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Category: Universities

  • MIL-OSI Global: Biden is getting prostate cancer treatment, but that’s not the best choice for all men − a cancer researcher describes how she helped her father decide

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Luisel Ricks-Santi, Senior Associate Vice President Community Health, Education and Training, Old Dominion University; Associate Professor of Pharmacy, University of Florida

    Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative had funded hundreds of cancer research projects across the country. AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

    “Me encontraron càncer en la pròstata,” my father told me. “They found cancer in my prostate.”

    As a cancer researcher who knows very well about the high incidence and decreased survival rates of prostate cancer in the Caribbean, I anguished over these words. Even though I study cancer in my day job, I struggled to take in this news. At the time, all I could muster in response was, “What did the doctor say?”

    “The urologist wants me to see the radiation oncologist to discuss ‘semillas’ (seeds),” he said. “They are recommending treatment.” Many men, including former President Joe Biden, whose case is advanced, do choose with their doctors to treat prostate cancer.

    However, I understood from my work that not undergoing treatment was also an option. In some cases, that is the better choice.

    So I took it upon myself to educate my father on his disease and assist him with the life-changing decisions he would need to make. Our journey can give you a preview of what a cancer diagnosis can be like.

    Prostate cancer diagnosis

    Prostate cancer was not a new topic for my father and me. His battle with his prostate health started over 10 years ago with an initial diagnosis of benign prostate hyperplasia, or BPH.

    The prostate gets bigger with age for a number of reasons, including changing hormone levels, infection or inflammation. Two of the most frequent symptoms of BPH are difficulty urinating and a sudden, urgent need to urinate, both of which my father experienced.

    Although research suggests that the factors that contribute to BPH similarly contribute to prostate cancer, there is no evidence that an enlarged prostate will necessarily develop into cancer.

    Prostate cancer diagnoses have risen in the U.S. in recent years.

    Upon my father’s initial BPH diagnosis, I asked about his PSA levels, the amount of prostate-specific antigens in his blood. PSA is a protein that both normal and cancerous prostate cells produce, and elevated amounts are considered red flags for prostate cancer. When combined with a digital rectal exam, a PSA test can allow doctors to more accurately predict a person’s risk of having prostate cancer.

    My father said his PSA levels were elevated but that the doctors would begin active surveillance, what he called “watchful waiting,” and monitor his PSA every six months to see if it rose.

    After several years of monitoring his PSA, doctors found my father’s PSA level had doubled. He then got a biopsy that indicated he had intermediate-risk prostate cancer.

    Cancer risk categorization

    After his diagnosis, my father was faced with the decision of how to proceed with treatment. I explained that categorizing how aggressive the cancer is and how far it has spread can help determine the best course of treatment.

    Prostate cancer can be grouped into four stages. Stages 1 and 2, when the tumor is still confined to the prostate, are considered early-stage or intermediate risk. Stages 3 and 4, when the tumor has spread beyond the borders of the prostate, are considered more advanced and high risk.

    Some patients with early-stage or intermediate-risk prostate cancer undergo additional treatment, including surgery, radiation or radioactive seed implants called brachytherapy. Patients with late-stage prostate cancer typically undergo hormone therapy along with surgery or radiation, or chemotherapy with or without radiation.

    Although I was not surprised by my father’s diagnosis, given his advanced age and his battle with prostate disease over the past decade, I still struggled emotionally. I struggled with our conversations about what “curing” his cancer meant and how to explain his treatment options to him. I wanted to ensure he would have the best outcome and could still live his best life.

    Our initial inclination was to undergo active surveillance. That meant we would monitor his PSA every six months instead of immediately starting treatment. That is appropriate for patients with early-stage and less aggressive tumors.

    Prostate cancer screening problems

    My father was leaning on me to help him decide how to proceed. I felt overwhelming anxiety because I did not want to fail him or my family. Even with all my expertise studying cancer genetics and working with cancer patients, I couldn’t help second-guessing our decisions, and I sometimes questioned our decision not to immediately treat his cancer.

    Some people diagnosed with prostate cancer don’t immediately start treatment, because many of the tumors found through PSA testing grow so slowly that they are unlikely to be life-threatening. Detecting these slow-growing tumors is considered overdiagnosis, because the cancer ultimately will not harm the patient during their lifetime. Nearly half of all patients with prostate cancer are overdiagnosed, often leading to overtreatment.

    Research suggests that many prostate cancer patients undergo unnecessarily aggressive treatments, which are often associated with significant harms, like urinary and bowel incontinence, sexual impotence and, in some cases, death. Several studies in the U.S. have shown that patients with early-stage prostate cancer generally have a good prognosis, and the cancer rarely progresses further. With careful observation, most will never need treatment and can be spared the burdens of unnecessary therapy until there are clear signs of progression.

    The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended personalized PSA-based screening in 2018 to avoid overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

    Overdiagnosis and overtreatment of prostate cancer led the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to recommend against PSA-based screening in 2012, with caveats for high-risk groups including African American men and those with a family history of prostate cancer. The recommendation was updated in 2018 to make screening a personal choice after discussion with a clinician.

    Those recommendations have resulted in reduced screening and increased prostate cancer diagnoses. Given that Black men are more likely to see the cancer progress to aggressive forms of the disease after initial diagnosis, this may worsen existing health disparities.

    Developing tests that better identify patients at risk of dying from prostate cancer can decrease overtreatment. In the meantime, educating patients can help them decide if screening is appropriate for them. For underserved and marginalized communities, community outreach can help improve health literacy and enhance awareness and screening.

    When I looked through my father’s stack of medical records, I found a beacon of light that eased my apprehension. His doctor had ordered a genetic test that estimates how aggressive a tumor may be by measuring the activity of specific genes in cancer cells. An increase in gene activity linked to cancer would indicate that it is likely to grow fast and spread.

    The test predicted that my father’s risk of dying from the disease in the next five years was less than 5%. Based on these results, we both understood that he had adequate time to make a decision and seek additional guidance.

    My father ultimately decided to continue active surveillance and forgo immediate treatment.

    Because of disparities in access to screening and treatment, African American men are more likely to be diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer.
    FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images

    Surviving prostate cancer

    I still worry about my father’s diagnosis, because his cancer is at risk for progression. So every six months, I inquire about his PSA levels. His doctors are monitoring his PSA levels as part of his survivorship plan, which is a record of information about his cancer diagnosis, treatment history and potential follow-up tests.

    My father’s decision to undergo active surveillance was controversial among our friends and family. Many were under the impression that prostate cancer required immediate treatment. Several shared successful treatment stories, sometimes followed by stories of adverse treatment-related side effects.

    To date, my father believes that active surveillance was the best decision for him and understands that this may not be the same for someone else. Talk to your doctor to see what the best options are for you or your loved ones.

