Source: United States Senator Pete Ricketts (Nebraska)
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE) introduced a legislative package of four bills that would counter malicious efforts to disrupt American prosperity by Communist China and other adversaries. The package includes the No Capital Gains Allowance for Americans Adversaries Act, the PRC Military and Human Rights Capital Markets Sanctions Act, the No China in Index Funds Act, and the Protecting Endowments from our Adversaries Act (PEOAA). This legislative package limits the ability of adversaries like Communist China from taking advantage of America’s economic strength and tax benefits intended for Americans.
“Communist China is the greatest threat to the American way of life,” said Ricketts. ”Communist China is actively threatening a rules-based system that has maintained peace and prosperity for over 80 years. America’s markets are supposed to benefit Americans. We can’t allow our markets to fund our adversaries like Communist China.”
The No Capital Gains Allowance for Americans Adversaries Act would:
Treat capital gains on all Chinese, Russian, Belarusian, Iranian, and North Korean stocks as ordinary income. Such investments would then not be eligible for the lower capital gains tax rates.
Eliminate the “step-up in basis” for Chinese, Russian, Belarusian, Iranian, and North Korean assets inherited at death – which reduces an heir’s tax liability by ignoring gains that occurred before inheritance.
Direct the Securities and Exchange Commission to maintain a public list of securities covered by this Act and require that sellers of covered securities disclosure to customers that sales of those securities will be treated as ordinary income.
The PRC Military and Human Rights Capital Markets Sanctions Act would:
Direct the President to compile and maintain a single public list of sanctioned companies and their affiliates.
These lists include those that target human rights violators, including companies that utilize coerced labor in production, companies that proliferate dangerous technologies, and those that have connections to the Chinese military and intelligence services.
Prevent U.S. persons from purchasing, selling, or holding:
A publicly-traded security issued by a sanctioned company or affiliate of the sanctioned company;
A publicly-traded security that is a derivative of a publicly issued security issued by a sanctioned company or affiliate of the sanctioned company;
A security that provides investment exposure to a publicly-traded security issued by a sanctioned company or affiliate of the sanctioned company.
Give a U.S. person 180 days after enactment to divest from the prohibited securities.
The No China in Index Funds Act would:
Prohibit index funds from investing in Chinese companies and require them to divest from such investments within 180 days after date of enactment.
The Protecting Endowments from Our Adversaries Act (PEOAA) would:
Apply to private college and university endowments over $1,000,000,000
Disincentivize endowments from investing (directly or indirectly) in adversarial entities that are on any of the following US Government Lists (USG):
Entity List
Military End User (MEU) List
Unverified List
FCC Covered List
Impose a 50% excise tax on the principal investment at the time of acquisition if an endowment invests in a company that is listed.
Impose a 100% excise tax on the realized gains derived from listed investments one year after an entity is listed.
BACKGROUND:
Other countries have investment incentives not applicable to some foreign investments. For instance, China provides investment incentives through its tax code, but foreign investments are eligible only with the pre-approval of the Chinese government.
Companies that have their business relations with the United States cut off or strictly restricted should not be allowed to sell securities in the U.S., or to U.S. persons, whether directly or indirectly through a mutual fund or ETF.
Index mutual funds minimize their expenses by simply investing in all the companies in a certain market sector, without looking closely at the individual companies. There are unique difficulties in evaluating the risks of investing in Chinese companies. Americans should not invest in these companies without carefully evaluating the risk. This bill will keep these hard-to-evaluate Chinese stocks out of index mutual funds.
University and college endowments are funds or assets donated to support various activities of the institution. These institutions often invest billions from their endowments into organizations and companies listed on the Department of Commerce’s Entity List. While maintaining a tax advantage, endowments can fund these entities even if they pose national security concerns.
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Simon Gikandi, Professor of English and Chair of the English Department, Princeton University
The passing of celebrated Kenyan writer and scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o on 28 May 2025 marks the end of a remarkable period in African literary history – the fabulous decades in the second half of the 20th century when African writers came to command the world stage.
This was the time of what I call the African literary revolution. As a scholar of African literature and the author of many books and papers on Ngũgĩ, I have raised several questions about this period. Why and how did this revolution happen? What motivated this turn to the imagination as a tool of decolonisation? And what was Ngũgĩ’s role in this drama?
To answer these questions one must think of Ngũgĩ inside and outside a generational cultural project.
The African literary revolution
Accounting for this project is not difficult. One can say for certain that in the late 1950s and early 1960s, as the African continent entered the last phase of decolonisation, writers and intellectuals became important actors in the fight for independence. They did so by quietly entering and occupying the spaces and knowledge systems that had until then been the preserve of colonial agents.
They used the work of the imagination to challenge colonial systems of thought and imagine decolonial alternatives. And what made this a period like no other in African literary history was a powerful sense of newness and the possibilities of a world yet to come. As the Nigerian writer and critic Chinua Achebe once put it:
There was something in the air.
Literature was asked to herald the possibilities and perils of freedom and Ngũgĩ was to play a major role in chaperoning the language of African being and becoming.
In the memoirs he wrote about his education, he would often return to his mental imprisonment in English literature and the mythology of Englishness.
Hidden in these narratives of colonial miseducation, however, was the discovery of the gift of African fiction brought by precursors. Nigeria’s Achebe and Cyprian Ekwensi and South Africa’s Peter Abrahams gave Ngũgĩ a model of how English could be used against Englishness.
Coming after these writers provided him with an alternative to the “Great Tradition” of English letters.
Reimagining Africa
As a student at Alliance High School in Kenya and later at Makerere University College in Uganda, Ngũgĩ positioned himself as part of a literary vanguard that was reimagining Africa.
His first major fiction was published in Penpoint, a pioneering journal of literature edited by students at the Makerere English department. He was a delegate to the 1962 Conference of African Writers held at the university, sharing the podium with writers who were to define the African culture of letters for several decades. He was one of the few writers at this historic conference without a major publication, but his presence seemed to signal the promise of the future.
Something else made this period distinctive: this was a time when African intellectuals, writers and politicians shared a common belief in the redemptive work of art and literature. At Makerere, Ngũgĩ had been preceded by Julius Nyerere, a translator of Shakespeare in Swahili who was to become president of Tanzania. At the same college, Apollo Milton Obote, future president of Uganda, had appeared in a 1948 production of Julius Caesar, the first performance of Shakespeare at the university.
And the contributors represented in Origin East Africa, an anthology of creative writing at Makerere, provide the most vivid example of the role writing and a literary education could come to play in the making of the postcolonial public sphere. Ngũgĩ had four stories published in the anthology, coming just after a short story by Ben Mkapa, future president of Tanzania.
Ngũgĩ belonged to a generation that saw literature as a forum for critique, of questioning dominant ideas and beliefs. In this context, creative writing was asked to perform at least four tasks:
to reimagine an African past whose resources might be rehearsed for the future
to rehearse the drama of decolonisation
to account for postcolonial failure
to produce fictions that might help readers rethink a global African identity.
Ngũgĩ’s novels rose to fulfil these tasks with conviction and courage. The River Between and Weep Not, Child dealt with the wounds of history. A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood were positioned in a zone where the figure of the new nation was caught between its aspirations and desires and the possibility of failure and betrayal. Wizard of the Crow was simultaneously an allegory of postcolonial failure and the possibility of its transcendence.
And then came banishment and exile.
The late career
Although he barely acknowledged it in his writings or in public, Ngũgĩ’s late career was defined by the realities of exile and an awareness of his own displacement from his primary audience and the Gĩkũyũ language that had energised his poetics.
He was celebrated and honoured in powerful American universities and institutions including the Library of Congress. He was recognised in the global African world and cited by the few African leaders like Ghana’s John Dramani Mahama who understood the need for a forceful response to racial ideologies.
But he was a persona non grata in the one place – Kenya – where recognition mattered most to him.
In the end, there was a certain kind of belatedness in Ngũgĩ’s later fictions. The subject of these works and their points of reference were distinctly Gĩkũyũ, Kenyan, African, pan-African, and global. Nonetheless, these gestures of being African were enacted far away from the homelands in which Ngũgĩ’s writing and thinking was both intelligible and functional.
Imagining and writing about Africa away from Africa was a promise and debt. It was an obligation to a place but also a measure of one’s distance from it.
I reflected on this problem as I reviewed Ngũgĩ’s 2006 novel set in an imaginary autocratic country, Murogi wa Kagogo (Wizard of the Crow), in its original Gĩkũyũ edition and later in its translation.
I was reading the same book, but it was pointing in two different directions – towards home and away from it.
In our many encounters, Ngũgĩ made fun of the fact that I seemed to have adopted alienation as the essential condition for thinking and writing. What he sought to do until the last minute of his life was carry within himself and his fictions that place that used to be home, its politics and poetics.
– Ngũgi wa Thiong’o and the African literary revolution – https://theconversation.com/ngugi-wa-thiongo-and-the-african-literary-revolution-258428
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Ibrahim Z. Bahreldin, Associate Professor of Urban & Environmental Design, University of Khartoum
What makes a public space truly public?
In Khartoum, before the current conflict engulfed Sudan, the answer was not always a park, a plaza or a promenade.
The city’s streets, tea stalls (sitat al-shai), protest sites and even burial spaces served as dynamic arenas of everyday life, political expression and informal resilience.
In a recently published article, I studied 64 public spaces across pre-war Greater Khartoum, revealing a landscape far richer – and more contested – than standard urban classifications suggest. Specifically, I uncovered four classifications: formal, informal, privately owned and hybrid spaces – each alive with negotiation and everyday use.
While some spaces were planned by colonial engineers or municipal authorities, many were carved out by communities: claimed, adapted and reimagined through use.
My research offers valuable insights into the design and planning of Africa’s cities. As they grow and face mounting political and environmental pressures, it’s time to rethink how public spaces are defined and designed – not through imported models, but by listening to the ways people already make cities public.
Across the African continent, cities are growing fast – but not always fairly. Urban expansion often privileges gated developments, mega-projects and high-security zones while neglecting the everyday spaces where most people live, work and gather.
In Sudan, these dynamics have been further complicated by conflict, displacement and economic instability. The ongoing war has disrupted not only governance, but also the spatial fabric of urban life.
My paper aims to invite those involved in planning policies and post-conflict reconstruction to move beyond formal, western-centric models that often overlook how publicness actually unfolds in African cities: through informality, negotiation and social improvisation.
Khartoum’s public spaces, as documented in my study, serve as diagnostic tools for understanding how cities survive crises, express identity and contest inequality.
In the wake of war and displacement, these spaces will play a role in shaping how Sudan rebuilds not just infrastructure, but social cohesion.
Pre-war Khartoum
Khartoum’s public spaces cannot be understood through conventional categories – like formal squares and urban parks – alone. These formal squares represent only one layer of a much more plural and negotiated urban reality.
Drawing on fieldwork and the documentation of 64 public spaces across Greater Khartoum, I identify four overlapping types that reflect how space is produced, accessed and contested.
1. Formal public spaces: These include planned parks, ceremonial squares, civic plazas and administrative open spaces, often relics of colonial or postcolonial urban planning. They are defined by order, visibility and regulation. Mīdān Abbas, originally an active civic space in the centre of Khartoum, repeatedly reclaimed by informal traders and protesters, is one example, illustrating how even the most formal spaces can become contested. It was notably active during Sudan’s April 1985 uprising, serving as part of a wider network of civic spaces used for political mobilisation. Informal traders consistently transformed it into a bustling marketplace, embedding everyday commerce and social exchange into the formal urban fabric.
2. Informal and insurgent spaces: These emerge beyond or against official planning logics – riverbanks used for gatherings, neglected lots transformed into social nodes or bridges appropriated by traders. They include spiritual sites like Sufi tombs, and protest spaces such as the sit-in zone outside the city’s army headquarters. These spaces reveal the city’s capacity for bottom-up urbanism and collective adaptation.
3. Privately owned civic spaces: Shopping malls, privately managed parks and cultural cafés fall into this category. While they appear public, they are often classed, surveilled (monitored through cameras or security presence) or exclusionary. The rise of these spaces coincides with the decline of state-managed urban infrastructure, reflecting the turn in Sudanese urban governance.
4. Public “private” spaces: These spaces blur lines between ownership and use. They include mosque courtyards, school grounds, building frontages or underutilised university lawns that serve as informal gathering points. Access here is governed less by law and more by social codes, trust or class.
Together, these typologies highlight that “publicness” in Khartoum is relational. It depends not only on who planned a space, but who uses it, how and under what conditions.
Planning in African cities must therefore move beyond fixed zoning maps to embrace the layered, fluid and lived nature of urban space.
Rebuilding, rethinking, resisting
Post-conflict reconstruction in Sudan – and elsewhere in Africa – must resist the allure of “blank slate” master plans. Those involve rebuilding cities from scratch with sweeping, top-down designs that ignore existing social and spatial dynamics.
Imported models, often guided by bureaucratic thinking or commercial incentives, risk erasing the very spaces where public life already thrives, albeit informally or invisibly.
Rather than imposing formality, planners should recognise and strengthen the informal and hybrid systems that sustain civic life, especially in times of instability.
Urban theorists working in and on the global south, such as AbdouMaliq Simone and the late Vanessa Watson, have long argued for planning frameworks that centre on everyday practices, adaptive use and spatial justice.
Khartoum offers a compelling case.
From the sit-ins of 2019 to tea stalls run by displaced women, public spaces in Sudan are not inert backdrops. They are active platforms of everyday life, resistance, care and community-making.
Reconstruction must begin by asking: what spaces mattered to people before the war? Which ones fostered inclusion, dignity and visibility? Only then can new urban futures emerge, ones that are rooted in the practices of those who have always made the city public, even when the state did not.
What makes spaces truly public?
The public realm in Sudan has always been shaped through negotiation, sometimes with the state, often despite it.
This requires a shift from viewing public space as a fixed asset to understanding it as a dynamic process. Who gets to gather, to speak, to rest, to protest – these are the true measures of publicness.
Understanding Khartoum’s pre-war public spaces isn’t a nostalgic exercise. It’s a necessary step towards building more inclusive, resilient and locally grounded cities in the wake of crisis.
– Khartoum before the war: the public spaces that held the city together – https://theconversation.com/khartoum-before-the-war-the-public-spaces-that-held-the-city-together-258632
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Hedley Twidle, Associate Professor and head of English Literary Studies, University of Cape Town
Across three decades of democracy, South Africa has – like many places undergoing complex and uneven social change – seen an outpouring of remarkable nonfiction. The Interpreters is a new book that collects the work of 37 authors, all of it writing (plus some drawing) concerned with actual people, places and events.
Soutie Press
The anthology is the product of many years of reading and discussion between my co-editor Sean Christie (an experienced journalist and nonfiction author) and me (a writer and professor who teaches literature, including creative nonfiction).
The book is a work of homage to the many strains of ambitious and artful writing that shelter within the unhelpful term “nonfiction”. These include: narrative and longform journalism; essays and memoir; reportage, features and profiles; life writing, from private diaries to public biography; oral histories, interviews and testimony.
To give an idea of the range, energy and risk of the pieces collected in the anthology, here I discuss five of them.
1. Fighting Shadows by Lidudumalingani
We debated for a long time which piece to start the anthology with, and ultimately went for this one, which begins:
One afternoon my father and the other boys from the Zikhovane village decided to walk across a vast landscape, two valleys and a river, to a village called Qombolo to disrupt a wedding.
