Category: Universities

MIL-OSI Asia-Pac: Doctors’ illnesses not linked: CHP

Source: Hong Kong Information Services

Regarding an acute gastroenteritis incident involving three oncologists at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH), the Centre for Health Protection (CHP), having completed its investigation, confirmed today that the illnesses of the three doctors were not related.

On February 10, the CHP received a notification from PMH that three doctors in its oncology department had developed acute gastroenteritis symptoms, and one of them unfortunately passed away on February 7.

PMH’s preliminary investigation revealed that a stool sample from one of the doctors, who had mild symptoms, tested positive for Shiga toxin genes by nucleic acid testing. Hence, the hospital suspected that the cluster might be associated with Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) infection.

The CHP immediately conducted a comprehensive epidemiological investigation with the help of an expert team led by Hong Kong University Chair of Infectious Diseases Prof Yuen Kwok-yung.

For the doctor suspected of having a STEC infection but with mild symptoms, the CHP found that the bacterial culture of the doctor’s stool sample did not grow any viable STEC bacteria.

Additionally, the CHP collected 34 environmental samples as well as 27 food samples from the oncology department and relevant food premises at PMH, all of which were negative for STEC.

The CHP also enhanced surveillance on the oncology department’s staff, and detected no other related cases.

Based on the available information, apart from confirming that there was no STEC outbreak in PMH’s oncology department, the CHP determined that there was no linkage between the illnesses of the three doctors.

Concerning the doctor’s cause of death, PMH’s pathology department conducted an autopsy and pathological examination, but the post-mortem examination could not determine the exact cause of the pathological changes that led to his death.

Separately, experts from the Hong Kong University Department of Microbiology detected group C rotavirus in various tissue samples of the deceased using nucleic acid testing. However, the virus was not detected in the stool samples of the other two doctors.

The experts were of the view that the initial acute gastroenteritis in the late doctor was caused by group C rotavirus. They also said that the direct relationship between group C rotavirus and the cause of death was uncertain, while other contributing factors could not be ruled out.

According to the Hospital Authority, there have been no deaths from rotavirus infection in public hospitals in the past 10 years, the CHP added.

MIL OSI Asia Pacific News –

May 31, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Sol 4553: Back to the Boxwork!

Source: NASA

Written by Lucy Thompson, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick
Earth planning date: Tuesday, May 27, 2005
We return to planning today after a successful long weekend and about 42 meters of drive distance (about 138 feet). We planned four sols of activities on Friday to keep Curiosity busy, while the U.S.-based science team and engineers took time off yesterday for the Memorial Day holiday. As we got to admire the new workspace and drive direction view in front of the rover this morning, I realized that we have now driven about 35 kilometers (about 22 miles) and climbed more than 850 meters (2,789 feet) in elevation since landing nearly 13 years ago, and we continue to do exciting science on Mars, having recently driven onto new terrain.
The so-called boxwork structures are a series of resistant ridges observed both from orbit and in long-distance rover imaging (see Ashley’s blog here). Not only are the ridges of interest (do they indicate enhanced fluid-flow and cementation?), but the outcrop expression in general changed after we drove over a shallow trough onto the rocks that host the ridges.
This plan will continue characterization of the interesting boxwork terrain. We had an example of a more resistant, ridge-like feature in our workspace today (see accompanying image). The composition of the ridge will be investigated using ChemCam (target “Sisquoc River”) and APXS (target “Palo Verde Mountains”), with accompanying Mastcam and MAHLI images. We will also acquire Mastcam imaging of a trough-like feature surrounding a bedrock slab, as part of our ongoing documentation of such structures, as well as of an apparent resistant boxwork ridge in the distance (“Lake Cachuma”). And a first for our mission, we are planning the longest-distance ChemCam remote imaging mosaic that we will have acquired — 91 kilometers (almost 57 miles) away! The intent is to compare the long-distance view from the ground with HiRISE orbital images in an attempt to create a 3D view. We also managed to squeeze in a Navcam large dust-devil survey before the planned 24-meter drive (about 79 feet). Once we arrive at our new location, MARDI will take an image of the terrain beneath the rover.
The plan is rounded out with the standard REMS, DAN and RAD activities.

MIL OSI USA News –

May 31, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: A Dust Devil Photobombs Perseverance!

Source: NASA

Written by Athanasios Klidaras, Ph.D. candidate at Purdue University, and Megan Kennedy Wu, Senior Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems

To celebrate her 1,500th Martian day (“Sol”) exploring the red planet, the Perseverance rover used its robotic arm to take a selfie of the rover and the surrounding landscape. But when team members reviewed the photo, they were surprised to find that Perseverance had been photobombed!
As the rover sat at the “Pine Pond” workspace, located on the outer rim of Jezero crater, which it has been exploring for the past several months, the Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering (WATSON) camera on the end of its arm was used to acquire a 59-image mosaic of the rover. This is the fifth “selfie” that Perseverance has acquired since landing on Mars in 2021. The rover’s robotic arm is not visible in the self portrait because — just like a selfie you would take with your own cellphone camera — rover operators make sure not to have the arm get “in the way” of the body of the rover. This is even easier to do on Mars because Perseverance needs to take 59 different images at slightly different arm positions to build up the selfie, and the elbow of the robotic arm is kept out of the way while the images are acquired. You can find more details about the Sol 1500 selfie here, and this YouTube video shows how the rover arm moves when these activities take place.
While snapping away, Perseverance was photobombed by a dust devil in the distance! These are relatively common phenomena both on Mars and in Earth’s desert regions, and form from rising and rotating columns of warm air, which gives the appearance of a dust tornado. Just like many other weather patterns, there is a peak “season” for dust-devil activity, and Jezero crater is in the peak of that season now (late northern spring). The one seen in the selfie is fairly large, about 100 meters, or 328 feet, across. While Perseverance regularly monitors the horizon for dust-devil activity with Navcam movies, this is the first time the WATSON camera on the end of the robotic arm has ever captured an image of a dust devil!
The dark hole in front of the rover, surrounded by gray rock powder created during the drilling process, shows the location of Perseverance’s 26th sample. Nicknamed “Bell Island” after an island near Newfoundland, Canada, this rock sample contains small spherules, thought to have formed by volcanic eruptions or impacts early in Martian history. Later, this ancient rock was uplifted during the impact that formed Jezero crater. Now that the rover has successfully acquired the spherule sample the science team was searching for, Perseverance is leaving the area to explore new rock exposures. Last week, the rover arrived at an exposure of light-toned bedrock called “Copper Cove,” and the science team was interested to determine if this unit underlies or overlies the rock sequence explored earlier. After performing an abrasion to get a closer look at the chemistry and textures, the rover drove south to scout out more sites along the outer edge of the Jezero crater rim.

MIL OSI USA News –

May 31, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: NASA Tests New Ways to Stick the Landing in Challenging Terrain

Source: NASA

Advancing new hazard detection and precision landing technologies to help future space missions successfully achieve safe and soft landings is a critical area of space research and development, particularly for future crewed missions. To support this, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) is pursuing a regular cadence of flight testing on a variety of vehicles, helping researchers rapidly advance these critical systems for missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
“These flight tests directly address some of NASA’s highest-ranked technology needs, or shortfalls, ranging from advanced guidance algorithms and terrain-relative navigation to lidar-and optical-based hazard detection and mapping,” said Dr. John M. Carson III, STMD technical integration manager for precision landing and based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Since the beginning of this year, STMD has supported flight testing of four precision landing and hazard detection technologies from many sectors, including NASA, universities, and commercial industry. These cutting-edge solutions have flown aboard a suborbital rocket system, a high-speed jet, a helicopter, and a rocket-powered lander testbed. That’s four precision landing technologies tested on four different flight vehicles in four months.
“By flight testing these technologies on Earth in spaceflight-relevant trajectories and velocities, we’re demonstrating their capabilities and validating them with real data for transitioning technologies from the lab into mission applications,” said Dr. Carson. “This work also signals to industry and other partners that these capabilities are ready to push beyond NASA and academia and into the next generation of Moon and Mars landers.”
The following NASA-supported flight tests took place between February and May:

Identifying landmarks to calculate accurate navigation solutions is a key function of Draper’s Multi-Environment Navigator (DMEN), a vision-based navigation and hazard detection technology designed to improve safety and precision of lunar landings.
Aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard reusable suborbital rocket system, DMEN collected real-world data and validated its algorithms to advance it for use during the delivery of three NASA payloads as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. On Feb. 4, DMEN performed the latest in a series of tests supported by NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, which is managed at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.
During the February flight, which enabled testing at rocket speeds on ascent and descent, DMEN scanned the Earth below, identifying landmarks to calculate an accurate navigation solution. The technology achieved accuracy levels that helped Draper advance it for use in terrain-relative navigation, which is a key element of landing on other planets.

Several highly dynamic maneuvers and flight paths put Psionic’s Space Navigation Doppler Lidar (PSNDL) to the test while it collected navigation data at various altitudes, velocities, and orientations.
Psionic licensed NASA’s Navigation Doppler Lidar technology developed at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and created its own miniaturized system with improved functionality and component redundancies, making it more rugged for spaceflight. In February, PSNDL along with a full navigation sensor suite was mounted aboard an F/A-18 Hornet aircraft and underwent flight testing at NASA Armstrong.
The aircraft followed a variety of flight paths over several days, including a large figure-eight loop and several highly dynamic maneuvers over Death Valley, California. During these flights, PSNDL collected navigation data relevant for lunar and Mars entry and descent.
The high-speed flight tests demonstrated the sensor’s accuracy and navigation precision in challenging conditions, helping prepare the technology to land robots and astronauts on the Moon and Mars. These recent tests complemented previous Flight Opportunities-supported testing aboard a lander testbed to advance earlier versions of their PSNDL prototypes.

Researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, developed a state-of-the-art Hazard Detection Lidar (HDL) sensor system to quickly map the surface from a vehicle descending at high speed to find safe landing sites in challenging locations, such as Europa (one of Jupiter’s moons), our own Moon, Mars, and other planetary bodies throughout the solar system. The HDL-scanning lidar generates three-dimensional digital elevation maps in real time, processing approximately 15 million laser measurements and mapping two football fields’ worth of terrain in only two seconds.
In mid-March, researchers tested the HDL from a helicopter at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with flights over a lunar-like test field with rocks and craters. The HDL collected numerous scans from several different altitudes and view angles to simulate a range of landing scenarios, generating real-time maps. Preliminary reviews of the data show excellent performance of the HDL system.
The HDL is a component of NASA’s Safe and Precise Landing – Integrated Capabilities Evolution (SPLICE) technology suite. The SPLICE descent and landing system integrates multiple component technologies, such as avionics, sensors, and algorithms, to enable landing in hard-to-reach areas of high scientific interest. The HDL team is also continuing to test and further improve the sensor for future flight opportunities and commercial applications.

Providing pinpoint landing guidance capability with minimum propellant usage, the San Diego State University (SDSU) powered-descent guidance algorithms seek to improve autonomous spacecraft precision landing and hazard avoidance. During a series of flight tests in April and May, supported by NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, the university’s software was integrated into Astrobotic’s Xodiac suborbital rocket-powered lander via hardware developed by Falcon ExoDynamics as part of NASA TechLeap Prize’s Nighttime Precision Landing Challenge.
The SDSU algorithms aim to improve landing capabilities by expanding the flexibility and trajectory-shaping ability and enhancing the propellant efficiency of powered-descent guidance systems. They have the potential for infusion into human and robotic missions to the Moon as well as high-mass Mars missions.

By advancing these and other important navigation, precision landing, and hazard detection technologies with frequent flight tests, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate is prioritizing safe and successful touchdowns in challenging planetary environments for future space missions.
Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/space-technology-mission-directorate/
By: Lee Ann ObringerNASA’s Flight Opportunities program

MIL OSI USA News –

May 31, 2025
MIL-OSI USA: Split Supreme Court Blocks Oklahoma’s Catholic Charter School

Source: US State of Connecticut

In April 2025, the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether the nation’s first religious charter school could open in Oklahoma. The St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School would have been funded by taxpayer money but run by a local archdiocese and diocese. Several justices appeared open to the idea during questioning, leading some analysts to predict a win for the school.

