but struggle to enter cells in large enough quantities to be useful. Knowing that particular fats (lipids) can enhance this process gives scientists a new tool for drug development.
Further experiments revealed that asperigimycins probably disrupt the process of cell division in cancer cells. Cancer cells divide uncontrollably, and these compounds appear to block the formation of microtubules, the scaffolding inside cells that are essential for cell division.
Tremendous untapped potential
This disruption is specific to certain types of cells, so this may in turn reduce the risk of side-effects. But the discovery of asperigimycins is just the beginning. The researchers also identified similar clusters of genes in other fungi, suggesting that many more fungal RiPPs remain to be discovered.
Almost all the fungal RiPPs found so far have strong biological activity, making this an area with tremendous untapped potential. The next step is to test asperigimycins in other systems and models, with the hope of eventually moving to human clinical trials. If successful, these molecules could join the ranks of other fungal-derived medicines, such as penicillin, which revolutionised modern medicine.
The story of Aspergillus flavus is a powerful example of how nature can be both a source of danger and a wellspring of healing. For centuries, this fungus was feared as a silent killer lurking in ancient tombs, responsible for mysterious deaths and the legend of the pharaoh’s curse. Today, scientists are turning that fear into hope, harnessing the same deadly spores to create life-saving medicines.
This transformation, from curse to cure, highlights the importance of continued exploration and innovation in the natural world. Nature has in fact provided us with an incredible pharmacy, filled with compounds that can heal as well as harm. It is up to scientists and engineers to uncover these secrets, using the latest technologies to identify, modify and test new molecules for their potential to treat disease.
The discovery of asperigimycins is a reminder that even the most unlikely sources – such as a toxic tomb fungus – can hold the key to revolutionary new treatments. As researchers continue to explore the hidden world of fungi, who knows what other medical breakthroughs may lie just beneath the surface?
Justin Stebbing 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.
At some point between conception and early childhood, pain makes its debut. But when exactly that happens remains one of medicine’s most challenging questions.
Some have claimed that foetuses as young as twelve weeks can already be seen wincing in agony, while others have flat-out denied that even infants show any true signs of pain until long after birth.
New research from University College London offers fresh insights into this puzzle. By mapping the development of pain-processing networks in the brain – what researchers call the “pain connectome” – scientists have begun to trace exactly when and how our capacity for pain emerges. What they discovered challenges simple answers about when pain “begins”.
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The researchers used advanced brain imaging to compare the neural networks of foetuses and infants with those of adults, tracking how different components of pain processing mature over time. Until about 32 weeks after conception, all pain-related brain networks remain significantly underdeveloped compared with adult brains. But then development accelerates dramatically.
The sensory aspects of pain – the basic detection of harmful stimuli – mature first, becoming functional around 34 to 36 weeks of pregnancy. The emotional components that make pain distressing follow shortly after, developing between 36 and 38 weeks. However, the cognitive centres responsible for consciously interpreting and evaluating pain lag far behind, and remain largely immature by the time of birth, about 40 weeks after conception.
This staged development suggests that while late-term foetuses and newborns can detect and respond to harmful stimuli, they probably experience pain very differently from older children and adults. Most significantly, newborns probably can’t consciously evaluate their pain – they can’t form the thought: “This hurts and it’s bad!”
These findings represent the latest chapter in a long-running scientific debate that has swung dramatically over the centuries, often with profound consequences for medical practice.
For most physiologists in the 18th and 19th centuries, the perceived delicacy of the infant’s body meant that it must be exquisitely sensitive to pain, so much so that some have had their doubts if infants ever felt anything else. Birth, in particular, was imagined to be an extremely painful event for a newborn.
However, advances in embryology during the 1870s reversed this thinking. As scientists discovered that infant brains and nervous systems were far less developed than adult versions, many began questioning whether babies could truly feel pain at all. If the neural machinery wasn’t fully formed, how could genuine pain experiences exist?
This scepticism had troubling practical consequences. For nearly a century, many doctors performed surgery on infants without anaesthesia, convinced that their patients were essentially immune to suffering. The practice continued well into the 1980s in some medical centres.
Towards the end of the 20th century, public outrage about the medical treatment of infants and new scientific results turned the tables yet again. It was found that newborns exhibited many of the signs (neurological, physiological and behavioural) of pain after all, and that, if anything, pain in infants had probably been underestimated.
The ambiguous brain
The reason why there has been endless disagreement about infant pain is that we cannot access their experiences directly.
Sure, we can observe their behaviour and study their brains, but these are not the same thing. Pain is an experience, something that’s felt in the privacy of a person’s own mind, and that’s inaccessible to anyone but the person whose pain it is.
Of course, pain experiences are typically accompanied by telltale signs: be it the retraction of a body part from a sharp object or the increased activity of certain brain regions. Those we can measure. But the trouble is that no one behaviour or brain event is ever unambiguous.
The fact that an infant pulls back their hand from a pin prick may mean that it experiences the pricking as painful, but it may also just be an unconscious reflex. Similarly, the fact that the brain is simultaneously showing pain-related activity may be a sign of pain, but it may also be that the processing unfolds entirely unconsciously. We simply don’t know.
Perhaps the infant knows. But even if they do, they can’t tell us about their experiences yet, and until they can, scientists are left guessing. Fortunately, their guesses are becoming increasingly well informed, but for now, that is all they can be – guesses.
What would it take to get certainty? Well, it would require an explanation that connects our brains and behaviour to our conscious experiences. But so far, no scientifically respectable explanation of this kind has been forthcoming.
Laurenz Casser receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rosa Busquets, Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences, Pharmacy and Chemistry, Kingston University
Thirst: In Search of Freshwater, an exhibition at Wellcome Collection.Benjamin Gilbert., CC BY-NC-ND
A new exhibition in London (open until February 2026) called Thirst: In search of freshwater highlights how civilisations have treasured – and been intrinsically linked to – safe, clean water.
Synthetic toxic chemicals are introduced into the environment from the products we make, use and dispose of. This wasn’t a problem centuries ago, where we had a totally different manufacturing industry and technologies.
Some, such as PFAS from stain-resistant textiles or nonstick materials such as cookware, can be particularly difficult to remove from wastewater. PFAS don’t degrade easily, they resist conventional heat treatments and can easily pass through wastewater treatments, so they contaminate rivers or lakes that are sources of our drinking water.
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Testing for pollutants is even more critical in developing nations that lack sanitation and face drought or flooding.
Having to protect and conserve drinking water and its sources is as relevant today as it always has been.
For this exhibition, curator at the Wellcome Collection in London, Janice Li, has selected 125 historical objects, photographs and feats of engineering that link to drought, rain, glaciers, rivers and lakes. These three artefacts from Thirst illustrate how our relationship with water contamination has evolved:
1. Ancient water filters
Made from natural materials such as clay, water jug filters have been used for hundreds of years in every continent by ancient civilisations. They show that purifying water for drinking was commonplace. The sand and soil particles that naturally get suspended in water and removed by these filters would have carried microbes.
Water jug filters with Arabic inscription, found in Egypt, dating back to 900-1,200. Victoria and Albert Museum London/Wellcome Collection, CC BY-NC-ND
But in ancient times, pharmaceuticals and other drugs, pesticides, forever chemicals and microplastics would not have been a problem. Those filters could work relatively well despite being made of simple materials with wide pores.
Today, those ancient filters would no longer be effective. Modern water filters are made using more advanced materials which typically have small pores (called micropores and mesopores). For example, filters often include activated carbon (a highly porous type of carbon that can be manufactured to capture contaminants) or membranes that filter water. Only then is it safe for people to drink.
Lead water pipes (known as fistulae) were useful parts of a relatively advanced plumbing system that distributed drinking water throughout Roman cities. They are still common in water systems in our cities today. In the US, there are about 9.2 million lead service lines in use. Exposure to lead causes severe humanhealth problems. Lead exposure, not necessarily from drinking water only, was attributed to more than 1.5 million deaths in 2021.
A Roman lead water pipe that dates back to 1-300CE. Courtesy of Wellcome Collection/Science Museum Group., CC BY-NC-ND
It’s now understood that lead is neurotoxic and it can diffuse or spread from the pipes to drinking water. Lead from paints and batteries, including car batteries, can also contaminate drinking water.
To protect us from lead leaching or flaking off from pipes, some government agencies are calling for the replacement of lead pipes with copper or plastic pipes. Water companies routinely add phosphates (mined powder that contains phosphorus) to drinking water to help capture potential lead contamination and make it safe to drink.
3. The horror of unhealthy water
One caricature titled The Monster Soup by artist William Heath (1828) is part of the Wellcome Trust’s permanent collection. The graphics read “microcosms dedicated to the London Water companies” and “Monster soup, commonly called Thames Water being a correct representation of the precious stuff doled out to us”. The cartoon shows a lady so terrified at the sight of microbes in river water from the Thames that she drops her cup of tea.
Monster Soup by William Heath. Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection., CC BY-NC-ND
By 2030, 2 billion people will still not have safely managed drinking water and 1.2 billion will lack basic hygiene services. Drinking water will still be contaminated by bacteria such as E. coli and other dangerous pathogens that cause waterborne diseases. So advancing technologies to filter out contamination will be just as crucial in the future as it has been in the past.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Rosa Busquets receives funding from UKRI/ EU Horizons MSCA Staff exchanges Clean Water project 101131182, DASA, project ACC6093561. She is affiliated with Kingston University, UCL, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, UNEP EEAP.
There is a strange and worrying parallel between the breakneck speed at which Donald Trump has operated in the first few months of his presidency and the ever-accelerating pace at which information moves on social media platforms. Where in his first term he used Twitter, now, the 47th US president is using his own platform, TruthSocial, to announce changes of direction that are sometimes so fundamental that they change decades of US policy.
Social media has become a key tool of governing for Trump’s administration. He uses it both to make announcements and to drum up support for those announcements. His social media posts can move the markets and make or break careers. They can even, it seems, stop wars.
So when he used TruthSocial to announce a ceasefire between Israel and Iran on June 23, giving the two countries a deadline to stop firing missiles, it appears that neither of the antagonists were fully aware of the situation, given they carried on attacking each other. So an all-caps message followed: “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” he posted. “BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!” – adding, just in case anyone had any doubt he was serious: “DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”
Trump’s use of his TruthSocial platform began as he sought to re-establish himself from the political wilderness after the insurrection of January 6 2021. It has now become a tool of his extreme power and his willingness to use (and abuse) it – globally as well as domestically.
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FDR’s “fireside chats”, broadcast on the radio throughout the US in the 1930s, reached an estimated 80% of the population, showing he understood the key media principle of reach. Roosevelt would address his listeners as “my friends” and Americans came to understand them as seemingly intimate conversations with their president.