    This is an updated version of an article originally published on Aug. 8, 2023.

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

    – ref. Biden is getting prostate cancer treatment, but that’s not the best choice for all men − a cancer researcher describes how she helped her father decide – https://theconversation.com/biden-is-getting-prostate-cancer-treatment-but-thats-not-the-best-choice-for-all-men-a-cancer-researcher-describes-how-she-helped-her-father-decide-257071

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI USA: With the Law in Front of Him, Trump IRS Nominee Refuses to Say It’s Illegal for the President to Weaponize the IRS Against His Political Enemies

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Massachusetts – Elizabeth Warren

    May 20, 2025

    Warren questioned Long on Trump’s threats to revoke Harvard’s non-profit status

    Warren: “It’s clear the statute makes it illegal…And the fact that you want to sit there and dance around about this tells me that you shouldn’t be within 1000 miles…of the IRS.” 

    Video of Exchange (YouTube)

    Washington, D.C. — At a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) questioned IRS Commissioner nominee Billy Long about the legality of President Trump’s threats to revoke Harvard’s non-profit status—and any other efforts by the President to use the IRS to target individual taxpayers. 

    In early May, President Trump threatened to revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status after the university refused to cave to his demands. 

    Despite Senator Warren walking him through the law and giving him over a dozen opportunities to answer, Mr. Long refused to say whether it is illegal for the President of the United States to instruct the IRS to remove a taxpayer’s non-profit status. 

    Federal law states that “[i]t shall be unlawful for [the President] to request, directly or indirectly, any officer or employee of the Internal Revenue Service to conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer.” In a meeting three weeks ago, Senator Warren asked Mr. Long whether it would be unlawful for the President to direct the IRS to revoke the nonprofit status of a taxpayer and sent Mr. Long a copy of the relevant statute after the meeting to review with counsel. Despite this, Mr. Long was still unable to answer the question. 

    “[Y]ou’d have a lot more credibility if you would just say yes. It’s clear the statute makes it illegal for the President to direct the IRS vis-à-vis any particular taxpayer. And the fact that you want to sit there and dance around about this tells me that you shouldn’t be within 1000 miles of the directorship of the IRS,” concluded Senator Warren. 

    Transcript: Hearing to Consider the Nomination of William Long, of Missouri, to be Commissioner of Internal Revenue for the remainder of the term expiring November 12, 2027
    Senate Finance Committee
    May 20, 2025 

    Senator Elizabeth Warren: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So the IRS collects nearly all federal revenue and that means that behind every road we build, every Social Security check that we pay is the IRS, making sure everyone pays what the law says they owe. No politics. But Donald Trump has a different idea. He wants to use the IRS to punish his enemies.

    On May 2, Trump said, “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status.” Harvard wouldn’t cave in to other demands Trump made, so Trump said he would hurt them using the IRS. Now, this is about more than Harvard. It is a threat to anyone who might displease the President, including the people or organizations that can’t afford to have an expensive legal battle if Trump sets the IRS on them.

    So, Mr. Long, when you and I met, I asked you whether it was illegal for the President to tell the IRS to revoke a taxpayer’s non-profit status. And you said in our meeting that you weren’t sure, but you would take a look and consult with lawyers. I sent you the statute, you’ve had three weeks to talk to the lawyers about it, so let’s jump in.

    Mr. Long, is it illegal for the President to direct the IRS to revoke a taxpayer’s non-profit status?

    Mr. Billy Long, nominee for Commissioner of the IRS: In the first place, he wouldn’t do that —

    Senator Warren: That’s not my question Mr. Long. Please don’t start down this. 

    Mr. Long: Are we on Section 7212 or 7217? 

    Senator Warren: I’m at 26 U.S.C. 7217. Do I need to read it to you? 

    Mr. Long: “Prohibits any member of the executive branch to request the IRS to conduct or terminate an audit on a taxpayer.” 

    Senator Warren: Alrighty. So is it illegal—

    Mr. Long: I’m going to follow the law. And if that’s the law, yes. 

    Senator Warren: Okay, but I want you—that is the law. So I just want to be clear: is it illegal for the President of the United States to instruct the IRS to remove a taxpayer’s non-profit status? 

    Mr. Long: “Prohibits any member of the executive branch to request the IRS to conduct or terminate an audit of a taxpayer.” 

    Senator Warren: Is that a yes? 

    Mr. Long: I’d have to go to the lawyers at the IRS to tell me. 

    Senator Warren: No. Come on. You just read it. 

    Mr. Long: I know, but I don’t see the instance that you’re speaking about in there. Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t see—

    Senator Warren: Look, it says “it shall be unlawful for any applicable person,” which in this case includes the President, “to request, directly or indirectly, any officer or employee of the Internal Revenue Service to conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer.” 

    Is it illegal for the President to instruct the IRS to remove non-profit status from a taxpayer? 

    Mr. Long: I’m not going to have the answer you need, and I apologize but like I said—

    Senator Warren: Why are you not having the answer? You’ve had three weeks to consult with lawyers, the statute is about as clear as plain English makes possible—

    Mr. Long: Well, if I say I’m going to follow the law, why would you need to ask me the question? 

    Senator Warren: Well, because I want to make sure that you understand what the law says. If you think ‘follow the law’ means you just get to make it up on the spot, then bud, you don’t get to be the IRS Commissioner. The point here is to follow the law as it is written and I’m asking what I think is a pretty simple question: can the President of the United States legally tell the IRS to change someone’s nonprofit status?

    Mr. Long: I’m not able to answer—

    Senator Warren: You can’t read these words and tell what those words say?

    Mr. Long: I can read the statute and I did but—

    Senator Warren: Alright, then tell me what they mean. What does it mean to say that ‘a person, an applicable person’ here—that’s the President, right?

    Mr. Long: Yes. 

    Senator Warren: Alright, ‘cannot directly or indirectly,’ right? 

    Mr. Long: (silence)

    Senator Warren: ‘Tell any officer or employee,’ that would be you, ‘of the Internal Revenue Service to conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer.’ What part do you not understand here? 

    Mr. Long: It seems to be a non-profit—I don’t see exactly what it refers to—

    Senator Warren: Any taxpayer. To start an investigation of any taxpayer. 

    Mr. Long: If it’s illegal, I’m not going to allow it to happen at my IRS. 

    Senator Warren: Is it illegal? That’s the question. 

    Mr. Long: Me and you will be friends then. I want to be your friend anyway but we will be on the same page. I’m going to follow the law, and if that’s point blank the law—

    Senator Warren: What do you understand the law to be saying about the President telling the IRS in his dealings with any particular taxpayer? What do you understand this law to be saying? 