They were proved wrong on May 22, 2025, when the court blocked St. Isidore. The one-sentence, unsigned order did not indicate how individual justices had voted, nor why, simply declaring it was a split 4-4 decision that leaves in place the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling against the school. Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case. Her former employer, the University of Notre Dame, runs a law clinic representing the school’s supporters.

Ever since the proposed school started making headlines, attention has focused on religion. Critics warned a decision in the school’s favor could allow government dollars to directly fund faith-based charter schools nationwide. In part, the justices had to decide whether the First Amendment’s prohibition on government establishing religion applies to charter schools.

But the answer to that question is part of an even bigger issue: Are charters really public in the first place?

The Supreme Court’s order applies only to Oklahoma, so similar cases attempting to open religious charter schools may emerge down the road. As two professors who study education law, we believe future court decisions could impact more than issues of religion and state, determining what basic rights students and teachers do or don’t have at charter schools.

Dueling arguments

In June 2023, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved St. Isidore’s application to open as an online K-12 school. The following year, however, the Oklahoma high court ruled that the proposal was unconstitutional. The justices concluded that charter schools are public under state law, and that the First Amendment’s establishment clause forbids public schools from being religious. The court also found that a religious charter school would violate Oklahoma’s constitution, which specifically forbids public money from benefiting religious organizations.

On appeal, the charter school claimed that charter schools are private, and so the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause does not apply.

Moreover, St. Isidore argued that if charter schools are private, the state’s prohibition on religious charters violates the First Amendment’s free exercise clause, which bars the government from limiting “the free exercise” of religion. Previous Supreme Court cases have found that states cannot prevent private religious entities from participating in generally available government programs solely because they are religious.

In other words, while St. Isidore’s critics argued that opening a religious charter school would violate the First Amendment, its supporters claimed the exact opposite: that forbidding religious charter schools would violate the First Amendment.

Are charters public?

The question of whether an institution is public or private turns on a legal concept known as the “state action doctrine.” This principle provides that the government must follow the Constitution, while private entities do not have to. For example, unlike students in public schools, students in private schools do not have the constitutional right to due process for suspensions and expulsions – procedures to ensure fairness before taking disciplinary action.

Charter schools have some characteristics of both public and private institutions. Like traditional public schools, they are government-funded, free and open to all students. However, like private schools, they are free from many laws that apply to public schools, and they are independently run.

Because of charters’ hybrid nature, courts have had a hard time determining whether they should be considered public for legal purposes. Many charter schools are overseen by private corporations with privately appointed boards, and it is unclear whether these private entities are state actors. Two federal circuit courts have reached different conclusions.

In Caviness v. Horizon Learning Center, a case from 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit held that an Arizona charter school corporation was not a state actor for employment purposes. Therefore, the board did not have to provide a teacher due process before firing him. The court reasoned that the corporation was a private actor that contracted with the state to provide educational services.

In contrast, the 4th Circuit ruled in 2022 that a North Carolina charter school board was a state actor under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In this case, Peltier v. Charter Day School, students challenged the dress code requirement that female students wear skirts because they were considered “fragile vessels.”

The court first reasoned that the board was a state actor because North Carolina had delegated its constitutional duty to provide education. The court observed that the charter school’s dress code was an inappropriate sex-based classification, and that school officials engaged in harmful gender stereotyping, violating the equal protection clause.

If the Supreme Court had sided with St. Isidore – as many analysts thought was likely – then all private charter corporations might have been considered nonstate actors for the purposes of religion.

But the stakes are even greater than that. State action involves more than just religion. Indeed, teachers and students in private schools do not have the constitutional rights related to free speech, search and seizure, due process and equal protection. In other words, if charter schools are not considered “state actors,” charter students and teachers may eventually shed constitutional rights “at the schoolhouse gate.”

When courts have held that charter schools are not public in state law, some legislatures have made changes to categorize them as public. For example, California passed a law to clarify that charter school students have the same due process rights as traditional public school students after a court ruled otherwise.

Likewise, we believe states looking to clear up charter schools’ ambiguous state actor status under the Constitution can amend their laws. As we explain in a recent legal article, a 1995 Supreme Court case involving Amtrak illustrates how this can be done.

Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation arose when Amtrak rejected a billboard ad for being political. The advertiser sued, arguing that the corporation had violated his First Amendment right to free speech. Since private organizations are not required to protect free speech rights, the case hinged on whether Amtrak qualified as a government agency.

The court ruled in the plaintiff’s favor, reasoning that Amtrak was a government actor because it was created by special law, served important governmental objectives and its board members were appointed by the government.

Courts have applied this ruling in other instances. For example, the 10th Circuit ruled in 2016 that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was a governmental agency and therefore was required to abide by the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

Since the Supreme Court did not release any reasoning for its order, we do not know how the justices viewed the “government actor” question in the case from Oklahoma. That said, we believe charter schools fail the test set out in the Amtrak decision. Charter schools do serve the governmental purpose of providing educational choice for students. However, charter school corporations are not created by special law. They also fall short because most have independent boards instead of members who are appointed and removed by government officials.

However, we would argue that states can amend their laws to comply with Lebron’s standard, ensuring that charter schools are public or state actors for constitutional purposes.

Originally published in The Conversation.

MIL OSI USA News –

May 31, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: Rosneft supports social projects for children and teenagers in Russian regions

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: Rosneft – Rosneft – An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.

Rosneft and its subsidiaries, within the framework of cooperation agreements with Russian regions, are implementing projects aimed at creating a modern social infrastructure and a favorable environment for the development of medicine, mass sports, culture, educational projects and the upbringing of the younger generation.

Bashneft supports the construction and reconstruction of children’s institutions within the framework of a cooperation agreement with the Republic of Bashkortostan. For example, in 2024, the Children’s Art Center in the village of Verkhneyarkeevo in the Ilishevsky District was reconstructed, a multifunctional educational center was built in the village of Elan-Chishma in the Yermekeyevsky District, Ufa kindergarten No. 2 was improved, and a multifunctional sports and health complex was built on the territory of the Republican Engineering Boarding School in Ufa.

In the Samara Region, with the support of Rosneft, the reconstruction of schools No. 28 and No. 29 in Syzran, the Harmony gymnasium in Otradny and school No. 24 in Samara has been completed. Thanks to the help of oil workers, the children’s surgical department and the perinatal center of the Syzran Central City Hospital have been equipped with high-tech equipment. They now have an operating table, an operating shadowless lamp and an open resuscitation system for newborns.

With the support of Rosneft, a new building of the Small Academy of Sciences with modern laboratories, a biotechnology center with laboratories for genomics and the study of ancient DNA, an IT center, a library, a TV studio, a sports hall and a gym was built in Yakutia. Children’s playgrounds and sports grounds were also opened in Yakutsk, Tas-Yuryakh, Myndyb and elsewhere. In the sponsored school of the Botuobuinsky nasleg of the Mirninsky district, in the school where children of indigenous peoples study, the robotics rooms, 3D modeling, and the press center were renovated, a stadium was built and the assembly hall was reconstructed.

Under the agreement with the government of Yugra, Rosneft supports the construction and reconstruction of educational and sports institutions in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug. In 2024, a kindergarten, the Lider and MediaQuant youth clubs, and an outdoor sports and play complex were opened in Nizhnevartovsk.

RN-Yuganskneftegaz is implementing a comprehensive program to support children and young people. In 2024, School No. 9 in Khanty-Mansiysk received modern equipment, including interactive panels and equipment for physics lessons. Much attention is paid to the development of children’s sports: ten sports schools in Yugra received almost a thousand units of modern hockey equipment, including sticks, skates and protective helmets. A modern sports complex was opened in the village of Lyamina.

In Achinsk, with the support of the Company, major repairs are underway at the inpatient department of the Krasnoyarsk Regional Center for the Protection of Motherhood and Childhood No. 2.

A project IT laboratory has been opened in Udmurtia and two sports halls have been renovated in School No. 12 in the city of Votkinsk in Udmurtia. The laboratory is equipped with modern technology, including an interactive panel, a 3D printer, a laser 3D scanner and all the necessary software.

In addition, the Company creates “Rosneft-classes” in the regions of its operations based on the best educational institutions: schools, lyceums and gymnasiums. As part of the project, students receive a high-quality general secondary education. Schoolchildren in grades 10-11 study according to programs with in-depth study of mathematics, physics, chemistry and computer science. The project is aimed at career guidance and motivation of teenagers to enter universities in the Company’s core specialties and subsequent employment of graduates at Rosneft enterprises.

In the completed academic year, 2.7 thousand schoolchildren studied in 118 Rosneft-classes. The project is being implemented in 56 general education organizations located in 47 cities and towns in 20 regions of Russia.

In anticipation of International Children’s Day, volunteers of the Company and its subsidiaries are organizing dozens of festive events aimed at developing sports and a healthy lifestyle, and the cultural and patriotic education of youth.

Kuibyshev Oil Refinery presented an educational interactive project “City of Safety”. Hundreds of children and teenagers have already taken part in it. In a game format, children learn the rules of safe behavior in various life situations, including road traffic and the Internet.

Workers of the Novokuibyshevsk Oil Refinery organized a holiday for children from social institutions of the city with quizzes dedicated to oil professions. Oil refiners annually organize an ecological family festival “Ecofest” for city residents; this year the festival brought together more than 400 schoolchildren.

Volunteers of the Syzran Oil Refinery brought gifts to the children of the center for helping children left without parental care. Samaraneftegaz organized a holiday for the children of employees called “Hello, Summer!” with the participation of representatives of the Russian Emergencies Ministry, who conducted a safety lesson in an entertaining manner.

Employees of the Saratov Oil Refinery conducted an interactive lesson “Ecology” for kindergarten children and donated sports equipment to the social rehabilitation center “Vozvrashchenie”.

Slavneft-Krasnoyarskneftegaz organized a city football tournament in Krasnoyarsk, during which 150 children had the opportunity to play at a professional stadium. In Krasnoyarsk Krai, oil workers delivered gifts to kindergarten children in the remote village of Kuyumba, overcoming a difficult route by helicopter and special equipment.

Orenburgneft volunteers conducted a series of eco-lessons as part of the Eco-School environmental marathon, where students were told about a responsible attitude towards the environment.

Tyumenneftegaz organized a big family day out in the fresh air with sports games, master classes and treats. Volunteers of Kharampurneftegaz organized an excursion to the zoo and an environmental quiz for the children of the Siyanie Severa family center. Volunteers of the corporate institute in Tomsk together with Tomsk Polytechnic University organized a quest game for schoolchildren of the city called “Oil Journey: from the Deposit to the Gas Station”. In a game form, the participants got acquainted with oil and gas professions, and as a reward, the winners received additional points for admission to the university.

Rosneft Scientific Institute in Ufa is implementing a volunteer project called “Social Tutor”. For the fifth year in a row, the institute’s employees have been voluntarily tutoring children from low-income families online.

Employees of Rosneft-Stavropol together with representatives of the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate held road safety lessons for preschoolers. At the Rosneft gas station in Stavropol Krai, young guests received educational books with creative tasks “Travel with a Polar Bear Cub” as a gift. In Arkhangelsk, RN-North-West organized an educational event “Children for Safe Roads”, where children studied traffic rules and tried themselves in the role of drivers.

Rosneft employees take an active part in all-Russian and regional campaigns, including the New Year’s “Wish Tree”, “Help Go to School”, “Give a Child a Holiday”, “Spring Week of Kindness”, “Warmth for Children”, “A Backpack for a First-Grader”, “Let’s Get a Child Ready for School”, “There Are No Other People’s Children”, “Santa Claus in Every Home”, “A Gift for School”, “A Gift from Santa Claus” and others.