It’s a quietly compelling opening. First of all, there is intrigue: why the disruption? It could also easily be the first sentence of a novel (maybe even one by famous Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe). And so we begin with a reminder of how storytelling is such a deep, ancient and fundamental part of societies – an impulse that long predates writing and moves across and beyond the fiction/nonfiction divide. (Lidudumalingani won the 2016 Caine Prize for a short story, so he works across both.)
Lidudumalingani has the stick fighting tradition at the centre of his piece.Soutie Press
Fighting Shadows is about the tradition of stick fighting, and how it’s transported from rural areas to urban ones. But it’s also about so much more, about “the dance between then and now”, as the writer puts it later on. The prose is so deft and graceful, as if the author is trying to match the “dance” of expert stick fighters with his own verbal arts. For me it’s a story that could only have emerged from this part of the world: it has a distinct voice, precision and poetry to it.
2. The End of a Conversation by Julie Nxadi
This is the shortest piece in the anthology, but for me one of the most affecting. It traces how a young girl comes to realise that the (white) family she is being brought up with are not really her family. She is the daughter of the housekeeper, the domestic worker:
I was not ‘the kids’. I was not their kin.
It’s probably best described as autofiction, a kind of writing that lies somewhere in the borderlands between autobiography and fiction. Nxadi has spoken of how she decided to write in a way that contained her own life story – the “heartbreak” of that moment – but was also able to carry and represent the experience of others who had gone through something similar.
Julie Nxadi.Soutie Press
The piece is also a product of the #FeesMustFall student protests (2015 onwards), when many young South Africans felt able to share unresolved, awkward or shameful stories for the first time.
The End of a Conversation is such a deft, wise and subtle handling of a difficult subject, with no easy targets or easy resolutions. Somehow the writer has found just the right distance – emotionally and aesthetically – from this moment of childhood realisation.
3. South African Pastoral by William Dicey
I co-own a pear farm with my brother. I attend to finances and labour relations, he oversees the growing of the fruit.
This essay by William Dicey thinks hard, very hard, about what it means to manage a fruit farm in the Boland (an agricultural region still shaped by South Africa’s divided past). It is one of the most frank and unflinching accounts of land and labour I’ve ever come across. The writer makes the point that he could easily have stayed in the city, lived in “liberal” circles and not thought about these issues much.
William Dicey.Soutie Press
But becoming a farmer confronts him with all kinds of difficult questions (How much should he intervene in the lives of his employees? In family and financial planning, in matters of alcohol abuse?) as he is drawn into an awkward but meaningful intimacy with others on the farm.
The US essayist Philip Lopate suggests that scepticism is often the tool for moving towards truth in personal nonfiction writing:
So often the “plot” of a personal essay, its drama, its suspense, consists in watching how the essayist can drop past his or her psychic defences toward deeper levels of honesty.
This is very much what happens in South African Pastoral, and why it is such a mesmerising piece (even while written in such a plain and restrained style).
4. Hard Rock by Mogorosi Motshumi
My co-editor said from the start we should include graphic nonfiction (drawn stories and comics) and I’m so grateful he did. Mogorosi Motshumi’s warm, zany but also harrowing account is about coming of age under apartheid and then the heady days of the 1990s transition.
Mogorosi Motshumi.Soutie Press
In his early career, Motshumi was widely known for his comic strips and political cartooning, but this graphic autobiography is far more ambitious. The style of drawing changes and evolves as the protagonist gets older; also, there is something intriguing about seeing weighty subjects like detention, disability, substance abuse and HIV/AIDS stigma approached through the eyes of a wry cartoonist with a keen sense of the absurd.
Hard Rock is a prologue to the graphic nonfiction memoir that he has been working on for many years, the 360 Degrees Trilogy. The first two instalments have appeared – The Initiation (2016) and Jozi Jungle (2022) – and I would urge anyone to seek them out. Mogorosi’s work is a major achievement in South African autobiography and life writing (or life “drawing”).
5. The Interpreters by Antjie Krog, Nosisi Mpolweni and Kopano Ratele
This co-authored piece is what gave the anthology its name. The Interpreters is a reflection on being a language interpreter during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings (1996-1998) into gross human rights violations during white minority rule.
Kopano Ratele.Soutie Press
A series of individuals recall the challenges of that process. Sitting in glass booths in the middle of proceedings, they had to move across South Africa’s many official languages in real time, translating the words of victims, perpetrators, grieving families, lawyers and commissioners.
Antjie Krog and co-authors write about interpreting language.Brenda Veldtman
The chapter is also a reminder of how our English-language anthology faces the challenge of doing justice to a multilingual, multivocal society where all kinds of cultural translations happen all the time.
The piece is a blend of many people’s voices, testimonies and reminiscences. As such, it also seemed to symbolise the larger project of The Interpreters: trying to record, render and honour the many voices that make up our complex social world.
– 5 great reads by South African writers from 30 years of real-life stories – https://theconversation.com/5-great-reads-by-south-african-writers-from-30-years-of-real-life-stories-258340
The joint IAEA and FAO Assessment Mission team examine new rice varieties during the first Atoms4Food Initiative Assessment Mission in Burkina Faso. (Photo: Victor Owino/IAEA)
In a critical step toward addressing food insecurity in West Africa, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations have launched their first joint Atoms4Food Initiative Assessment Mission in Burkina Faso.
This mission aims to identify key gaps and opportunities for delivering targeted technical support to Burkina Faso for food and agriculture in a country where an estimated 3.5 million people—nearly 20% of the population—are facing food insecurity. By leveraging nuclear science and technology, Atoms4Food seeks to bolster agricultural resilience and agrifood systems in one of the region’s most vulnerable nations.
The mission, conducted from 26 May to 1 June, assessed how nuclear and related technologies are being used in Burkina Faso to address challenges in enhancing crop production, improving soil quality and in animal production and health, as well as human nutrition.
The Atoms4Food Initiative was launched jointly by IAEA and FAO in 2023 to help boost food security and tackle growing hunger around the world. Atoms4Food will support countries to use innovative nuclear techniques such as sterile insect technique and plant mutation breeding to enhance agricultural productivity, ensure food safety, improve nutrition and adapt agrifood systems to the challenges of climate change. Almost €9 million has been pledged by IAEA donor countries and private companies to the initiative so far.
As part of the Atoms4Food initiative, Assessment Missions are used to evaluate the specific needs and priorities of participating countries and identify critical gaps and opportunities where nuclear science and technology can offer impactful solutions. Based on the findings, tailored and country-specific solutions will be offered.
Burkina Faso is one of 29 countries who have so far requested to receive support under Atoms4Food, with more expected this year. Alongside Benin, Pakistan, Peru and Türkiye, Burkina Faso was among the first countries to request an Atoms4Food Assessment Mission in 2025.
A large proportion of Burkina Faso’s population still live in poverty and inequality. Food insecurity has been compounded by rapid population growth, gender inequality and low levels of educational attainment. In addition, currently, 50% of rice consumed in Burkina Faso is imported. The government aims to achieve food sovereignty by producing sufficient rice domestically to reduce reliance on imports.
“Hunger and malnutrition are on the rise globally, and Burkina Faso is particularly vulnerable to this growing challenge,” said IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi. “This first Atoms4Food assessment mission marks a significant milestone in our collective efforts to harness the power of nuclear science to enhance food security. As the Atoms4Food Initiative expands worldwide, we are committed to delivering tangible, sustainable solutions to reduce hunger and malnutrition.”
The mission was conducted by a team of ten international experts in the areas of crop production, soil and water management, animal production and health and human nutrition. During the mission, the team held high-level meetings with the Burkina Faso Ministries of Agriculture, Health and Environment and conducted site visits to laboratories including the animal health laboratory and crop breeding facility at the Institute of Environment and Agricultural Research, the crop genetics and nutrition laboratories at the University Joseph Ki-Zerbo, and the bull station of the Ministry of Agriculture in Loumbila.
“The Government of Burkina Faso is striving to achieve food security and sovereignty, to supply the country’s population with sufficient, affordable, nutritious and safe food, while strengthening the sustainability of the agrifood systems value-chain,” said Dongxin Feng, Director of the Joint FAO/IAEA Centre for Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture and head of the mission to Burkina Faso. “Though much needs to be done, our mission found strong dedication and commitment from the Government in developing climate-resilient strategies for crops, such as rice, potato, sorghum and mango, strengthening sustainable livestock production of cattle, small ruminants and local poultry, as well as reducing malnutrition among infants and children, while considering the linkages with food safety.”
The Assessment Mission will deliver an integrated Assessment Report with concrete recommendations on areas for intervention under the Atoms4Food Initiative. This will help develop a National Action Plan in order to scale up the joint efforts made by the two organizations in the past decades, which will include expanding partnership and resource mobilization. “Our priority now is to deliver a concrete mission report with actionable recommendations that will support the development of the National Action Plan aimed at improving the country’s long term food security,” Feng added.
In Khartoum, before the current conflict engulfed Sudan, the answer was not always a park, a plaza or a promenade.
The city’s streets, tea stalls (sitat al-shai), protest sites and even burial spaces served as dynamic arenas of everyday life, political expression and informal resilience.
In a recently published article, I studied 64 public spaces across pre-war Greater Khartoum, revealing a landscape far richer – and more contested – than standard urban classifications suggest. Specifically, I uncovered four classifications: formal, informal, privately owned and hybrid spaces – each alive with negotiation and everyday use.
While some spaces were planned by colonial engineers or municipal authorities, many were carved out by communities: claimed, adapted and reimagined through use.
My research offers valuable insights into the design and planning of Africa’s cities. As they grow and face mounting political and environmental pressures, it’s time to rethink how public spaces are defined and designed – not through imported models, but by listening to the ways people already make cities public.
Across the African continent, cities are growing fast – but not always fairly. Urban expansion often privileges gated developments, mega-projects and high-security zones while neglecting the everyday spaces where most people live, work and gather.
In Sudan, these dynamics have been further complicated by conflict, displacement and economic instability. The ongoing war has disrupted not only governance, but also the spatial fabric of urban life.
My paper aims to invite those involved in planning policies and post-conflict reconstruction to move beyond formal, western-centric models that often overlook how publicness actually unfolds in African cities: through informality, negotiation and social improvisation.
Khartoum’s public spaces, as documented in my study, serve as diagnostic tools for understanding how cities survive crises, express identity and contest inequality.
In the wake of war and displacement, these spaces will play a role in shaping how Sudan rebuilds not just infrastructure, but social cohesion.
Pre-war Khartoum
Khartoum’s public spaces cannot be understood through conventional categories – like formal squares and urban parks – alone. These formal squares represent only one layer of a much more plural and negotiated urban reality.
Drawing on fieldwork and the documentation of 64 public spaces across Greater Khartoum, I identify four overlapping types that reflect how space is produced, accessed and contested.
1. Formal public spaces: These include planned parks, ceremonial squares, civic plazas and administrative open spaces, often relics of colonial or postcolonial urban planning. They are defined by order, visibility and regulation. Mīdān Abbas, originally an active civic space in the centre of Khartoum, repeatedly reclaimed by informal traders and protesters, is one example, illustrating how even the most formal spaces can become contested. It was notably active during Sudan’s April 1985 uprising, serving as part of a wider network of civic spaces used for political mobilisation. Informal traders consistently transformed it into a bustling marketplace, embedding everyday commerce and social exchange into the formal urban fabric.
2. Informal and insurgent spaces: These emerge beyond or against official planning logics – riverbanks used for gatherings, neglected lots transformed into social nodes or bridges appropriated by traders. They include spiritual sites like Sufi tombs, and protest spaces such as the sit-in zone outside the city’s army headquarters. These spaces reveal the city’s capacity for bottom-up urbanism and collective adaptation.
3. Privately owned civic spaces: Shopping malls, privately managed parks and cultural cafés fall into this category. While they appear public, they are often classed, surveilled (monitored through cameras or security presence) or exclusionary. The rise of these spaces coincides with the decline of state-managed urban infrastructure, reflecting the turn in Sudanese urban governance.
4. Public “private” spaces: These spaces blur lines between ownership and use. They include mosque courtyards, school grounds, building frontages or underutilised university lawns that serve as informal gathering points. Access here is governed less by law and more by social codes, trust or class.
Together, these typologies highlight that “publicness” in Khartoum is relational. It depends not only on who planned a space, but who uses it, how and under what conditions.
Planning in African cities must therefore move beyond fixed zoning maps to embrace the layered, fluid and lived nature of urban space.
Rebuilding, rethinking, resisting
Post-conflict reconstruction in Sudan – and elsewhere in Africa – must resist the allure of “blank slate” master plans. Those involve rebuilding cities from scratch with sweeping, top-down designs that ignore existing social and spatial dynamics.
Imported models, often guided by bureaucratic thinking or commercial incentives, risk erasing the very spaces where public life already thrives, albeit informally or invisibly.
Rather than imposing formality, planners should recognise and strengthen the informal and hybrid systems that sustain civic life, especially in times of instability.
Urban theorists working in and on the global south, such as AbdouMaliq Simone and the late Vanessa Watson, have long argued for planning frameworks that centre on everyday practices, adaptive use and spatial justice.
Khartoum offers a compelling case.
From the sit-ins of 2019 to tea stalls run by displaced women, public spaces in Sudan are not inert backdrops. They are active platforms of everyday life, resistance, care and community-making.
Reconstruction must begin by asking: what spaces mattered to people before the war? Which ones fostered inclusion, dignity and visibility? Only then can new urban futures emerge, ones that are rooted in the practices of those who have always made the city public, even when the state did not.
What makes spaces truly public?
The public realm in Sudan has always been shaped through negotiation, sometimes with the state, often despite it.
This requires a shift from viewing public space as a fixed asset to understanding it as a dynamic process. Who gets to gather, to speak, to rest, to protest – these are the true measures of publicness.
Understanding Khartoum’s pre-war public spaces isn’t a nostalgic exercise. It’s a necessary step towards building more inclusive, resilient and locally grounded cities in the wake of crisis.
Ibrahim Bahreldin is a member of the Sudanese Institute of Architects and the City Planning Institute of Japan, and is registered as a professional architect and urban planner with the Sudanese Engineering Council and the Saudi Council of Engineers. He is also affiliated with the King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia.
The Author receives funding from KAU Endowment (WAQF) at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
After more than 20 months of devastating violence in Gaza, the right-wing Israeli government’s pursuit of two irreconcilable objectives — “destroying” Hamas and releasing Israeli hostages — has left the coastal strip in ruins.
At least 54,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, close to two million have been forcibly displaced, and many are starving. These atrocities have provoked intense moral outrage around the world and turned Israel into a pariah state.
Meanwhile, Hamas is resolved to retain control over Gaza, even at the cost of sacrificing numerous innocent Palestinian lives for its own survival.
Both sides have been widely accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and mainly in Israel’s case, genocide.
While the obstacles to ending the fighting remain stubbornly difficult to overcome, a troubling pattern has become increasingly apparent.
The very outrage that succeeded in mobilising, sustaining and swelling international opinion against Israel’s actions — a natural psychological response to systematic injustice — has also reinforced a “siege mentality” already present among many in its Jewish population.
This siege mentality may have undermined more proactive Israeli Jewish public support for a ceasefire and “day-after” concessions.