    Mr. Long: I think it sounds like it’s saying what you are saying, but I don’t—I’ve got a little bit of a section here, and I looked at it, I talked to an attorney that used to be at the IRS and now is going to maybe be back at the IRS and I’m sorry if I don’t have the answer.

    Senator Warren: What? You mean the lawyers told you that they couldn’t understand this?

    Mr. Long: The what? 

    Senator Warren: The lawyers told you they couldn’t understand this? 

    Mr. Long: I didn’t say that. 

    Senator Warren: Well, then tell me, what part do you not understand? It says ‘no person,’ and you’ve said that includes the President, ‘cannot instruct any officer,’ that would be you, ‘of the IRS to conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation for any particular taxpayer.’

    Mr. Long: I don’t intend to let anyone direct me to start an audit for a political reason or any type of reason. 

    Senator Warren: Does that include the President of the United States? 

    Mr. Long: Anyone. 

    Senator Warren: Can you say yes? That the President of the United States cannot tell the IRS what to do.  

    Mr. Long: I can tell them they’re not going to tell me what to do. I can’t speak for if there’s other agents at the IRS that you’re talking about, but I’m telling you what I don’t want to have happen at my IRS. 

    Senator Warren: You know, Mr. Long, you’d have a lot more credibility if you would just say yes. It’s clear the statute makes it illegal for the President to direct the IRS vis-à-vis any particular taxpayer. And the fact that you want to sit there and dance around about this tells me that you shouldn’t be within 1000 miles of the directorship of the IRS. 

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Recent spy scandals reveal how western allies are increasingly unreliable friends

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Robert Dover, Professor of Intelligence and National Security & Dean of Faculty, University of Hull

    Denmark’s foreign affairs minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen sounded surprised and emotional as he addressed a press conference on May 7. He announced he would call in the acting head of the US embassy in Copenhagen, Jennifer Hall Godfrey, over highly charged allegations that Washington has instructed its intelligence agencies to step up espionage on Greenland and Copenhagen.

    According to the Wall Street Journal, US intelligence operatives have been asked to collect information on Greenland’s politicians, independence activists and mining interests that could be leveraged in a potential purchase or coerced transfer of Greenland to the US.

    Greenland is a semi-autonomous Danish territory that Donald Trump has stated he would like to become part of the US. The US State Department has refused to comment on the allegations and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said she was opening an investigation into leaks of classified information.

    This looks like a large powerful nation doing all it can to undermine an ally and fellow member of Nato, which is why the Danes are so affronted.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    The real surprise of the story is that it became so public. But this drama comes at a time of increasingly frosty relations between Denmark and the US, made worse by a visit by US vice-president, J.D. Vance, that didn’t go through diplomatic channels. Even before this, Danish supermarkets were marking US products so consumers could boycott them.

    In another case with some parallels to the Greenland spy saga with one ally spying on another, there has been reports of a newly uncovered Hungarian spy ring in Ukraine, collecting military data for Russia. Hungary said the reports were propaganda.

    Hungary is, in theory, aligned with Ukraine as a member of the EU and Nato. However, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has expressed sympathy for Russian agendas and has the closest relationship with Moscow of any current EU leader. Orbán has even repeatedly attempted to block EU aid to Ukraine.

    The alleged discovery of a Hungarian spy network may ramp up the creeping distrust of Hungary by other EU members and the sense of it becoming even more closely aligned with Russia.

    There has even been a recently reported example of spying going on among countries that are loosely considered allies. North Korean spies were recently caught spying on China, for example.

    The Greenland and Hungary episodes, particularly, shed light on how the world order is being remade. We are in the middle of this shift, with technology-enabled intelligence playing a significant part. These episodes demonstrate that governments who thought they were allies are quickly discovering they could be adversaries.



    Read more:
    How Donald Trump’s proposal to buy Greenland really went down in Denmark

    Regulation by revelation

    The US’s reported efforts at spying on Greenland and Denmark is a window into intelligence business.

    Intelligence efforts against allies are generally only curtailed when they become subject to a public scandal. Intelligence historian Richard Aldrich described this as “regulation by revelation”. The inquiries into these operations normally result in a light censure from politicians or judges, pledges not to repeat the offences and subsequent changes to processes.

    Denmark claims the US has been spying on Greenland.

    What will happen in the Greenland case is as yet unclear, particularly when the Trump administration has shown itself to be particularly immune from public, media and political challenge. The most effective challenge to hostile activity against Greenland could be any ramifications for international stock market sentiment, but even that is not guaranteed.

    The reliance of the US constitution and international law on participants behaving appropriately now looks strained under the Trump administration. The lack of restraint on US power may cause nations to rely more heavily on their own intelligence capabilities.

    Intelligence could, as a policy area, begin to mirror that of tariffs and trade as a way that the US can create further uncertainty among other nations about its foreign policy objectives.



    Read more:
    US and Russia squabble over Arctic security as melting ice opens up shipping routes

    Technology makes it easy

    But another factor in contemporary intelligence is that nations can now spy on each other much more easily. Technical capabilities are getting cheaper and easier to use.

    For instance, communications intercepts, satellite imagery and open source data-analysis spying methods are cheaper than ever before. These approaches offer more insight, because of the development of machine analytics and the ready availability of computing power and data storage.

    So, allies will continue to spy on allies because they are able to. That ability drives a demand, even in peace time, to know what other national leaders, and their public, are thinking and doing.

    Nations will also aggressively spy at the moment because the world is particularly unstable, and on the edge of conflict in many regions. Understanding where conflicts might erupt, why and with what force and consequence is essential to any nation’s defence posture.

    Nations only know what equipment to buy, what resources to stockpile and how many people to employ in their militaries with this insight. Intelligence is as much about avoiding surprise as it is creating the circumstances to surprise others. In this sense, intelligence is just another tool of statecraft.

    Most nations have spied on their allies for as long as they have been able. During the cold war the US purchased the Swiss encrypted communications company Crypto AG and sold hundreds of secure communications devices with weakened security, which allowed it to listen in on the countries that were using it and gain intelligence

    This type of operation was the forerunner of the widespread intelligence practices of the US National Security Agency, which is in charge of collecting information for counter intelligence purposes, in recent years.

    For Denmark, the challenges of working with its allies through Nato, while defending Greenland, are increasingly complex. Meanwhile, the EU will also be concerned about what Hungary is sharing with its other “friends”. International allies and alliances are increasingly untrustworthy as part of 2025 tectonic shifts in global geopolitics. The recent revelations are just part of that moving picture.

    Robert Dover has previously received funding from the AHRC around the subject of lessons learned from intelligence operations.