Department of Information and Advertising of PJSC NK Rosneft May 30, 2025

Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 31, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: “AI and machine learning are powerful technologies, but not everyone has learned how to apply them”

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: State University Higher School of Economics – State University Higher School of Economics –

The global education industry’s revenue growth could reach 4% in the coming years thanks to the introduction of artificial intelligence technologies. In addition, AI reduces the working hours of teachers by 4-5 times. HSE experts explained how teachers and administrative staff of universities are mastering neural networks, bots and other tools and why there is no need to be afraid that AI will replace them.

AI is being introduced into higher education

According to data research HSE and Yandex Education, 49% of students already use generative technologies, and 54% of university employees are confident that these skills will positively influence the career development of students. However, AI technologies are actively used not only by students, but also by teachers and administrative staff.

Possible scenarios for the use of AI by teachers:

work with educational programs, curricula, individual modules and topics;

development of educational content: presentation materials, tests, essay topics;

assessment of written work and analysis of students’ skills.

Possible scenarios for the use of AI by university administrations:

optimization of the educational schedule;

consulting students on organizational issues and applicants on admission issues;

analytics and forecasting of educational results;

creation of marketing content;

management of local regulatory documents, generation of documents upon request.

Features of training teachers in AI tools

Mass training of teachers is not an easy task. To teach such a demanding audience, highly qualified lecturers are needed, and this is a limited resource. Teachers from different faculties and areas expect to receive subject knowledge and specific tools that will allow them to automate the execution of various tasks right now. And all listeners want to hear about cases that are directly related to their field, explained Evgeny Sokolov, scientific director of the Center for Continuous Education, head of Department of Big Data and Information Retrieval HSE Faculty of Computer Science.

“This complexity is not new at all: we have extensive experience in corporate training in the field of AI, and there we also always hear a request for very specific recommendations and very close cases,” says Evgeny Sokolov. “And this always requires elaboration and explanation. Yes, AI and machine learning are extremely powerful technologies that have already proven themselves and that may have great prospects. But not everyone has learned to use them, not everyone has bright examples of implementation. And therefore we can explain what it is and how it works, show how it brings a lot of benefits in other areas, and then together think about transferring this experience.”

In total, in 2024, HSE trained 1,750 teachers, researchers, and administrative staff from all campuses to work with artificial intelligence for free. The training was conducted as part of the Priority 2030 strategic academic leadership program. Employees could choose one of the areas based on their level of training — from prompting and Python programming to machine and deep learning.

Here are some of the applied skills that students learn:

using generative models to simplify and automate work;

data analysis and visualization;

using Python for editing and generating text files: contracts, memos in pdf and word;

Sending Emails with Python;

creation of telegram bots to collect information from students, etc.

The core of the teaching staff of the programs was made up of specialists Faculty of Computer Science HSE University. The organization of advanced training programs was carried out by Center for Continuous Education of the Faculty of Computer Science, and administrative support for all courses was provided by Center for Advanced Studies.

The Center for Continuous Education of the Faculty of Computer Science trains not only HSE employees. Employees of the Irkutsk National Research Technical University passed advanced training program “Python for automation and data analysis”, and employees of the Vladivostok State University of Economics and Service – program advanced training “Modern approaches and methods of teaching the course “Digital Literacy””.

How Teachers Are Using AI in Their Work

Project work plays a significant role in the programs. Students reflect on how AI methods can be useful in their tasks, formulate corresponding ideas and receive feedback from experts. These are ideas about simplifying teaching routines, restructuring disciplines and new research tasks.

Then these proposals begin to receive full implementation. Within the framework of the program, each student prepares a final project on the implementation of neural networks in work processes, some of which are already successfully used in practice.

For example, the course “Venture Capital” has an assistant based on the bot-psychologist “Anna”. The AI assistant interacts with students, helps answer difficult questions and improve psychological preparation for interaction with investors. Using the assistant has improved the quality of students’ training and provided new tools for discussing the psychological aspects of entrepreneurship.

Another example is the use of AI to create educational materials. Tools such as Narakeet and invideo AI reduce the time it takes to create presentation-quality video materials by more than 10 times. Teachers now have a wider range of ready-made templates and ideas for visual presentation of lecture material. All this makes the educational process more visual and understandable for students.

According to teachers, after training they use AI to prepare notes, presentations, cases and tests, check assignments, work with databases, search for scientific literature, and translate texts.

“Useful content, accessible presentation of the material, as well as patience with our pace and questions. I was genuinely interested in the tools presented in the course, I will study and apply them further in my work. To be honest, I did not even guess that the speed of a heart attack can be predicted by the voice, and about some other discoveries that have already been implemented in practice. So special thanks for keeping us informed of human technical progress,” noted Anastasia Pyatachkova, Deputy Head of the Asia-Pacific Sector. Centre for Comprehensive European and International Studies HSE.

Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 31, 2025
MIL-OSI United Kingdom: ‘Oxford Travel Options’ website launches for residents, visitors, and commuters

Source: City of Oxford

A new website has launched to help anyone who lives in, works in, or visits Oxford to find alternatives to travelling by car around the city.

Oxford Travel Options, aims to provide Oxford residents, commuters, visitors and businesses with information and advice on alternatives to travelling by car.

The website has been created by the Zero Carbon Oxfordshire Partnership and Low Carbon Oxford North, with support from the Low Carbon Hub.

The site includes information on different ways of travelling around the city, which is updated regularly. It covers everything from explaining different bus ticket types, cycling and walking routes, to online journey planners, lift share apps, information on wheelchair bus access, and cargo bike hire. It also includes advice for employers on supporting staff travel.

The website also features real stories from local people, with case studies and advice on a range of topics from travelling with kids to finding a liftshare buddy, and finding cheaper and healthier ways to travel.

The Zero Carbon Oxfordshire Partnership is a group of Oxfordshire’s leading institutions and employers working together to achieve zero carbon emissions across the county by 2050, including the universities, NHS trusts, councils, large businesses, further education, and community organisations.

Low Carbon Oxford North is a community climate charity set up by local residents to support ambitious CO2 cuts through local action.

Low Carbon Hub is a social enterprise out to prove we can meet our energy needs in a way that’s good for people and good for the planet. They provided funding to Low Carbon Oxford North for the project through their Community Grants Programme, which supports local action on climate change.

Transport is the second largest contributor to Oxford’s emissions, accounting for 23% of emissions. In order for Oxford to become a net zero city by 2040, a shift from private car use towards increased public transport-use is needed, as well as cycling, walking, working-from-home, and car sharing.

The need for the website was identified by the Partnership’s Sustainable Travel working group, which supports sustainable travel initiatives with employers, and by Low Carbon Oxford North through their work with Oxford residents.

Funding for the creation of the website has come from the Zero Carbon Oxfordshire Partnership and Low Carbon Hub. Ongoing management of the website will be funded by the Foundation for Integrated Transport and the Zero Carbon Oxfordshire Partnership.

“Transport is one of Oxford’s biggest sources of carbon emissions, and we know that helping people shift how they travel – even in small ways – is key to tackling this. The website brings together local travel advice to help people choose low-carbon options that fit their daily lives, including guidance for employers supporting staff to travel more sustainably. The Sustainable Travel Working Group identified the need for a central, user-friendly resource like this, and it’s great to see that idea now brought to life. We hope it will be a useful tool for employers, residents and visitors alike to make more confident, informed choices about how they travel.”

Jerry Woods, Champion of the ZCOP Sustainable Travel working group

“We know from working with Oxford residents that there are lots of people in Oxford who would like to drive less and would value some support in making changes – and this is exactly what Oxford Travel Options is intended to do. The site makes it easier for people to access the huge variety of resources and services Oxford offers in support of sustainable travel. We know people rely on cars for lots of reasons – we also know that small changes to our travel habits can save money, reduce stress and improve happiness, as well as improving air quality and reducing carbon emissions. This is not an ‘all or nothing scenario’. We hope that by providing lots of useful information, the website will encourage people to have a try and see how it goes!”

Carey Newson, Trustee of community climate charity Low Carbon Oxford North

“I am delighted to welcome this fantastic initiative from ZCOP. Healthy and sustainable travel options improve every aspect of people’s lives: mental and physical health and wellbeing, educational outcomes, independence and resilience in young people, cleaner air, safer streets, better public transport, and much else.

“Part of the county council’s long-term transport strategy for Oxfordshire is to enable residents to feel the many benefits of walking and cycling, and using public and shared transport. The travel options website is an example of organisations working together to inspire others to try something new, one journey at a time.”

Councillor Andrew Gant, Cabinet Member for Transport Management at Oxfordshire County Council

“We know from working with the city’s biggest employers that residents & their staff want information on how to travel into and across Oxford conveniently and sustainably. This new website aims to compile this information into one accessible place. I hope that residents will find it useful for journey planning & will encourage them to try different ways of getting to work and around the city.”

Councillor Anna Railton, Deputy Leader, and Cabinet Member for a Zero Carbon Oxford, Oxford City Council

“The University of Oxford is pleased to be part of the ZCOP Sustainable Travel Working Group and to support the launch of the Oxford Travel Options website. This resource makes sustainable travel simple and accessible for everyone in Oxford. With so many staff and students travelling daily, it provides valuable support to help make greener travel choices easier. It’s encouraging to see partners across the city collaborating on this initiative.”

Ed Wigzell, Sustainable Travel Manager, University of Oxford

MIL OSI United Kingdom –

May 31, 2025
MIL-OSI Security: IAEA Teaches Fukushima Students Environmental Remediation

Source: International Atomic Energy Agency – IAEA

The lectures, based on the IAEA Safety Standards, covered the basics of radiation and radiation monitoring, environmental remediation and decontamination and radioactive waste management. Students also attended a workshop in which they used different devices to detect and measure radiation in various environmental samples such as soil and minerals.

“I would expect that the IAEA lectures will motivate Fukushima Prefecture university students to learn more about environmental radiation as a subject and the current state of environmental remediation in the prefecture,” said Hiroshi Aoki, then Director General of the Fukushima Prefectural Centre for Environmental Creation.

“We hope the younger generation will learn from the collective knowledge and experience of the IAEA and apply this to the next steps for reconstruction and revitalization in Fukushima Prefecture, which would also contribute to international nuclear safety,” added Kenichiro Tanaka, Director of the International Nuclear Cooperation Division at Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The programme, a pilot exercise that took place at the end of 2024, was requested by the Government of Japan under a cooperation agreement with the IAEA that started in 2012 and will run until 2027. Under the agreement, the IAEA has been assisting Fukushima Prefecture in activities related to radiation monitoring, environmental remediation, decontamination and waste management, in line with IAEA safety standards.

“After the lectures I hope to be able to share accurate information about radiation with those around me, when the topic comes up on television or other media,” said Hiroki Furuchi, a student at Higashi Nippon International University.

The feedback from this first course will be collected and used by the IAEA to further adapt the content to the prefecture’s needs in line with IAEA Safety Standards, before returning to Fukushima to continue the programme at more universities in 2025.

Read more about the cooperation between Fukushima Prefecture and the IAEA on radiation safety since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident here.

MIL Security OSI –

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Closure of Riverside Theatre a Major Loss

Source: Traditional Unionist Voice – Northern Ireland

Statement by TUV Vice Chairman and Causeway Councillor Allister Kyle:

“It is deeply disappointing that Ulster University has chosen not to work constructively with the council to explore options to keep the Riverside Theatre open. Instead, the university presented a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum: unless council agreed to take on the lease, full running costs, and liabilities, the theatre would close in summer 2025.

“This is not a partnership—it’s an offload. And once again, it reflects the ongoing marginalisation of Coleraine in favour of the university’s Jordanstown and Magee campuses.

“The Riverside Theatre has meant a great deal to me personally. I’ve enjoyed many performances there over the years, and I know how much it matters to the people of this area. It’s Northern Ireland’s fifth-largest theatre and the oldest professional venue outside Belfast. It has hosted remarkable talent—including our very own James Nesbitt, who began his career on its stage.