A toxic cocktail of emotions
Several dominant groups have shaped the conflict’s dynamics, each driven by a distinct set of emotional responses.
For many Israeli Jews, the massacres of October 7 have aggravated longstanding feelings of victimhood and mistrust, fears of terrorist attacks, perceptions of existential threats, intergenerational traumas stemming from the Holocaust, and importantly, the strong sense of siege mentality.
Together, these emotions have produced a toxic blend of anger, hatred and intense desire for revenge.
For the Palestinians, Israel’s devastation of Gaza has followed decades of oppressive occupation, endless rights violations, humiliation and dispossession. This has exacerbated feelings of hopelessness, fear and abandonment by the world.
The wider, global pro-Palestinian camp has been driven by moral outrage over the atrocities being committed in Gaza, alongside empathy for the victims and a sense of guilt over Western governments’ complicity in the killings through the provision of arms to Israel.
Similarly, for Israel’s supporters around the world, anger and resentment have led to feelings of persecution, and in turn, victimisation and a sense of siege.
Many on both sides have become prisoners of this moral outrage. And this has suppressed compassion for the suffering of the “other” — those we perceive as perpetrators of injustice against the side we support.
Complaints of bias and content omissions
Choosing sides in a conflict translates almost inevitably into biases in how we select, process and assess new information.
This tendency also increases our sensitivity to omissions of facts we deem important for our cause.
Since early in the crisis, voices in the two camps have accused the mainstream media in the West of biased coverage in favour of the “other”. These feelings have added fuel to the moral outrage and sense of injustice among both sides.
Outrage in the pro-Israel camp has focused mainly on a perceived global conspiracy to absolve Hamas of any responsibility.
In that view, Israel has been singled out as the only culpable party for the killings in Gaza. This is despite the fact Hamas unleashed the violence on October 7, used the Gazan population as human shields while hiding in tunnels, and refused to release all the Israeli hostages to end the fighting.
On both sides, then, significant focus has been placed on omissions of facts that could support one’s own narrative or cause.
A siege mentality in Israel
Many Israelis continue to relive October 7 while remaining decidedly blind to the daily horrors their military inflicts on Gaza in their name. For them, the global outrage has reinforced a long-existing and potent siege mentality.
The so-called “ring of fire” created around Israel by Iran and its proxies —Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Houthis — has further amplified this siege mentality. Their stated objective is the destruction of Israel.
I’ve conducted an exploratory study of Israeli media, government statements and English Jewish diaspora publications from October 2023 to May 2025, reviewing some 5,000 articles and video clips.
In this research, I’ve identified strong, consistent uses of siege mentality language, phrases such as:
In a detailed analysis of 65 English articles from major Israeli outlets, such as The Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel, and Jewish publications in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, I found siege mentality language in nearly nine out of ten searches.
Importantly, nearly half of these occurrences were in response to pro-Palestinian rhetoric or advocacy: campus protests and actions targeting Israelis or Jews, university groups refusing to condemn October 7, or foreign governments’ recognition of Palestinian statehood.
The sharp increase in attacks on Jews and Jewish installations since October 7 has also sparked global debates over rising antisemitism. Distinguishing honest critiques of Israel’s actions in Gaza from antisemitic rhetoric has become contentious, as has the use of antisemitism claims by Israeli leaders to dismiss much of this criticism.
Moving forward
When viewed through the prism of injustice, the strong asymmetry between Israeli and Palestinian suffering has long been apparent. But it’s grown even wider following Israel’s brutal responses to October 7.
The culpability of Israel’s government and Hamas for the atrocities in Gaza is incontestable. However, many in the Israeli-Jewish public must also share some of the blame for refusing to stand up to – or by actively supporting – their extremist government’s policies.
The pro-Palestine movement’s justice-driven campaigns have done much to combat international bystanding and motivate governments to act. At the same time, the unwillingness to unite behind a clearer unequivocal condemnation of Hamas’ massacres may have been a strategic mistake.
By ignoring or minimising the targeting of civilians, the hostage-taking and the reports of sexual violence committed by Hamas, a vocal minority of advocates has weakened the movement’s otherwise strong moral authority with some of the audiences it needed to influence most. First and foremost, this is people in Israel itself.
My research suggests that while injustice-based outrage can be effective at generating attention and engagement, it can also produce negative side effects. One adverse impact has been the polarisation of the public debate over Gaza, which, in turn, has contributed to the intensification of Israelis’ siege mentality.
Noam Chomsky, a well-known Jewish academic and fierce critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, once noted in relation to Palestinian advocacy:
You have to ask yourself, when you conduct some tactic, what the effect is going to be on the victims. You don’t pursue a tactic because it makes you feel good.
The question, then, is how to harness the strong mobilising power of moral outrage for positive ends – preventing bystander apathy to atrocities – without the potential negative consequences. These include polarisation, expanded violence, feeding a siege mentality (when applicable), and making peace negotiations more difficult.
The children in Gaza and elsewhere in the world deserve advocacy that will prioritise their welfare over the release of moral outrage — however justified.
So, what approaches would most effectively help end the suffering?
Most immediately, the solution rests primarily with Israel and, by extension, the Trump administration as the only international actor powerful enough to force Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to halt the killings.
Beyond that, and looking toward the future, justice-based activism should be grounded in universal moral principles, acknowledge all innocent victims, and work to create space for both societies to recognise each other’s humanity.
I served as a counterterrorism specialist with the Israeli Defence Forces in the 1980s.
The Online Streaming Act, passed in 2023, amended the Broadcasting Act to “ensure that online streaming services make meaningful contributions to Canadian and Indigenous content.”
This is a pivotal moment to think about the important role of policy to support Canada’s independent artists, as well as public and community media, and the increasing power of global streaming companies when it comes to setting the terms of cultural policy. One way to do this is to consider the trajectory of satellite radio.
As I discuss in my new book, Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age, the launch of subscription satellite radio services in the United States in 2001, and their subsequent entry into the Canadian market in 2005, raised questions about how to regulate these new services.
Canadian content regulations had been established for broadcast radio in 1971, and these needed to be sorted out for satellite radio channels. Many artists and music industry workers were keen to allow the service to enter the country, while others were concerned with the lack of substantial cultural protectionism.
Critics felt that relegating Canadian music to a small selection of channels higher on the channel lineup (in the 160s and 170s) was a disservice to Canadian content regulations, as those channels were easy to ignore. They also thought that, overall, the domestic music content featured on satellite would be lower than what was heard on terrestrial radio.
During the 2004 CRTC public hearing before the licensing of Sirius and XM in Canada, Neil Dixon, the president of Canadian Music Week, argued that “one of the most difficult things we had to do in promoting independent music on an independent label was getting it outside this country.”
Dixon championed the advantages of satellite radio in comparison to terrestrial radio, as did several creatives entities. They spoke of the belief and hope in seeing Canadian, as well as Indigenous artists, heard beyond Canadian borders and in areas not served by broadcast radio.
CBC Radio 3 and satellite
Among the Canadian satellite channels was CBC Radio 3, a channel programming 100 per cent independent Canadian music. It served as a beacon of hope for Canadian artists because its music programming drew from a wide variety of artists who had not yet received commercial radio play. This channel came from a financial and programming partnership between CBC, the public broadcaster, and Sirius Canada.
Years after the 2011 merger of Sirius and XM in Canada, SiriusXM Canada was restructured in 2016, with 70 per cent of the company now owned by U.S. SiriusXM. This also meant that the CBC would cease being a shareholder in SiriusXM Canada.
The cutting of CBC channels sparked uproar among artists in Canada, namely independent ones. SiriusXM had become a major income source for Canadian artists, particularly by comparison to the low royalty payments from Canadian commercial radio and streaming platforms.
Among the new channels introduced by SiriusXM when it simultaneously cut CBC channels was Mixtape North, devoted to Canadian hip hop and R&B.
Such a channel has the potential to support upcoming Canadian artists in these genres. However, the Mixtape North channel description mentions massively successful commercial artists: “Playing the newest hits from Drake and Jessie Reyez to classic throwbacks from Kardinal Offishall and K-OS to emerging voices.” In late May 2025, according to xmplaylist.com, the most played artists were The Weeknd and Drake, as well as Melanie Fiona, who has a new song with American artist LaRussell.
A balance between superstar artists and smaller or independent artists is evident. The channel seems designed for more superstar artists than Radio 3, because it is without the CBC’s public media mandate to play independent artists.
Precarity of public media institutions
SiriusXM is a massive commercial subscription radio company with a long history of working to alter cultural policy in its favour. Some have argued that it didn’t make sense for a public media company to partner with a commercial subscription radio service in this way.
The story of satellite radio exemplifies an imperfect approach to supporting Canadian culture across the digital and streaming music era, as well as the competing commercial and public interests in policymaking.
We need to pay careful attention to the uneven power dynamics between major media companies and then the musicians and music lovers who live by the rules established through policymaking.
Brian Fauteux receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 12, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Apex Labs Ltd. (APEX or the Company), a pharmaceutical company transforming the standard of mental health care with psilocybin is pleased to announce the approval by the Israeli MoH and IRBs to open two additional clinical trial sites for SUMMIT-90. The trial is a double-blind, placebo controlled phase 2b study evaluating multiple doses of APEX-90, a psilocybin macrodose utilizing APEX’s US patent pending capsule. APEX-90 is administered in-clinic with study-assisted psychotherapy for severe depression within diagnosed PTSD. Israel is facing a severe mental health crisis: 44% of adults report depression and 42% PTSD, far above the 8–13% depression and 6–10% PTSD rates seen in the US and Canada.
This MoH approval leverages the expertise of TAU’s renowned SGI and Merhavim Hospital, which both have a rich history of pioneering research in neurological sciences. Their cutting-edge facilities and teams profound understanding of PTSD dynamics are poised to add patient recruitment expertise.
“I am honoured to have been able to facilitate this new partnership; another example of building important bridges between Canada and Israel in innovative clinical research, which will result in advancing patient access to emerging treatments,” says Sharon J. Fraenkel, TAU Canada’s CEO for Ottawa, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada, on behalf of the organization.
“As someone deeply connected to Israel, witnessing the toll of PTSD among my loved ones, I’m driven to lead research that brings hope and healing,” says Alysa Langburt, APEX’s VP of Global Clinical Development. “This marks more than a clinical milestone, it represents a fundamental step towards transforming the mental health landscape in Canada and Israel, where the need has never been greater. Through our incredible partnerships, we aim to catalyze a shift in access, care and outcomes for those suffering with PTSD.”
“SUMMIT-90 offers a beacon of hope for the significant numbers suffering from PTSD in Canada and Israel,” says Tyler Powell, co-Founder and CEO of APEX. “It underscores our commitment to global mental health innovation and our belief in the opportunity for clinically proven psilocybin therapies to transform mental health care.”
About Apex Labs Ltd. APEX is a patient-driven pharmaceutical company focused on revolutionizing the standard of mental health care with psilocybin. APEX’s strategy is two-pronged, clinical evaluation of drug assets alongside a robust Early Access Program. APEX recognizes and prioritizes Veterans as a patient base with the most severe unmet medical need.
Forward-Looking Statements This release contains certain “forward-looking statements” and certain “forward-looking information” as defined under applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking statements and information can generally be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “may”, “will”, “expect”, “intend”, “estimate”, “anticipate”, “believe”, “continue”, “plans” or similar terminology. Forward-looking statements and information are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions that, while believed by management to be reasonable, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Forward-looking statements and information are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the ability to control or predict, that may cause the Company’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied thereby, and are developed based on assumptions about such risks, uncertainties and other factors set out here in, including but not limited to: receiving authorization of Health Canada Dealers Licence; filing US provisional patent, the Company evaluating the safety and efficacy of APEX-52 (psilocybin) and APEX-90 (psilocybin) in treating depression in Veterans and patients with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; statements related to APEX-52 and APEX-90, including manufacturing, dosing, and trial details; statements made by the Company’s executives with respect to Health Canada’s Dealer’s Licence and capsule patent filing; the Company’s efforts around the Early Access Program; statements made relating to Canadian Veteran patients; approvals by the Israeli Ministry of Health and ethics; the inherent risks involved in the general securities markets; uncertainties relating to the availability and costs of financing needed in the future; the inherent uncertainty of cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses, currency fluctuations; regulatory restrictions, liability, competition, loss of key employees and other related risks and uncertainties. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information except as required by applicable law. Such forward-looking information represents managements’ best judgment based on information currently available. No forward-looking statement can be guaranteed and actual future results may vary materially. Accordingly, readers are advised not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information.
As AI tools disrupt conventional subject boundaries, educators face a dilemma: some seek to ban these tools, while others are seeking ways to embrace them in the classroom.
Both approaches risk missing a deeper transformation that was predicted 60 years ago by Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan.
McLuhan’s insights can help educators — and all of us grappling with the meaning, uses and misuses of AI — to think about how to cultivate a new mindset, one that integrates human agency and machine capabilities consciously and critically.
‘Oracle of the electric age’
In the mid-1960s, McLuhan published Understanding Media, earning a reputation as the “oracle of the electric age.”
In the chapter, “Automation: Learning a Living,” McLuhan opens with a provocative observation: “Little Red Schoolhouse Dies When Good Road Built.” Technological change, he suggested, doesn’t merely augment existing systems — it transforms them.
While roads once expanded access to specialized education, automation reverses this logic, he argued.
This is because disciplinary boundaries are dissolved, and the intersection of learning and work is redefined. He wrote:
“Automation … not only ends jobs in the world of work, it ends subjects in the world of learning.”
McLuhan foresaw that computing would enable new forms of pattern recognition, requiring fundamentally different ways of thinking — more integrative, relational and responsive — rather than simply accelerating old methods.
Automation makes the arts mandatory
Crucially, McLuhan argued that far from making the liberal arts obsolete, automation makes them mandatory. In an age where machine intelligence is integrated into communication and creativity, the humanities, with their focus on cultural understanding, ethical reasoning and imaginative expression, become more essential than ever.
The “adjacent possible” refers to the set of opportunities and innovations that become accessible when new combinations of existing ideas and technologies are explored.
This gives rise to what I refer to as AI-adjacency: a framework that treats artificial intelligence not as a replacement for human intelligence, but as a partner in strategic collaboration and creative inquiry.
6 ways AI can be a partner in creative inquiry
1. Critical discernment
AI-adjacent learning begins with critical discernment: the ability to assess intellectual and cultural value regardless of whether AI was involved in the creation process.
When game designer Jason Allen’s AI-assisted image, Théâtre D’opéra Spatial, won first place in a digital arts competition at the 2022 Colorado State Fair — and Allen shared information about it on social media — controversy ensued.
Commenters were unsure how to evaluate artistic merit when creative direction is shared with AI. Allen reportedly spent more than 80 hours crafting over 600 text prompts in Midjourney, and also digitally altered the work. The debate illustrates how critical discernment moves beyond detecting AI use to asking deeper questions about authorship, effort and esthetic judgment.
2. Strategic collaboration
Strategic collaboration requires nuanced decision-making about when and how to involve AI tools in a creative process. A recent study reports that “the impact of ChatGPT as a feedback tool on students’ writing skills was positive and significant.”
As one student in the study noted: “When you use ChatGPT in a classroom with your classroom, you’re doing it with several people. So much talk going on simultaneously! It’s kinda cool. The conversations are so meaningful and without noticing, we are working together and writing.”