FDR dominated the airwaves at a time when many Americans hardly understood the important role that the federal government played in their own lives – and millions of households were only just getting mains electricity (thanks to the Rural Electrification Act of 1936). But radios were becoming a common mass medium and FDR perfectly understood how to use it. If you listen to the fireside chats, FDR may sound patrician – and at times formal – but his tone is also friendly, thoughtful and reassuring.
In Germany at around the same time, Adolf Hitler’s massive stadium speeches were very effective for people who were in the stadium and being lifted by the intensity of the crowd and all the carefully thought out visual cues. But when broadcast on radio, Hitler had nothing like Roosevelt’s ability to connect with people on a personal level.
Roosevelt was hardly the first leader – or even the first US president – to speak on the radio. But he was the first to master the medium. He figured out how to use its potential to deliver a key implicit message: that his government should and did take on a central role in people’s lives.
Equally, John F. Kennedy can be said to have “discovered” political television. Not just as a medium for political campaigns, debates and speeches – but also for putting across to a mass audience his role as the embodiment of American decency, beauty and masculinity: JFK’s White House as Camelot.
JFK was considered a master of the fast-growing medium of television.
Both Roosevelt and Kennedy were in several ways physically disabled and lived with chronic illness, yet through the “new medium” of their time were able to project an image of quintessentially American strength and trustworthiness. In part this was their own doing – but it’s also a testament to the power of the media they used for their time.
Mastering the medium
These possibilities of a medium used to its best advantage – for example, to be heard around the US, but still to project a sense of intimacy – have become known as the “affordances” of a medium. The medium afforded Roosevelt space to be authentic without showing his disability. Kennedy appeared young, fit and handsome – even when dependent on painkillers.
When a new medium is introduced, people start to play around with its affordances – and this applies to politicians too. Political leaders who develop a special aptitude for using the new medium to emphasise their unique style can become particularly successful, as has Donald Trump with his use of social media.
The US president rose to power helped by his adept use of many of Twitter’s attributes – the imposed brevity of his messages, the ease of retweeting, the tendency for other users to “pile on” (and the user anonymity, which tends to encourage pile-ons) to polarise American public debate.
Trump was forced off Twitter after the Capitol Hill insurrection of January 6 2021. So he came back with his own platform, TruthSocial, where he can also make the rules. And now he uses the platform to make foreign policy, trumpeting his positions (which can change with bewildering speed) on TruthSocial well before they can be announced by the White House press team, which often has to scramble to catch up.
When Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan penned his famous phrase: “The medium is the message” in his groundbreaking 1964 study, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, he meant to say that media form and content are not as distinct from one another as one might think and that the form of a medium of communication can shape society as much as its content. In Donald Trump’s use of social media, we are seeing this idea at work.
Sara Polak 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.
Shopping for clothes online is a risky business. How do you know if that top will be a good fit, or those shoes will definitely be the right colour? One popular solution to this predicament is to order lots of tops and lots of shoes, try them on at home, and send back all the ones you don’t want – often at no cost.
But that tactic can be expensive for the fashion retailer, which needs to pay for all those deliveries and returns. And now Asos, which sends millions of shipments every month, has started banning some customers for over-returning items – prompting something of a backlash.
The response by the retail giant, which says it wants to maintain a “commitment to offering free returns to all customers across all core markets”, also raises questions about the sustainability of the online fashion business model which Asos helped to create.
Many online retailers rely on the emotional highs of shopping. The excitement of placing an order, the anticipation of delivery, and the dopamine hit of unpacking a purchase is central to its popular customer experience.
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Online shopping generally has thrived on impulsive buying, with the option of returning items treated as a normal part of the process. Of course, even in the days before online shopping there would be customers who routinely returned items.
But by digitising and simplifying the process, the likes of Asos have helped this to happen on a massive scale. Shoppers have become completely used to ordering multiple sizes or styles with the express intention of returning most of the items they receive. Their homes effectively become fitting rooms.
And those customers could reasonably argue that online retailers often use digital strategies which encourage multi-item purchases.
Some sites remind shoppers of recently viewed products and provide suggestions of similar items, for example. There may be are prompts and nudges towards clothes which are frequently bought together.
Items are then sometimes temporarily reserved in a shopper’s basket for 60 minutes, creating a sense of urgency. Targeted emails and limited time offers drive bulging shopping baskets, encouraging more risk purchases and returns.
Yet returned items carry a significant cost. They may be unfit for resale and ultimately disposed of, which beyond the financial burden, has an environmental price.
In addition to creating landfill, each delivery and return has a carbon footprint. And although many younger consumers express support for sustainable practices, their buying behaviour continues to prioritise price and convenience.
But free returns have become part of the online fashion industry landscape. Research suggests that customers are simply more likely to buy something if returns are free.
And today’s tricky financial climate, marked by inflation and rising living costs will surely have made consumers even more cautious. Many will be reluctant to buy items that incur delivery and return costs.
Shopping around
Frustrations can then arise from unclear return policies, often buried in lengthy terms and conditions documents. Some of those banned by Asos say they were confused about the rules.
Automated customer service systems offering generic responses may then leave shoppers with no clear way to challenge these decisions.
Perhaps the wider issue here is that online shopping cannot fully replicate the benefits of shopping in store. In physical shops, customers can try on items before deciding.
But online, this can’t happen, so returns become fundamental to the decision-making process. For cost-conscious shoppers, avoiding unnecessary spending is essential. But if returns policies become harder to access, they may turn to other retailers which offer more certainty.
For example, retailers such as Zara and H&M, with a business model which mixes online convenience with a high street (or shopping mall) presence, offer the option to order online and then return in person.
This hybrid (or “omni-channel”) model appears to be driving consumers to physical shops for a blended experience which provides convenience and helps reduce return costs.
For Asos, doing something similar would require major investment (in bricks and mortar) and increased operational costs – so is perhaps an unlikely solution for the company.
But to balance sustainability, cost and customer satisfaction, Asos could explore other options. These might include clearer, more visible communication regarding “fair use” policies and their consequences. It could aim for more human interactions and better dialogue with customers it plans to ban.
Offering physical retail locations or return collection points to simplify the process and reduce the environmental impact and costs will provide customer flexibility. Overall, these areas will help create a better customer service experience.
Ultimately, Asos and other similar online clothing retailers must evolve. With changing consumer expectations, a challenging economic climate and rising operational costs, the model that defined these retailers’ early success cannot remain unchanged.
If they make adjustments, they may emerge stronger. If they do not, they risk sparking a customer exodus that would be hard to reverse.
Nic Sanders 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.
Self-determination theory (SDT) is one of the most well established and powerful approaches to wellbeing in psychological research literature. Yet it doesn’t seem to have broken through into popular discussions about wellbeing, happiness and self-help. That’s a shame, because it has so much to contribute.
A foundational idea in self-determination theory is that we have three basic psychological needs: for autonomy, competence and relatedness.
Autonomy is the need to be in control of your own life rather than being controlled by others. Competence is the need to feel skilful at the tasks one values or needs to thrive. Relatedness refers to feeling loved and cared for, and a sense of belonging to a group that provides social support.
If our basic psychological needs are met, then we are more likely to experience wellbeing. Symptoms include emotions such as joy, vitality and excitement because we’re doing the things we love, for example. We’ll probably have a sense of meaning and purpose because we live within a community whose culture we value.
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Conversely, when our basic needs are thwarted we should see symptoms of illbeing. Anger, frustration and boredom grow when our behaviour is controlled by parents, bureaucrats, bosses or other forces that press our energies towards their ends instead of ours.
Depression is liable when we our competence is overwhelmed by failure. And anxiety is often a social emotion that arises when we’re worried about whether our group cares for us.
So we should cultivate our basic psychological needs – but how? You need to discover what you want to do with your life, what skills to become competent in, who to relate to and what communities to contribute to.
Using motivation to find your way
Here’s where the second foundational idea in SDT can be super helpful, as I explain in my new book, Beyond Happy: How to rethink happiness and find fulfilment. SDT proposes a motivational spectrum running from extrinsic at one end to intrinsic at the other. Finding out where you are on the spectrum for a certain activity or task can help you work out how to be happier.
The more extrinsically motivated something is, the more self-regulation it requires. For example, when refugees flee their homes due to encroaching war, there is often a large part of them that wants to stay. Willpower is required to act. In contrast, intrinsically motivated behaviour springs spontaneously from us. You don’t need willpower to get stuck into your hobbies.
Each type of motivation comes with different emotional signals and deciphering them can help us find what values, behaviour and groups suit us.
The spectrum of motivation according to self-determination theory. CC BY-NC
“Identified” motivation, for example, sits between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. It occurs when we value an activity but don’t inherently enjoy it. That’s why success in identified behaviour is usually met with a feeling of accomplishment or the warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you do the right thing, like going a bit out of your way to put your rubbish in a bin.
In contrast, “introjected” motivation is where you value something contingent to the behaviour itself. Many of us loathe the gym, for example, but we want to be healthy. A child might not want to practice the cello, but they do want their parent’s approval.
Because introjection is relatively extrinsic, it requires willpower, and probably a bit more of it than for identified behaviour. Completion of an introjected activity is often met with relief rather than accomplishment and little desire to keep going.
Sometimes things that are dependent on introjected behaviour can make us unhappy. In teen dramas, for example, the protagonist often does something because they want to be popular, but when they win the approval of the cool kids they realise those kids are mean and lame.
Why money, power and status won’t make you happy
If that’s how you feel, you’ve found something inauthentic to you. Then there’s very little chance the introjected activity will lead to your wellbeing. In fact, SDT has identified some common values. You’ll recognise them immediately: popularity, fame, status, power, wealth and success.
They’re extrinsic because they’re not peculiar to you. If you get rich doing the thing you love, that’s great, but many of us never even think about what we love because we’re too busy thinking about how to get rich.
Extrinsic pursuits are ultimately bad for our wellbeing because they’re all poor substitutes for basic psychological needs. When our autonomy is thwarted by strict parents or disciplinarian teachers, we crave power. When we don’t know what sort of life to build and thus what skills we need competence in, we adopt other people’s notions of success instead.
Extrinsic pursuits often emerge from a wounded place and a defensive reaction. When we’re lonely or feel unloved for who we are, for example, we might compensate by seeking fame or popularity. We’ll start talking about our accomplishments on LinkedIn, for example.
The problem is that the people this attracts don’t value you specifically, only your power, status or money. You sense that if you ever lost those things, you would lose these people too.
SDT can help you learn to listen to your emotions and interpret your motivations instead, and use them to guide you towards the values, activities and people that are right for you.
For example, if you feel joyful and fulfilled when you solve a complex puzzle, perhaps consider a career that involves that activity, such as law or engineering. If such puzzles feel like torture, that’s a signal too. Perhaps something more relational or intuitive, like social work, would work better.