“It didn’t have to come to this. I firmly believe a solution could have been found if the university had been willing to engage properly. But council cannot be expected to shoulder all the costs and risks, particularly when we lack the specialist expertise to run such a venue.

“It’s also regrettable that no support or intervention came from Stormont’s Department for Communities, despite the cultural and economic importance of the theatre.

“The closure of the Riverside will be a massive loss to Coleraine and the wider Causeway Coast and Glens area—not just in terms of the arts, but in the vibrancy, identity, and opportunities it brought to our community.”

MIL OSI United Kingdom –

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: May medals of GUU sportswomen

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: State University of Management – Official website of the State –

Students of the State University of Management successfully performed at the XXXVII Moscow Student Sports Games.

Our wonderful girls brought several medals to the university’s collection.

In the fencing competition, in which representatives of 22 capital universities took part, Sofia Tarasova emerged as the best, and Daria Fedotova won bronze.

At the Summer Athletics Championships, Margarita Lazareva won silver in the 3000-meter run.

We congratulate our charming athletes and wish new victories to all students of the State University of Management!

Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI United Kingdom: James Bamberg is appointed to the ACNRA Board
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

News story

James Bamberg is appointed to the ACNRA Board

The Secretary of State has appointed James Bamberg as a Board Member for the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives. This is a 4 year term from 10 March 2025 to 9 March 2029
James Bamberg

James (Jim) Bamberg is an historian and author who was formerly the official historian of BP plc. He wrote two volumes of BP’s official history published by Cambridge University Press and a third unpublished volume. He was also responsible for BP’s archives, in which capacity he proposed and managed the relocation of the archives to the University of Warwick and their opening to public access. On leaving BP he joined Harvard Business School as the Alfred D. Chandler International Visiting Scholar in Business History. He afterwards worked as an independent consultant and formed his own historical consultancy company, Storica Ltd.

Jim holds a first class honours degree and a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge, as well as an honours degree in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Reading; a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge; President of the Association of Business Historians; and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Remuneration and Governance Code

Board Members will be remunerated at a rate of £386 per day. This appointment has been made in accordance with the Cabinet Office’s Governance Code on Public Appointments.

The appointments process is regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. Under the Code, any significant political activity undertaken by an appointee in the last five years must be declared. This is defined as including holding office, public speaking, making a recordable donation, or candidature for election. James has declared no significant political activity.

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Published 30 May 2025
MIL OSI United Kingdom –
May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: “HSE and VTB Partnership: Cooperation to Solve Applied Problems”

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: State University Higher School of Economics – State University Higher School of Economics –

© Higher School of Economics

A project session dedicated to scientific and technological cooperation between the university and VTB Bank was held at the Higher School of Economics. HSE employees presented a wide range of projects that will help ensure the bank’s technological leadership. For example, this includes creating 3D avatars based on a person’s photo or solutions to reduce employee stress levels. In total, 21 projects were taken on by the bank. The next meeting of VTB and HSE representatives will take place in September.

The session was attended by experts from the “Testing New Technologies” stream, as well as experts from the data analysis and modeling departments and the digital development operating model of VTB and representatives of the bank’s technology partner, IT holding T1.

The strategic session began with a welcome from the host.

“HSE is a large university. We have five campuses, including an online campus. HSE has more than 55 thousand students, almost 4.5 thousand teachers and researchers, and the university carries out more than 600 research projects annually. These projects give us more than 3,000 publications, and it is very pleasing that HSE published 40% of Russian A* reports on artificial intelligence last year,” said Igor Sokolov, Director of Research and Development at HSE, a little about what the university is today. According to him, the university conducts more than 150 unique fundamental studies annually and more than 270 applied projects are done for organizations, ministries and departments.

Most of the projects at HSE are implemented by research departments (the largest is Institute for Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge), the contribution of faculties is growing annually, and one of the goals of the strategic session is their active involvement in interaction with partners, noted Igor Sokolov.

At the beginning of the program “Priority 2030“HSE’s revenue from research and development from all sources amounted to 5 billion rubles. By 2030, the university has set an ambitious goal of doubling this amount “on a parity basis: half from the state assignment, half from applied research,” he also said. “At the moment, we expect that applied research at HSE will slightly outpace the state assignment, including with the participation of partners such as VTB Bank,” Igor Sokolov added.

Director Center for commercialization of developments and technology transfer HSE University Anton Yanovsky, in turn, noted that HSE is a university that knows how to make intellectual products and sell them under a license model. According to him, HSE already has a fairly large package of products from various fields – from expert analytics, medical applications, genetic tests to linguistic applications and sensory testing systems.

The list of such products is constantly growing. “Our task is not just to transfer the results of scientific research to the customer, but also to create products together with them that can be sold in series,” Anton Yanovsky noted. If we consider the dynamics of the development of relations with business partners, the university has a growing number of licensing deals, he added.

“VTB is actively developing interaction with technological innovations from the open market, including through work with scientific schools. Today, the bank has built its own system for working with innovations, several teams that have colossal expertise in research, testing and piloting innovative technological solutions. The bank has a fairly high appetite for using breakthrough technologies to solve business problems,” said Deputy Head of the IT Architecture Department, Vice President of VTB Andrey Kovalenko.

The heads of the VTB Accelerator teams, the VTB Innovation Studio and the VTB Technology Laboratory shared their expertise on how to build effective cooperation with the bank, and also reviewed HSE projects for the potential development of partnership.

Among the solutions presented by HSE employees were projects to create a visual search system within videos, an educational chatbot, a model for generating 3D avatars based on a person’s photograph, as well as projects for solutions to reduce employee stress. A total of 32 projects were reviewed, 5 of which were from the HSE campuses in Perm and St. Petersburg. Following the review, 21 projects were included in the framework of the mutual cooperation agreement. Representatives of VTB and HSE agreed that the next strategic session will be held in the fall.

Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: Thailand aims to become regional hub for AI, digital innovation: deputy PM

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian – People’s Republic of China in Russian –

Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News

BANGKOK, May 30 (Xinhua) — Thailand is advancing a national transformation strategy and aiming to become a regional hub for artificial intelligence (AI) and digital innovation, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Economy and Society Prasert Chantharawongthong said in a video message Thursday at the Huawei Thailand Digital and AI Summit 2025.

He pointed to the important role of AI and digital innovation in Thailand’s long-term development strategy, noting that the country’s digital economy is growing rapidly and will expand by 7.3 percent in 2025.

“Under the ‘Economic Growth Engine of Thailand’ program, we aim to enhance national competitiveness, create a safe digital environment, and nurture a new generation of digital talent,” said P. Chantharawongthong. Thailand aims to strengthen its digital infrastructure, create a safe digital environment that protects users’ rights and enjoys public trust, and develop human capital by training talent and developing AI developers over the next two years, he added.

In support of the country’s talent development policy, Chinese tech giant Huawei and Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University are collaborating to develop AI-focused curricula, develop ICT infrastructure, and transform the university into a fully integrated smart campus.

“This collaboration with Huawei reflects our strong commitment to digital transformation in education and preparing our students and staff for the future digital economy,” said Parichat Sthapitanonda, vice president of the university.

Huawei Technologies Thailand CEO Li Xiongwei pointed to the transformative power of AI for society. “By collaborating with government, industry, and academia, Huawei aims to advance all sectors, from agriculture to healthcare to finance,” he said.

The summit brought together more than 2,000 participants, including government leaders, global tech leaders and academics, to explore the next phase of Thailand’s digital economy, powered by AI, cloud innovation and cross-sector collaboration. –0–

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 30, 2025
Astronomers scrutinize a star behaving unlike any other

Source: Government of India

Source: Government of India (4)

Astronomers have spotted a star acting unlike any other ever observed as it unleashes a curious combination of radio waves and X-rays, pegging it as an exotic member of a class of celestial objects first identified only three years ago.

It is located in the Milky Way galaxy about 15,000 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Scutum, flashing every 44 minutes in both radio waves and X-ray emissions. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

The researchers said it belongs to a class of objects called “long-period radio transients,” known for bright bursts of radio waves that appear every few minutes to several hours.

This is much longer than the rapid pulses in radio waves typically detected from pulsars – a type of speedily rotating neutron star, the dense collapsed core of a massive star after its death. Pulsars appear, as viewed from Earth, to be blinking on and off on timescales of milliseconds to seconds.

“What these objects are and how they generate their unusual signals remain a mystery,” said astronomer Ziteng Wang of Curtin University in Australia, lead author of the study published this week in the journal Nature.

In the new study, the researchers used data from NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory, the ASKAP telescope in Australia and other telescopes.

While the emission of radio waves from the newly identified object is similar to the approximately 10 other known examples of this class, it is the only one sending out X-rays, according to astrophysicist and study co-author Nanda Rea of the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona.

The researchers have some hypotheses about the nature of this star. They said it may be a magnetar, a spinning neutron star with an extreme magnetic field, or perhaps a white dwarf, a highly compact stellar ember, with a close and quick orbit around a small companion star in what is called a binary system.

“However, neither of them could explain all observational features we saw,” Wang said.

Stars with up to eight times the mass of our sun appear destined to end up as a white dwarf. They eventually burn up all the hydrogen they use as fuel. Gravity then causes them to collapse and blow off their outer layers in a “red giant” stage, eventually leaving behind a compact core roughly the diameter of Earth – the white dwarf.

The observed radio waves potentially could have been generated by the interaction between the white dwarf and the hypothesized companion star, the researchers said.

“The radio brightness of the object varies a lot. We saw no radio emission from the object before November 2023. And in February 2024, we saw it became extremely bright. Fewer than 30 objects in the sky have ever reached such brightness in radio waves. Remarkably, at the same time, we also detected X-ray pulses from the object. We can still detect it in radio, but much fainter,” Wang said.

Wang said it is thrilling to see a new type of behavior for stars.

“The X-ray detection came from NASA’s Chandra space telescope. That part was a lucky break. The telescope was actually pointing at something else, but just happened to catch the source during its ‘crazy’ bright phase. A coincidence like that is really, really rare – like finding a needle in a haystack,” Wang said.

(Reuters)

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: The Polytechnic University remembers: 80 years of Victory through the eyes of the SPbPU Student City

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University – Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University –

University youth have always played a key role in preserving historical memory and perpetuating the feat of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War. Students and staff of the Student City were no exception – they actively participated in university events dedicated to the anniversary of the Great Victory. In an effort to preserve the memory of the Student City’s contribution during the war, the united student council of the SPbPU dormitories initiated its own projects aimed at education and preserving the historical heritage.

Information stands telling about the role of students during the war were placed in all the dormitories and hotels of the Student City. These stands became not only a tribute to memory, but also an opportunity for new generations of students to touch the pages of the past. Particular attention was paid to memorial sites – ceremonial flower-laying ceremonies were held at the dormitories on Lesnaya Street, as well as at the “Blockade Well” on Nepokorennykh Avenue.

In addition, a series of videos was prepared for social networks, revealing the heroism of those who lived in dormitories during the war years. Thanks to living testimonies, archives and photographs, we can understand at what incredible cost in the conditions of war students continued to study and live.

The beginning of the war

From the recollections of Flight Research Institute student Zalman Reznikov-Levit: June 22, 1941. A clear, gentle, sunny day. The student campus “on Flyugov” was quiet. An examination session was underway. Everyone was sitting with their notes, preparing to take the next exam. The session was coming to an end. I was preparing “Electric Drive”, which was due tomorrow, Monday, June 23. The morning was clear and calm. Suddenly the radio announced that at 12 o’clock the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR, Comrade V. M. Molotov, would speak on the radio. I felt anxious… For the next day, a table was set up in the student campus on the street opposite the canteen near building No. 5, where the registration of volunteers for the student division of the people’s militia began. The registration of those wishing to participate lasted for several days. There were a lot of people around the registration tables, a crush, noise.