The value here is in an AI-facilitated collaboration that encourages students to become more interested in learning how to express themselves through writing.
3. Voice and vision stewardship
Stewarding voice and vision means ensuring that technology serves individual expression, not the other way around. At Berklee College of Music in Boston, with varied instructors, students are encouraged to explore AI’s varied potential uses in enhancing their creative process. If it’s used, instructors emphasize outputs must reflect the artist’s own style, not just the algorithm’s fluency. This fosters self-awareness and creative authorship amid technological collaboration.
4. Cultural and social responsibility
AI tools are not neutral, but they can be powerful allies when developed with cultural and social responsibility. Researchers on Vancouver Island are developing AI voice-to-text technology specifically for Kwak’wala, an endangered Indigenous language.
Unlike existing systems designed for English, this AI must be built from scratch because Kwak’wala is verb-centred rather than noun-based.
The project demonstrates how AI can amplify marginalized voices. In this case, Indigenous communities control the development process and cultural knowledge remains in community hands.
5. Adaptive expertise
Adaptive expertise means knowing when to innovate beyond routine solutions. Medical education researchers Brian J. Hess and colleagues define it as “the capacity to apply not only routinized procedural approaches but also know when the situation calls for creative innovative solutions.”
In an AI-integrated world, students must distinguish between when AI-generated responses are appropriate and can enhance productivity, versus when situations require human, slower, in-depth thinking and creative analysis.
Students must distinguish between when AI-generated responses can enhance productivity, versus when situations require human thinking. (Allison Shelley for EDUimages), CC BY-NC
For example, history students can use AI to quickly process archival materials and identify patterns, but must also learn how to use AI to help them interpret the cultural significance of those patterns, which requires innovative analytical approaches grounded in a liberal arts education.
6. Creative and intellectual agency
Creative and intellectual agency represents a central pillar of humanities education, rooted in the German concept of Bildung, which is developing oneself through critical engagement with complex ideas.
This principle of cultivating independent thinking and deep attention to challenging problems remains essential in an AI-integrated world. The challenge facing higher education is find ways to amplify intellectual agency through creative collaboration with AI tools. At Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, humanities students work with computer scientists to develop interdisciplinary courses like “Algorithms and Social Justice,” which involves applying humanistic perspectives throughout data analysis processes.
McLuhan’s warning: loss of self-awareness
‘Narcissus,’ by Italian baroque painter Caravaggio, circa 1597–99. (Wikimedia Commons)
McLuhan also offered a powerful warning through the myth of Narcissus in Understanding Media.
Contrary to popular view, McLuhan argued Narcissus didn’t fall in love with himself; instead, he mistook his reflection for someone else.
This “extension of himself by mirror,” McLuhan writes, “numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended … image” — meaning, Narcissus became dependent on his own reflection.
The real danger of AI isn’t replacement. It’s the loss of self-awareness. We risk becoming passive users of our own technological extensions and allowing them to shape how we think, create and learn without realizing it. In McLuhan’s terms, we become tools of our tools.
AI-adjacent practices offer a way out. By engaging consciously with technology through the six dimensions, students learn to use AI critically and creatively — without surrendering their agency.
Gordon A. Gow receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Many people thought that the close relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk would end badly, since they both have the hubris that comes from success and power. One is arguably the most powerful politician in the world and the other the richest man.
That said, most people were not prepared for the rapid breakdown in their relationship and the slanging match that took place after Musk spectacularly fell out with the US president. This was magnified by the fact that both have their own influential social media sites (X and Truth Social) and so the divorce was very, very public.
More recently Musk has rowed back on the comments he made about Trump after leaving his role as a “special government employee” of the administration, and says he went “too far”. But Trump might have a long memory for grievances, so it remains to be seen if the relationship can be patched up.
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What do the American people think? The chart below shows the percentage of respondents with favourable and unfavourable opinions of Trump and Musk in the most recent US Economist/YouGov poll completed on June 9 after the row blew up.
It is clear that the most people think that Trump won the contest, giving him a favourability gap (% favourable minus % unfavourable) of minus 10% compared with Musk’s gap of minus 23%.
What Americans think of Trump and Musk after their row:
Author’s graph based on Economist polling., CC BY-SA
The demographics of these favourability judgements are particularly interesting. After the row, around 49% of men thought favourably of Trump, compared with 38% of women, continuing a trend that shows more male than female support for the president. But the gender gap for Musk is even wider with 43% men and only 27% women having a favourable view of the billionaire, making the gap 11% for Trump and 16% for Musk.
Another interesting demographic is age. Some 35% of 18-to-29 year olds favour Trump (the lowest number of any age group), compared with 30% who favour Musk. The equivalent figures for the over 65s are 45% favouring Trump and 37% Musk. The age divide is wide, with young Americans disliking both more than older Americans, but it is not as wide as the gender gap.
The income figures and attitudes to both are surprising. A total of 38% of those with incomes less than US$50,000 (£36,700) a year favour Trump, compared with 51% of those with incomes between US$50,000 and US$100,000. The surprise is that only 42% of those with incomes greater than US$100,000 favour Trump, making affluent Americans closer to the low-income group than to the middle-income group in attitudes to the president.
The equivalent figures for Musk are 32% favourable in the US$50,000 group, 39% in the US$50,000 to US$100,000 group and 36% in the US$100,000+ group, which gives a similar picture.
If we look at the voting record of the survey respondents in the presidential elections last year, 86% of Trump voters still have a favourable view of him, compared with only 5% of Harris voters. In comparison 67% of Republican voters are favourable to Musk, compared with 10% of Democrats. Equally, 81% of Conservatives favour Trump compared with 67% who favour Musk.
Looking at the overall picture Musk is the loser in the row as far as the American public are concerned, and this may in part explain his apparent contrition.
The price of Tesla shares (US$) since the presidential election:
Author’s graph based on data from Yahoo finance., CC BY
Overall though, Trump has been gradually losing support on his job approval since the election and the polling shows that 43% of respondents approve and 52% disapprove of his performance as president.
We don’t have equivalent figures for Musk, but if we take the stock market price of Tesla shares as a guide to his approval ratings this has declined rapidly over time as the chart shows. On December 17 last year the price was US$480 (£353) per share, compared with US$332 per share on June 11 2025. This represents a fall of about 30%. The dramatic dip at the end of the series is an indicator of how markets have reacted to the spat between them.
Following his public break-up with Trump, Musk’s other major company, Space X, is also likely to face fallout. It is a private company and so does not have a share price, but it is heavily dependent on contracts from the US government to keep going. It seems likely that the flow of contracts for space projects is likely to dry up following the row with Trump, as the president has suggested.
Overall, Musk has paid a heavy price for becoming such a visible Trump supporter and subsequently falling out with him. And, so far, the public appears to be on Trump’s side.
Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sarah Louisa Bowen, Head of Animation at the Northern Film School, Leeds Beckett University
The original DreamWorks animated feature film, How To Train Your Dragon, was released in 2010 to widespread critical acclaim. Praised for its innovative 3D animation, emotional depth and stunning flying sequences, spectacle converged with identity, inclusion and a story of generational change that adhered to a reassuringly traditional narrative structure. Fifteen years later, in a world more politically fractured, the live-action remake has been released.
The original film confidently mastered the uncanny valley issues of early 3D animation. This new live-action version builds on its success and presents a spectacular photo-realistic fantasy world.
Hyper-real flight sequences offer immersion in ways that have appealed to audiences since the inception of cinema when phantom rides simulated the thrill of speed and continuous movement from a first person perspective.
There are references to other films throughout, including Titanic (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998) and the Alien and Harry Potter franchises. But even with its extensive use of CGI and visual effects, the differences between the live-action and animation are not as pronounced as might be expected in films made 15 years apart.
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Significant differences are apparent when it comes to the characters, however. The 2025 reinterpretations of Hiccup (Mason Thames), Astrid (Nico Parker) and Stoic (Hiccup’s father, played by Gerard Butler) seem less nuanced than the original versions. With animated characters, the audience accepts a stylised story world and character motivation more readily. But translated to live action, their motivations now feel as though they turn on a sixpence. As such they come across more as narrative devices than psychologically developed characters.
The story centres on a young Viking named Hiccup. He looks older here than the original animated 15-year-old, but like most heroes heading off for a rite of passage, he is still awkward, cerebral and caught in the space between boyhood and an adult masculinity.
Hiccup is expected to kill a dragon as his initiation into adulthood. Instead, he bonds with the fearful Night Fury Dragon (which he names Toothless), and relates to the creature’s feelings of exclusion. This furthers his understanding of the creature he has injured and leads him to question the beliefs of his community.
The trailer for How to Train Your Dragon.
When Hiccup reaches out (a moment of welcome respite in the relentless musical score) to Toothless, the most feared dragon, becomes puppy-like with exuberance, gratitude and goodwill. This underlines the film’s themes of empathy over power and a vision for a world that is remade through connection. As such, Hiccup’s mastery of Toothless, through mutual trust and consent, belongs to a cinematic lineage of children and their animal companions.
American exceptionalism
The film begins with an introduction to the village of Berk that is under aerial bombardment from dragons. The plucky island community endures the raids with a grit and stoicism that is reminiscent of cinematic representations of the British during the blitz.
If the dragons are stand-ins for the German Luftwaffe Messerschmitt, then Toothless is all RAF Spitfire. The aerial combat takes a new direction when the attacking dragons are revealed to be controlled by tyrannical alpha dragon, The Red Death.
The voice casting of the villagers distracts from the action, however. The established Viking community is represented by a range of identities. All the adults speak with British accents while their children, the future inheritors, have an American lilt.
Tradition versus modernity is one of the themes of the film.
The implication is that the old Viking community is blinkered by tradition while the American youths represent modernity through reason and inclusion. This hackneyed trope of a traditional community stuck in the past until the Americans drive progress remains in this live-action version. It contradicts the film’s themes of inclusion and understanding by perpetuating an American exceptionalism that resonates with cultural shifts in the aftermath of the second world war.
As such, the choice of accents is not merely a concession to the market but a continuation of the cultural hegemony of US war narratives. Even though the Battle of Britain was mostly a British, European and Commonwealth effort, it’s the legacy of the Eagle Squadrons, those rule-breaking Americans, who are alluded to here.
This live-action version of How To Train Your Dragon is therefore refreshed in its visuals only. The dreams, cultural anxieties and post-war allusions remain. The question then is this: after Trump’s reshaping of America’s relationship with the UK and Europe, is a second world war meta-narrative still going to fly?
Sarah Louisa Bowen 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 high school prom, an American institution, has now been a mainstay in UK culture for over 25 years. A prom heralds the end of exams and the end of school altogether – and the beginning of a new chapter of life. It’s an opportunity for teens to dress up in glamorous dresses and smart tuxedos, and maybe arrive in style in the back of a limo.
It’s an adolescent ritual that might be seen as a one-off, frivolous event. But a prom is much more important than that.
The research for our forthcoming book chapter has shown that organising and attending proms build teenagers’ leadership skills, creativity, practical and life skills, as well as social and emotional skills. It also boosts positive emotions, such as enthusiasm and pride: something teenagers emerging from a gruelling summer of exams need.
For teens involved in organising the event, there is scope to develop leadership skills. Making group decisions about where to hold the event and how to fund it requires bargaining with other organising committee members, as well as reasoning with fellow students and navigating school rules.
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Trying to please everyone, including teachers, parents and host venues can be a steep learning curve. And dealing with disappointment when compromise is required is an important life skill.
For teenagers with limited involvement in organising the event, attending prom can still help boost their learning. Having a party to look forward to can increase teens’ diligence and commitment to their schoolwork as they revise for their exams. Some schools capitalise on this by offering “passports” to prom. This scheme could involve students earning a free ticket to prom by attending a set number of revision classes.
Emerging adult selves
Prom is more than an opportunity for dressing up. Teenagers can also use this event to present a new or altered self, using a coming-of-age celebration as a platform to convey who they are or who they want to be. In some cases, this can involve young people making their own clothing and accessories. Such types of activity afford practical and life skills.
And any prom look requires organisation: budgeting, researching what’s available. Finances, limited or otherwise, may constrain or restrict choice and result in problem solving or trade-offs. As the high school prom occurs within a particular time frame, time management and the (online) ordering of products can contribute – or not – to the success of a desired prom outfit.
Friends are keen to share their prom experience with others, but attending the high school prom can be prohibitively expensive. Our research has shown that in these situations, teens can develop their social and emotional skills as well as effectively communicating and negotiating with school staff in more equal, adult ways than they may have before.
For example, some teens in our research secured their friend’s attendance at prom by buying her a dress for her birthday and asking their teacher if she could have her prom ticket for free.
There remains opportunity to use the high school prom as means to develop a wider range of diverse skills. Equality, diversity and inclusion could be better embedded in prom activities to make them accessible to all, and teenagers can be part of this. To ensure widening participation, creating high school proms that reflect a range of cultures and identities could further enhance learning opportunities for those taking part.
High school proms involve not only teenagers but also their families, friends and the wider community. Schools especially have an important role to play in this coming-of-age celebration, often going further than simply supporting its organisation. Teachers, for example, can help facilitate the supply of dresses and other resources to guarantee inclusion at this end of school celebration, ensuring that those who want to attend this event can do so.
Our research shows that teenagers actively participate in a learning journey while preparing for this ritual and develop life skills that they can build on in work, further education and volunteering. A high school prom is more than just one night to remember.
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.
The Labour government has made economic growth its top priority, committing to planning reforms, business partnerships and millions of pounds of investment in science and technology.
But economic growth is not just about innovation, investment and businesses. How the law functions is of fundamental importance for economic growth. The UK’s highly-regarded system of justice plays an important role in creating the environment of trust that underpins commerce and investment.
The legal system should be regarded as part of the national infrastructure, just as much as rail or electricity networks, or health and education. But like them, it has suffered a sustained drop in funding. And with the civil courts now in a state of neglect, their reputation – and the trust placed in them – is at risk of crumbling.
For both people and businesses, the forum for resolving disputes and securing rights against one another, or against the state, involves the legal system. County courts, tribunals and bodies such as Acas (the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) are just a few of the bodies involved in civil and administrative law, employment law, tax law and corporate law.
The Ministry of Justice budget for England and Wales, which funds courts and tribunals, started to fall in real terms in the 2011-12 financial year. This has led to under-resourcing, underequipping, and understaffing of services. Justice is an “unprotected” government department, and continues to be a low priority compared to others such as health and education.
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The chancellor’s spending review announced “up to £450 million additional investment per year for the courts system by 2028-29, compared to 2025-26”, which the government says will help tackle court backlogs. But years of decline have already deteriorated the system significantly.
The key question to measuring the success of publicly-funded legal systems is, are they fast, fair and predictable? It would be difficult today to answer positively.
There are large backlogs due to staff shortfalls compared to caseloads. When it comes to civil claims in the courts, aside from the very smallest claims, the average period from a claim to a hearing is now 77 weeks. This is an increase from 48 weeks pre-austerity. In either case, it’s plenty of time for a small business or startup to go under while trying to reclaim a debt.
The position in the tribunals is not much better. According to the latest Ministry of Justice statistics, the backlog of open tribunal cases rose by 4% overall in the quarter to June 2024, to 668,000. There was a 17% jump in employment tribunal open cases, and a huge surge in appeals to the special educational needs and disability tribunal, taking the backlog up 61% to 9,200.