    – ref. Recent spy scandals reveal how western allies are increasingly unreliable friends – https://theconversation.com/recent-spy-scandals-reveal-how-western-allies-are-increasingly-unreliable-friends-256353

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: UK film and TV boom hides a crisis that threatens the whole industry – new report

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrew Philip, Lecturer in Filmmaking and Knowledge Exchange Fellow, University of Reading

    Judging by the recent success of UK productions like Adolescence and Baby Reindeer, you might assume that the UK film and television industry is flourishing. And indeed, spending on production has risen dramatically in the last year, a boom which is expected to continue through to 2026.

    Unfortunately, our new report highlights a workforce crisis that raises serious questions about the future of the UK screen industry. And Donald Trump’s recent threat to impose tariffs on non-US films adds to the grim situation, throwing the industry’s vulnerability into stark relief.

    We carried out extensive interviews with 29 participants from across the sector who painted a bleak picture of overwork, financial instability, discrimination and barriers to career progression.

    Charities supporting the sector have already noted that the industry has a longstanding retention problem – the so-called “leaky pipeline”. But our report highlights that economic volatility in the UK and elsewhere is worsening financial and working conditions so much that the film and television industry risks a debilitating loss of its most valuable resource: freelancers.

    This article is part of our State of the Arts series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry – and celebrate the wins, too.

    Long gaps between jobs are widening, and even experienced freelancers with long careers are struggling to make ends meet. Currently there is no publicly available data on numbers entering and leaving the industry, but companies have reported worsening skills shortages, not due to poor recruitment, but because people are leaving in response to worsening conditions.

    As many as two thirds of screen freelancers are considering leaving the industry within the next five years. Since just under 50% of the film production workforce is freelance, such a large-scale exodus would seriously damage our domestic screen industry.

    That industry contributes £13.48 billion to the UK economy, and its talent on-screen and behind the cameras is world-renowned, so why is this crisis happening at all?

    Boom and bust

    The key change has been a reduction in domestic investment by UK-based public service broadcasters in tandem with increased investment from US-based studios and streamers.

    While a recent boom in international investment led to a rapid expansion in UK film and TV infrastructure and a corresponding acute shortage of workers, it also inflated the costs of production, which has proved unaffordable to traditional domestic commissioners. Without consistent local productions, the UK market is exposed to international disruptions like never before.

    Since the deregulation of the TV sector in the 1990s, the UK’s screen industry has relied on a high proportion of freelance workers. This model provided flexibility in a thriving domestic industry boasting some of the world’s most skilled talent and specialist infrastructure to match.

    A shift in the 2000s towards international workflows in production and post-production fuelled by competitive tax incentives transformed the UK film and TV industry into a global operation. Coupled with healthy domestic competition, the UK’s film and TV industry soared.

    But more recently, this globalised business model has been tested by an extended period of economic volatility that has left experienced talent out of work.

    First came the COVID lockdowns. Then a post-pandemic boom as companies moved to refill their schedules, took UK film and TV production to a record high in 2021.

    But then industrial action by US writers and actors in 2023 brought many UK productions to a halt. Once the strike was over, falling subscriptions numbers led to market volatility for streaming giants, who immediately tightened their budgets and slowed investment in UK-based productions.

    High inflation – partly caused by the influx of international money – led many domestic companies to slash their commissioning budgets. By the middle of 2024, plans to build new studios in the UK were being put on hold and more than half the workforce were still unemployed.

    As one worker told us: “I’ve got friends who’ve been out of work for a year … they’re having to sell their houses and these are experienced, serious producers.” Another contributor told us how: “So many people I know at the moment are looking elsewhere for work completely outside of the industry.”

    And another interviewee said: “There have been some unfortunate casualties along the way, some people simply haven’t had the income or the interest to sustain a living and and they’ve got to do what comes first, which is earn a wage that lets them survive.”

    Until recently, a healthy domestic broadcasting industry helped provide consistent work opportunities for freelancers. But at the same time as production costs have risen, broadcasters’ revenue from advertising – and for the BBC, from the licence fee – has fallen.

    The effect has been a precipitous 22% drop in domestic high-end television commissions in 2024, alongside a 50% decrease in international co-productions. UK broadcasters no longer have the financial capacity to plug the gap in the periods when international investors cut back.

    In effect, the domestic industry has become dominated by, and heavily reliant on, a handful of international players led by unpredictable economic interests and global market fluctuations. It’s no coincidence that the two most notable recent British success stories, Adolescence and Baby Reindeer, are produced by Netflix, which has the financial resources British broadcasters lack.

    And despite the presence of the streamers, inflated costs are making it harder for producers to make programmes with British subject matter. Patrick Spence, the executive producer of the hugely successful Mr Bates vs. the Post Office, has said he wouldn’t even try to make the show today.

    To make matters worse, productions funded by international finance (that might have been funded by UK broadcasters in the past) bring little subscription or licensing profits back to the domestic industry.

    As our research shows, this constellation of issues means freelancers face extreme financial insecurity like never before, alongside increasingly poor working practices as production companies try to cut costs and, in some cases, promote too early where experienced staff are missing. It is little wonder that so many are considering leaving the sector.

    If significant numbers do leave the sector, there will no longer be a supply of skilled workers to meet the demands of an uptick in productions – and the US firms will go elsewhere, leaving only a depleted domestic industry in financial crisis.

    Netflix has already made a thinly veiled threat to seek out more competitive territories in the event of a levy on streamers. We could expect a similar decision if they find that the skilled talent they count on in the UK is no longer available.

    The next bust may already be in sight thanks to President Trump’s proposed tariffs on “foreign-made” films. Though such a levy would be difficult to implement and would cause as much harm to the US industry as it would its global partners, it’s not hard to imagine it having a chilling effect on commissioning in the UK.



    Read more:
    Why Trump’s plans for tariffs on foreign films probably won’t have a happy ending

    Structural change needed

    So what can be done? The introduction of a new programme of tax breaks for productions made in the UK, initiated by the Conservatives and ratified by the Labour government, has been rightly celebrated. However, industry experts predict these will not solve the financial sustainability of a homegrown industry.

    MPs have called on the government to go further in its support for the UK independent film and high-end television sectors, to provide a counterbalance to the fluctuations in investment in big budget fare, and to appoint a freelance commissioner to protect workers rights.

    We wait to hear whether the government will take up its recommendations, and bring us closer to other countries, such as France, that have protected their domestic workforce by negotiating specific investment agreements with the major US streamers.

    In our report, we argue that a minister for self-employed and precarious workers working across government departments is the only way to ensure that the appropriate measures can be achieved to address the challenges freelancers now face.

    Better data on freelancer movements will help policy makers and industry to understand the effects of changes to the domestic industry, to help better secure that workforce for future growth as part of the government’s Invest 2035 growth plans.

    We also recommend better data for freelancers themselves: a central source of information on taxation, employment rights, training, funding and the other resources they need to thrive in this challenging landscape.