Simultaneously with the announcement of the attack of Nazi Germany on our country, the People’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the USSR V. M. Molotov read the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on the mobilization of persons born between 1905 and 1918 into the Red Army. As the director of the Student City Iraida Grigoryevna Otto recalled, military tables were organized in the premises of the factory-kitchen on a voluntary basis. The staff of the Student City delivered summonses to persons who had to appear at the recruiting stations. The administration also created self-defense groups in the Student City with the help of public organizations. They consisted mainly of women and children aged 12 to 17. The duties of the participants in these groups, in addition to regular duty, included sealing windows with paper tape, filling sandbags, and keeping watch in the attics.

Student City Buildings

Student canteen #6, located in the third dormitory, was transferred to the hospital. The hospital’s service personnel were housed in part of the second academic building. In the first days of the war, the V and VI buildings of the Student City were occupied by an evacuation hospital. As TVN worker P. Fomin recalls, it was there that he was treated for his wounds. 85% of the glass in the building had been replaced with plywood, the heating no longer worked, and there was no water. Due to the lack of fuel, the heat supply to the Student City buildings ceased, and the remaining students heated their rooms with temporary shelters. On December 31, 1941, due to improper use of a “potbelly stove”, the IV building caught fire. A third of the building burned down, and two fires that occurred in January completely destroyed the IV building of the Student City.

The commander of the 7th company was a career firefighter A. Kudryavtsev, and the political instructor was a polytechnic student Valentin Vernitsky. The platoon headquarters was located in the Red Corner of the first building of the Student City on Lesnoy, 65. From September 11, the entire regiment was transferred to barracks. As student Vera Sharova recalls, the female firefighters lived in two rooms on the fifth floor of the first building of the Student City, and the guys lived with the company leadership in the basement of a building on the corner of Lesnoy Prospekt and 1st Murinsky. Every day, the platoon fighters gathered at the command post, from where they went on patrol.

In addition, a tank regiment was located in the Student City. It stayed in the main building for only 12 days, after which it was transferred to the VII Corps of the Student City, located at 14 Pribytkovskaya Street. This street no longer exists. It is built up with houses, including the institute’s dormitories. Regular scheduled classes had effectively ceased by November 1941 due to the small number of groups. Lectures were often held in the apartments of teachers or in student dormitories.

Before the war, flowers and seedlings were grown on the territory of the Polytechnic. So by the summer of 1941, gardeners had everything ready for growing flowers. But the war messed up their plans. It was too late to start planting vegetables; they were planted in the spring. Gardening was transformed into a subsidiary farm of the institute, and its staff increased. Already from mid-July 1942, the institute’s employees were harvesting.

Victory Day

Two o’clock in the morning. The dormitory was quiet, almost everyone was asleep. But as soon as the radio announced the capitulation of Nazi Germany, all the students and teachers were on their feet. The corridors began to stir, people congratulated each other, kissed each other. Songs thundered throughout the corridor, – a quote from the newspaper “Polytechnic” from May 16, 1945.

After the announcement of Victory at 2:20 a.m. a rally was organized, after which dancing and singing began. The fun continued until six o’clock in the morning.

By the way, the restoration of the Polytechnic buildings began in the summer of 1944. Workshop No. 1 was tasked with repairing the metal roof of the first and second academic buildings, and then the Main Building and the dormitories on Lesnoy. Special teams were created, which were joined by students arriving from evacuation.

This page of the history of the Great Patriotic War is forever inscribed in the fate of the university and the Student City, becoming a symbol of the contribution to the education of a strong, courageous generation of defenders of the Motherland.

Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: How trafficked American guns fuel Mexico’s cartel violence – podcast

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

More than two thirds of guns recovered at Mexican crime scenes originate in the U.S. For decades, Mexico has struggled with staggering levels of gun violence fueled in large part by weapons trafficked across its northern border.

Now an investigation published by The Conversation has arrived at a new estimate of the scale of this illicit gun trade between the U.S. and Mexico in 2022: 135,000 guns.

Investigative journalist Sean Campbell and Topher McDougal, a professor of economic development at the University of San Diego, spent a year combing through multiple databases and court documents and conducting interviews to understand how the flow of guns works.

Their investigation reveals where in the U.S. the guns are coming from, what impact these American guns are having in Mexico, and how difficult it is for American law enforcement agencies to prosecute those trafficking guns across the border.

Listen to Campbell and McDougal talk about their investigation on The Conversation Weekly podcast.

You can read the full investigation here.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Newsclips in this episode from PBS News, CGTN, France24, ABC 7 and NewsNation.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available on Apple Podcasts.

Sean Campbell and Topher McDougal 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.

– ref. How trafficked American guns fuel Mexico’s cartel violence – podcast – https://theconversation.com/how-trafficked-american-guns-fuel-mexicos-cartel-violence-podcast-256746

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: From working class pubs to sold-out stadiums: how darts has become a major international sport

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Joshua McLeod, Senior Lecturer in Sport Management, Deakin University

Few sports have witnessed a transformation as dramatic as darts in recent years.

From its origins as a pub game stereotypically played with cigarette and beer in hand, darts is now serious business.

With surging television ratings and huge demand for live events, the growth of darts continues to leave many sports looking on in envy.

There has been a combination of factors at play – not least one exceptionally prodigious teenager. Before discussing those factors, it’s worth taking a closer look at the numbers.

Becoming big business

Darts sits alongside a select few sports to have achieved significant commercial growth over the past decade.

While not at the scale of sports such as the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and Formula 1, the rise of darts has been prolific.

In the United Kingdom, a record-breaking peak of 3.7 million viewers watched the 2024 Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) World Championship final. It was Sky Sports’ highest-ever non-soccer broadcast.

In addition to the PDC World Championship – the sport’s premier knockout event – viewership records were also broken across the 2024 Premier League Darts season, a league-format competition featuring weekly fixtures between top-ranked players.

On the UK’s Sky Sports, the 15 most-watched nights in the competition’s history all occurred that year.

The PDC World Championship and Premier League Darts sit alongside the World Matchplay as the “Triple Crown” of most important darts events.

Outside the UK, darts viewership also continues to grow.

The Netherlands remains a strong and expanding heartland, while in Germany, viewership for the World Championship final has increased eightfold since 2008.

In Australia, precise viewing figures are not widely available, but the Foxtel Group’s landmark four-year deal with the PDC in 2023 suggests rising demand.

Surging audiences are translating into significantly larger broadcast deals.

In 2025, Sky Sports reportedly outbid Netflix to secure a new £125 million (A$260.3 million) deal for exclusive UK coverage of the PDC for 2026–30. That was double the size of the previous deal.

In contrast, many other sports face stagnation or even sharp declines in media rights value.

For instance, the UK Super League rugby’s rights on Sky Sports fell from £40 million (A$83.3 million) per season in 2021 to £21.5 million (A$44.5 million) in 2024.

Similarly, in soccer, the French Ligue 1’s TV deal with DAZN collapsed due to underwhelming subscriber numbers. Meanwhile, ESPN walked away from its long-standing agreement with Major League Baseball after unsuccessfully trying to cut its US$550 million (A$848 million) annual payment down to $200 million (A$309 million).

Prize money in darts has also exploded.

Next year, the winner of the two-week long World Championship will bank £1 million (A$2.08 million) – doubling this year’s purse.

The prize money was £60,000 (A$124,960) in 2005, representing a 1,567% increase over 20 years.

Tickets are also hot property. Premier League and World Championship sessions often sell out within minutes worldwide: the UK, Bahrain, New York and even Wollongong have become key stops in darts’ international calendar.

The recipe for success

Like Formula 1 and the UFC, darts benefits from being privately operated.

Without the typical bureaucracy and conflicting interests seen in many traditional sport governing bodies, the PDC can respond more quickly to audience preferences and market opportunities.

This streamlined, commercially driven approach has been key to darts’ growth.

The sport has been expertly tailored to modern audiences.

One of darts’ best-known selling points is the live event experience. The entertainment-first approach is known for loud music, the showmanship of player walk-ons, fancy dress from the crowd and yes, often plenty of alcohol.

The lines are blurred between sport and party and fans love it.

Culturally, darts is seen by many as fun, relatable, and rooted in working-class culture. After all, its heritage is in the pub.

Darts is ideally suited to modern sport media consumption habits: PLD matches last only 20–30 minutes and the up-close TV product works perfectly for social media highlight clips.

It is also one of the few sports where women compete directly against men.

This adds another layer of interest for fans and has helped elevate stars such as Fallon Sherrock, who made headlines in 2019 by becoming the first woman to win a match at the PDC World Championship, eventually reaching the final 32.

A prodigy emerges

The so-called “Littler Effect” has given darts’ profile a significant boost.

The emergence of talented teenager Luke Littler has broken new ground for the sport and drawn global interest.

The English prodigy, who has quickly risen to fame, is by far the sport’s biggest star, but it would be unfair to say darts is a one-man band.

Luke Humphries and Michael van Gerwen enjoy significant profiles while Phil Taylor is regarded as the sport’s greatest player. Australia’s Simon “The Wizard” Whitlock also forged a successful career.

There is also colourful two-time world champion Peter Wright.

Where to from here?

The success of darts reveals much about modern sports audiences and their preferences.

Darts does not rely on traditional ideas of athletic excellence, nor does it fit the Olympic ideal.

Yet, darts is thriving while many traditional sports are stagnating.

Darts’ success stems from remaining authentic to its working-class roots while evolving into an engaging commercial product suited for television, short-form content and digital media.

For darts to fully achieve its global potential, the next step has to be continued international growth. Although it has grown steadily in markets like Australia and throughout Asia, the UK remains darts’ dominant base.

As the global sports marketplace becomes more fragmented and competitive, darts is well positioned to continue growing.

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

– ref. From working class pubs to sold-out stadiums: how darts has become a major international sport – https://theconversation.com/from-working-class-pubs-to-sold-out-stadiums-how-darts-has-become-a-major-international-sport-254807

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: Another step towards innovative technologies: GUU and SPb FRC RAS signed a cooperation agreement

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: State University of Management – Official website of the State –

On May 27, 2025, Rector of the State University of Management Vladimir Stroyev and Director of the St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences Andrey Ronzhin signed an agreement on cooperation in the educational and scientific fields.

St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences is a leading scientific institution with advanced scientific groundwork in fundamental research and engaged in interdisciplinary research in the field of information technology, automation, environmental management and environmental safety.

Vice-Rector Maria Karelina and Director of the Engineering Project Management Center Vladimir Filatov also took part in the meeting on behalf of the State University of Management. The Director of the St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences was given a tour of the State University of Management and the Engineering Project Management Center, where specialists presented the projects being implemented. These included developments in the field of unmanned aircraft systems and work within the framework of a large scientific project being carried out at the State University of Management. Representatives of the State University of Management’s Student Design Bureau demonstrated a project to restore the LuAZ-967M (TPK) vehicle and create its electrified version.

Within the framework of the signed agreement, the State University of Management and the St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences will carry out joint research projects in the field of high-tech innovative technologies, develop and update educational programs for higher and additional professional education, and conduct expertise in the field of research and experimental activities.

Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: Marat Khusnullin: More than 3 thousand km of roads to educational and leisure institutions will be updated this year thanks to the national project “Infrastructure for Life”

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: Government of the Russian Federation – An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.

In 2025, under the national project “Infrastructure for Life”, about 3 thousand km of regional and local roads to kindergartens, schools and other educational and leisure institutions will be brought into compliance with the regulations. Most of the facilities are planned to be commissioned by the beginning of the new school year.

“High-quality and safe roads leading to schools, kindergartens and universities are a necessary condition for the comfortable life of children, parents and teachers. Good road surfaces, well-thought-out pedestrian crossings, lighting and necessary signs reduce the risk of accidents. In addition, a convenient route makes the work of school buses easier. This year, under the national project “Infrastructure for Life”, we plan to bring 854 road facilities up to standard – this is more than 3 thousand km of regional and local roads leading to educational institutions,” said Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin.