Another example is the 79,000 appeals outstanding at the social security and child support tribunal, where eligibility for personal independence payments for disabled people is determined. This was up 12% on the year in mid-2024, causing a large number of mostly financially struggling people to wait too long for the money they are due. This has the effect of draining spending power in the local economies that need it most.
So much for speed. What about whether people and businesses can rely on justice that is fair and predictable? Unfortunately, the tribunal statistics contain worrying signs that this is not reliably happening. For instance, with the social security and child support tribunal, three-fifths of hearings resulted in administrative decisions being overturned in favour of the claimant.
Effect on the economy
The economic impact of fraying civil justice is hard to discern. The academic and policy literature alike tend to focus on the high-profile areas of law that affect corporations, such as property and contract disputes.
Yet there are assuredly costs across the system. Employers may be unable to recruit staff until a tribunal case is settled; meanwhile, employees can’t find a new job. And small businesses may be unable to get bills paid, even for large amounts well over what their cash flow can sustain.
For countries where slow and unpredictable justice has long been acknowledged as a problem, there is solid evidence of its detrimental effect on the economy. For example, Italian growth has been shown to be hampered by the uncertainty around civil law processes, increasing the risks involved in business decisions. Economists – including Nobel prizewinners Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson – have identified the legal system as essential underpinning for the economy.
The justice system needs to be regarded as part of national infrastructure, the collection of physical and institutional systems and networks without which the economy cannot function. People do not want courts any more than they want bridges or cables for their own sake, but for all the indispensable activities they enable.
The value of the courts is indirect but fundamental. If they crumble, the economic transactions and investment enabled by a predictable, rapid justice system are held back.
Civil and administrative justice does not leap to mind when contemplating the demands of the growth mission: battery factories, graphene labs and building sites all provide ministers with better photo ops. But unless there is improvement in the timeliness of decisions by courts and tribunals, growth in the UK will be facing yet another powerful headwind.
Diane Coyle has received funding from the Nuffield Foundation’s Public Right to Justice programme.
The hardest part of any workout regime is sticking with it. Around half of those who start an exercise programme stop within six months.
But our recent study found that using wearables (such as a smartwatch) not only makes people more likely to start working out, they’re also seven times more likely to still be active after six months compared to those who didn’t use a smartwatch.
Our study focused specifically on adults who had recently been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Physical activity is a cornerstone of type 2 diabetes management, as it helps regulate blood sugar, supports cardiovascular health and improves quality of life.
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Our study tested a new approach using wearable technology and remote coaching to overcome these barriers. We found that people who followed a smartwatch-supported remote coaching programme were ten times more likely to start a workout regime than those who received remote coaching alone.
The study involved 125 adults aged between 40 and 75 from the UK and Canada who had recently been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. All participants worked with an exercise specialist to co-design a personalised six-month physical activity plan. The focus was on gradually increasing both moderate-to-vigorous exercise (with a target of 150 minutes per week) and daily lifestyle activity. Support was delivered remotely through phone or video calls.
Half of the participants were randomly assigned to use wearable technology to support their personalised activity plans. The smartwatch had movement and heart rate sensors, a mobile app to track activity and personalised text messages based on their recent progress. They could also message their coach, receive real-time feedback and adjust their activity plans accordingly.
The results were striking. Compared to the control group, those who were given a smartwatch were ten times more likely to start working out regularly, seven times more likely to still be active after six months and three times more likely to remain active one year later – even after support had ended.
At the end of the programme, over 50% of the smartwatch group were meeting recommended activity levels. In comparison, only 17% of the control group were.
Feedback from participants showed that the flexibility of plans, personalised messages and smartwatch data were key motivators. While some faced early challenges with the technology, most adapted quickly.
These findings support growing evidence that wearable technology can help people become – and stay – more active. While our study focused on people with type 2 diabetes, similar benefits have also been observed in the general population.
For example, one trial found that inactive adults (aged 45-75) who were given pedometers and walking advice increased their daily step count by around 660 steps after 12 weeks compared to a control group. Those given a pedometer were also more active three years later.
Since then, wearable technology has advanced. Modern smartwatches now capture a wider range of metrics beyond steps – such as heart rate and activity intensity. A 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis, which analysed more than 160 randomised controlled trials, found that fitness trackers and similar devices were effective at increasing physical activity by an average of around 1,800 steps per day. Importantly, the most sustained improvements occurred when wearables were paired with personalised feedback or behavioural support.
Together, these studies suggest that wearables can be powerful tools for long-term behaviour change and may help us better stick to our fitness goals.
Wearable fitness trackers can extremely helpful – but only if you use them purposefully. Our research, along with findings from other studies, shows that wearables are most effective when they help you apply proven behaviour-change strategies.
Here are some evidence-based tips to help you get the most out of your device:
1. Set realistic, specific goals
Plan exactly when and how you’ll move. Apps can help you set daily or weekly targets. Research shows that breaking down big, vague intentions – such as “get fit” – into small, concrete steps makes it easier to stay motivated and avoid feeling overwhelmed.
2. Schedule activity and stick to it
Use reminders or calendar prompts to build a regular routine. Consistency builds habits, and scheduled activity reduces the chance of skipping workouts due to forgetfulness or lack of planning.
3. Track your progress
Monitoring your activity helps you stay motivated and accountable. This feedback boosts motivation by showing that your efforts are making a difference, increasing your sense of control and accountability.
4. Use small rewards
Many devices include features such as badges or streaks, which reinforce progress. Celebrating small wins triggers feelings of accomplishment, which encourages you to keep going and helps build long-term habits.
5. Share with others
Whether it’s a friend or coach, sharing your progress can boost commitment. Knowing others are aware of your goals can increase motivation, provide encouragement, and help you overcome challenges.
6. The tracker is a tool, not the solution
It won’t change behaviour on its own. Its value lies in how it supports your goals and helps you build lasting habits.
Our research shows that when wearable tech is used as part of a structured, supportive programme, it can make a real difference – especially for people managing health conditions such as type 2 diabetes. By combining wearable technology with personalised coaching and proven behaviour change techniques, you might just have a better chance of sticking with your physical activity goals.
Matthew Cocks receives funding from the Medical Research Council.
Katie Hesketh receives funding from Diabetes UK and NIHR.
ARU students Lisa-Marie Soulier, left, and Claudia Vogt at the awards ceremony
Two Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) students have won a national award run by Kodak for a “bold” and “funny” commercial, beating off entries from 17 other universities and film schools from across the UK and Ireland.
Director Claudia Vogt and producer Lisa-Marie Soulier, both 22-year-old third year BA (Hons) Film and Television Production students at ARU, collected the award for best overall film at a ceremony held at the historic Regent Street Cinema in London.
The Kodak Student Commercial Awards is an annual competition run by Kodak and Nahemi, the national association for higher education in the moving image. The competition, which has been running for nearly 40 years, received a total of 61 entries this year.
Students were provided with a 10 minute roll of Kodak 16mm film to make a 30 second commercial based on one of four live briefs set by advertising agencies McCann, Libertine and TBWA. Representatives from the national agencies were on the judging panel.
The ARU students’ live brief was for the sexual health and wellbeing charity Brook, and their winning film, Eros – The Myth Buster, is a light-hearted commercial to promote the use of condoms.
The judges described the commercial as “a film that really stood out with its original storytelling and bold, funny approach. The sharp writing had us laughing throughout, and it felt more like an entertaining story than an ad, in the best possible way.”
In addition to Claudia and Lisa-Marie, the cinematographer for Eros – The Myth Buster was Jack Bryant and it was edited by Karina Bhojwani, who are also both third year BA (Hons) Film and Television Production students at ARU.
“We didn’t expect to win first prize at all, so this is such a surprise. It’s also incredibly rewarding because it was quite a complicated shoot, using cameras we don’t use on a day-to-day basis, so this recognition from Kodak and the judges is fantastic.”
Student Claudia Vogt, who directed the film
“The brilliant thing about the Film and TV Production course at ARU is that it’s so hands-on and practical.
“We have access to the very best equipment, such as ARRI Alexa Mini LF cameras, which are the same cameras used in Hollywood, and our tutors have been amazing. They’ve provided opportunities for us during the course to work with high-profile organisations such as the Imperial War Museum and Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, which is great for our portfolios.”
Producer Lisa-Marie Soulier, who came to study at ARU from Montreal in Canada
The pair also combined for their graduation film Saturday Night Butch, which is on show at the ARU Creative Showcase, and plan to continue working together after graduation.
Claudia added: “We’ve made documentary, fiction and now adverts together, and we plan to expand on all of these and continue to focus on opportunities and projects that feel relevant to us.”
Toronto, Canada, June 12, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — In a significant step toward mainstreaming crypto-based passive income, Coinchange and Kanga Exchange have joined forces to offer automated yield solutions—resulting in over 30% user adoption in just months. The partnership between Coinchange, a digital asset management platform, and Kanga Exchange, a leading cryptocurrency exchange platform, demonstrates how the integration of yield-generating solutions can simplify access to passive income opportunities. The collaboration has enabled over 30% of Kanga’s active users to generate passive income through multi-strategy active portfolio management solutions on their digital asset holdings without requiring active supervision or technical expertise.
Kanga and Coinchange Address Passive Income Needs
Kanga Exchange operates over 800 physical exchange points across 12 countries, specifically serving users who prefer cash-based transactions or localized financial services. This model merges traditional finance with digital assets to serve both individual and institutional clients through its platform and wallet application. However, users increasingly wanted to grow their crypto holdings passively, which created a demand for tools that automate yield generation with minimal complexity.
Coinchange addressed this need by integrating its Earn API into Kanga’s platform. The API connects user deposits to a range of protocols, automating how users earn returns and eliminating the need for manual intervention. This strategy is appealing to busy individuals as well as businesses that want to grow their unused funds without needing to navigate smart contracts or liquidity pools.
Partnership Highlights: Key results
Increased earnings: Users achieved 3-5% higher yields on average compared to traditional savings and staking offerings;
Expanding reach: Kanga Exchange’s hundreds of thousands active users could see 30% adoption of its Earn product, underscoring surging demand for passive crypto income tools;
Instant access: Coinchange’s Earn product removed the typical 15–30 day waiting period for Kanga Exchange, giving users easy and flexible access to their funds.
Simplifying DeFi: How the Earn API Works for Users
The Earn API simplifies the process: users deposit digital assets as well as stablecoins into their Kanga wallets, and the API automatically allocates funds across vetted protocols. This approach removes technical barriers, allowing users to benefit from decentralized finance without requiring knowledge of wallet addresses, gas fees, or market monitoring.
Key advantages of the integration include:
Reduced transaction costs: The API aggregates funds & optimizes a multi-strategy approach to reduce transaction costs;
Automated yield generation: Algorithms handle asset allocation for consistent and diversified returns;
Liquidity preservation: Integration enables withdrawals without lock-up periods – removing the need to wait.
Measurable Success and Market Impact
The partnership has supported financial inclusion by making access to advanced portfolio composition tools streamlined. Users who previously avoided decentralized finance due to its complexity now earn passive income through a familiar exchange interface.
The integration has demonstrated measurable success in enhancing user engagement, with 30% of users utilizing the yield feature. By making the process easier, Kanga has strengthened its value proposition as more than a trading platform, while Coinchange has expanded its reach to a diverse, globally distributed user base.
Addressing Challenges: Trust and Compliance
Initially, adoption faced challenges as users didn’t fully understand how risks were managed. Coinchange and Kanga addressed this by highlighting the Earn API’s security protocols and audit processes. Regulatory compliance across multiple jurisdictions necessitated the use of reporting tools, ensuring compliance with local financial regulations.
Key Takeaways and Future Outlook
The Coinchange-Kanga partnership case study exemplifies how strategic collaborations can unlock potential for mainstream audiences. The Earn API integration simplified complex technology, making it easy for Kanga’s global users to earn passive income. This model highlights the importance of infrastructure solutions in driving cryptocurrency adoption, particularly for users prioritizing simplicity and liquidity. To further enhance its comprehensive offering, Kanga Exchange also provides a crypto loan service. Looking ahead, Kanga is actively working on introducing advanced features, including futures contracts and trading competitions, to further expand its ecosystem. As the digital asset ecosystem evolves, similar integrations will likely play a pivotal role in bridging the gap between traditional finance and decentralized innovation.
About Coinchange
Coinchange is a digital asset management platform based in Canada that provides market-neutral, multi-management, and multi-strategy solutions. In order to produce steady, market-neutral yields as investment solutions for institutional clients, the company combines active portfolio management, transparency, and strategy diversification.
About Kanga Exchange
Kanga Exchange is a leading cryptocurrency platform born in Poland and built for the world. Since 2018, Kanga has been on a mission to make crypto accessible and usable in everyday life, not just as an investment, but as a real financial alternative.
With a deep presence in Central Europe and an expanding international footprint, Kanga helps people easily move between crypto and cash through one of the region’s largest on-ramp and off-ramp infrastructures, including over 800 physical locations.
More than just a trading platform, Kanga is committed to education and real-world adoption through initiatives like its free Kanga University, helping users explore the full potential of digital assets beyond speculation, focusing on everyday use, financial inclusion, and long-term impact.
As it continues to grow, Kanga is building on its existing ecosystem of accessible financial tools, including peer-to-peer trading, crypto-backed services, and everyday crypto-to-cash solutions. Kanga makes crypto simpler, more useful, and more human for everyone, everywhere.
Samsung’s education-focused, corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes strive to promote innovation and empower youth through technology; with the ultimate aim of addressing societal issues.
These programmes offer support to underprivileged youth and aim to cultivate creative thinking while also providing critical skills training needed by the local economy. By doing so, Samsung is creating opportunities for young people to make a positive impact on their communities and society. Samsung spoke to some of the beneficiaries from its education-focused initiatives that are driven through technology and this is what they had to say:
Siyabonga ‘Siya” Mojalefa Tshabalala originally from Qwaqwa in the Free State was part of the 2022 Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC) programme in partnership with Central University of Technology (CUT). SIC is a global initiative that upskills youth aged 18-25 in future technologies to enhance their employability while focusing on AI, IoT, Big Data and Coding. Siya explained: “ Through this SIC programme – I gained hands-on experience through paper coding, peer programming and projects and these skills have helped me to solve real-world problems. The programme also taught me some important soft skills that are required in work environments, these included communication, critical thinking, problem solving skills and ability to collaborate with others.”
Another beneficiary, 26 year old Mulalo Ndou, did her undergrad in Mathematical Science and majored in Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). She also completed her honours in Risk Analysis (Cum-laude) at the University of the Free State (UFS).
According to Mulalo, Samsung’s bursary fund was her light at the end of the tunnel. Mulalo received funding from Samsung when she needed it to complete her last year of studies. “I lost the funding I had for my studies in my final year and had to go back home, but Samsung came through for me, she said. “This bursary fund paid for my annual fees and accommodation in my final year and postgraduate studies. It also provided me with a monthly meal and living stipend as well as an allowance for a laptop.”
After Mulalo finished her postgrad, Samsung provided her with an internship opportunity. “When the internship period was over, Samsung gave me a full-time position as a Process Improvement Data Analyst/Reporting Specialist am very grateful to the individuals at Samsung who helped me to be successful in my role,” she added. In an effort to pay it forward, Mulalo also works as a volunteer at Rising Females in STEM, as she is also a Rising Female in Technology and Mathematics.