    These are only the first steps to lessen the immediate risk of losing a substantial section of the skilled workforce that is the engine of the UK industry, preparing the ground for the much larger structural shifts that are needed. Participants in our research at different stages of their career repeatedly insisted that the industry needs root and branch care to overcome the extreme cycles of feast and famine.

    Protecting the cultural value of the UK’s screen industry goes far beyond making economic sense. The sector forms a major part of the country’s diverse national identity and projects a global image that is literally priceless.

    Andrew Philip receives funding for his screen industries research from the Arts & Humanities Research Council through the University of Reading’s Impact Acceleration Account programme.

    Lisa Purse receives funding for her screen industries research from the Arts & Humanities Research Council through the University of Reading’s Impact Acceleration Account programme.

    – ref. UK film and TV boom hides a crisis that threatens the whole industry – new report – https://theconversation.com/uk-film-and-tv-boom-hides-a-crisis-that-threatens-the-whole-industry-new-report-255986

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Falling back into the shadows? How to keep internal displacement on the humanitarian agenda

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Megan Bradley, Full Professor, Political Science and International Development Studies, McGill University

    The international humanitarian system is in freefall. Following the dramatic funding cuts initiated by Donald Trump’s administration in the United States, deliveries of essential food, medicines and clean water to those in need have halted and stockpiles are dwindling. Aid agencies are scrambling to figure out how to do less with less, even as global needs are mounting.



    Read more:
    The growing threat to U.S. democracy will literally cost lives

    Those displaced inside their own countries, as a result of conflict or natural disaster, have been particularly hard hit by this upheaval.

    Internally displaced persons already fall through the cracks of the humanitarian system, despite dramatically outnumbering those who cross borders as refugees.

    Worldwide, there are an estimated 43.7 million refugees, compared to 83.4 million internally displaced people. Yet media coverage still focuses on those fleeing their country as refugees, while internally displaced people remain less visible and beholden to national governments that have the primary responsibility to assist them.

    Some governments, such as Ukraine’s, work hard to meet this challenge but need outside support. In countries like Myanmar and Afghanistan, governments are complicit in displacing their own citizens, necessitating stronger international leadership.

    The UN’s central role

    The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established to protect and assist refugees. But from as early as the 1970s — as a result of calls from the UN General Assembly to address displacement crises — it has also become a leading entity in the international response to internally displaced persons.

    Advocacy from the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons (established in the early 1990s), and more recently from the UN Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on Internally Displaced Persons and the work of the Office of the UN Special Advisor on Solutions to Internal Displacement, has also promoted increased attention to the issue and advocated workable solutions.

    This progress is now at risk in the face of U.S. humanitarian aid cuts.

    The danger today is not that the UNHCR and other humanitarian leaders will treat internally displaced people as unimportant or undeserving of help. Instead, ground could be lost through a return to the UNHCR’s traditional, narrow refugee mandate. Responsibility for internally displaced persons could be shirked as many UN agencies are also under stress.

    This will further increase the marginalization of internally displaced people and expose them to heightened levels of insecurity, poverty and disease.

    The UNHCR is far from the only international organization involved with internally displaced persons. The International Organization for Migration is another important player, particularly in natural disasters, and other agencies, including the UN Development Programme, support longer-term development solutions.

    Yet the UNHCR is the core protection agency for those who are forcibly displaced and its leadership is critical to ensuring a comprehensive response to both refugees and those displaced within their own country’s borders.

    Difficult choices

    In the face of a 30 per cent reduction in operating expenses in its headquarters and regional bureaus, the UNHCR faces some agonizing choices. But these cuts must not produce a competition between internally displaced persons and refugees in humanitarian assistance.

    Experience has shown that effective responses must consider displacement dynamics not only across but also within borders — especially since many refugees are internally displaced before they seek safety abroad and many face internal displacement if they return to their countries of origin.

    The good news is that the UNHCR remains committed to supporting inter-agency co-operation on solutions for internally displaced people, following up on the work of the Office of the UN Special Advisor.

    However, the head of the UNHCR has not yet publicly and clearly reaffirmed his agency’s commitment to standing up for internally displaced people alongside refugees in this moment of flux in the humanitarian sector.

    The need for strong leadership

    As the UNHCR reduces its commitments and shrinks its operations, there could be a void of senior leadership on internal displacement at headquarters and in the field. This means the agency’s response may be determined by regional and country directors with different levels of comfort with and commitment to internally displaced persons.

    The irony is that the UNHCR routinely calls for governments dealing with internal displacement crises to clearly allocate responsibility for effective responses. Today’s budget crisis is no excuse for the UNHCR not to walk its own talk.

    In the face of declining resources but mounting humanitarian needs, the UNHCR and its donors should prioritize preserving their investment in strengthened, reliable and rights-based responses to internally displaced persons — not only for the sake of these citizens, but also as an integral element of a comprehensive response to refugee situations.



    Read more:
    Ethiopia’s war may have ended, but the Tigray crisis hasn’t

    The UNHCR should recognize and insist that refugee response requires an effective response to those displaced internally and vice versa. As a core part of this approach, the agency should also enhance its support for local efforts led by internally displaced people themselves, recognizing they can be, and have been, at the forefront of more effective solutions to their displacement.

    The UNHCR’s funding cuts are putting the agency in a pared-down holding pattern until the next high commissioner of the organization is chosen later this year. A key criterion for selecting the next leader should be their vision for sustaining engagement with internally displaced persons alongside refugees in this moment of global turmoil.

    Megan Bradley receives funding from SSHRC.

    Jennifer Welsh receives funding from the Social Science and Research Council of Canada and the European Research Council.

    – ref. Falling back into the shadows? How to keep internal displacement on the humanitarian agenda – https://theconversation.com/falling-back-into-the-shadows-how-to-keep-internal-displacement-on-the-humanitarian-agenda-255856

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Feats of the human body behind Tom Cruise’s stunts in Mission: Impossible movies

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dan Baumgardt, Senior Lecturer, School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience, University of Bristol

    He’s leapt from cliffs, clung to planes mid-takeoff and held his breath underwater for as long as professional freedivers. Now, at 62, Tom Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt for one final mission – and he’s still doing his own stunts.

    With Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the saga reaches its high-stakes finale. But behind the scenes of death-defying spectacles lies a fascinating question: just how far can the human body be pushed – and trained – to pull off the seemingly impossible?

    And at what cost? In filming the eight Mission: Impossible films, Cruise has suffered a broken ankle, cracked ribs and a torn shoulder.

    Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to consider the capabilities – and limits – of the human body in being able to achieve these awesome heights. How much is it possible to train to achieve the apparently impossible?

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    Breathing underwater

    In Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Hunt navigates an underwater vault to recover a stolen ledger. Cruise wanted to film this all in one take and sought help from freediving instructors in order to hold his breath for the required time – over six minutes!