Repair, reconstruction and construction of roads to educational institutions is, first and foremost, the creation of a safe space for children.

“When carrying out work, we implement comprehensive solutions: this is the installation of lighting, speed bumps, pedestrian barriers, and marking. All these measures reduce the risks on the path of a schoolchild. This approach has already proven itself well. Let me remind you that in 2024, under the national project “Safe High-Quality Roads”, 920 road facilities leading to educational institutions were brought into compliance with the standard, their total length was more than 3.1 thousand km,” said Minister of Transport Roman Starovoit.

The issue of reducing the risk of road accidents near children’s educational and leisure institutions has been a priority since the very beginning of the implementation of the national project “Safe High-Quality Roads”.

“Children are the most vulnerable road users. Their safety depends on our attention and responsibility, as well as on the good transport and operational condition of the roads. Over the six years of implementing the national project “Safe High-Quality Roads”, we have managed to bring more than 5,000 facilities near schools, kindergartens, higher education institutions, etc. into compliance with the regulations. This work continues in the new national project “Infrastructure for Life”. At the same time, together with regional project offices, we are trying to maintain the principle of an integrated approach: if an educational institution is built or modernized in a region, the road to it is also updated,” emphasized Igor Kostyuchenko, Deputy Head of the Federal Road Agency.

Thus, in the village of Chigiri in the Amur Region, construction continues on a section of Krasnaya Street, which will become the access road to the new school. The three-story building of the new educational institution for 528 students was built at the end of last year. The completion of the work was eagerly awaited by residents not only of the village of Chigiri, but also of neighboring settlements.

In Chelyabinsk, a section of Kharis Yusupov Street is also under construction, about 0.4 km long. In the immediate vicinity is the school building and preschool department of Educational Center No. 2. This is one of the largest comprehensive schools in Chelyabinsk and the Ural Federal District – over 3.8 thousand people study here.

In the Chechen Republic, in 2025, under the national project “Infrastructure for Life”, five road facilities leading to schools and higher education institutions, with a total length of over 6.5 km, will be brought into compliance with the regulations. In particular, in Grozny, the reconstruction of a section of A. Sheripov Street, where the Chechen State University named after A.A. Kadyrov is located, continues. It was founded in 1938 and is now one of the leading centers of education and science in the North Caucasus Federal District. 15 thousand students receive education here.

Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI Global: Young men on South Africa’s urban margins: new book follows their lives over 10 years

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Hannah J. Dawson, Senior Lecturer, Anthropology and Development Studies, University of Johannesburg

South Africa’s young people, aged 15 to 34, who make up more than 50% of the country’s working age population, bear a disproportionate burden of unemployment. They have done so for more than a decade. Of this group, those aged 15-24 face the highest barriers to the job market, according to data from Statistics South Africa. The majority of these young people live in the townships and informal settlements.

A new book, Making a Life: Young Men on Johannesburg’s Urban Margins, examines how young people in Zandspruit, an informal settlement on the outskirts of Johannesburg, make a life. Anthropologist Hannah Dawson explains why she chose Zandspruit for her research and shares her findings about the sociopolitical landscape of urban settlements.

Why the choice of Zandspruit for your research?

It started with my arrival there in 2011 to study a wave of political protests during local elections. This sparked a much longer research journey spanning more than a decade, which this book traces.

The settlement was established in the early 1990s and has grown into a densely populated area of around 50,000 people, across 14 pieces of land.

The expansion of Zandspruit reflects broader trends in post-apartheid South Africa: rapid urbanisation, inadequate urban housing, rising unemployment and underemployment — including a shift from permanent to casual work, and from formal to informal employment.

What sets Zandspruit apart is its location. It is near post-apartheid economic hubs such as Kya Sands, with its light industries and business parks, and Lanseria Airport, a growing freight and logistics hub earmarked for expansion under the Greater Lanseria Masterplan. It also borders affluent suburbs and golf estates. This makes it distinct from older, more isolated settlements in Johannesburg’s south. Its proximity to shopping malls, townhouse complexes, warehouses and commercial zones makes it a destination of choice for migrants. They include people seeking a foothold in the urban market from rural areas of South Africa as well as people from other parts of the African continent.

This proximity makes Zandspruit a case study for understanding how residents access urban job markets, and the connections between wage and non-wage economic activities.

What do your findings tell us about the lives of young people?

The book draws on research primarily with young men, whose work and lives I followed over ten years. It shows how young men on the urban margins navigate structural unemployment and inequality by forging social ties, asserting belonging, and pursuing alternative livelihoods within what I call Zandspruit’s “redistributive economy”. I use the phrase “making a life” to move beyond survival or income generation. A life is not only about securing food and shelter. It involves the pursuit of social connection, identity, place and dignity.

For many of the young men I came to know, this often involved turning down demeaning jobs in favour of self-initiated income strategies that offered greater autonomy. These included renting out shacks, running internet cafes or car washes, or operating as mashonisas (unregistered loan sharks). Such efforts reflect more than personal resilience – they reveal how men’s social position and connections within the settlement shape access to the more lucrative niches of the local economy.

These dynamics point to a broader condition facing young people in South Africa: deep and persistent material insecurity. Yet, they also show the ways in which young people, especially young men, are actively building lives in the face of profound uncertainty. They are crafting meaning and striving for something more in a context marked by chronic unemployment and inequality.

What did you learn about urban inequality and living on the urban margins?

The residents of Zandspruit are not equally poor or marginalised. A focus of the book is the division between “insiders” – long-term residents with access to property who earn rental income – and “outsiders” – new arrivals and immigrants who, as tenants, are more dependent on low-paid jobs. These distinctions shape access to land, housing, livelihoods and local recognition.

Most immigrants form a precarious tenant class, while landlords tend to be established residents with long-standing ties to the settlement. Zandspruit is a deeply stratified space where social connections, property access and local citizenship determine who belongs and who benefits. By tracing men’s positions as insiders or outsiders, the book shows how these inequalities shape their economic strategies and capacity to build a life on the urban margins.

What do you recommend in terms of public policy?

The book doesn’t make policy recommendations. However, it speaks to key public and policy debates. Media and policy narratives often portray unemployed youth as idle and disconnected from society, ignoring the complex, often invisible, economic activities and arrangements that structure their lives. While informal and unstable, these pursuits reflect resourcefulness, local knowledge, and a conscious rejection of degrading labour.

It challenges the idea that informal entrepreneurship can solve youth unemployment. Most enterprises are too precarious to lift young people out of poverty. It also questions the notion that informal settlements are simply ghettos of exclusion and poverty. Instead, it highlights the inequalities within the settlement and calls for greater attention to be paid to the local economies and social orders being forged within these spaces. Understanding these dynamics is crucial to rethinking how we respond to unemployment, the urban housing crisis and inequality in South Africa.

Hannah J. Dawson received funding from the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission and the National Research Foundation.

– ref. Young men on South Africa’s urban margins: new book follows their lives over 10 years – https://theconversation.com/young-men-on-south-africas-urban-margins-new-book-follows-their-lives-over-10-years-257026

MIL OSI – Global Reports –

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: Chinese students recited works by classics of Russian poetry

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian – People’s Republic of China in Russian –

Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News

BEIJING, May 30 (Xinhua) — The 8th Russian poetry reading event entitled “I Remember a Wonderful Moment” and the 3rd Russian Classical Poetry Recitation Competition among Beijing University Students were held at Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) as part of the closing ceremony of the 19th BFSU Russian Culture Festival.

The event featured speeches by the Third Secretary of the Russian Embassy in China A. I. Druzhinin and the Deputy Director of the Institute of Russian Language of PULIN, Professor He Fang. PULIN Professor Liu Guangzhun, who initiated the event, Professor Huang Suhua of Capital Normal University and other distinguished guests were also present at the event.

The competition involved 13 teams from 9 Beijing universities. Based on the results of the competition, prizes were awarded for first, second and third places, as well as the audience award. The first place was won by PUJI student Xu Jin.

The 19th Festival of Russian Culture of the PUL also included a competition for dubbing films into Russian among students of Beijing universities and many other interesting events. This year, for the first time, a new form of cultural exchange was added – joint dubbing of works by students from China and Russia, which became an innovative format for deepening interaction between the youth of the two countries. -0-

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI Africa: Young men on South Africa’s urban margins: new book follows their lives over 10 years

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Hannah J. Dawson, Senior Lecturer, Anthropology and Development Studies, University of Johannesburg

South Africa’s young people, aged 15 to 34, who make up more than 50% of the country’s working age population, bear a disproportionate burden of unemployment. They have done so for more than a decade. Of this group, those aged 15-24 face the highest barriers to the job market, according to data from Statistics South Africa. The majority of these young people live in the townships and informal settlements.

A new book, Making a Life: Young Men on Johannesburg’s Urban Margins, examines how young people in Zandspruit, an informal settlement on the outskirts of Johannesburg, make a life. Anthropologist Hannah Dawson explains why she chose Zandspruit for her research and shares her findings about the sociopolitical landscape of urban settlements.

Why the choice of Zandspruit for your research?

It started with my arrival there in 2011 to study a wave of political protests during local elections. This sparked a much longer research journey spanning more than a decade, which this book traces.

The settlement was established in the early 1990s and has grown into a densely populated area of around 50,000 people, across 14 pieces of land.

The expansion of Zandspruit reflects broader trends in post-apartheid South Africa: rapid urbanisation, inadequate urban housing, rising unemployment and underemployment — including a shift from permanent to casual work, and from formal to informal employment.

What sets Zandspruit apart is its location. It is near post-apartheid economic hubs such as Kya Sands, with its light industries and business parks, and Lanseria Airport, a growing freight and logistics hub earmarked for expansion under the Greater Lanseria Masterplan. It also borders affluent suburbs and golf estates. This makes it distinct from older, more isolated settlements in Johannesburg’s south. Its proximity to shopping malls, townhouse complexes, warehouses and commercial zones makes it a destination of choice for migrants. They include people seeking a foothold in the urban market from rural areas of South Africa as well as people from other parts of the African continent.

This proximity makes Zandspruit a case study for understanding how residents access urban job markets, and the connections between wage and non-wage economic activities.

What do your findings tell us about the lives of young people?

The book draws on research primarily with young men, whose work and lives I followed over ten years. It shows how young men on the urban margins navigate structural unemployment and inequality by forging social ties, asserting belonging, and pursuing alternative livelihoods within what I call Zandspruit’s “redistributive economy”. I use the phrase “making a life” to move beyond survival or income generation. A life is not only about securing food and shelter. It involves the pursuit of social connection, identity, place and dignity.

For many of the young men I came to know, this often involved turning down demeaning jobs in favour of self-initiated income strategies that offered greater autonomy. These included renting out shacks, running internet cafes or car washes, or operating as mashonisas (unregistered loan sharks). Such efforts reflect more than personal resilience – they reveal how men’s social position and connections within the settlement shape access to the more lucrative niches of the local economy.

These dynamics point to a broader condition facing young people in South Africa: deep and persistent material insecurity. Yet, they also show the ways in which young people, especially young men, are actively building lives in the face of profound uncertainty. They are crafting meaning and striving for something more in a context marked by chronic unemployment and inequality.

What did you learn about urban inequality and living on the urban margins?

The residents of Zandspruit are not equally poor or marginalised. A focus of the book is the division between “insiders” – long-term residents with access to property who earn rental income – and “outsiders” – new arrivals and immigrants who, as tenants, are more dependent on low-paid jobs. These distinctions shape access to land, housing, livelihoods and local recognition.

Most immigrants form a precarious tenant class, while landlords tend to be established residents with long-standing ties to the settlement. Zandspruit is a deeply stratified space where social connections, property access and local citizenship determine who belongs and who benefits. By tracing men’s positions as insiders or outsiders, the book shows how these inequalities shape their economic strategies and capacity to build a life on the urban margins.