Mulalo said that she has always wanted to be one of the mentors in the Samsung Solve For Tomorrow (SFT) programme. “This SFT opportunity came at the right time and has been an amazing experience. I am learning something new each day from the participating learners and most importantly, how to become a great mentor.”
Nzumbululo Todani, an 18 year old learner from Mbilwi Secondary in Thohoyandou, Limpopo. Nzumbululo is one of the beneficiaries from the SFT contest that challenges students to use STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) skills to solve real-world problems in their respective, local communities. His participation in the SFT competition has proved to be invaluable – he attributes his academic achievements in 2024 to his experience in the programme. Nzumbululo was awarded the top learner in the province for the 2024 NSC examinations with an average aggregate of 97%. Also, he was awarded for obtaining 300/300 in two gateway subjects: Physical Science and Geography.
“When I participated in the contest, I assumed the role of team co-ordinator, managing and planning the daily landscape of the project and doing quality control on the prototype as well as all papers written and the final presentation. The competition left me with invaluable communication, leadership, planning, evaluation and time management skills.”
Thoriso Rangata is a 32 year male entrepreneur and the owner of KTO Digital – a Business Process Automation, Software Development Services and Background Screening Software as a Service (SaaS) solution provider. He currently stays in Johannesburg but is originally from Limpopo and is one of the beneficiaries of the Samsung EEIP Entrepreneurship Development Programme. Thoriso became part of the programme when he responded to a public call for applications. At the time, his business needed support so that they could meet the company’s growth objectives.”
Since being part of the EEIP programme, Thoriso won the Nedbank Business of the Year Award in 2022. His company also launched their own product and received accreditation for the business as a credit bureau in 2022.
“The other direct benefits that we received from being part of the programme included: Grant Funding, Asset Financing and Continuous Business Mentorship that our business needed in order for us to move forward, Thoriso added. “We strongly believe that the skills we acquired from this EEIP programme, which included Business regulatory governance structures and strategic business growth approaches/methods – have contributed to the success of our business to date.”
Through these education-focused CSR programmes that are driven by technology, Samsung is actively promoting the transfer of critical skills as well as both employment and entrepreneurship opportunities that are needed by the country’s youth and the local economy.
The testimonials from the youth that participated in Samsung’s programmes mentioned above, are a clear indication of the impact the company is making in South Africa. By continuing to fund such programmes, Samsung is working towards winning the fight against youth unemployment, inequality and poverty in the country; through job creation and the development of a skilled workforce.
Tasmanian politics has been thrown into chaos after a Labor motion of no confidence forced Premier Jeremy Rockliff to either resign or call for a new election. The premier opted for the latter, with Tasmanians to vote on July 19, only something over a year into the four-year term.
In Tasmania, Australia’s smallest state in terms of both size and population, local issues dominate. Labor homed in on economic mismanagement.
But there is controversy over the Macquarie Point Hobart AFL stadium (which the major parties support) as well as the state’s important salmon industry, which saw a lot of attention federally in the lead-up to the last election.
To talk all things Tasmanian, we’re joined by Independent Tasmanian Senator Tammy Tyrrell. She was elected in 2022 under the banner of the Jacqui Lambie Network a former member of the party but left last year. We talk about the state election, as well as federal issues and the new Senate.
Tyrrell laments Tasmanians’ being made to vote again so soon,
I was out and about on the northwest coast of Tasmania all day yesterday and everybody was like, what the heck is going on? They don’t want to go to an election, the people of Tasmania, they want the parliament to actually be grown ups and sort it out amongst themselves.
The budget in Tasmania is in a shambles and we’re so far in the red that we can’t see any way out of it. But really? There’s no way that the Labor [party] is going to form government unless they form a minority government and no Tasmanian will support a Labor-Greens government again in a hurry. But I really think that the Liberal government should have elevated somebody else from within to be the leader, to be the premier.
On her former boss Jacqui Lambie whose party has now collapsed, Tyrrell says it’s because of the kind of person she is,
[In] the federal election, Jacqui focused outside of Tasmania. She focused on expanding the network. And it didn’t work for her because she didn’t campaign enough here in Tasmania.
It’s a shame that she’s not supporting the candidate that is still sitting with her under the network. […] I think she should have stuck by Andrew Jenner and supported him through this [Tasmanian] election because he has shown loyalty to her and he has stuck it through thick and thin. So I believe he should be able to run back under the banner.
Jacqui is a strong person and the network had every chance to be a strong network, but Jacqui [is] not really a team player. She’s more of a single athlete because she’s so determined and strong of her opinion and it’s hard to take a group forward when you’ve got such a strong force that does not communicate sideways very well. She is a strong human being and I still believe in Jacqui but it makes it hard for her to have a team.
On the salmon farming industry, while Tyrrell voices her support, she agrees that environmental concerns do matter,
I support any industry that puts jobs and money into small rural and regional communities in Tasmania. I agree that they need to be as eco and as green friendly as possible and I know that the salmon industry is doing things to be clean and as green as possible. But I also believe that we need to look after the people who live and work in Tasmania.
We can’t sacrifice an industry completely just to satisfy the people that don’t like the salmon industry. I will always support the people of Tasmania and encourage industry and business to be as eco-friendly as possible, which is why we’re encouraging as many biofuels and eco-green fuel companies as possible to come to Tasmania, and thrive here.
On reports that the Nationals approached her to join their party. Tyrell says while she didn’t seriously consider it, she took it as a “compliment”,
It was a big compliment though. The Nats represent rural and regional Australia beautifully, by speaking their voice and for them to see that I am representing the people of Tasmania in a good light. It was a huge compliment to be approached to join them. But I’d already been in a relationship and I’m quite happy being a single divorcee.
It’s amazing being an independent, it means that I can say and do what my community wants me to in their voice without having to agree to broad-sweeping politics or legislative ideas that I don’t agree with fundamentally.
Michelle Grattan 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.
DENVER, June 12, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Through a unique collaboration, Scrum Alliance® a global leader in agile certifications, and Northwestern University School of Professional Studies (SPS), renowned for its prestigious academic programs and dedicated approach to professional development, have joined forces to offer a suite of on-demand courses designed to equip professionals with essential agile skills.
No matter where an organization is in its agile transformation, these on-demand courses offer ways to understand agile adoption success factors, management approaches and change management development.
All three courses offer the ultimate flexibility, letting those who desire to stay ahead of the curve learn anytime, anywhere and at their own pace. But it’s not just about convenience — these courses will provide the tools to seize opportunities and deliver real, impactful results in any industry. Whether it’s advancing a career or transforming an organization, these courses provide the expertise you need to thrive in today’s fast-paced, ever-evolving business world.
“Agility is no longer just a buzzword; it’s the key to thriving in today’s volatile, fast-moving business world,” said Tristan Boutros, CEO of Scrum Alliance. “This partnership with Northwestern University allows us to deliver actionable skills that go beyond theory — these are concrete skills that help professionals mobilize strategy, drive measurable bottom-line results and mitigate risk. Whether it’s managing projects more effectively, leveraging AI advancements or responding to shifts in the market, agility is essential for today’s leaders who need to act fast, think ahead and lead with impact.”
Professionals will have access to three on-demand microcredential courses offered by Scrum Alliance with each course launching this summer.
Agile Stakeholder Engagement will launch in early July. Effective stakeholder communication is crucial for product owners and scrum masters to ensure project alignment, build relationships and maintain engagement throughout the agile process. This course will explain best practices for communication between agile and traditional projects while identifying and prioritizing stakeholder’s communication needs.
Agile Change Management will launch in August. Whether your organization is just beginning its agile transformation or is further along, it’s crucial to help your team quickly adapt. This course addresses common obstacles teams face during agile transitions and offers change management strategies to overcome resistance.
Mastering Hybrid Agile is scheduled to launch in September. This course helps teams—remote, hybrid and in-person—optimize collaboration and tackle the challenges of distributed work. Participants will explore agile practices to enhance communication, streamline teamwork and overcome common hurdles in hybrid environments, ensuring success on any project.
Each course is between three and five hours long and covers several modules and examples. Interactive and practical exercises are integrated throughout each microcredential to apply what was learned. Together, Northwestern University and Scrum Alliance encourage those already in the workforce to take advantage of these offerings and advance their professional skills.
“SPS is committed to offering high-quality, flexible, and accessible educational programs that advance the careers of working professionals,” said Erica Wilke Bova, Ed.D., Assistant Dean, Professional Education Programs. “This partnership enables us to create contemporary curricula in an innovative format that meets the workforce needs of Scrum Alliance’s network.”
About Scrum Alliance® As the first not-for-profit focused on agile education and professional credentialing, Scrum Alliance continues to advance its position of Agile for Anyone™ by equipping professionals and their organizations with the education, skills, and community needed to succeed in today’s ever-evolving workplaces.
About Northwestern University Northwestern University is a leading private research institution with campuses in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois. Known for its academic excellence and commitment to innovation, Northwestern offers a wide range of professional development programs through its School of Professional Studies, preparing individuals for success in an ever-evolving global economy.
For more information or to enroll in the new agile courses, please visit www.scrumalliance.org or www.sps.northwestern.edu.
Media Contact Bethany Rhodes Uproar by Moburst for Scrum Alliance bethany@moburst.com
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Scientists comment on a drought status confirmed in Yorkshire, as announced by the Environment Agency.
Dr Jess Neumann, Associate Professor in Hydrology, University of Reading, said:
“The drought announcement in Yorkshire comes only a few weeks after parts of north-west England declared a drought.
“An unseasonably dry spring, the driest in nearly 90 years, means many reservoir levels are only 60-65% full, well below the 80-85% average for this time of year. The lack of rainfall is placing significant strain on public water supplies, affecting agricultural crop production, and harming wildlife and the environment.
“Water companies are implementing their drought action plans as another warm and dry week is forecast ahead. Small actions and changes to behaviour can have an important role to play. People should be mindful of their water use, and I would urge everyone to develop water-saving habits. Small actions such as capturing water from the tap in a jug while waiting for it to run hot, turning taps off when brushing your teeth, and using a watering can rather than a hose in the garden may prevent harsher restrictions, such as so-called “hosepipe bans” being needed, in the coming weeks and months.
“Two large areas of England are now in drought status. This raises important questions about the security of our water in the long term. Water is no longer abundant and plentiful. We urgently need to adjust to a future of climate change and water stress and invest in infrastructure and regulations to save water.
“At the same time, the forecast for the UK is suggesting that there is potential for some torrential downpours and thunderstorms, which may bring rapid flash flooding, especially to the west of England and Wales, but with eastern England, southern Scotland and Northern Ireland also at risk.
“The recent dry weather conditions, which can lead to dry soils or baked, hard ground, may actually increase run-off rates, potentially increasing the risk of hazardous flash flooding.
“Currently the UK is sandwiched between high pressure to the east and low pressure in the west, driving hot, humid air across the country, creating conditions for active thunderstorms.
“The current climatic picture in the UK shows water stress and uncertainty in some regions while other areas are facing risks of flooding. This pattern of extreme weather and regional variability is in keeping with the impacts of the hotter atmosphere and warmer, higher seas that we are already experiencing as a result of our increasingly changing climate.”
Declared interests
Jess Neumann: “I am a trustee of the Charity River Mole River Watch. We work with water companies including SES Water and the Environment Agency.”
SAN DIEGO, June 12, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — LPL Financial LLC announced today that financial advisor Jeff Runyan has joined LPL Financial’s broker-dealer, Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) and custodial platforms. He reported serving approximately $330 million in advisory, brokerage and retirement plan assets* and joins LPL from Wedbush Securities.
Based in Beverly Hills, Calif., Runyan grew up in Missouri, where his passion for financial discipline took root early and deepened over time. After beginning his career in wealth management in 2001, he set out to fulfill a lifelong dream of building his own firm. In 2010, he founded Runyan Capital, an independent firm dedicated to delivering an elevated wealth management experience. With over two decades of experience in investment management, Runyan remains grounded in the midwestern values that shaped him, earning a reputation as a trusted advisor known for thoughtful guidance and a deep commitment to helping clients make confident, informed financial decisions.
“Our guiding principle is: ‘Discipline Makes the Difference,’” Runyan said. “The Runyan Capital process of building portfolios for each client incorporates behavioral economics research, taking a disciplined and proactive approach that helps prevent reactionary changes, aligns with each client’s individual goals, and contributes to their long-term success.”
Looking for improved technology offerings, more autonomy and the opportunity to amplify the elevated client experience, the Runyan Capital team, which includes Connor Brumfield, Sam Aamot and Jenni Runyan, Jeff’s wife, turned to LPL.
“We chose to partner with LPL because of its size, scale and reputation, as well as their impressive integrated and streamlined technology,” Runyan said. “Making the move to LPL will allow us to take our business to the next level and provide our clients with an enhanced level of service.”
Outside of work, Runyan enjoys spending time with his wife and two children and is an avid endurance athlete, having run marathons around the world. He has served on several boards, including the Rotary Club of Beverly Hills, PIMCO’s Investment Management Member Advisory Board for Financial Advisors and The Friends of Greystone in Beverly Hills. A proud alumnus of the University of Missouri, he remains an active supporter of its faculty and programs and is a lifetime member of the university’s Chancellor’s Fund for Excellence.
Scott Posner, LPL Managing Director, Business Development, said, “We welcome Jeff, Connor, Sam and Jenni to the LPL community and congratulate them on this milestone in the evolution of their practice. Just as the Runyan Capital team offers their unwavering dedication to their client’s financial success, we are committed to helping our advisors differentiate themselves and enhance the client experience. We look forward to supporting Runyan Capital in this next chapter of their business.”
LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: LPLA) is among the fastest growing wealth management firms in the U.S. As a leader in the financial advisor-mediated marketplace, LPL supports over 29,000 financial advisors and the wealth management practices of approximately 1,200 financial institutions, servicing and custodying approximately $1.8 trillion in brokerage and advisory assets on behalf of approximately 7 million Americans. The firm provides a wide range of advisor affiliation models, investment solutions, fintech tools and practice management services, ensuring that advisors and institutions have the flexibility to choose the business model, services, and technology resources they need to run thriving businesses. For further information about LPL, please visit www.lpl.com.
Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial LLC (“LPL Financial”), a registered investment advisor and broker-dealer, member FINRA/SIPC. Runyan Capital and LPL Financial are separate entities.
Throughout this communication, the terms “financial advisors” and “advisors” are used to refer to registered representatives and/or investment advisor representatives affiliated with LPL Financial.
We routinely disclose information that may be important to shareholders in the “Investor Relations” or “Press Releases” section of our website.
*Value approximated based on asset and holding details provided to LPL from end of year, 2024.
Conducted by Queen Mary University in partnership with White & Case, the 2025 International Arbitration Survey results state:
“The ICC Arbitration Rules are highly regarded, with many interviewees highlighting their established reputation and ease of use for arbitrators and counsel, as well as the support of the Secretariat.”
The survey revealed a strong preference among arbitration communities on every continent for the ICC Arbitration Rules, from a choice of more than 60 sets of rules. The ICC Rules took top position in Africa (53%), the Caribbean and Latin America (74%), Europe (60%), the Middle East (59%) and North America (55%), underlining the global character and adaptability of the regulations.