    The average human can hold their breath for about 30 to 90 seconds. That’s without training. Although there’s an innate diving reflex built into the human body that allows it to temporarily adapt to immersion underwater.

    The response is to lower the heart rate and redirect blood to the body’s core, essentially enabling it to lower its metabolic demand and preserve the function of the vital organs, like the brain and heart.

    All well and good, but consider now the need to swim, as well as resist the pressure of the water pressing on the lungs. And also while fighting that desperate urge as a result of rising CO₂ to take a deep breath – which, underwater, would be catastrophic.

    And if the diver’s oxygen levels fall too low, they might black out and lose consciousness. That’s why shallow water drowning is a real risk here.

    That’s where freediving training comes into play. With practice, there are several ways you can increase the time you’re able to remain underwater. These include mastering breathing techniques to retain the maximum amount of air in the lungs. Sustained practice might also lead to increased oxygen storage capacity in the bloodstream.

    This process takes months to years to attain and might lengthen the immersion time, on average, to around five minutes. What Cruise managed to achieve was nothing short of exceptional.

    The official trailer for Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning.

    Free climbing – and that scene

    Mission Impossible films often open with Ethan Hunt working his way up some impossibly sheer building or cliff face with the agility of a mountain goat. He appears to be free climbing without a harness, and at the start of Mission: Impossible 2, clinging on with just one hand. While Cruise used safety wires to secure himself, the climbing was 100% real.

    Then, of course, how could we forget that scene? The one in the original Mission: Impossible – where he has to suspend all limbs, centimetres from the ground, to prevent himself from setting off the alarms.

    Although Cruise hasn’t revealed his specific training regime for these stunts that I can see – performing any of these actions would require an exceptionally strong back and core.

    The muscles of our backs keep the spine straight and upright. Some span the space between back and limb, such as latissimus dorsi, or “lats”. These sheets of muscle, prized by bodybuilders, are also particularly valuable to climbers – allowing you to perform a chin-up, or pull yourself up that rock face.

    Besides this, many other muscles are needed for extreme climbing – those that enable a strong grip, allow for reaching and “push offs”, and maintain tension and hold. It’s no wonder climbing is considered one of the best whole-body workouts.

    It’s no surprise that Cruise is known to have trained extensively for this. To understand even an element of the difficulty he may have faced, you could try adopting that vault heist pose, with your belly in contact with the floor, and see how long you can hold it. I won’t tell you how pitiful my own attempt was.

    What a blast

    Hunt has also escaped a fair few explosions in his time, from a helicopter in the Channel tunnel to a detonating fish tank in Prague. In Mission: Impossible 3, on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, another helicopter launching a missile triggers an explosion that sends Hunt smashing into a car. Again, Cruise did it all himself, for the price of two cracked ribs.

    Pyrotechnics were used for the explosion, but of course, they couldn’t be used to lift Cruise up and deposit him against the car. The solution? A series of wires were used to drag him sideways. Never has the direction “brace, brace” been so apt.

    And just so you know, broken or bruised ribs are far from fun. Some describe them as one of the most painful injuries you can experience, since the simple acts of coughing, sneezing and merely breathing exacerbate the pain.

    But Tom Cruise picks himself up yet again, dusts himself off and gets on with it. His motivation? He has reportedly claimed that he wants the audience to experience what it really feels to be in that moment. And what a good sport he is.

    This article won’t self-destruct in five seconds.

    Dan Baumgardt 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. Feats of the human body behind Tom Cruise’s stunts in Mission: Impossible movies – https://theconversation.com/feats-of-the-human-body-behind-tom-cruises-stunts-in-mission-impossible-movies-256908

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: English schools to increase mental health support – why they need to get children involved in designing it

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gemma McKenna, Fellow – Medical Sociology, University of Birmingham

    BalanceFormCreative/Shutterstock

    The UK government has announced the continuing rollout of the provision of mental health support teams in schools in England, with the intention of providing six in ten pupils with this support by March 2026.

    One in five children over the age of eight has a probable mental health condition in England today. Mental health support teams are needed to support children and young people early with their mental health and wellbeing to help prevent problems escalating.

    Mental health support teams are made up of experts who work with a number of schools in their local area. They collaborate with school staff, provide group or one-to-one sessions for pupils, parents and carers, and help schools create a culture that promotes mental health and wellbeing.

    With colleagues, I work on research investigating mental health in schools. This has involved assessing the early progress of the mental health support teams – the first ones were created between 2018-19 as part of the then Conservative government’s trailblazer initiative, which aimed to test out approaches and solutions to complex societal problems in specific regions.

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    Our research looked in particular at one of the key purposes of the mental health support teams – to help schools set up or improve a “whole school” approach to mental health support.

    A whole school approach means that all areas of the school or college work together to put mental health and wellbeing at the heart of their school community. This contrasts to standalone mental health activities that aren’t grounded within the everyday school culture. For instance, a school might hold an assembly on wellbeing but continue to implement a behaviour policy that heavily relies on punishment and therefore risks affecting children’s wellbeing.

    School culture

    Well-designed and implemented whole school approaches can have positive effects on children and young people’s wellbeing and contribute to the prevention and reduction of mental health problems. We also know that children are more likely to achieve at school if they feel like they belong, can participate and have autonomy, all fostered by the whole school approach.

    An example of a whole school approach is identifying and supporting children and young people early with mental health support. It can include “global learning”, where learning about mental health and wellbeing becomes a core part of schools’ assemblies, clubs and project-based learning. However, these are just some of a number of combined approaches to a whole school approach.

    In our research, children and young people in schools and colleges where mental health support teams had helped put whole school approach activities in place, told us that they were visible and felt seen. Teachers reached out to them about their wellbeing, either in classrooms through emotional check-ins, or through special lessons focused on mental health attached to curriculum teaching.

    Feeling like there was somewhere to go, someone to talk to, and be heard, made a clear difference to children and young people.

    However, we found that some schools were not including children and young people in their development of whole school mental health strategies. In one of the participating schools, mental health support team work was only known about by the child who had experience of the team. In this school, there was no discernible whole school work being undertaken in addition to direct support.

    The key missing ingredient to really support children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing is for them to feel that they have agency – some input – into the activities that help them.

    Feeling that they have agency and input into decisions that affect them is good for children’s wellbeing.
    Nadya Lukic/Shutterstock

    Also, involving children in developing activities like this can help them to feel valued and included. This in itself is good for mental health.

    Creating together

    With my colleagues at The University of Birmingham’s Institute of Mental Health Youth Advisory Group and National Children’s Bureau, we worked with children and school staff to put together England’s first guide to creating a whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing in schools with pupils. The set of resources include a structured classroom activity, introductory video and practical guide.