When you pursue things that are authentic to you it will nourish your sense of autonomy. You’ll build competence in those activities because they’re intrinsically motivated. And you’ll form deep relationships with the people you encounter because you genuinely like each other. Wellbeing will follow.
Mark Fabian 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 James Bond franchise has lain dormant for four years, since Daniel Craig’s swansong as 007, No Time to Die. A legal quarrel between Bond’s producers, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, and Amazon Studios resulted in a stalemate and production on a new Bond film has remained in limbo.
Nevertheless, speculation has been rife about which actor will next play Ian Fleming’s super-spy (the latest actor to be associated with the role is former Spider-man Tom Holland).
When news surfaced in February 2025 that Amazon MGM (Amazon purchased MGM in 2021) had effectively become Bond’s new custodians, critics and audiences alike expressed concern – to put it lightly. Many feared that Jeff Bezos was more interested in stimulating Amazon Prime membership by driving multiple content streams through spin-offs and merchandising than protecting Fleming’s legacy.
However, last week’s announcement that Denis Villeneuve has been appointed as the director of the 26th Bond film is a savvy move. It’s a declaration of intent that seeks to promote and market Amazon MGM as safe harbour for the Bond franchise.
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The announcement positions the next era of Bond as a prestigious exercise helmed by “a cinematic master”, not a journeyman director. Villeneuve was previously offered the opportunity to direct No Time to Die, but turned the role down because of his commitment to the Dune films.
By appointing Villeneuve, Amazon has managed to radically shift the public debate. Villeneuve is “much more than a technical director”, wrote Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw. “He is an alpha-grade auteur in the same league as Christopher Nolan.”
Other critics have pointed to his rare ability to “combine blockbuster momentum (and ticket sales) with the finer, more nuanced sensibilities of a filmmaker always concerned with slowing down, honing in on character and theme”.
Although Sam Mendes, director of Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015), came with artistic status, Villeneuve is something different – a marquee name frequently described as an auteur.
Villeneuve talks about his love for Bond.
Since his transition from making mostly low-key independent films in his native Canada to his arrival in Hollywood with Prisoners, starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal (2013), Villeneuve has amassed an impressively eclectic filmography.
He has proven that he is as comfortable shooting realistic crime thrillers (Sicario, 2015) and surrealist cinema that David Lynch would be proud of (Enemy, 2013), as he is with science fiction (Arrival, 2016, Blade Runner 2049, 2017, and the Dune films, 2021 and 2024).
Villeneuve’s Bond
Although Sicario may be the closest in terms of genre to the Bond films, establishing Villeneuve as a director who can expertly shoot action sequences, it is nevertheless difficult at this stage to conceptualise what a Villeneuve Bond film might be like.
Some critics have suggested that the director’s cinematic resume, eclectic as it is, might not bode well for Bond. The Hollywood Reporter’s film critic Benjamin Svetkey, for instance, worries that Villeneuve’s “lugubrious, meditative filmmaking” is sorely lacking in humour – which could be fatal for 007. “A certain amount of wit and winking is critical to the character,” he claims.
It is early days for Amazon MGM and Villeneuve. As yet, there is reportedly no treatment, no script, no writer and – more pointedly – no actor appointed to the role. Whatever happens, the 26th Bond film is likely to be a hard reboot that wipes the slate clean (again) after the fate of 007 in No Time to Die.
Villeneuve’s choice for Bond is unlikely to be as cartoonish as Pierce Brosnan’s iteration.
Although Villeneuve has said that he intends to honour tradition and that Bond is “sacred territory” for him, Bond’s capacity for revision and regeneration has been key to the franchise’s longevity.
As socoiologists Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott argue in their seminal study, Bond and Beyond, the figure of Bond has over the past six decades “been differently constructed at different moments,” with “different sets of ideological and cultural concerns”.
So what kind of Bond film Villeneuve ends up directing largely depends on the story and whichever actor is anointed as the next James Bond. It is doubtful that audiences will expect a campy pantomime Bond like Roger Moore, or a Bond with an invisible car, like Pierce Brosnan in the cartoonish Die Another Day (2002). Villeneuve’s choice of Casino Royale as his favourite 007 may provide a clue. But it is also unlikely that the director will be satisfied with slavishly repeating the past.
William Proctor 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.
Waking up from a nightmare can leave your heart pounding, but the effects may reach far beyond a restless night. Adults who suffer bad dreams every week were almost three times more likely to die before age 75 than people who rarely have them.
This alarming conclusion – which is yet to be peer reviewed – comes from researchers who combined data from four large long-term studies in the US, following more than 4,000 people between the ages of 26 and 74. At the beginning, participants reported how often nightmares disrupted their sleep. Over the next 18 years, the researchers kept track of how many participants died prematurely – 227 in total.
Even after considering common risk factors like age, sex, mental health, smoking and weight, people who had nightmares every week were still found to be nearly three times more likely to die prematurely – about the same risk as heavy smoking.
The team also examined “epigenetic clocks” – chemical marks on DNA that act as biological mileage counters. People haunted by frequent nightmares were biologically older than their birth certificates suggested, across all three clocks used (DunedinPACE, GrimAge and PhenoAge).
The science behind the silent scream
Faster ageing accounted for about 39% of the link between nightmares and early death, implying that whatever is driving the bad dreams is simultaneously driving the body’s cells towards the finish line.
How might a scream you never utter leave a mark on your genome? Nightmares happen during so-called rapid-eye-movement sleep when the brain is highly active but muscles are paralysed. The sudden surge of adrenaline, cortisol and other fight-or-flight chemicals can be as strong as anything experienced while awake. If that alarm bell rings night after night, the stress response may stay partially switched on throughout the day.
Continuous stress takes its toll on the body. It triggers inflammation, raises blood pressure and speeds up the ageing process by wearing down the protective tips of our chromosomes.
On top of that, being jolted awake by nightmares disrupts deep sleep, the crucial time when the body repairs itself and clears out waste at the cellular level. Together, these two effects – constant stress and poor sleep – may be the main reasons the body seems to age faster.
The idea that disturbing dreams foreshadow poor health is not entirely new. Earlier studies have shown that adults tormented by weekly nightmares are more likely to develop dementia and Parkinson’s disease, years before any daytime symptoms appear.
Growing evidence suggests that the brain areas involved in dreaming are also those affected by brain diseases, so frequent nightmares might be an early warning sign of neurological problems.
Nightmares are also surprisingly common. Roughly 5% of adults report at least one each week and another 12.5% experience them monthly.
Because they are both frequent and treatable, the new findings elevate bad dreams from a spooky nuisance to a potential public health target. Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, imagery-rehearsal therapy – where sufferers rewrite the ending of a recurrent nightmare while awake – and simple steps such as keeping bedrooms cool, dark and screen free have all been shown to curb nightmare frequency.
Before jumping to conclusions, there are a few important things to keep in mind. The study used people’s own reports of their dreams, which can make it hard to tell the difference between a typical bad dream and a true nightmare. Also, most of the people in the study were white Americans, so the findings might not apply to everyone.
And biological age was measured only once, so we cannot yet say whether treating nightmares slows the clock. Crucially, the work was presented as a conference abstract and has not yet navigated the gauntlet of peer review.
Despite these limitations, the study has important strengths that make it worth taking seriously. The researchers used multiple groups of participants, followed them for many years and relied on official death records rather than self-reported data. This means we can’t simply dismiss the findings as a statistical fluke.
If other research teams can replicate these results, doctors might start asking patients about their nightmares during routine check-ups – alongside taking blood pressure and checking cholesterol levels.
Therapies that tame frightening dreams are inexpensive, non-invasive and already available. Scaling them could offer a rare chance to add years to life while improving the quality of the hours we spend asleep.
Timothy Hearn 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 Labib Azzouz, Research Associate in Transport and Energy Innovation, University of Oxford
Electric vehicle chargers at a motorway service station in Grantham, England.Angus Reid/Shutterstock
The automotive and EV industry has repeatedly insisted that the UK needs more electric vehicle (EV) chargers to help motorists make the switch from conventional fossil-fuel burning cars.
The Labour government has announced £400 million to install EV chargers, mainly on streets in poorer residential neighbourhoods, in place of the Conservative’s £950 million rapid charging fund that was directed at installing chargers in motorway service stations.
Does it matter where these chargers are – and who pays to build them?
The short answer is yes, it does matter. Our research conducted at motorway and local EV charging stations across England – including those located in residential areas, high streets and community centres – indicates that these two types of infrastructure serve distinct groups of users and fulfil different purposes.
Suggesting that one can substitute for the other risks sending mixed signals to both the industry and the driving public.
We found that motorway charging stations tend to cater to wealthier men, who are more likely to own premium EVs with long-range batteries and better performance. Many of these drivers have access to home chargers, so their use of public chargers is only for occasional, long-distance travel for business, leisure, or holidays – trips that require chargers along motorways.
Convenience and charging speed are often more important than the price of public charging, particularly when the travel costs of these drivers are covered by their employers.
Local public charging stations, on the other hand, serve more diverse groups. These include drivers from lower-income households who are more likely to own older and smaller EVs with shorter ranges. Access to home charging is often limited, especially for people living in flats or urban areas without driveways, garages or off-street parking.
Local chargers are also vital for taxi and delivery drivers who depend on their vehicles for work and make frequent short trips throughout the day. There are many professional drivers without access to workplace charging stations who need alternative local provision – something the Conservative government recognised in its 2022 EV charging strategy.
Ultimately, the transition to EVs should take a balanced approach that carefully considers social equity, economic viability and environmental impact.
Different locations serve different drivers
Motorway charging stations are commercially attractive to private investors, such as energy companies, specialist charging providers and car manufacturers, despite their higher upfront costs and complex requirements.
This is because service stations offer greater short-term revenue due to their ability to set premium prices. This is a result of there being limited alternatives and high demand for rapid charging, especially among long-distance travellers, and the willingness of EV drivers to pay for speed and convenience – unlike in more price-sensitive neighbourhood settings.
Unsurprisingly, the government found that the rapid deployment of motorway chargers in recent years has been largely driven by the private sector. Our research highlighted that these revenues could be enhanced by a broader range of retail, dining and relaxation amenities, turning the time waiting for a car to charge into a more productive and pleasurable experience.
Residential charging stations may not offer high profits per charge, but they typically require lower capital investment and benefit from consistent and predictable use. They are also suited to measures for reducing strain on the grid and balancing energy supply and demand.
These measures include tariffs that make it cheaper to charge EVs during off-peak hours, or technology that allows cars to feed electricity stored in batteries back into the grid. These features make them appropriate for public funding, where return on investment is measured not just in profit but in value for the public.