In 2024, 831 new cases were filed under the ICC Arbitration Rules, with a total of 2,392 parties from 136 jurisdictions.
Claudia Salomon, President of the ICC International Court of Arbitration, said:
“We’re delighted that the ICC Court again tops the list of the Queen Mary Study as the most-preferred arbitral institution globally. Our services are built on over 100 years of experience, combined with our continued focus on meeting the evolving needs of the parties. We take this opportunity to thank those who entrust the resolution of their disputes to ICC. Our ranking would not be possible without the exemplary leadership and dedication of the ICC Court members and the Secretariat”.
The 2025 International Arbitration Survey investigates current trends in user preferences and perceptions, as well as opportunities to shape the future of international arbitration practice. The 2025 edition is the result of 2,402 questionnaire responses and 117 interviews with a diverse pool of participants.
Full survey findings are available on the Queen Mary University London website
Large cuts to government-funded research and development can endanger American innovation – and the vital productivity gains it supports.
The Trump administration has already canceled at least US$1.8 billion in research grants previously awarded by the National Institutes of Health, which supports biomedical and health research. Its preliminary budget request for the 2026 fiscal year proposed slashing federal funding for scientific and health research, cutting the NIH budget by another $18 billion – nearly a 40% reduction. The National Science Foundation, which funds much of the basic scientific research conducted at universities, would see its budget slashed by $5 billion – cutting it by more than half.
Research and development spending might strike you as an unnecessary expense for the government. Perhaps you see it as something universities or private companies should instead be paying for themselves. But as research I’ve conducted shows, if the government were to abandon its long-standing practice of investing in R&D, it would significantly slow the pace of U.S. innovation and economic growth.
I’m an economist at Texas A&M University. For the past five years, I’ve been studying the long-term economic benefits of government-funded R&D with Karel Mertens, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. We have found that government R&D spending on everything from the Apollo space program to the Human Genome Project has fueled innovation. We also found that federal R&D spending has played a significant role in boosting U.S. productivity and spurring economic growth over the past 75 years.
Measuring productivity
Productivity rises when economic growth is caused by technological progress and know-how, rather than workers putting in more hours or employers using more equipment and machinery. Economists believe that higher productivity fuels economic growth and raises living standards over the long run.
U.S. productivity growth fell by half, from an average of roughly 2% a year in the 1950s and 1960s to about 1%, starting in the early 1970s. This deceleration eerily coincides with a big decline in government R&D spending, which peaked at over 1.8% of gross domestic product in the mid-1960s. Government R&D spending has declined since then and has fallen by half – to below 0.9% of GDP – today.
Government R&D spending encompasses all innovative work the government directly pays for, regardless of who does it. Private companies and universities conduct a lot of this work, as do national labs and federal agencies, like the NIH.
Correlation is not causation. But in a Dallas Fed working paper released in November 2024, my co-author and I identified a strong causal link between government R&D spending and U.S. productivity growth. We estimated that government R&D spending consistently accounted for more than 20% of all U.S. productivity growth since World War II. And a decline in that spending after the 1960s can account for nearly one-fourth of the deceleration in productivity since then.
These significant productivity gains came from R&D investments by federal agencies that are not focused on national defense. Examples include the NIH’s support for biomedical research, the Department of Energy’s funding for physics and energy research, and NASA’s spending on aeronautics and space exploration technologies.
Not all productivity growth is driven by government R&D. Economists think public investment in physical infrastructure, such as construction of the interstate highway system starting in the Eisenhower administration, also spurred productivity growth. And U.S. productivity growth briefly accelerated during the information technology boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which we do not attribute to government R&D investment.
More R than D
We have found that government R&D investment is more effective than private R&D spending at driving productivity, likely because the private sector tends to spend much more on the development side of R&D, while the public sector tends to emphasize research.
Like the private sector, the Department of Defense spends much more on development – of weapons and military technology – than on fundamental research. We found only inconclusive evidence on the returns on military R&D.
R&D work funded by the Defense Department also tends to initially be classified and kept secret from geopolitical rivals, such as the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb. As a result, gains for the whole economy from that source of innovation could take longer to materialize than the 15-year time frame we have studied.
The high returns on nondefense R&D that we estimated suggest that Congress has historically underinvested in these areas. For instance, the productivity gains from nondefense R&D are at least 10 times higher than those from government investments in highways, bridges and other kinds of physical infrastructure. The government has also invested far more in physical infrastructure than R&D over the past 75 years. Increasing R&D investment would take advantage of these higher returns and gradually reduce them because of diminishing marginal returns to additional investment.
So why is the government not spending substantially more on R&D?
One argument sometimes heard against federal R&D spending is that it displaces, or “crowds out,” R&D spending the private sector would otherwise undertake. For instance, the administration’s budget request proposed reducing or eliminating NASA space technology programs it deemed “better suited to private sector research and development.”
But my colleague and I have found that government spending on R&D complements private investment. An additional dollar of government nondefense R&D spending causes the private sector to increase its R&D spending by an additional 20 cents. So we expect budget cuts to the NIH, NSF and NASA to actually reduce R&D spending by companies, which is also bad for economic growth.
Federal R&D spending is also often on the chopping block whenever Congress focuses on deficit reduction. In part, that likely reflects the gradual nature of the economic benefits from government-funded R&D, which are at odds with the country’s four-year electoral cycles.
Similarly, the benefits from NIH spending on biomedical research are usually less visible than government spending on Medicare or Medicaid, which are health insurance programs for those 65 years and older and those with low incomes or disabilities. But Medicare or Medicaid help Americans buy prescription drugs and medical devices that were invented with the help of NIH-funded research.
Even if the benefits of government R&D are slow to materialize or are harder to see than those from other government programs, our research suggests that the U.S. economy will be less innovative and productive – and Americans will be worse off for it – if Congress agrees to deep cuts to science and research funding.
The views expressed in the Dallas Fed working paper are the views of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas or the Federal Reserve System.
Andrew Fieldhouse does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Magali A. Delmas, Professor of Management, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles
Since the early 1990s, the small blue Energy Star label has appeared on millions of household appliances, electronics and even buildings across the United States. But as the Trump administration considers terminating some or all of the program, it is worth a look at what exactly this government-backed label means, and why it has become one of the most recognizable environmental certifications in the country.
Energy Star was launched by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1992 and later expanded in partnership with the Department of Energy with a simple goal: making it easier for consumers and businesses to choose energy-efficient products, helping them reduce energy use and save money, without sacrificing quality or performance.
As a scholar of energy conservation, I have studied the Energy Star program’s development and public impact, including how it has shaped consumer behavior and environmental outcomes.
Products that earn the Energy Star certification typically use significantly less energy than standard models, often between 10% and 50% less. The energy – and financial – savings can add up quickly, especially when homes or buildings have multiple Energy Star appliances and systems.
Energy Star itself does not manufacture or sell products. Instead, it acts as a trusted third-party certifier, providing consumers and businesses with reliable information and clear labeling. It also offers information to help people estimate energy savings and compare long-term costs, making it easier to identify high-performing, cost-effective options. Manufacturers participating in Energy Star seek to improve their environmental reputation and increase their market share, giving them a strong incentive to meet the program’s efficiency criteria.
Today, the label appears on refrigerators, dishwashers, laptops, commercial buildings and even newly built homes. The government says people in more than 90% of American households recognize the label.
Energy Star-certified appliances include upright freezers, clothes washers and many other types of home equipment, which use between 10% and 50% less energy than uncertified items. AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel
People don’t always choose efficient products
Energy Star seeks to tackle a wide range of problems that can result in people deciding not to buy energy-efficient products.
One problem is that efficient models often come with higher up-front costs. While efficient models save money over time, that higher purchase price can discourage buyers. Energy Star helps counter this problem by clearly showing how much money can be saved on energy costs over the lifetime of the product – as compared with noncertified products – and by offering rebates that reduce the initial expense.
Another problem involves what economists call “split incentives.” A landlord might not want to pay a higher price up front for energy-efficient appliances if the tenants are the ones who will save money on the utility bills. And renters may not want to spend a lot of money on appliances or equipment in a place they do not own. Energy Star tries to bridge this divide by promoting whole-building certifications, which encourage landlords to invest in their buildings’ energy efficiency with the goal of making their properties more attractive to tenants.
The countless varieties of refrigerators, dishwashers, air conditioners and other items on the market can also create confusion. Consumers who just look at manufacturers’ promotional material may find it very hard to determine which appliances truly deliver better energy efficiency. The Energy Star label makes this comparison easier: If the label is there, it is among the most efficient choices available.
And consumers are often skeptical of manufacturers’ claims – especially when it comes to new technologies or environmental promises. Energy Star’s status as a program backed by the government, rather than a private company, gives it a level of independence and credibility that many other labels lack. People know the certification is based on science, not sales tactics.
Lastly, Energy Star helps overcome the problem that many people are not aware of how much energy their appliances consume, or how those choices contribute to climate change. By connecting everyday products to larger environmental outcomes, Energy Star helps consumers understand the effects of their decisions, without needing to become energy experts.
The program delivers real results
Since its inception, more than 800,000 appliance models have earned Energy Star certification based on the criteria for their type of product.
The same principles that make the label valuable for consumer appliances – independent certification, clear metrics and a focus on results – have proved equally effective in real estate. Nearly 45,000 commercial buildings and industrial plants have earned certification. And there have been more than 2.5 million Energy Star-certified homes and apartments built in the U.S.
Energy Star-certified homes are designed to be at least 10% more energy efficient than those built to standard building codes, with more insulation and windows and lights that are energy-efficient, as well as appliances. These enhancements can translate to better quality, comfort and long-term cost savings for homeowners.
Commercial buildings, which account for about 18% of total U.S. energy use, have also benefited substantially. Research I was involved in found that certified commercial buildings use an average of 19% less energy than their noncertified counterparts.
Energy Star’s status as a government-led label contributes to its credibility as a more neutral and science-based source of information than commercial labels.
Energy Star’s government connections also bring scale: By requiring federal purchases to have Energy Star certifications, the federal government can influence manufacturers. For example, a federal executive order in 1993 required government agencies to purchase only computers that had been Energy Star-certified, which required them to have energy-saving sleep functions.
In response, manufacturers began including the feature so they could sell their products to the government. Consumers soon came to expect the sleep feature on all computers.
A quiet success story in energy and climate
Energy Star does not grab headlines. It does not rely on regulation or mandates. Yet it has quietly become one of the most effective tools the U.S. has for improving energy efficiency across homes, offices and public buildings.
That said, the program is not without its limitations. Some critics have pointed out that not all certified products consistently perform at the highest efficiency levels. Other critics note that the benefits of Energy Star are more accessible to wealthier consumers who can afford up-front investments, even with available rebates. And the EPA itself has, at times, struggled to manage the certification process and update standards in line with the latest technological advances.
At a time when energy costs and climate concerns are rising, Energy Star stands out as a rare example of a practical, nonpartisan program that delivers real benefits. It helps individuals, businesses and communities save money, lower emissions and take part in a more sustainable future – one smart decision at a time.
Magali Delmas received funding from the US EPA in 2002 for research on Environmental Management Strategies and Corporate Performance.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Michael Naparstek, Associate Teaching Professor Religious Studies, University of Tennessee
A man plays the Chinese action role-playing game ‘Black Myth: Wukong’ during its launch day in Hangzhou, in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, on Aug. 20, 2024.STR/AFP via Getty Images
Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.
Title of the course
Religion and Gameworlds
What prompted the idea for the course?
Most of my research is in Chinese religions, and I find it fascinating that popular video games – like many popular films before them – draw from the mythologies, cosmologies, unseen powers and heroic narratives found across the world’s religious traditions.
Recent examples such as “Black Myth: Wukong” and “Raji: an Ancient Epic” draw explicitly from mythologies and religious narratives of China and India, respectively, putting the player in direct contest against pantheons of gods. Meanwhile, games such as “Sid Meier’s CIV VI,” where players develop an historical civilization from the Stone Age to Space Age in a quest for global domination, explicitly utilize religion as ways to develop and conquer the world.
At the same time, the interactive experience of a video game makes it an especially interesting place to study religion. When your character uses magic, interacts with powerful deities, or even achieves godlike status themselves, the player also shares such experiences on some level as well. Sometimes, viewers’ experiences blur the lines between “real life” and on-screen.
Some churches have even used the game “Second Life” to offer worshippers the option of getting baptized using their digital avatar in the game. This kind of practice raises poignant questions about how we understand religion in our modern world.
What makes this course different from many others that utilize video games is that the student experience of playing the games influences how we frame our investigation of religion. Students wrestle with questions about how religion helps build the worlds they are experiencing.
We meet in the game lab as a class once a week to observe and analyze each other’s experiences playing different kinds of games.
We start the week with relevant theoretical and historical framing in the traditional classroom. For example, in our investigation of “Black Myth: Wukong,” a game inspired by the 16th-century novel “Journey to the West,” students first read selections from the work as they learn about its protagonist, the trickster monkey god Sun Wukong.
In the novel, Wukong picks fights with all the gods in an attempt to overthrow the cosmic order, only to eventually be violently put in his place by the highest gods of the Chinese pantheon. Our class discussions thus serve as a general introduction to Chinese religions, while we also get to discuss the theoretical basis for culturally defined ideas such as what makes a hero.
Playing as a descendant of Sun Wukong, students explore enchanted landscapes, interact with local spirits and engage in magical combat against the very gods that we learned about in class.
Each week, students note their observations, carefully detailing their experience playing the game, as well as the experience of watching others do the same. Students are also asked to analyze the ways in which religious themes, narratives and practices played a role in the game world they experienced.
We conclude the class with weekly reflections on the overall experience.
What will the course prepare students to do?
In 2024, the video game industry boasted over US$184 billion generated in market value. The global reach of games allows new audiences to experience and learn about religious narratives and practices in new ways.
Popular media has long been a powerful mode of cultural exchange. Video games are just a recent example, but the scale to which gamers around the world connect with each other through playing demands more attention.
The wild popularity following the 2024 release of the game “Black Myth: Wukong,” the first premier produced game out of China for an international audience, suggests that this kind of experience is truly a global phenomenon that will only continue to grow. It only makes sense that video games can serve as powerful pedagogical tools as well.
The goal of the course is to prepare students to better understand the broader contexts in which their shared experience of enjoying video games derives. Learning about the role of religion in shaping that experience allows students to better understand how religion shapes our modern world.
Michael Naparstek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ian McDonough, Associate Professor of Psychology, Binghamton University, State University of New York
Older adults generally have a good sense of their own financial abilities – unless they have dementia. shapecharge/E+ via Getty Images
Older adults diagnosed with dementia lose their ability to assess how well they manage their finances, according to a recent study I co-authored in The Gerontologist. In comparison, people of the same age who don’t have dementia are aware of their financial abilities – and this awareness improves over time.
For our study, we used data from over 2,000 adults in the U.S. age 65 and older, collected during a long-term study on aging.
We focused on how participants’ financial skills changed over time. The study began in 1998 and is still running, but we probed data collected between 1998 and 2009.
Participants were assessed at one year, two years, five years and 10 years for their ability to carry out everyday tasks, including ones that required handling money. For example, they had to calculate the cost of a gym membership and a store discount rate, fill out part of a tax return and assess the cost of medical services. They also rated how well they thought they could do everyday financial tasks. Initially, none of the participants were diagnosed with dementia, but over the course of the decade, 87 participants, or 3.1%, received a dementia diagnosis.