What do you recommend in terms of public policy?

The book doesn’t make policy recommendations. However, it speaks to key public and policy debates. Media and policy narratives often portray unemployed youth as idle and disconnected from society, ignoring the complex, often invisible, economic activities and arrangements that structure their lives. While informal and unstable, these pursuits reflect resourcefulness, local knowledge, and a conscious rejection of degrading labour.

It challenges the idea that informal entrepreneurship can solve youth unemployment. Most enterprises are too precarious to lift young people out of poverty. It also questions the notion that informal settlements are simply ghettos of exclusion and poverty. Instead, it highlights the inequalities within the settlement and calls for greater attention to be paid to the local economies and social orders being forged within these spaces. Understanding these dynamics is crucial to rethinking how we respond to unemployment, the urban housing crisis and inequality in South Africa.

– Young men on South Africa’s urban margins: new book follows their lives over 10 years
– https://theconversation.com/young-men-on-south-africas-urban-margins-new-book-follows-their-lives-over-10-years-257026

MIL OSI Africa –

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI China: Integrated data market high on agenda

Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News

China is studying and formulating policy documents to cultivate a national integrated data market in accordance with new characteristics related to the development of the data market as part of a broader push to fully unleash the value of its massive data resources, said the National Data Administration, the country’s top data governance regulator.

More efforts should be made to bolster the development and utilization of public data, and encourage enterprises to innovate by leveraging data to reduce costs and improve operational efficiency, so as to nurture new quality productive forces and empower high-quality economic and social development, said the NDA.

To promote the use of data as a factor of production in more fields and tap the potential of data, the administration is ramping up efforts to compile a guideline on the application scenarios of data elements.

China has issued a three-year action plan to expand the application of data in 12 key fields, including manufacturing, modern agriculture, logistics and financial services.

The country will take steps to promote the high-level application of data, ensure the quality of data supply, improve the environment of data circulation and strengthen data security, said the action plan.

Luan Jie, deputy head of the policy and planning department at the NDA, said nearly 500 digital tech companies have been established by centrally administered State-owned enterprises, and about 66 percent of leading enterprises in various industries have purchased data, adding that the extensive participation of social entities has laid a solid foundation for unleashing the value of data.

Luan said data has been increasingly applied into a diverse range of sectors, such as industry, agriculture and transportation, giving rise to new business forms and models and generating a multiplier effect in boosting the economy.

Looking ahead, the administration will accelerate steps to roll out a guideline on the construction of data infrastructure and establish comprehensive experimental zones for data elements, while strengthening the top-level design of the data market and establishing rules, facilities and governance systems related to a unified national data market to create a fairer and more dynamic market environment.

The nation’s total data output reached 41.06 zettabytes last year, up 25 percent year-on-year, while the added value of core industries of the digital economy accounted for about 10 percent of the GDP, said the NDA.

“Data elements have been rapidly integrated into various areas like production, circulation, consumption and social services, and are playing an increasingly vital role in bolstering industrial upgrades,” said Ouyang Rihui, assistant dean of the China Center for Internet Economy Research at the Central University of Finance and Economics.

The in-depth integration of data with traditional industries will improve production efficiency, optimize the allocation of resources and create novel business models, Ouyang said, while stressing the need to bolster the circulation and transaction of data, explore a data pricing mechanism and value assessment system, ensure data security and strengthen privacy protection.

Data have the attributes of commodities, which could be effectively allocated through market evaluation and trading, so as to create huge economic and social value, he said.

Jiang Xiaojuan, a professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the nation’s accelerated push to nurture a national integrated data market and create more abundant applications of data in various sectors is conducive to driving the transformation and upgrade of industries, facilitating the development of digital economy, and giving full play to the value of data to foster new growth drivers.

The National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center said revenue derived from China’s data elements market is projected to rise to 198.9 billion yuan ($27.7 billion) in 2025, with the compound annual growth rate surpassing 25 percent during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period.

MIL OSI China News –

May 30, 2025
India working towards becoming food bank of the world: Shivraj Singh

Source: Government of India

Source: Government of India (4)

India is working towards becoming the “food bank of the world” under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on Thursday.

He was speaking at the launch of the Viksit Krishi Sankalp Abhiyan at the Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT) in Bhubaneswar.

The nationwide campaign, launched by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare in collaboration with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), will run from May 29 to June 12. As part of the initiative, agricultural scientists will visit villages across over 700 districts to engage with farmers and offer scientific advice aimed at transforming agriculture and securing India’s food future.

“The farmers of India are not just Annadata (food providers), they are Jeevandata (life providers). Our goal is to empower them to feed not only 145 crore Indians but also export food grains and vegetables across the globe,” said Chouhan. He emphasized that the government is committed to making India self-reliant in agriculture through innovation, technology, and grassroots participation.

Chouhan highlighted that government schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana have been launched to provide compensation for crops affected by climate change. The central government is also providing an interest subsidy up to 4 per cent on agricultural loans through Kisan Credit Cards.

The Union Minister will travel across 20 states during the 15-day campaign to mobilize support and engagement. He also urged farmers in Odisha to actively participate in the initiative, noting that over 16,000 agricultural scientists are being connected with farmers as part of the campaign.

Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi expressed pride that the campaign is being launched from the state.

Also present at the event were Odisha Deputy Chief Minister and Agriculture Minister Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo, senior agriculture department officials, and leading agricultural scientists.

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: Presentation of the book “Xi Jinping on public administration” in Kazakh language held in Astana

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian – People’s Republic of China in Russian –

Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News

ASTANA, May 30 (Xinhua) — A presentation of the Kazakh version of the four-volume collection “Xi Jinping on Public Administration” was held in the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana, on Thursday.

China is a reliable strategic partner for Kazakhstan. Friendly exchanges and a high level of trust between the leaders of the two countries have given a powerful impetus to the development of bilateral relations, noted Aida Balayeva, Minister of Culture and Information of Kazakhstan, in her speech. Rich in content, profound in meaning and practical in significance, the book “Xi Jinping on Public Administration” is an important work that will help readers in Kazakhstan better understand China.

The participants of the event noted that this book is an important work of the President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping, which embodies his profound reflections on the issues of Chinese governance and global governance and opens a “window of ideas” for the international community to understand China. The publication and distribution of the Kazakh version of the book is a new important achievement of cooperation between the publishing and translation circles of China and Kazakhstan, as well as a clear evidence of the exchange of experience between the two countries and mutual learning in the field of governance, which will certainly contribute to mutual understanding and closeness between the two peoples and give a new powerful impetus to the construction of a Chinese-Kazakh community with a common future.

According to the event organizers, since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), under the strong leadership of Chairman Xi Jinping, the CPC has united and led the Chinese people, successfully promoted and expanded Chinese-style modernization, and achieved remarkable achievements in development. China and Kazakhstan are fellow travelers on this path of modernization. After reading the Chinese leader’s book, friends from all walks of life in Kazakhstan will be able to gain useful experience in independently mastering the development path according to their national conditions. The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China is a great undertaking that brings together the consensus and cooperation of the international community, and all participating countries will benefit from it. This event will serve as an opportunity to implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of China and Kazakhstan, further deepen exchanges and cooperation between the two countries in poverty alleviation and reduction, green development and the search for a path of modernization, so as to inject more positive energy into the peace, stability and development of the region and the world.

At the presentation ceremony, Chinese and Kazakh guests jointly presented the four-volume collection “Xi Jinping on Public Administration” in the Kazakh language, China presented new books to the Kazakh side, and experts and scholars from the two countries exchanged views on the experience of China and Kazakhstan in public administration.

The event was organized by the Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, the National Affairs Committee of the People’s Republic of China, the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Kazakhstan, the Office of the People’s Republic of China for Publication and Distribution of Literature in Foreign Languages, and the Ministry of Culture and Information of Kazakhstan, and was implemented by the Nationalities Publishing House of China, the Foliant Publishing House of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Eurasian Center of the Office of the People’s Republic of China for Publication and Distribution of Literature in Foreign Languages, and the Kazakhstan branch of Beijing Language and Culture University. The event was attended by about 300 representatives of political parties, media, think tanks, and universities of China and Kazakhstan.

The Kazakh edition of the book “Xi Jinping on Public Administration” was translated and published by the “Nationalities Publishing House” of China and the “Foliant” Publishing House of the Republic of Kazakhstan. To date, the book has been translated and published in 42 languages. –0–

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 30, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: Shock NSW Senate result as One Nation beats Labor to win final seat

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

The button was pressed to electronically distribute preferences for the New South Wales Senate today. All analysts expected Labor to win the final seat, for a three Labor, two Coalition, one Green result. Instead, One Nation won the final seat, for a two Labor, two Coalition, one Green and one One Nation result. This is a One Nation gain from the Coalition.

Six of the 12 senators for each state and all four territory senators were up for election on May 3. Changes in state senate representation are measured against 2019, the last time these senators were up for election. State senators elected at this election will start their six-year terms on July 1.

Senators are elected by proportional representation in their jurisdictions with preferences. At a half-Senate election, with six senators in each state up for election, a quota is one-seventh of the vote, or 14.3%. For the territories, a quota is one-third or 33.3%.

Final primary votes in NSW gave Labor 2.63 quotas, the Coalition 2.06, the Greens 0.78, One Nation 0.42, Legalise Cannabis 0.24, Trumpet of Patriots 0.17, the Libertarians 0.13 and Family First 0.11. One Nation defeated Labor’s third at the final count by 0.89 quotas to 0.87.

Labor was hurt by the Greens being well short of quota, and getting preferences from left sources that would otherwise have gone to Labor, while right-wing parties united behind One Nation. The Greens only crossed quota at the second last count, and their small surplus wasn’t enough for Labor to catch One Nation.

I covered Senate results from other states and territories earlier and this week.

In the later piece, I talked about the two-party count. This isn’t finished yet in NSW or Victoria, but one side of politics usually needs about 57% of the two-party vote in a state to win four of the six senators (four quotas). This is very difficult to achieve.

In Tasmania, Labor won the two-party count by over 63–37, but missed out on three senators owing to Jacqui Lambie. In South Australia, Labor won by over 59–41 and the left won a 4–2 Senate split. In Victoria, Labor leads by nearly 57–43, and the left won a 4–2 Senate split. In Western Australia and NSW, Labor won by less than 56–44 and the Senate was tied 3–3 between left and right.

Out of the 40 Senate seats that were up at this election, Labor won 16 (up three), the Coalition 13 (down five), the Greens six (steady), One Nation three (up two) and Lambie and David Pocock one each (both steady). The Coalition lost senators in all mainland states, with Labor gaining in Victoria, South Australia and Queensland, and One Nation in NSW and WA.

The 36 state senators elected in 2022 won’t be up for election until 2028. For the whole Senate, Labor has 28 out of 76, the Coalition 27, the Greens 11, One Nation four and there are six others. Labor will need either the Greens or the Coalition to reach the 39 votes needed for a Senate majority.

In 2022, the United Australia Party (UAP) won a seat in Victoria. During the last term, Lidia Thorpe defected from the Greens, Fatima Payman from Labor and Tammy Tyrrell from the Jacqui Lambie Network. The six others are these four, Pocock and Lambie.

Counting Thorpe, Payman and Pocock as left and the UAP as right, the left overall has a 42–32 Senate majority, with two others (Lambie and Tyrrell).

National Senate primaries and results by state

Nationally, Labor won 35.1% of the Senate vote (up 5.0% since 2022), the Coalition 29.9% (down 4.4%), the Greens 11.7% (down 0.9%), One Nation 5.7% (up 1.4%), Legalise Cannabis 3.5% (up 0.2%), Trumpet of Patriots 2.6% and Family First 1.5%.

Labor won 34.6% nationally in the House of Representatives, so their Senate vote was 0.5% higher than in the House. It’s likely the lack of a Teal option helped Labor in the Senate.