Considering that local EV charging serves those who do not have access to home charging and who drive for a living, the case for public funding is even stronger. These sorts of chargers make switching to an EV easier for different groups.
For example, safe and carefully placed public chargers could help more women switch to EVs – although our research suggests that, while “careful placement” might refer to residential areas, it doesn’t necessarily mean on streets. Well-lit car parks and community destinations are sometimes considered safer options.
Charging points outside a community centre in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. AlanMorris/Shutterstock
By helping EV drivers make frequent short trips, local chargers can also significantly reduce urban air pollution, emissions and noise, contributing to more liveable, healthier cities.
That said, motorway charging stations and those near key transport corridors still play a crucial role in a comprehensive national network, and public funding may be required in more peripheral and rural areas of the UK where installations lag and commercial interest is limited.
While long-distance trips are less frequent than short ones, they account for a disproportionately large share of energy use and emissions. Switching such trips to electric will be essential to reaching net zero goals.
It seems reasonable to prioritise public investment in local EV charging infrastructure to support a fairer EV transition, but this should not be limited to on-street chargers. Investment is needed in residential and non-residential areas, public car parks, community centres and workplaces.
Different types of EV charging are not interchangeable – all are needed to support the switch.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Labib Azzouz has received funding from the UK Research and Innovation via the UK Energy Research Centre and Innovate UK as part of the Energy Superhub Oxford (ESO) project.
Hannah Budnitz receives government funding from UK Research and Innovation grants via the Economic and Social Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. She has also previously received funding from Innovate UK and the Department for Transport.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Samantha Abbott, Doctoral Researcher, Department of Sport Science, Nottingham Trent University
England’s Beth Mead cheering on podium after win v Germany in the Women European Championship Final 2022photographyjp/Shutterstock
Think back to the last time you had a cold or the flu. Now imagine stepping onto the pitch for a European Cup final, while battling through those symptoms. For elite athletes, illness can strike at the worst possible time – and it could hit women harder.
Research suggests that female athletes are more susceptible to cold and flu-like illnesses than their male counterparts. For England women’s national football team, the Lionesses, this risk only increases before a major tournament like the Euros.
Close contact, shared kit, disrupted sleep and travel all add up to a perfect storm for infection. But targeted nutritional strategies, alongside good sleep and hand hygiene, can offer a crucial line of defence.
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1. Fuel first: energy matters for immunity
Before anything else, players need to eat enough. Energy supports both performance and immune function. In fact, female athletes who didn’t meet their energy needs in the run-up to the 2016 Olympics were four times more likely to report cold or flu symptoms.
This is especially relevant in women’s football, where low energy and carbohydrate intake has been documented among professional players and recreational players too. Regular meals and snacks that include carbohydrate-rich foods like oats, bread and pasta, especially around training, are essential to meet energy demands and support immune health.
2. Eat the rainbow
Athletes are often encouraged to go beyond the public’s five-a-day fruit and veg target, aiming instead for eight to ten portions daily. Why? Because colourful plant foods are packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds: all vital for immunity.
Each colour offers unique benefits. For instance, red fruits and vegetables, such as tomatoes, contain lycopene, a powerful antioxidant. Orange produce like carrots get their colour from beta-carotene, which is converted by the body into vitamin A – a key vitamin for immune health.
Vitamin C has long been linked with reducing the risk and severity of cold and flu symptoms. One Cochrane review found that regular vitamin C intake halved the risk of illness in physically active people.
However, more isn’t always better. Long-term use of high-dose vitamin C supplements could blunt training adaptations – the structural and functional changes the body undergoes in response to repeated exercise – because of its anti-inflammatory effects. That’s why vitamin C is most effective when used strategically, such as during high-risk periods like travel or intense competition. Good food sources include oranges, kiwis, blackcurrants, red and yellow peppers, broccoli and even potatoes.
Probiotics, found in fermented foods like kefir and kimchi or in supplement form, have been shown to reduce the duration and severity of respiratory illnesses in athletes. Prebiotics have similarly shown promise. In one study, a 24-week prebiotic intervention in elite rugby players reduced the duration of cold and flu symptoms by over two days.
In the build-up to the Euros, including probiotic-rich foods in their diet or taking a daily prebiotic and probiotic supplement may help players stay healthy and return to training faster if they do get ill.
5. Zinc lozenges: first aid for a sore throat
If cold-like symptoms do appear, zinc lozenges can offer fast-acting relief. Zinc has antiviral, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. When zinc is delivered as a lozenge, it acts directly in the throat, where many infections begin. Taken within 24 hours of symptoms starting, zinc lozenges could shorten illness duration by a third.
But caution is key. Long-term use of high-dose zinc supplements can actually suppress immune function. Zinc lozenges should only be used short-term at symptom onset, not as a daily supplement.
Staying match-ready during major tournaments means more than just tactical drills and fitness. Nutrition is a powerful ally in illness prevention, especially for women’s teams like the Lionesses. From fuelling adequately to supporting gut health and knowing when to supplement, these nutritional strategies can make the difference between sitting on the bench and bringing a trophy home.
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 painless, non-invasive brain stimulation technique can significantly improve how young adults learn maths, my colleagues and I found in a recent study. In a paper in PLOS Biology, we describe how this might be most helpful for those who are likely to struggle with mathematical learning because of how their brain areas involved in this skill communicate with each other.
Maths is essential for many jobs, especially in science, technology, engineering and finance. However, a 2016 OECD report suggested that a large proportion of adults in developed countries (24% to 29%) have maths skills no better than a typical seven-year-old. This lack of numeracy can contribute to lower income, poor health, reduced political participation and even diminished trust in others.
Education often widens rather than closes the gap between high and low
achievers, a phenomenon known as the Matthew effect. Those who start with an advantage, such as being able to read more words when starting school, tend to pull further ahead. Stronger educational achievement has been also associated with socioeconomic status, higher motivation and greater engagement with material learned during a class.
Biological factors, such as genes, brain connectivity, and chemical signalling, have been shown in some studies to play a stronger role in learning outcomes than environmental ones. This has been well-documented in different areas, including maths, where differences in biology may explain educational achievements.
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To explore this question, we recruited 72 young adults (18–30 years old) and taught them new maths calculation techniques over five days. Some received a placebo treatment. Others received transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS), which delivers gentle electrical currents to the brain. It is painless and often imperceptible, unless you focus hard to try and sense it.
It is possible tRNS may cause long term side effects, but in previous studies my team assessed participants for cognitive side effects and found no evidence for it.
Participants who received tRNS were randomly assigned to receive it in one of two different brain areas. Some received it over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region critical for memory, attention, or when we acquire a new cognitive skill. Others had tRNS over the posterior parietal cortex, which processes maths information, mainly when the learning has been accomplished.
Before and after the training, we also scanned their brains and measured levels of key neurochemicals such as gamma-aminobutyric acid (gaba), which we showed previously, in a 2021 study, to play a role in brain plasticity and learning, including maths.
Some participants started with weaker connections between the prefrontal and parietal brain regions, a biological profile that is associated with poorer learning. The study results showed these participants made significant gains in learning when they received tRNS over the prefrontal cortex.
Stimulation helped them catch up with peers who had stronger natural connectivity. This finding shows the critical role of the prefrontal cortex in learning and could help reduce educational inequalities that are grounded in neurobiology.
How does this work? One explanation lies in a principle called stochastic resonance. This is when a weak signal becomes clearer when a small amount of random noise is added.
In the brain, tRNS may enhance learning by gently boosting the activity of underperforming neurons, helping them get closer to the point at which they become active and send signals. This is a point known as the “firing threshold”, especially in people whose brain activity is suboptimal for a task like maths learning.
It is important to note what this technique does not do. It does not make the best
learners even better. That is what makes this approach promising for bridging gaps,
not widening them. This form of brain stimulation helps level the playing field.
Our study focused on healthy, high-performing university students. But in similar studies on children with maths learning disabilities (2017) and with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (2023) my colleagues and I found tRNS seemed to improve their learning and performance in cognitive training.
I argue our findings could open a new direction in education. The biology of the learner matters, and with advances in knowledge and technology, we can develop tools that act on the brain directly, not just work around it. This could give more people the chance to get the best benefit from education.
In time, perhaps personalised, brain-based interventions like tRNS could support learners who are being left behind not because of poor teaching or personal circumstances, but because of natural differences in how their brains work.
Of course, very often education systems aren’t operating to their full potential because of inadequate resources, social disadvantage or systemic barriers. And so any brain-based tools must go hand-in-hand with efforts to tackle these obstacles.
Roi Cohen Kadosh serves on the scientific advisory boards of Neuroelectrics Inc., and Innosphere Ltd. He is the founder and shareholder of Cognite Neurotechnology Ltd. He received funding from the Wellcome Trust, UKRI, the British Academy, IARPA, DASA, Joy Ventures, the James S McDonnell Foundation, and the European Union. He is affiliated with the University of Surrey.
Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Glenn Ivey – Maryland (4th District)
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies and Representative Steny Hoyer, Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, along with Governor Wes Moore, Senator Angela Alsobrooks and Representatives Glenn Ivey, Kweisi Mfume, Jamie Raskin, Sarah Elfreth, and Johnny Olszewski (all D-Md.), and Prince George’s County Executive Aisha N. Braveboy released the following statement regarding the Administration’s attempt to reprogram funding intended for the new FBI Headquarters in Greenbelt, Md.
“The FBI deserves a headquarters that meets their security and mission needs – and following an extensive, thorough, and transparent process, Greenbelt, Maryland, was selected as the site that best meets those requirements. Not only was this decision final, the Congress appropriated funds specifically for the purpose of the new, consolidated campus to be built in Maryland. Now the Administration is attempting to redirect those funds – both undermining Congressional intent and dealing a blow to the men and women of the FBI – since we know that a headquarters located within the District would not satisfy their security needs. Simply moving down the street would ignore the real threats the Bureau faces and further jeopardize the safety of those protecting our communities. That’s why we will be fighting back against this proposal with every tool we have.”
Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Glenn Ivey – Maryland (4th District)
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies and Representative Steny Hoyer, Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, along with Governor Wes Moore, Senator Angela Alsobrooks and Representatives Glenn Ivey, Kweisi Mfume, Jamie Raskin, Sarah Elfreth, and Johnny Olszewski (all D-Md.), and Prince George’s County Executive Aisha N. Braveboy released the following statement regarding the Administration’s attempt to reprogram funding intended for the new FBI Headquarters in Greenbelt, Md.