We found that even though participants’ performance on financial tasks declined as they aged, older adults who did not have dementia and older adults who had mild cognitive impairment were appropriately aware of their financial abilities. What’s more, that awareness increased over time. However, participants who were diagnosed with dementia during the study and experienced severe cognitive decline often misjudged how well they performed financial tasks.
Financial scams targeting older adults are on the rise.
The lack of insight into one’s cognitive abilities is called anosognosia. This study reveals a new type called financial anosognosia.
Few tools are available that can support families in helping cognitively impaired adults manage their finances. Our research suggests that there is a critical window of time after people begin to experience cognitive decline during which they are still aware of their financial abilities. We believe that this is when people can take action to secure their finances and develop systems to protect themselves from fraud.
What still isn’t known
Close friends or family members are often tempted to take away the financial autonomy of an older adult who is mismanaging their finances. However, that may not be the best solution, particularly for people who feel that handling their finances is a core part of their identity. More research is needed to identify how best to balance personal autonomy and the need to protect a person’s finances.
What’s next
This study used paper-and-pencil tasks to assess financial performance. But increasingly, many older adults are using online banking.
E-banking simplifies many calculations, which may be helpful for older adults with declining cognition. However, e-banking can also make finances more of a black box, which may decrease a person’s awareness of their financial abilities. Furthermore, e-banking is constantly advancing, putting older adults at a disadvantage because they are more likely to be less cognitively flexible and to learn more slowly.
We hope to explore whether older adults with and without cognitive decline have similar awareness of their ability to appropriately manage their finances online and identify potential financial scams.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Ian McDonough receives funding from The National Institutes of Health.
The 49 bus connects the Strawberry Mansion, Grays Ferry and University City neighborhoods. Courtesy of SEPTA
When the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority launched the 49 bus route in Philadelphia in early 2019, those who most benefited were older adults and people who already ride the bus – and not commuters who were persuaded to ditch their cars for public transportation, according to our new research.
Some of the largest benefits of Route 49 came in saved time and fewer transfers for existing users of other transit routes.
Route 49 launched in early 2019 and was the first local bus service that SEPTA added to its system in nearly a decade. It connects two residential Philadelphia neighborhoods – Strawberry Mansion in North Philadelphia and Grays Ferry in South Philadelphia – with the job-rich University City area in West Philadelphia.
Public transit agencies often try to court “choice” riders – people who have a reasonable chance of choosing to either drive or use public transportation for a given trip, and who tend to be higher income.
SEPTA, however, didn’t necessarily focus on choice riders with the design of Route 49. But planners at the agency did tell us during our data collection that many commuters to University City don’t take public transit.
We found that early riders of Route 49 tended to be previous transit riders who seldom drove before the line’s launch. They took other SEPTA buses, or did not make that trip.
Riders ages 65 and older, who are less likely to be commuters, were even more likely to have simply switched bus routes to make the same trip they regularly made before the new service line began.
For new bus and rail lines to be financially sustainable, they must attract enough riders. The fares those riders pay allow agencies to run services more regularly and have the line be cost effective.
While it’s always difficult to attract new riders, the past few years have been especially challenging for U.S. transit agencies. National transit ridership remains only about 80% of what it was when the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020.
Getting people back onto buses and trains will require agencies to understand what attracts people to new transit lines. If public transit agencies want to recapture ridership and echo the success of bus services like Route 49, it may be best for them to talk to current users rather than potential public transit converts.
How we do our work
To understand how new riders used Route 49, we boarded Route 49 buses throughout the route and conducted in-person surveys with over 350 riders in early 2019. We wanted to capture feedback and data from users of the service shortly after it was launched.
In addition to asking riders what they used Route 49 for and how they took the same trip before its launch, we recorded characteristics such as age, income and gender.
What’s next
Drawing on our 2019 survey data, we plan to explore how new Route 49 riders learned about the transit line and decided to begin riding the new service. Did they hear about it from agency flyers or websites? From seeing new bus lines on the road, or from friends discussing it? Analyzing these answers can help transit agencies enhance access for all travelers.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
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.
President Donald Trump’s second term as president will surely go down in history, though of course, just six months into his four-year term, much of this story has yet to be written.
But it is already clear that most Americans will not be able to read exactly what Trump has said, as they have with previous presidents, during his current term in the White House.
The White House has removed the official transcripts of Trump’s public remarks from its government website, NBC News reported in May 2025, replacing the written transcripts with select videos and audio of Trump’s public appearances.
White House officials told NBC News that this switch should help people get a fuller, more consistent and accurate sense of Trump by watching and listening to him, rather than reading what he says verbatim at official events.
Government stenographers are also still recording and transcribing all of Trump’s remarks, though these are no longer being published on the White House’s website or elsewhere. It is not clear where or how those transcriptions are being saved.
For years, translators, reporters, students, historians and presidential scholars like me have used official presidential transcripts to understand a president’s exact words and track government decisions. Without these written transcripts, it becomes harder to get the full story of exactly what the president has done or said.
President Donald Trump, joined by members of his cabinet, delivers a statement on natural disaster preparedness in the Oval Office at the White House on June 10, 2025. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
A partial history
A nation’s history is etched in its records. The preservation of official proceedings provides the bedrock for understanding a country’s past and navigating its future.
A growing chorus of historians, public officials and transparency advocates is raising alarms about how the Trump administration is curating and potentially manipulating the government’s records and actions.
The White House’s recent decision to not share official, written transcripts of what the president has said is not the first time this issue has emerged under Trump.
As I wrote in 2021, the first Trump administration did not consistently submit the transcripts of the president’s political rally speeches to the National Archives, as was the custom with previous presidents. The National Archives is an independent government agency within the executive branch that preserves the nation’s historical records.
This official recordkeeping is important, and it’s more than a tradition – it’s a legal obligation. A law called the Presidential Records Act of 1978 says that everything a president does in office – from making speeches to writing emails – belongs to the public.
This includes not just formal speeches, but also public remarks and oral exchanges, which are traditionally included in a compilation of presidential documents.
My examination of this compilation for 2025 appears to show a gap in such records from mid-April 2025 onward. While the transcript of Trump’s full remarks when speaking with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was published on this government site on April 18, for example, publicly available documents from May only include a checklist of White House press releases, a digest of White House announcements and a list of acts that the president signed into law.
In the absence of complete official records from government sources, external, independent organizations that also monitor the presidency, like The American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, have become crucial repositories.
The American Presidency Project diligently logs and, when transcripts are unavailable, provides video of public presidential messaging, striving to create as complete a record as possible for all curious viewers and readers.
The fight over keeping an honest record of presidents is a problem that comes up again and again in American history.
Perhaps the most powerful example of losing historical records comes from the country’s very first president, George Washington. He knew he was setting an example for all future presidents and kept very careful records. He wanted to leave a complete story of his life and his work for the future.
But there is very little of it left.
After Washington died, his wife, Martha, burned most of the letters they wrote to each other to keep their lives private.
Washington left his official papers to his nephew, Supreme Court Justice Bushrod Washington. But Bushrod gave many of them to Chief Justice John Marshall, who was writing a book about the president. The papers were not treated carefully, and many were damaged. To make matters worse, Bushrod would often tear off scraps of Washington’s writings and give them to people as souvenirs.
The result is that Americans have an incomplete picture of their first president. What now exists is a weaker version of the real story, created more by what other people did than by what Washington himself had planned.
Memories fade, and people are not around forever.
The main way that the U.S. can preserve its story is through accurate records. The current arguments over saving transcripts and official papers are about more than just rules. They are about the future. The records that Trump and other presidents leave behind will decide if people in the future see them as they really were, or just how they wanted others to view them.
Shannon Bow O’Brien 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.
AI tools gather information about you from many types of devices, including smartphones.Prostock-Studio/Getty Images
Like it or not, artificial intelligence has become part of daily life. Many devices – including electric razors and toothbrushes – have become “AI-powered,” using machine learning algorithms to track how a person uses the device, how the device is working in real time, and provide feedback. From asking questions to an AI assistant like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot to monitoring a daily fitness routine with a smartwatch, many people use an AI system or tool every day.
While AI tools and technologies can make life easier, they also raise important questions about data privacy. These systems often collect large amounts of data, sometimes without people even realizing their data is being collected. The information can then be used to identify personal habits and preferences, and even predict future behaviors by drawing inferences from the aggregated data.
As an assistant professor of cybersecurity at West Virginia University, I study how emerging technologies and various types of AI systems manage personal data and how we can build more secure, privacy-preserving systems for the future.
Generative AI software uses large amounts of training data to create new content such as text or images. Predictive AI uses data to forecast outcomes based on past behavior, such as how likely you are to hit your daily step goal, or what movies you may want to watch. Both types can be used to gather information about you.
How AI tools collect data
Generative AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini collect all the information users type into a chat box. Every question, response and prompt that users enter is recorded, stored and analyzed to improve the AI model.
OpenAI’s privacy policy informs users that “we may use content you provide us to improve our Services, for example to train the models that power ChatGPT.” Even though OpenAI allows you to opt out of content use for model training, it still collects and retains your personal data. Although some companies promise that they anonymize this data, meaning they store it without naming the person who provided it, there is always a risk of data being reidentified.
ChatGPT stores and analyzes everything you type into a prompt screen. Screenshot by Christopher Ramezan, CC BY-ND
Predictive AI
Beyond generative AI assistants, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok continuously gather data on their users to train predictive AI models. Every post, photo, video, like, share and comment, including the amount of time people spend looking at each of these, is collected as data points that are used to build digital data profiles for each person who uses the service.
The profiles can be used to refine the social media platform’s AI recommender systems. They can also be sold to data brokers, who sell a person’s data to other companies to, for instance, help develop targeted advertisements that align with that person’s interests.
Many social media companies also track users across websites and applications by putting cookies and embedded tracking pixels on their computers. Cookies are small files that store information about who you are and what you clicked on while browsing a website.
One of the most common uses of cookies is in digital shopping carts: When you place an item in your cart, leave the website and return later, the item will still be in your cart because the cookie stored that information. Tracking pixels are invisible images or snippets of code embedded in websites that notify companies of your activity when you visit their page. This helps them track your behavior across the internet.
This is why users often see or hear advertisements that are related to their browsing and shopping habits on many of the unrelated websites they browse, and even when they are using different devices, including computers, phones and smart speakers. One study found that some websites can store over 300 tracking cookies on your computer or mobile phone.
Here’s how websites you browse can track you using cookies or tracking pixels.
Data privacy controls – and limitations
Like generative AI platforms, social media platforms offer privacy settings and opt-outs, but these give people limited control over how their personal data is aggregated and monetized. As media theorist Douglas Rushkoff argued in 2011, if the service is free, you are the product.
Many tools that include AI don’t require a person to take any direct action for the tool to collect data about that person. Smart devices such as home speakers, fitness trackers and watches continually gather information through biometric sensors, voice recognition and location tracking. Smart home speakers continually listen for the command to activate or “wake up” the device. As the device is listening for this word, it picks up all the conversations happening around it, even though it does not seem to be active.
Some companies claim that voice data is only stored when the wake word – what you say to wake up the device – is detected. However, people have raised concerns about accidental recordings, especially because these devices are often connected to cloud services, which allow voice data to be stored, synced and shared across multiple devices such as your phone, smart speaker and tablet.
If the company allows, it’s also possible for this data to be accessed by third parties, such as advertisers, data analytics firms or a law enforcement agency with a warrant.
Privacy rollbacks
This potential for third-party access also applies to smartwatches and fitness trackers, which monitor health metrics and user activity patterns. Companies that produce wearable fitness devices are not considered “covered entities” and so are not bound by the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act. This means that they are legally allowed to sell health- and location-related data collected from their users.
Concerns about HIPAA data arose in 2018, when Strava, a fitness company released a global heat map of user’s exercise routes. In doing so, it accidentally revealed sensitive military locations across the globe through highlighting the exercise routes of military personnel.
Smart speakers can collect information even when they’re sleeping. recep-bg/Getty Images
Such partnerships can expand corporate and government reach into everyday consumer behavior. This one could be used to create detailed personal profiles on Americans by linking their consumer habits with other personal data. This raises concerns about increased surveillance and loss of anonymity. It could allow citizens to be tracked and analyzed across multiple aspects of their lives without their knowledge or consent.
Some smart device companies are also rolling back privacy protections instead of strengthening them. Amazon recently announced that starting on March 28, 2025, all voice recordings from Amazon Echo devices would be sent to Amazon’s cloud by default, and users will no longer have the option to turn this function off. This is different from previous settings, which allowed users to limit private data collection.
Changes like these raise concerns about how much control consumers have over their own data when using smart devices. Many privacy experts consider cloud storage of voice recordings a form of data collection, especially when used to improve algorithms or build user profiles, which has implications for data privacy laws designed to protect online privacy.
Implications for data privacy
All of this brings up serious privacy concerns for people and governments on how AI tools collect, store, use and transmit data. The biggest concern is transparency. People don’t know what data is being collected, how the data is being used, and who has access to that data.
Companies tend to use complicated privacy policies filled with technical jargon to make it difficult for people to understand the terms of a service that they agree to. People also tend not to read terms of service documents. One study found that people averaged 73 seconds reading a terms of service document that had an average read time of 29-32 minutes.
Data collected by AI tools may initially reside with a company that you trust, but can easily be sold and given to a company that you don’t trust.
AI tools, the companies in charge of them and the companies that have access to the data they collect can also be subject to cyberattacks and data breaches that can reveal sensitive personal information. These attacks can by carried out by cybercriminals who are in it for the money, or by so-called advanced persistent threats, which are typically nation/state- sponsored attackers who gain access to networks and systems and remain there undetected, collecting information and personal data to eventually cause disruption or harm.
While laws and regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union and the California Consumer Privacy Act aim to safeguard user data, AI development and use have often outpaced the legislative process. The laws are still catching up on AI and data privacy. For now, you should assume any AI-powered device or platform is collecting data on your inputs, behaviors and patterns.
Using AI tools
Although AI tools collect people’s data, and the way this accumulation of data affects people’s data privacy is concerning, the tools can also be useful. AI-powered applications can streamline workflows, automate repetitive tasks and provide valuable insights.
But it’s crucial to approach these tools with awareness and caution.
When using a generative AI platform that gives you answers to questions you type in a prompt, don’t include any personally identifiable information, including names, birth dates, Social Security numbers or home addresses. At the workplace, don’t include trade secrets or classified information. In general, don’t put anything into a prompt that you wouldn’t feel comfortable revealing to the public or seeing on a billboard. Remember, once you hit enter on the prompt, you’ve lost control of that information.
Remember that devices which are turned on are always listening – even if they’re asleep. If you use smart home or embedded devices, turn them off when you need to have a private conversation. A device that’s asleep looks inactive, but it is still powered on and listening for a wake word or signal. Unplugging a device or removing its batteries is a good way of making sure the device is truly off.
Finally, be aware of the terms of service and data collection policies of the devices and platforms that you are using. You might be surprised by what you’ve already agreed to.
This article is part of a series on data privacy that explores who collects your data, what and how they collect, who sells and buys your data, what they all do with it, and what you can do about it.