This table shows the senators elected in each state and territory in 2025, with the seat share and vote share at the bottom. Despite the losses in NSW and WA, Labor and the Greens are overrepresented in the Senate relative to vote share.

Others are greatly underrepresented, but this is because most other parties are either left or right-wing, and their preferences go to Labor, the Greens, the Coalition or One Nation rather than to more others.

For the combined left to lose control of the Senate in 2028, they would need to lose four seats. The only seat that looks vulnerable is the WA seat won by Payman for Labor in 2022. Even if the Coalition wins in 2028, the Senate is likely to be hostile to the Coalition.

At a double dissolution election, all senators are up for election at the same time. If the Coalition wins in 2028, a double dissolution would be an option to seek to change a hostile Senate.

Preference distributions for WA and Queensland

Final WA primary votes gave Labor 2.53 quotas, the Liberals 1.86, the Greens 0.90, One Nation 0.41, Legalise Cannabis 0.28, the Nationals 0.25 and Australian Christians 0.19.

One Nation defeated Labor’s third at the final count by 0.90 quotas to 0.86. When the Nationals were excluded, the Liberals got a large surplus. As in Victoria, Liberal preferences heavily favoured One Nation over Labor and Legalise Cannabis.

But Legalise Cannabis preferences were not as good for Labor as in Victoria, with Labor winning these preferences by 13 points over One Nation, rather than 24 points in Victoria.

Final Queensland primary votes gave the Liberal National Party 2.17 quotas, Labor 2.13, the Greens 0.73, One Nation 0.50, Gerard Rennick 0.33, Trumpet of Patriots 0.26 and Legalise Cannabis 0.25.

Both the Greens and One Nation easily reached a quota on the distribution of preferences, with Rennick finishing far behind on 0.55 quotas.

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

– ref. Shock NSW Senate result as One Nation beats Labor to win final seat – https://theconversation.com/shock-nsw-senate-result-as-one-nation-beats-labor-to-win-final-seat-257888

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: NSU awarded the most active volunteers

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: Novosibirsk State University – Novosibirsk State University –

Each faculty and almost every division of NSU has volunteers who are ready to help in important events of the university, such as Open Day, Interweek, Mayovka and many others. On May 29, the most active volunteers of NSU were awarded in the student creative center.

— Today, there are several student associations here: NSU Volunteers, NSU Medical Volunteers, and volunteer pre-psychologists of the You Are Not Alone service. We are summing up the work for the academic year and would like to thank the guys for always being ready to help. A volunteer is a person with a big heart who is ready to give more than to receive. It seems to me that this is a very important feature of any person who takes part in the volunteer movement. And in general, volunteers are amazing people who are ready to share their resources and time to help others and the university. I would especially like to note the volunteers of the You Are Not Alone movement, because in order to provide support to another person, you yourself need to be in a stable psychological and emotional state, — said Elena Krasilova, Head of the Department of Youth Policy and Educational Work at NSU.

Darya Kolomnikova became a volunteer in her second year of undergraduate studies, and is now a first-year master’s student. Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of NSU. Organizers of the Olympics and other large events always need help, so the girl decided to become a volunteer. For example, this year she contributed to the organization of such events as Mayovka, Donor Days, the Voice of Generations forum and Career Days.

— I like this activity, and I am very grateful to the university that our work is so highly appreciated here. In addition to studying at NSU, I look for volunteer opportunities, because it is completely different from the work you do every day. It gives you a new charge of energy and emotions, — shared Daria Kolomnikova.

The platform has been operating in the Russian Federation for several years now. Good.ru. On this site, the university is represented by a verified account — “NSU Volunteers”. The organizer of any event can create a card for their event, and the guys who are registered on this platform can click the “Ready to help” button and become a volunteer. Later, this event and the hours worked will be displayed in their volunteer book. At any time, they can download it and attach it to their portfolio. Also, the results of volunteer activities can be submitted for an increased state academic scholarship on the scale of “Achievements of students in social activities”.

Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 30, 2025
MIL-OSI Russia: International cooperation: GUU at the General Assembly of the Peoples of Eurasia and Africa

Translation. Region: Russian Federal

Source: State University of Management – Official website of the State –

On March 28, 2025, the State University of Management took part in a meeting of the General Assembly of the Peoples of Eurasia and Africa, which was held in the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation.

The meeting was attended by the Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs Grigory Karasin, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Nationalities Ildar Gilmutdinov, Director of the FAO Liaison Office with the Russian Federation Oleg Kobyakov, Plenipotentiary Minister with the rank of Ambassador – Deputy Head of Mission of the Republic of Cuba to the Russian Federation Enrique Horta Gonzalez, Minister Counselor of the Embassy of the Republic of Nicaragua Claudio Antonio Arana.

Our university was represented by the Head of the International Cooperation Department Inessa Bogatyreva and graduate students from the Institutes of the State University of Management: Nguyen Thi Hai Anh (Socialist Republic of Vietnam), Moncef Nasrullah (Afghanistan), Umar Bretil Hissein Bretil Hissein (Republic of Chad).

In their reports, the speakers paid special attention to the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War and noted that this year has been declared the Year of Peace and Unity in the CIS in the fight against Nazism. The participants presented such large-scale projects as the International Public Forum “Preserving the Memory of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War”, the initiatives “Immortal Memory”, “Road of Life – Road of Military Glory”, “Panfilov’s Men: Our Pride, Our Glory”, etc.

It is worth noting that within the framework of the Assembly’s work, significant projects are being implemented that contribute to strengthening spiritual and cultural ties between the states of Eurasia and Africa. Among them are the “Caravan of Friendship”, “Road of Life”, “Song of Peace”, “Children of Eurasia”, “Angels of Peace”, “Discover Eurasia”, the 1st International Sports Games of National and Non-Olympic Sports “Towards Eurasiada”.

Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.

MIL OSI Russia News –

May 30, 2025
MIL-Evening Report: GPs will be a great help for managing ADHD medications. But many patients will still need specialists

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Guastella, Professor and Clinical Psychologist, Michael Crouch Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health, University of Sydney

The New South Wales government this week announced reforms that will allow some GPs to treat and potentially diagnose attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

This aims to make ADHD care more accessible and less expensive and follows changes in Western Australia and Queensland, which have increased GPs’ role in diagnosing and prescribing for ADHD.

Previously, only specialists (usually paediatricians and psychiatrists) could diagnose ADHD and prescribe the most commonly used ADHD stimulant medications.

This reform comes on the back of evidence of extensive wait times for ADHD care and costs too high for many people.

But while up-skilling GPs to treat ADHD will benefit many patients, some people with more complex cases will still need to see a specialist.

What’s planned for NSW?

Under this new framework, the NSW government proposes a two-stage plan.

In phase one, around 1,000 GPs will be trained to support the ongoing prescribing of ADHD medications.

In phase two a smaller number, about 100 GPs, will receive more intensive training to conduct ADHD assessments, make diagnoses and initiate ADHD medications.

For phase two the initial focus will be on children and adolescents and then the trial will extend to adults.

Why a diagnosis is crucial for people with ADHD

The recent Senate inquiry into ADHD highlighted growing awareness about the daily struggles of people with ADHD across Australia.

People with ADHD have serious difficulties with attention, impulsivity and hyperactivity, which impact across the lifespan and many settings where people live, learn, work and play.

ADHD is linked to many poor outcomes and is even associated with higher rates of accidental injury and death.

ADHD treatments, such as stimulant medication, has been shown be safe, effective and to substantially lower risks of negative outcomes. But to receive these treatments, a person needs to first receive a diagnosis.

GPs can play an important role managing ADHD

There is also no question that GPs are more accessible than specialists, both in terms of availability and cost.

They already provide ongoing management for a wide range of chronic medical conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. They are highly skilled in monitoring outcomes and adjusting treatments.

With the right training, they bring many transferable skills to ADHD care. Increasing their ability to take over ongoing prescribing for people diagnosed and stabilised on treatment is low risk and has shown to be effective in a range of studies.

However, although the proposal to increase the role of GPs in ADHD care is a step in the right direction, it is not without challenges.

GPs may struggle to assess complex patients

Collaborative care involves general practitioners working with specialists and specialist teams to provide care. If GPs don’t have specialists to rely on for expert advice about ongoing management, many will choose not to provide ADHD care. Ongoing support and strong links between specialist and primary care services will be essential.

GPs may also struggle to assess and diagnose complex cases.

The vast majority of people with ADHD will have other mental health conditions, but some of these other conditions (such as anxiety conditions) can also result in symptoms that appear like ADHD.

For these complex situations, specialist services with multidisciplinary teams of doctors and allied health providers (such as psychologists and occupational therapists) will still be needed.

Read more:
Wondering about ADHD, autism and your child’s development? What to know about getting a neurodevelopmental assessment

To ensure high-quality care and reduce the potential for misdiagnosis and incorrect treatment, it will be even more important that specialists are available to provide additional services when required.

There is little detail currently in the NSW proposal about how specialist multidisciplinary services will be supported to ensure this happens. And funding models for this will need to be established to support existing guidelines.

Bringing GPs into the assessment and diagnosis to initiate treatment is positive but comes with added pressures to manage assessment and treatment.

There are many cases in the media of poor diagnostic process, where patients were misdiagnosed with conditions such as ADHD after inadequate assessments. These practices may be driven by financial rewards and a poor application of evidence-based guidelines.

Sometimes teams of clinicians and allied health providers will be needed for a diagnosis.
Alex and Maria photo/Shutterstock

Could this lead to over-diagnosis? Or correct under-diagnosis?

In Australia, the debate about whether ADHD is under- or over-diagnosed is ongoing. There reality is that there is almost certainly a mixture of both.

The real rates of ADHD are estimated at around 7% in Australian children and 2.5% in adults. While these rates have remained stable for many years, the rates of clinical diagnosis and treatment have increased dramatically, particularly in young women.

Around 6% of children and adolescents currently receive ADHD medications, similar to the actual rates of ADHD in the population. For adults, the rates of ADHD medication use remain low for those over 45 years. For those between 18 and 44 years, rates now sit at around 2%.

One interpretation of these figures is that most children, adolescents and adults with ADHD are now getting the support they need.

However, if we remember the strong evidence that many Australians are struggling to access ADHD care, particularly in under-resourced, regional and remote areas, the more likely answer is that a combination of “misdiagnosis” and “missed diagnosis” means that sometimes diagnoses are not done correctly.

This highlights the importance of focusing on the need for accurate assessment as the cornerstone of high quality ADHD care. In its answer to the question of who should assess and diagnose ADHD, the Australian ADHD guideline focuses on training and skills rather than which profession conducts the assessment.

There is no reason that GPs cannot develop these skills, but they will require adequate training and ongoing support to do so, and they will need time to commit to these assessments.

Finally, we need to make sure medication is not the only option available. Research shows ADHD medications provide effective treatment. But they should never be the only form of treatment offered.

Sadly, reports show medical treatments are relied upon more frequently in more disadvantaged communities where access to other supports can be difficult.

These reforms will do little to increase access to psychological and allied health supports to ensure the right care can be provided to people with ADHD.

Read more:
GPs could improve access to ADHD treatment. But we still need specialists to diagnose and start medication

Adam Guastella receives funding from the NSW Government for the evaluation of mental health supports provided to children and families in health services. He has received funding from research agencies (ARC, NHMRC, MRFF) for the evaluation of assessment and supports related to neurodevelopmental conditions and for independent and sponsored clinical trials for the evaluation medical and psychological therapies. He is affiliated with Neurodevelopment Australia.

David Coghill has been a consultant for with Takeda, Medice, Servier, Novartis. He receives research funding from the NHMRC and royalties from Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. He is the president of Australasian ADHD Professional Association.

– ref. GPs will be a great help for managing ADHD medications. But many patients will still need specialists – https://theconversation.com/gps-will-be-a-great-help-for-managing-adhd-medications-but-many-patients-will-still-need-specialists-257610

MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

May 30, 2025