“The FBI deserves a headquarters that meets their security and mission needs – and following an extensive, thorough, and transparent process, Greenbelt, Maryland, was selected as the site that best meets those requirements. Not only was this decision final, the Congress appropriated funds specifically for the purpose of the new, consolidated campus to be built in Maryland. Now the Administration is attempting to redirect those funds – both undermining Congressional intent and dealing a blow to the men and women of the FBI – since we know that a headquarters located within the District would not satisfy their security needs. Simply moving down the street would ignore the real threats the Bureau faces and further jeopardize the safety of those protecting our communities. That’s why we will be fighting back against this proposal with every tool we have.”
New York, July 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Univest Securities, LLC (“Univest”), a member of FINRA and SIPC, and a full-service investment bank and securities broker-dealer firm based in New York, today announced the closing of registered direct offering (the “Offering”), for its client Ostin Technology Group Co., Ltd. (Nasdaq: OST) (the “Company”), a leading supplier of display modules and polarizers based in China.
Under the terms of the securities purchase agreement, the Company has agreed to sell to a single institutional investor for the purchase and sale of an aggregate of 41,666,667 of the Company’s Class A ordinary share, par value $0.001 per share (the “Shares”) (or pre-funded warrants in lieu thereof) at a purchase price of $0.12 per share in a registered direct offering. The purchase price for the pre-funded warrants is identical to the purchase price for Shares, less the exercise price of $0.001 per share.
The aggregate gross proceeds to the Company of this offering were approximately $5 million.
Univest Securities, LLC acted as the sole placement agent.
The registered direct offering was made pursuant to a shelf registration statement on Form F-3 (File No. 333-279177) previously filed by the Company and declared effective by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) on May 28, 2024. A final prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus describing the terms of the proposed offering were filed with the SEC and are available on the SEC’s website located at http://www.sec.gov. Electronic copies of the final prospectus supplement and the accompanying prospectus may be obtained, by contacting Univest Securities, LLC at info@univest.us, or by calling +1 (212) 343-8888.
This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor will there be any sales of such securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of such jurisdiction. Copies of the prospectus supplement relating to the registered direct offering, together with the accompanying base prospectus, can be obtained at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.
About Univest Securities, LLC
Registered with FINRA since 1994, Univest Securities, LLC provides a wide variety of financial services to its institutional and retail clients globally including brokerage and execution services, sales and trading, market making, investment banking and advisory, and wealth management. It strives to provide clients with value-add service and focuses on building long-term relationships with its clients. As a prominent name on Wall Street, Univest has successfully raised over $1.3 billion in capital for issuers across the globe since 2019 and has completed approximately 100 transactions spanning a wide array of investment banking services in various industries, including technology, life sciences, industrial, consumer goods, etc. For more information, please visit: https://www.univest.us/.
About Ostin Technology Group Co., Ltd.
Founded in 2010, the Company is a supplier of display modules and polarizers in China. The Company designs, develops, and manufactures TFT-LCD display modules in a wide range of sizes and customized sizes which are mainly used in consumer electronics, outdoor LCD displays, and automotive displays. The Company also manufactures polarizers used in the TFT-LCD display modules.
This press release contains forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance, and underlying assumptions and other statements that are other than statements of historical facts. When the Company uses words such as “may, “will, “intend,” “should,” “believe,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “project,” “estimate” or similar expressions that do not relate solely to historical matters, it is making forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results to differ materially from the Company’s expectations discussed in the forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to uncertainties and risks including, but not limited to, the uncertainties related to market conditions and the completion of the initial public offering on the anticipated terms or at all, and other factors discussed in the “Risk Factors” section of the registration statement filed with the SEC. For these reasons, among others, investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon any forward-looking statements in this press release. Additional factors are discussed in the Company’s filings with the SEC, which are available for review at www.sec.gov. Univest Securities LLC and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that arise after the date hereof.
For more information, please contact:
Univest Securities, LLC Edric Guo Chief Executive Officer 75 Rockefeller Plaza, Suite 18C New York, NY 10019 Phone: (212) 343-8888 Email: info@univest.us
Continues the company’s disciplined capital allocation strategy of targeted bolt-on acquisitions and proven ability to build trusted, proprietary partnerships with family-owned businesses
Acquisition expands Ingersoll Rand competencies and capabilities in high-growth end markets
Purchase made at an attractive low-double-digit multiple with expected post-synergy multiple in the mid-to-high single digits
DAVIDSON, N.C., July 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Ingersoll Rand Inc., (NYSE: IR) a global provider of mission-critical flow creation and life science and industrial solutions, has acquired Termomeccanica Industrial Compressors S.p.A. (“TMIC”) and its subsidiary Adicomp S.p.A. (“Adicomp”) (collectively “TMIC/Adicomp”) with a purchase price of approximately €160 million.
TMIC is an international leader in the design and production of air and gas compressors with over 100 years of experience and innovation. Its subsidiary Adicomp provides engineered-to-order (ETO) solutions in the renewable natural gas (RNG) industry. TMIC/Adicomp are based in Italy, with an existing presence in North America and recent expansion into Brazil and India, and improve the company’s RNG gas-ends and packaging presence. The businesses will join the Industrial Technologies and Services (IT&S) segment.
“TMIC/Adicomp are leading businesses in their respective industries, and today we welcome them to Ingersoll Rand,” said Vicente Reynal, chairman and chief executive officer of Ingersoll Rand. “These companies strengthen our core capabilities and broaden our service offerings, enabling us to deliver greater value to our customers while advancing our long-term growth strategy for shareholders. Additionally, these companies reflect the strength of our M&A flywheel and reaffirm our ability to partner with family-owned businesses on a proprietary basis.”
About Ingersoll Rand Inc.
Ingersoll Rand Inc. (NYSE: IR), driven by an entrepreneurial spirit and ownership mindset, is dedicated to Making Life Better for our employees, customers, shareholders, and planet. Customers lean on us for exceptional performance and durability in mission-critical flow creation and life science and industrial solutions. Supported by over 80+ respected brands, our products and services excel in the most complex and harsh conditions. Our employees develop customers for life through their daily commitment to expertise, productivity, and efficiency. For more information, visit www.IRCO.com.
Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements related to Ingersoll Rand Inc.’s (the “Company” or “Ingersoll Rand”) expectations regarding the performance of its business, its financial results, its liquidity and capital resources and other non-historical statements. These forward-looking statements generally are identified by the words “believe,” “project,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “forecast,” “outlook,” “target,” “endeavor,” “seek,” “predict,” “intend,” “strategy,” “plan,” “may,” “could,” “should,” “will,” “would,” “will be,” “on track to,” “will continue,” “will likely result,” “guidance” or the negative thereof or variations thereon or similar terminology generally intended to identify forward-looking statements. All statements other than historical facts are forward-looking statements.
These forward-looking statements are based on Ingersoll Rand’s current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially from these current expectations. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those indicated or anticipated by such forward-looking statements. The inclusion of such statements should not be regarded as a representation that such plans, estimates, or expectations will be achieved. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such plans, estimates or expectations include, among others, (1) adverse impact on our operations and financial performance due to natural disaster, catastrophe, global pandemics (including COVID-19), geopolitical tensions, cyber events, or other events outside of our control; (2) unexpected costs, charges, or expenses resulting from completed and proposed business combinations; (3) uncertainty of the expected financial performance of the Company; (4) failure to realize the anticipated benefits of completed and proposed business combinations; (5) the ability of the Company to implement its business strategy; (6) difficulties and delays in achieving revenue and cost synergies; (7) inability of the Company to retain and hire key personnel; (8) evolving legal, regulatory, and tax regimes; (9) changes in general economic and/or industry specific conditions; (10) actions by third parties, including government agencies; and (11) other risk factors detailed in Ingersoll Rand’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), as such factors may be updated from time to time in its periodic filings with the SEC, which are available on the SEC’s website at http://www.sec.gov. The foregoing list of important factors is not exclusive.
Any forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release. Ingersoll Rand undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information or development, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any of these forward-looking statements.
AUSTIN, Texas, July 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — BigCommerce (Nasdaq: BIGC), a leading open SaaS ecommerce platform for B2C and B2B businesses, announced today that former Adobe Fellow and Vice President of Technology Anil Kamath has joined the BigCommerce Board of Directors.
“Joining the Board of BigCommerce is an exciting opportunity to support BigCommerce’s innovation agenda through strategic guidance on data and AI,” Kamath said. “I see immense potential to leverage predictive analytics, personalization and intelligent automation to drive transformative growth for merchants. Ecommerce is one of the most dynamic frontiers for applied AI, and I’m thrilled to contribute to a vision that empowers businesses to scale smarter, serve customers better and innovate faster.”
Over his 30-year career as a technology entrepreneur, advisor and leader, Kamath has developed expertise in business strategy, scaling companies, strategic oversight, governance and corporate development that, combined with his industry perspective, will enable him to provide BigCommerce with critical strategic guidance.
During his 13 years at Adobe, Kamath was responsible for data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence for the Adobe Experience Cloud. Prior to joining Adobe, he was the founder and primary architect of Efficient Frontier, a digital ad buying platform that managed more than $2 billion in advertising spend until its acquisition by Adobe. He led the integration of Efficient Frontier into Adobe Marketing Cloud and developed data science-driven solutions that optimized customer acquisition, engagement, retention and growth across B2C and B2B businesses. More recently, he spearheaded the generative AI transformation for enterprise marketing, leading to the launch of Gen Studio for Performance Marketing.
After a successful 13-year tenure at Adobe, Kamath transitioned earlier this year to focus on mentoring and supporting early-stage innovation. He is a longtime member of the Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs, as well as lead mentor and advisor at StartX, a non-profit accelerator for Stanford University startups.
“Anil brings an extensive blend of strong leadership and valuable technological expertise to BigCommerce at a time when our industry and our business are going through some exciting changes,” said Travis Hess, CEO of BigCommerce. “His addition to our Board will help strengthen BigCommerce’s core offerings as well as inform the innovations we are building to drive business outcomes for merchants. We are excited to leverage his experience and look forward to Anil’s perspectives and contributions.”
Kamath was appointed to the vacancy created upon the departure of BigCommerce board member Lawrence Bohn who had served since 2011, when he became BigCommerce’s first investor through General Catalyst’s Series A investment in the company.
“I want to personally thank Larry for his many significant contributions to the growth and success of BigCommerce,” Hess said. “Since the earliest days of the company, Larry has been invaluable to BigCommerce, and throughout his tenure, he has championed a deep belief in our mission and strategy.”
About BigCommerce BigCommerce (Nasdaq: BIGC) is a leading open SaaS and composable ecommerce platform that empowers brands, retailers, manufacturers and distributors of all sizes to build, innovate and grow their businesses online. BigCommerce provides its customers sophisticated professional-grade functionality, customization and performance with simplicity and ease-of-use. Tens of thousands of B2C and B2B companies across 150 countries and numerous industries rely on BigCommerce, including Coldwater Creek, Harvey Nichols, King Arthur Baking Co., MKM Building Supplies, United Aqua Group and Uplift Desk. For more information, please visit www.bigcommerce.com or follow us on X and LinkedIn.
Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “outlook,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “project,” “will,” “would,” “should,” “could,” “can,” “predict,” “potential,” “strategy,” “target,” “explore,” “continue,” or the negative of these terms, and similar expressions intended to identify forward-looking statements. However, not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. By their nature, these statements are subject to numerous uncertainties and risks, including factors beyond our control, that could cause actual results, performance or achievement to differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. These assumptions, uncertainties and risks include that, among others, our expectations regarding our revenue, expenses, sales, and operations; anticipated trends and challenges in our business and the markets in which we operate; the war involving Russia and Ukraine and the potential impact on our operations, global economic and geopolitical conditions; the impacts of changes in U.S. trade policy and global tariffs; our anticipated areas of investments and expectations relating to such investments; our anticipated cash needs and our estimates regarding our capital requirements and refinancing; our ability to compete in our industry and innovation by our competitors; our ability to anticipate market needs or develop new or enhanced services to meet those needs; our ability to manage growth and to expand our infrastructure; our ability to establish and maintain intellectual property rights; our ability to manage expansion into international markets and new industries; our ability to hire and retain key personnel; our ability to successfully identify, manage, and integrate any existing and potential acquisitions; our ability to adapt to emerging regulatory developments, technological changes, and cybersecurity needs; the anticipated effect on our business of litigation to which we are or may become a party; the anticipated benefits and opportunities related to past and ongoing restructuring may not be realized or may take longer to realize than expected; our ability to manage key executive succession and retention or continue to attract qualified personnel; our ability to implement a go-to-market strategy that focuses on efficient profitable revenue growth, operating leverage, and healthy cash flow, may be impacted by unforeseen challenges in streamlining our organization and adapting to market dynamics; and our ability to remediate the material weakness could negatively affect our business. Additional risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements are included under the caption “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, our Quarterly Report for the quarter ended March 31, 2025, and the future quarterly and current reports that we file with the SEC. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date the statements are made and are based on information available to BigCommerce at the time those statements are made and/or management’s good faith belief as of that time with respect to future events. BigCommerce assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they were made, except as required by law.
BigCommerce® is a registered trademark of BigCommerce Pty. Ltd. Third-party trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kerrie Sadiq, Professor of Taxation, QUT Business School, and ARC Future Fellow, Queensland University of Technology
The beginning of the financial year means for the first time in Australia the public will see previously unreleased tax reports produced by multinational taxpayers.
These documents, known as country-by-country reports, or CbCR for short, contain information about the tax practices of large Australian businesses and foreign businesses operating in Australia. This information, previously only available to the taxpayer and the Australian Tax Office, will be made public.
Country-by-country reports, announced in the October 2022-2023 budget, were introduced with other measures designed to improve corporate tax behaviour. The reports will be released from this week as part of corporate reporting practices. Multinationals have 12 months to comply.
A fairer tax system
Country-by-country reporting forms part of the government’s multinational tax integrity election commitment package. The aim is to ensure a fairer and more sustainable tax system. Large firms will be required to publish a statement on their global activities plus tax information for each jurisdiction in which they operate.
Until now, large multinationals only had to prepare annual consolidated financial statements under international financial reporting standards. The traditional reports aggregate results and provide limited geographic reporting information.
Traditional high-level reporting allows multinationals to conceal their country-level activities. This hides questionable tax practices.
Country-by-country reporting allows us to better see where a multinational operates. More importantly, the amount of activity in each jurisdiction is reported. The information provides clues as to whether artificial profit shifting has occurred.
Anyone interested can uncover details about how multinationals structure their global operations. Information may reveal a misalignment between the company’s real economic presence in a country, the profits they book and taxes they pay in that country.
Bringing Australia into line with the EU
Country-by-country reporting is not new. It is the requirement that the information be made public that has changed.
Australian firms have been required to provide such reports to the Australian Tax Office since 2016. However, the information has been confidential.
The new public disclosure law brings Australia in line with large firms operating in the European Union which brought in the change last year.
How country-by-country reporting works
A taxpayer with annual global income above A$1 billion and at least A$10 million of its turnover Australian-sourced will need to produce a report. The obligation to disclose rests with the parent entity no matter where they are located.
Australia’s largest companies, including mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP, biotech firm CSL, and investment bank Macquarie Group, will be among those expected to report, as will foreign tech behemoths such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta.
These tech giants are the same US firms likely to be excluded from the global minimum tax rules under a G7 agreement reached last week. Under the agreement, US multinationals were exempted from paying more corporate tax overseas. Other G7 members gave in to protect their own companies from the US’s threat of retaliation.
Under the law change in Australia, a parent entity will provide its name, the names of all members of the group, a description of their approach to tax, and information about operations in certain countries. Included on the list are countries that attract multinationals due to reduced tax obligations, such as Singapore, Switzerland, and the Bahamas.
Everyone will be able to see where a multinational is operating. They will also see the types of business activities conducted, number of employees, assets, revenue, and taxes paid. Large profits in a country but little business activity and very few employees may raise questions, especially if a country has a low tax rate.
Benefits of better transparency
Access to the extra information will help investors assess the tax and reputational risk of a firm. A multinational that shifts profits to low tax countries may be audited and pay extra tax and penalties.
Increased transparency allows greater scrutiny. In turn, it is hoped multinationals will reduce aggressive tax planning due to potential risk to their reputation.
If multinationals shift less taxable profits out of Australia to low-tax or no-tax jurisdictions, this will lead to Australia receiving a greater share of much needed corporate tax revenue.
Increased tax transparency helps investors and tax authorities to better understand a multinational’s economic and tax geographic footprint. It is also important when it seems that US giants will be excluded from the 15% global minimum tax rules. Transparency by itself, however, does not lead to multinationals paying more corporate taxes.
By its very nature, tax avoidance is legal but pushes the boundaries by going against the spirit of the law. Indeed, many large multinationals argue tax is a legal obligation and is not voluntary. They maintain they pay the tax required of them according to the law.
Undoubtedly, Australia’s new public country-by-country regime is a positive step for tax transparency. As a country initiative, it has been applauded as groundbreaking and world leading. However, it is not a panacea to corporate tax avoidance.
To limit corporate tax avoidance and have multinationals pay more corporate taxes, we must get to the heart of the problem. We must change the law that dictates the way multinationals are taxed.
Kerrie Sadiq currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She has previously received research grants from CPA Australia and CAANZ.
Rodney Brown has previously received research grants from CPA Australia and CAANZ.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kerrie Sadiq, Professor of Taxation, QUT Business School, and ARC Future Fellow, Queensland University of Technology
The beginning of the financial year means for the first time in Australia the public will see previously unreleased tax reports produced by multinational taxpayers.
These documents, known as country-by-country reports, or CbCR for short, contain information about the tax practices of large Australian businesses and foreign businesses operating in Australia. This information, previously only available to the taxpayer and the Australian Tax Office, will be made public.
Country-by-country reports, announced in the October 2022-2023 budget, were introduced with other measures designed to improve corporate tax behaviour. The reports will be released from this week as part of corporate reporting practices. Multinationals have 12 months to comply.
A fairer tax system
Country-by-country reporting forms part of the government’s multinational tax integrity election commitment package. The aim is to ensure a fairer and more sustainable tax system. Large firms will be required to publish a statement on their global activities plus tax information for each jurisdiction in which they operate.
Until now, large multinationals only had to prepare annual consolidated financial statements under international financial reporting standards. The traditional reports aggregate results and provide limited geographic reporting information.
Traditional high-level reporting allows multinationals to conceal their country-level activities. This hides questionable tax practices.
Country-by-country reporting allows us to better see where a multinational operates. More importantly, the amount of activity in each jurisdiction is reported. The information provides clues as to whether artificial profit shifting has occurred.
Anyone interested can uncover details about how multinationals structure their global operations. Information may reveal a misalignment between the company’s real economic presence in a country, the profits they book and taxes they pay in that country.
Bringing Australia into line with the EU
Country-by-country reporting is not new. It is the requirement that the information be made public that has changed.
Australian firms have been required to provide such reports to the Australian Tax Office since 2016. However, the information has been confidential.
The new public disclosure law brings Australia in line with large firms operating in the European Union which brought in the change last year.
How country-by-country reporting works
A taxpayer with annual global income above A$1 billion and at least A$10 million of its turnover Australian-sourced will need to produce a report. The obligation to disclose rests with the parent entity no matter where they are located.
Australia’s largest companies, including mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP, biotech firm CSL, and investment bank Macquarie Group, will be among those expected to report, as will foreign tech behemoths such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta.
These tech giants are the same US firms likely to be excluded from the global minimum tax rules under a G7 agreement reached last week. Under the agreement, US multinationals were exempted from paying more corporate tax overseas. Other G7 members gave in to protect their own companies from the US’s threat of retaliation.
Under the law change in Australia, a parent entity will provide its name, the names of all members of the group, a description of their approach to tax, and information about operations in certain countries. Included on the list are countries that attract multinationals due to reduced tax obligations, such as Singapore, Switzerland, and the Bahamas.
Everyone will be able to see where a multinational is operating. They will also see the types of business activities conducted, number of employees, assets, revenue, and taxes paid. Large profits in a country but little business activity and very few employees may raise questions, especially if a country has a low tax rate.
Benefits of better transparency
Access to the extra information will help investors assess the tax and reputational risk of a firm. A multinational that shifts profits to low tax countries may be audited and pay extra tax and penalties.
Increased transparency allows greater scrutiny. In turn, it is hoped multinationals will reduce aggressive tax planning due to potential risk to their reputation.
If multinationals shift less taxable profits out of Australia to low-tax or no-tax jurisdictions, this will lead to Australia receiving a greater share of much needed corporate tax revenue.
Increased tax transparency helps investors and tax authorities to better understand a multinational’s economic and tax geographic footprint. It is also important when it seems that US giants will be excluded from the 15% global minimum tax rules. Transparency by itself, however, does not lead to multinationals paying more corporate taxes.
By its very nature, tax avoidance is legal but pushes the boundaries by going against the spirit of the law. Indeed, many large multinationals argue tax is a legal obligation and is not voluntary. They maintain they pay the tax required of them according to the law.
Undoubtedly, Australia’s new public country-by-country regime is a positive step for tax transparency. As a country initiative, it has been applauded as groundbreaking and world leading. However, it is not a panacea to corporate tax avoidance.
To limit corporate tax avoidance and have multinationals pay more corporate taxes, we must get to the heart of the problem. We must change the law that dictates the way multinationals are taxed.