    The classroom activity prompts a creative conversation with children about what wellbeing means to them, how their school supports their wellbeing, and what more the school could do. The guide includes practical suggestions about how to talk to pupils about mental health and wellbeing at school in a safe, supportive and inclusive way. It also offers ideas about how to use the information from the classroom activity to support pupils.

    The activity itself asks children to reflect on where and how their wellbeing is supported at school, alongside a focus on the people, places and practices that might help them. The overall aim is to develop a child-centred, whole school approach, one which focuses on the things that matter most to children about their emotional wellbeing.

    Whole school approaches could provide schools with a more holistic way of supporting children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing. Involving them in all areas of design and implementation could help to keep wellbeing and mental health at the heart of schools.

    Gemma McKenna receives funding from University of Birmingham, Impact Fund.
    Affiliations include: Health Services Research UK ,HSR UK, https://hsruk.org/
    TONIBOBANDLOU CIC https://www.tonibobandlou.com/

    – ref. English schools to increase mental health support – why they need to get children involved in designing it – https://theconversation.com/english-schools-to-increase-mental-health-support-why-they-need-to-get-children-involved-in-designing-it-252121

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: For long-tailed tits, it really does take a village

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jennifer Morinay, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Sheffield

    Any parent will tell you how useful it can be to have family living nearby, giving a helping hand when raising your children. In humans, relatives and even non-relatives act as childminders. Such behaviour is widespread in other animals too, particularly birds.

    In our recent study we explored why long-tailed tits, one of the UK’s tiniest bird species, often act as foster parents instead of raising their own brood.

    Since Darwin’s musings on apparent altruism in honeybees, scientists have discovered that individuals of many species help each other, including bacteria, insects, shrimps, mammals and especially birds. We now know that almost 10% of bird species cooperate, helping to raise nestlings that are not their own. This is called cooperative breeding.

    The question that has puzzled scientists since Darwin is why do other animals (and why do we) cooperate? The answer usually lies in a shift in focus from the individual to the genes that make them. The revolutionary work of evolutionary biologist Bill Hamilton in the 1960s (popularised in Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene in 1976), showed that helping family members can improve the transmission of shared genes to the next generation.

    But when is it more advantageous to help family members than to raise your own kids? That is the question we asked of long-tailed tits, the most cooperative of the UK’s birds. In our recent study published last month, we summarised 30 years of research on the cooperative breeding system of long-tailed tits.

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    These tiny and highly social birds with their characteristic chrrr-rr-rr calls are common in UK woods and gardens. In winter, they hang out in groups of 10-20 birds. These flocks often contain close family members, such as parents with offspring and siblings. They forage together during the day and, at night, they sleep in tight huddles on branches, to keep themselves warm.

    In February or March, when they sense that spring is just around the corner, the groups disband, and each bird finds a partner. Then follows what must seem like a marathon effort. Their domed nests, usually built in spiky bushes or high in tree forks, are elaborate constructions that may take weeks to complete. Females lay 9-11 eggs that they incubate until hatching two weeks later. Nestlings are fed by both parents for 16-18 days, when they fledge.

    However, small carnivores and other bird species are waiting for this bonanza of eggs or chicks, and about 70% of long-tailed tit nests are destroyed by such predators every year. Pairs must then start all over again, building a new nest and laying eggs. No wonder that they can only raise one brood per year.

    Long-tailed tits make elaborate nests to raise their chicks in.
    Chosg/Shutterstock

    By early May, the season is too advanced to re-nest, and if a pair has lost their brood they give up for the year. Some lucky ones manage to reproduce, of course. Is it luck? Maybe, in part – but the secret for half of the successful nests is that they got help from family members.

    Birds that fail to breed often become helpers, moving to another nest and assisting that pair in raising their offspring. Around half of all broods have helpers, typically just one or two, but up to eight at a single nest. The extra food that helpers provide increases the survival of offspring. Helpers normally choose the nest of relatives, increasing the number of birds carrying their genes in the next generation. For birds that may live for just a couple of years, this is the next best option after failing to breed successfully themselves.

    Small birds with persistent family bonds

    In our study, we aimed to understand how these family bonds persist and are important for the long-tailed tits. First, they tend to stay and reproduce near where they were born, especially males. As a consequence, we observed that long-tailed tits live in “kin neighbourhoods”. Second, even when they move and decide to settle further afield, long-tailed tits do so with sisters and brothers, maintaining their family ties as they move.

    Long-tailed tits are less than half the weight of a robin.
    David OBrien/Shutterstock

    These family ties can persist over thousands of kilometres. Long-tailed tits in the UK stay in the same area all year. However, populations in the Baltics migrate and spend the winter in central Europe. By catching groups on their southward and northward journeys, we discovered that long-tailed tits travel over large distances in family groups and end up nesting next to each other. These strong family bonds enable them to keep their support network in place.

    Males help more than females, and only birds in good condition help. But, most importantly, it is the strength of the family bond – how closely related and familiar they are – that affects this decision. We also identified external factors that promote cooperation. When predation is intense there are more failed breeders seeking helping opportunities. And when the weather limits time for breeding, long-tailed tits are more likely to help others. Out of adversity comes opportunity.

    We have unpicked the web of causes and effects that explain why long-tailed tits have complex social lives and a cooperative breeding system. Now, our aim is to understand how they recognise family members, whether it is with their calls, their smells, or simply because they built strong friendships over time with them.

    Ben Hatchwell receives funding from a Horizon Europe Guarantee grant from UKRI, via EPSRC, for a project selected by the ERC.

    Jennifer Morinay 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. For long-tailed tits, it really does take a village – https://theconversation.com/for-long-tailed-tits-it-really-does-take-a-village-256128

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Starmer says migrants should speak English – but all of the UK’s languages are important for integration

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mike Chick, Senior Lecturer in TESOL/English, University of South Wales

    William Perugini/Shutterstock

    When Keir Starmer said: “If you want to live in the UK, you should speak English”, it laid bare an assumption – that English is the only language that counts in the UK.

    This view not only overlooks the UK’s rich linguistic diversity, but also runs counter to the language policies being developed across the devolved nations.

    While the UK government’s latest proposals on immigration treat English proficiency as the main pathway to integration, governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are taking different approaches.

    Immigration is a matter controlled by Westminster. But integration, including language education, is devolved. That means each UK nation sets its own direction.

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    England

    Despite frequent political emphasis on English language learning and testing as key to integration, England does not have a national strategy for migrant or refugee integration. It also does not have an England-wide policy for teaching English for speakers of other languages (Esol).

    Instead, decisions about language classes are made locally but provision is uneven. In some areas, support is well-organised and accessible. In others, it’s barely there.