Kerrie Sadiq currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She has previously received research grants from CPA Australia and CAANZ.
Rodney Brown has previously received research grants from CPA Australia and CAANZ.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michalis Hadjikakou, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Sustainability, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, Engineering & Built Environment, Deakin University
The way we currently produce and consume food takes a big toll on the environment.
Worldwide, farming is responsible for more than 20% of greenhouse gas emissions and uses more than 70% of all fresh water taken from rivers, lakes and groundwater. It’s the leading driver of deforestation and nutrient pollution, largely from fertiliser run-off. All of these pose a serious threat to ecosystems.
If this sounds serious, it’s because it is. If emissions and land clearing trends continue, the world’s food system alone could make it impossible to meet climate targets. If we continue eating and producing food in the same way we are now, we will almost certainly exceed crucial environmental limits by 2050.
What can be done? In our new research, we looked for ways to keep the food system within environmental limits by 2050. We found only one approach worked: combine high-impact changes such as shifting to flexitarian (low meat) diets, improving farming practices and reducing food waste.
Why will farming take us past environmental limits?
Environmental limits are also known as planetary boundaries. These nine boundaries are Earth’s natural safety limits. They range from freshwater resources to the biosphere to the climate. Human activities have pushed past six out of nine safe boundaries through clearing too much land, overusing water for irrigation, overapplying fertilisers or emitting more than our shrinking carbon budget permits.
If we cross these thresholds, we risk dangerous and irreversible changes to the conditions supporting a stable planet.
Transforming the way we farm and eat is essential if we are to keep humanity in a safe operating space within environmental limits.
The 2021 documentary Breaking Boundaries focused on the very real dangers of breaching planetary limits.
What does this transformation look like?
The challenge of making food production sustainable is long-running. Previous research has compared the effectiveness of different changes authorities and consumers could make. But most studies used different models, making it hard to compare changes.
To overcome this problem, we synthesised information from previous studies and built a database of thousands of future food system scenarios and possible changes. Then we performed a meta-analysis to combine data from multiple studies and draw more robust conclusions.
This approach allows policymakers and researchers to compare apples and apples, as well as see which combination of changes would let us stay within crucial safety limits by 2050.
We focused on four vital indicators: how much land and water is used for farming; the amount of greenhouse gases emitted; and the flows of two key nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus.
What works best?
What stood out was the sheer variation in effectiveness. Some changes would work very well across several areas, while others would take a lot of effort for not enough result.
Two changes punch well above their weight on land, water and emissions.
The first is shifting to a flexitarian diet with fewer foods sourced from animals. This is similar to traditional regional diets such as the Mediterranean and Okinawan diets, where meat and dairy are eaten in much smaller proportions compared to whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes.
Returning to this diet could shrink how much land we use for farming by almost a quarter (24%), cut water demand by 14% and slash greenhouse gas emissions by 47%.
Traditional diets such as the Mediterranean diet rely less on animal products and more on plants, nuts, oils and legumes. monticello/Shutterstock
The second is breeding better livestock. Livestock today are much better at converting their feed into meat or milk than their precursors. But this could be better still. More productive animals could enable an 18% reduction in land use, a 10% drop in water use and a 34% cut to emissions.
Modern fertilisers have made it possible to produce many more crops and fodder. But if too much fertiliser is applied, it can wash off after rain and pollute waterways.
Better timed and more precise application of fertiliser is by far the best way to cut nutrient pollution. Major improvements here could cut nitrogen pollution by 39% and phosphorus pollution by 42%. As a side benefit, it could save farmers money.
Increasing crop yields, lowering agricultural emissions through better soil management and other practices, and taking up technologies such as methane-reducing supplements can significantly reduce our risk of exceeding environmental limits. So too can cutting food waste and using water more wisely in farming. Our extended results show the relative benefits of ten possible interventions.
There is no silver bullet
We found no single change was up to the task of making food production and consumption sustainable.
We considered over a million possible combinations of changes. Of these combinations, only a tiny fraction – 0.02% – give us a fighting chance of staying within all environmental limits.
In almost all successful combinations, the world would need to make significant cuts to how many calories come from animals, make big improvements to fertiliser use and nutrient management, and focus research and development on finding ways to farm land and livestock with less resources and emissions.
Most successful combinations also rely on halving food waste and reducing overconsumption.
Is it still possible?
Farming within the limits of Earth’s systems will be hard. But it is possible.
Some work is already being done. Global organisations such as the United Nations are making a concerted effort to accelerate changes to food systems across many countries.
Research like ours can make people feel powerless. But individual change is always worthwhile. Reducing your intake of animal products benefits your health and the planet.
Properly addressing these very real issues will take concerted, collective work. If we don’t succeed, we risk triggering ecological collapse – and threatening the foundation for human civilisation.
The knowledge and tools are at hand. What’s needed now is ambition – and a sense of what’s at stake.
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.
People with poor mental health face many challenges. One that’s perhaps lesser known is that they’re more likely than the overall population to have poor oral health.
Research has shown people with serious mental illness are four times more likely than the general population to have gum disease. They’re nearly three times more likely to have lost all their teeth due to problems such as gum disease and tooth decay.
People living with schizophrenia have, on average, eight more teeth that are decayed, missing or filled than the general population.
So why does this link exist? And what can we do to address the problem?
Why is this a problem?
Oral health problems are expensive to fix and can make it hard for people to eat, socialise, work or even just smile.
What’s more, dental issues can land people in hospital. Our research shows dental conditions are the third most common reason for preventable hospital admissions among people with serious mental illness.
Meanwhile, poor oral health is linked with long-term health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, and even cognitive problems. This is because the bacteria associated with gum diseases can cause inflammation throughout the body, which affects other systems in the body.
Why are mental health and oral health linked?
Poor mental and oral health share common risk factors. Social factors such as isolation, unemployment and housing insecurity can worsen both oral and mental health.
For example, unemployment increases the risk of oral disease. This can be due to financial difficulties, reduced access to oral health care, or potential changes to diet and hygiene practices.
It’s clear the relationship between oral health and mental health goes both ways. Dental disease can reduce self-esteem and increase psychological distress. Meanwhile, symptoms of mental health conditions, such as low motivation, can make engaging in good oral health practices, including brushing, flossing, and visiting the dentist, more difficult.
And like many people, those with serious mental illness can experience significant anxiety about going to the dentist. They may also have experienced trauma in the past, which can make visiting a dental clinic a frightening experience.
Separately, poor oral health can be made worse by some medications for mental health conditions. Certain medications can interfere with saliva production, reducing the protective barrier that covers the teeth. Some may also increase sugar cravings, which heightens the risk of tooth decay.
In a recent study, we interviewed young people with mental illness. Our findings show the significant personal costs of dental disease among people with mental illness, and highlight the relationship between oral and mental health.
Smiling is one of our best ways to communicate, but we found people with serious mental illness were sometimes embarrassed and ashamed to smile due to poor oral health.
One participant told us:
[poor oral health is] not only [about] the physical aspects of restricting how you eat, but it’s also about your mental health in terms of your self-esteem, your self-confidence, and basic wellbeing, which sort of drives me to become more isolated.
Another said:
for me, it was that serious fear of – God my teeth are looking really crap, and in the past they’ve [dental practitioners] asked, “Hey, you’ve missed this spot; what’s happening?”. How do I explain to them, hey, I’ve had some really shitty stuff happening and I have a very serious episode of depression?
What can we do?
Another of our recent studies focused on improving oral health awareness and behaviours among young adults experiencing mental health difficulties. We found a brief online oral health education program improved participants’ oral health knowledge and attitudes.
Improving oral health can result in improved mental wellbeing, self-esteem and quality of life. But achieving this isn’t always easy.
It’s crucial the health system takes a holistic approach to caring for people experiencing serious mental illness. That means we have mental health staff who ask questions about oral health, and dental practitioners who are trained to manage the unique oral health needs of people with serious mental illness.
It also means increasing government funding for oral health services – promotion, prevention and improved interdisciplinary care. This includes better collaboration between oral health, mental health, and peer and informal support sectors.
Amanda Wheeler is an investigator on a MetroSouth Health 2025 grant exploring use of Queensland Emergency Departments for people with mental ill-health seeking acute care for oral health problems.
Steve Kisely has received a grant on oral health from Metro South Research Foundation and one from the Medical Research Future Fund.
Bonnie Clough, Caroline Victoria Robertson, and Santosh Tadakamadla 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.
People with poor mental health face many challenges. One that’s perhaps lesser known is that they’re more likely than the overall population to have poor oral health.
Research has shown people with serious mental illness are four times more likely than the general population to have gum disease. They’re nearly three times more likely to have lost all their teeth due to problems such as gum disease and tooth decay.
People living with schizophrenia have, on average, eight more teeth that are decayed, missing or filled than the general population.
So why does this link exist? And what can we do to address the problem?
Why is this a problem?
Oral health problems are expensive to fix and can make it hard for people to eat, socialise, work or even just smile.
What’s more, dental issues can land people in hospital. Our research shows dental conditions are the third most common reason for preventable hospital admissions among people with serious mental illness.
Meanwhile, poor oral health is linked with long-term health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, and even cognitive problems. This is because the bacteria associated with gum diseases can cause inflammation throughout the body, which affects other systems in the body.
Why are mental health and oral health linked?
Poor mental and oral health share common risk factors. Social factors such as isolation, unemployment and housing insecurity can worsen both oral and mental health.
For example, unemployment increases the risk of oral disease. This can be due to financial difficulties, reduced access to oral health care, or potential changes to diet and hygiene practices.
It’s clear the relationship between oral health and mental health goes both ways. Dental disease can reduce self-esteem and increase psychological distress. Meanwhile, symptoms of mental health conditions, such as low motivation, can make engaging in good oral health practices, including brushing, flossing, and visiting the dentist, more difficult.
And like many people, those with serious mental illness can experience significant anxiety about going to the dentist. They may also have experienced trauma in the past, which can make visiting a dental clinic a frightening experience.
Separately, poor oral health can be made worse by some medications for mental health conditions. Certain medications can interfere with saliva production, reducing the protective barrier that covers the teeth. Some may also increase sugar cravings, which heightens the risk of tooth decay.
In a recent study, we interviewed young people with mental illness. Our findings show the significant personal costs of dental disease among people with mental illness, and highlight the relationship between oral and mental health.
Smiling is one of our best ways to communicate, but we found people with serious mental illness were sometimes embarrassed and ashamed to smile due to poor oral health.
One participant told us:
[poor oral health is] not only [about] the physical aspects of restricting how you eat, but it’s also about your mental health in terms of your self-esteem, your self-confidence, and basic wellbeing, which sort of drives me to become more isolated.
Another said:
for me, it was that serious fear of – God my teeth are looking really crap, and in the past they’ve [dental practitioners] asked, “Hey, you’ve missed this spot; what’s happening?”. How do I explain to them, hey, I’ve had some really shitty stuff happening and I have a very serious episode of depression?
What can we do?
Another of our recent studies focused on improving oral health awareness and behaviours among young adults experiencing mental health difficulties. We found a brief online oral health education program improved participants’ oral health knowledge and attitudes.
Improving oral health can result in improved mental wellbeing, self-esteem and quality of life. But achieving this isn’t always easy.
It’s crucial the health system takes a holistic approach to caring for people experiencing serious mental illness. That means we have mental health staff who ask questions about oral health, and dental practitioners who are trained to manage the unique oral health needs of people with serious mental illness.
It also means increasing government funding for oral health services – promotion, prevention and improved interdisciplinary care. This includes better collaboration between oral health, mental health, and peer and informal support sectors.
Amanda Wheeler is an investigator on a MetroSouth Health 2025 grant exploring use of Queensland Emergency Departments for people with mental ill-health seeking acute care for oral health problems.
Steve Kisely has received a grant on oral health from Metro South Research Foundation and one from the Medical Research Future Fund.
Bonnie Clough, Caroline Victoria Robertson, and Santosh Tadakamadla 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.
Australian farms are at the forefront of a wave of technological change coming to agriculture. Over the past decade, more than US$200 billion (A$305 billion) has been invested globally into the likes of pollination robots, smart soil sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) systems to help make decisions.
What do the people working the land make of it all? We interviewed dozens of Australian farmers about AI and digital technology, and found they had a sophisticated understanding of their own needs and how technology might help – as well as a wariness of tech companies’ utopian promises.
These names all gesture towards a future in which the relationship between humans, computing and nature have been significantly reconfigured. Perhaps remote sensing technology will monitor ever more of a farm system, autonomous vehicles will patrol it, and AI will predict crop growth or cattle weight gain.
But there’s another story to tell about the way technological change happens. It involves people and communities creating their own future, their own sense of important change from the past.
AI, country style
Our research team conducted more than 35 interviews with farmers, specifically livestock producers, from across Australia.
The dominant themes of their responses were captured in two pithy quotes: “shit in, shit out” and “more automation, less features”.
“Shit in, shit out” is an earthier version of the “garbage in, garbage out” adage in computer science. If the data going into a model is unreliable or overly abstract, then the outputs will be shaped by those errors.
This captured a real concern for many farmers. They didn’t feel they could trust new technologies if they didn’t understand what knowledge and information they had been built with.
A different kind of automation
On the other hand, “more automation, less features” is what farmers want: technologies that may not have a lot of bells and whistles, but can reliably take a task off their hands.
Australian farmers have a ready appetite for labour-saving technologies. When human bodies are scarce, as they often are in rural Australia, machines are created to fill the void.
Windmills, wire fences, and even the iconic Australian sheepdog have been a crucial part of the technological narrative of settler colonial farming. These things are not “autonomous” in the same way as computer-powered vehicles and drones, but they offer similar advantages to farmers.
What these classic farm technologies have in common is a simplicity that derives from a clarity of purpose. They are the opposite of the “everything apps” that fuel the dreams of many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.
“More automation, less features” is in this sense a farmer envisaging a digital product that fits with their image of a useful technology: transparent in its operations, and a reliable replacement for or an addition to human labour.
The lesson of the Suzuki Sierra Stockman
When speaking with one farmer about favoured technologies of her lifetime, she mentioned the Suzuki Sierra Stockman. These small, no-frills, four-wheel-drive vehicles became something of an icon on Australian sheep and cattle farms through the 1970s, ‘80s and ’90s.
By the 1990s, the Suzuki Sierra Stockman had an iconic status among Australian farmers. Turbo_J / Flickr
Reflecting on her memories of first using the vehicle, the farmer said:
Once I learnt that I could actually draft cattle out with the Suzuki, that changed everything. You could do exactly what you did on a horse with a vehicle.
It seems unlikely that Suzuki’s engineers in Japan envisaged their little jeep chasing cattle in the paddocks of Central West of NSW. The Suzuki was in a sense remade by farmers who found innovative uses for it.
Future technology must be simple, adaptable and reliable
The combustion engine was a key technological change on farms in the 20th century. Computers may play a similar role in the 21st.
We are perhaps yet to see a digital product as iconic as wire fences, windmills, sheepdogs and the Suzuki Stockman. Computers are still largely technologies of the office, not the paddock.
However, this is changing as computers get smaller and are wired into water tanks, soil monitors and in-paddock scales. More data input from these sensors means AI systems have more scope to help farmers make decisions.
AI may well become a much-loved tool for farmers. But that journey to iconic status will depend as much on how farmers adapt the technology as on how the developers build it. And we can guess at what it will look like: simple, adaptable and reliable.
This article is based on research conducted by the Foragecaster project, led by AgriWebb and supported by funding from Food Agility CRC Ltd, funded under the Commonwealth Government CRC Program. The CRC Program supports industry-led collaborations between industry, researchers and the community. This project was also supported by funding from Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA).
Australian farms are at the forefront of a wave of technological change coming to agriculture. Over the past decade, more than US$200 billion (A$305 billion) has been invested globally into the likes of pollination robots, smart soil sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) systems to help make decisions.
What do the people working the land make of it all? We interviewed dozens of Australian farmers about AI and digital technology, and found they had a sophisticated understanding of their own needs and how technology might help – as well as a wariness of tech companies’ utopian promises.
These names all gesture towards a future in which the relationship between humans, computing and nature have been significantly reconfigured. Perhaps remote sensing technology will monitor ever more of a farm system, autonomous vehicles will patrol it, and AI will predict crop growth or cattle weight gain.
But there’s another story to tell about the way technological change happens. It involves people and communities creating their own future, their own sense of important change from the past.
AI, country style
Our research team conducted more than 35 interviews with farmers, specifically livestock producers, from across Australia.
The dominant themes of their responses were captured in two pithy quotes: “shit in, shit out” and “more automation, less features”.
“Shit in, shit out” is an earthier version of the “garbage in, garbage out” adage in computer science. If the data going into a model is unreliable or overly abstract, then the outputs will be shaped by those errors.
This captured a real concern for many farmers. They didn’t feel they could trust new technologies if they didn’t understand what knowledge and information they had been built with.
A different kind of automation
On the other hand, “more automation, less features” is what farmers want: technologies that may not have a lot of bells and whistles, but can reliably take a task off their hands.
Australian farmers have a ready appetite for labour-saving technologies. When human bodies are scarce, as they often are in rural Australia, machines are created to fill the void.
Windmills, wire fences, and even the iconic Australian sheepdog have been a crucial part of the technological narrative of settler colonial farming. These things are not “autonomous” in the same way as computer-powered vehicles and drones, but they offer similar advantages to farmers.
What these classic farm technologies have in common is a simplicity that derives from a clarity of purpose. They are the opposite of the “everything apps” that fuel the dreams of many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.
“More automation, less features” is in this sense a farmer envisaging a digital product that fits with their image of a useful technology: transparent in its operations, and a reliable replacement for or an addition to human labour.
The lesson of the Suzuki Sierra Stockman
When speaking with one farmer about favoured technologies of her lifetime, she mentioned the Suzuki Sierra Stockman. These small, no-frills, four-wheel-drive vehicles became something of an icon on Australian sheep and cattle farms through the 1970s, ‘80s and ’90s.
By the 1990s, the Suzuki Sierra Stockman had an iconic status among Australian farmers. Turbo_J / Flickr
Reflecting on her memories of first using the vehicle, the farmer said:
Once I learnt that I could actually draft cattle out with the Suzuki, that changed everything. You could do exactly what you did on a horse with a vehicle.
It seems unlikely that Suzuki’s engineers in Japan envisaged their little jeep chasing cattle in the paddocks of Central West of NSW. The Suzuki was in a sense remade by farmers who found innovative uses for it.
Future technology must be simple, adaptable and reliable
The combustion engine was a key technological change on farms in the 20th century. Computers may play a similar role in the 21st.
We are perhaps yet to see a digital product as iconic as wire fences, windmills, sheepdogs and the Suzuki Stockman. Computers are still largely technologies of the office, not the paddock.
However, this is changing as computers get smaller and are wired into water tanks, soil monitors and in-paddock scales. More data input from these sensors means AI systems have more scope to help farmers make decisions.
AI may well become a much-loved tool for farmers. But that journey to iconic status will depend as much on how farmers adapt the technology as on how the developers build it. And we can guess at what it will look like: simple, adaptable and reliable.
This article is based on research conducted by the Foragecaster project, led by AgriWebb and supported by funding from Food Agility CRC Ltd, funded under the Commonwealth Government CRC Program. The CRC Program supports industry-led collaborations between industry, researchers and the community. This project was also supported by funding from Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA).
Source: United States Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.)
Padilla Statement Denouncing Senate Republicans’ Passage of Billionaire-First Tax Bill
WATCH: Padilla blasts President Trump’s “Big Ugly Bill” cutting health care and clean energy investments to provide tax cuts to billionaires
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following statement after Senate Republicans narrowly passed their billionaire-first budget reconciliation bill to gut critical programs, kick 17 million Americans off their health care, explode the debt by over $3.5 trillion, and skyrocket energy costs for Californians:
“Senate Republicans just voted to let President Trump and his billionaire buddies steal from working families in order to cut their own taxes by trillions of dollars.
“Americans are struggling to keep up with rising costs from Trump’s chaotic tariffs. Instead of trying to reduce costs, Senate Republicans have chosen to cut a trillion dollars from Medicaid, kicking 17 million people — including over 2.3 million Californians — off their health insurance. Their votes will cause rural hospitals across the country to close. They’re decimating SNAP nutrition assistance that parents count on to feed their children. And electricity bills will go up while our energy system becomes less reliable.
“One thing is clear: Republicans are voting for this bill knowing full well it will hurt their constituents, all in an effort to please Donald Trump and enrich the billionaire class.”
Overnight, Senator Padilla proposed an amendment to the reconciliation bill to force Republicans to make changes to ensure it would not increase the deficit. Republicans rejected the amendment, highlighting their complete hypocrisy on the national debt. Republicans’ Big Ugly Bill adds more to the debt than the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, American Rescue Plan Act, CARES Act, and CHIPS and Science Act combined — all to pay for yet another round of tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations.
As Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Padilla previously circulated a memorandum outlining Senate Republicans’ hypocritical violation of filibuster rules in order to exploit the expedited reconciliation process while hiding the true cost of their tax bill. Padilla also spoke on the Senate floor against the Republican budget resolution in April, and voted against advancing it in the Senate in both February and April. He condemned House Republicans’ passage of the reconciliation bill in May.
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