    Despite the lack of national leadership, the Esol sector in England has long benefited from grassroots activism. Organisations like the National Association for Teaching English and Community Languages to Adults and English for Action have been vocal in campaigning for better funding. Researchers and teachers also continue to call for a joined-up strategy for migrant and refugee integration.

    Wales

    By contrast, the Welsh government has made language education a core part of its progressive integration policies. Its ambition to become the world’s first “nation of sanctuary” is backed up by practical measures. This includes a dedicated language education policy for migrants, focused primarily on Esol – the only one of its kind in the UK.

    The first national Esol strategy was published in 2014, revised in 2018, and will be updated this year following a review.

    The introduction of Welsh as an element of migrant language education is helping to build a more inclusive, multicultural society too. It shows learners that all languages, including their mother tongue, have a role to play in a modern, multilingual nation.

    Scotland

    Since 2014, Scotland has implemented three refugee integration strategies. The new Scots refugee integration strategy has been internationally recognised as a model of good practice. It adopts a multilingual, intercultural approach, emphasising that language learning should include home languages and the language or languages of the new community, which may include Gaelic, Scots and English.

    Scotland had two successive adult Esol strategies from 2007 to 2020. These were developed in consultation with Esol learners and detailed clear progression routes into further training, education and employment. But they were discontinued in favour of a broader adult learning strategy in 2022 which covers all adult learners rather than just the needs of migrants.

    It was a decision criticised by some due to concerns about losing focus on the specific needs of Esol learners, and reducing the voice of Esol learners and teachers in Scotland.

    Northern Ireland

    In Northern Ireland, there is no dedicated migrant language policy yet. But its draft refugee integration strategy does at least acknowledge the importance of language in helping migrants feel “valued and respected”.

    In 2022, the Identity and Language (Northern Ireland) Act granted official status to the Irish language, and to Ulster-Scots as a minority language. Nevertheless, the Northern Ireland refugee integration strategy focuses solely on English language classes as the primary language education provision.

    Welsh for speakers of other languages.

    What all UK nations share, however, is chronic underfunding. Adult education, where Esol funding sits across all four nations, now faces yet more cuts meaning many language learners will continue to face long waiting lists for classes.

    But how language education for migrants, especially migrants seeking sanctuary in the UK is perceived, organised and provided is critical to fostering inclusion, promoting integration and bestowing a sense of belonging. Developing competency in the dominant language or languages of the host nation can enable migrants to navigate health, housing or social security systems. It can help them cope with the needs of daily life and to use their skills and knowledge to enter work or education.



    Read more:
    How the Welsh language is being promoted to help migrants feel at home

    Many people seeking sanctuary have experienced trauma from undergoing forced migration. This makes it vital that language provision is trauma-informed and recognises a learner’s existing multilingual skills. It’s also important that it is shaped around their needs, not just on externally imposed assessments of English proficiency.

    The value of multilingualism

    Multilingual education is more than just a nice thing to have.
    There is growing evidence that valuing the languages refugees already speak, and recognising their linguistic skills as assets, improves wellbeing, builds confidence and enhances social inclusion.

    Too often in the UK, language learning is treated as a condition for acceptance, rather than a right that can enable belonging. That risks undermining the very integration that policymakers claim to support.

    If the UK is serious about being a modern, inclusive and multicultural state, it must embrace the reality that it is also multilingual, and that different nations may choose different routes to welcome those seeking sanctuary.

    The authors wish to thank their respective universities for the support they have received in researching this issue. They would also like to thank their co-researchers Sylvia Warnecke and Mel Engman and their co-authors on their recently published policy briefing.

    Gwennan Higham and Sarah Cox 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. Starmer says migrants should speak English – but all of the UK’s languages are important for integration – https://theconversation.com/starmer-says-migrants-should-speak-english-but-all-of-the-uks-languages-are-important-for-integration-255286

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: M&S cyberattack: how can retailers regain customers’ trust after a hack? A marketing expert explains

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kokho Jason Sit, Senior Lecturer in Marketing; Associate Head (Global), University of Portsmouth

    Several big British retailers have been in the news recently – but not for buoyant sales or new product launches. Firms like Marks & Spencer and Co-op have been hacked, affecting online sales and the range of products available in-store, and forcing them to apologise to customers and other stakeholders. Luxury retailer Harrods also suffered a near-miss.

    M&S, a legacy retailer that has more than 1,000 stores across the UK, appears to have suffered the most significant damage from its cyberattack. Bank of America analysts estimated that the company has lost more than £40 million in weekly sales since the incident began over the Easter bank holiday weekend.

    As a precaution, the retailer was reported to have shut down many IT operations, effectively locking itself out of its core systems as it tried to address the incident.

    And then the situation worsened. M&S acknowledged that the personal data of customers, including names, dates of birth, telephone numbers, home and email addresses, and online order histories, had been stolen. However, the retailer insisted that the data theft did not include usable card, payment or login information.

    There are logical reasons why M&S may have opted for the cautious approach. It did not wish to create more panic and anxiety among customers. It preferred to tackle the issue covertly while the outcome was pending. It did not want to be seen as digitally incompetent. Of course, this reasoning is only speculative.

    That said, M&S’s approach to managing the incident has raised questions from a branding perspective.

    First, how long has the retailer been aware of the attack? And, more importantly, how long did it wait to share news of the data theft with its customers and the public?

    Research suggests that brands that are prompt and transparent in disclosing a hack, notifying the affected customers and communicating the potential implications for their privacy, are more likely to win consumer trust. It is better for brand image than those that opt for a “wait-and-see” or “drip-drip” approach.

    In 2016, US IT firm Yahoo was slapped with lawsuits after it announced a hack. The company’s stock price plunged amid fears that a data breach could derail its pending merger with Verizon Communications, set to be worth US$4.8 billion (£3.6 billion).

    But the lawsuits and the market’s adverse reaction were less about the data breach and more about Yahoo’s delayed actions. It involuntarily announced the data breach when the hacker attempted to sell the stolen user data online. Yahoo reportedly learned of the breach two years previously but did not warn its users and stakeholders. An internal review later found that the company had “failed to act sufficiently” on the knowledge it had.

    Bring in the marketers

    Second, does M&S need to do more than simply assure its customers that no usable payment or login information was stolen? Other personal data like date of birth, home and email addresses did get hacked, and are useful for criminals to commit identity theft.

    A prudent retailer will do more than follow the laws and regulations, it can take a more customer-centric, moralistic approach in protecting its customers’ welfare after a cyberattack. A study has highlighted the strategic value of involving marketers – either in-house or an external PR firm – in protecting consumer data and responding to breaches.

    The authors of the study stated that a marketer’s remit typically involves working with people from different backgrounds across all departments of a firm. This enables them to facilitate talks and negotiations between the relevant people, from company lawyers, tech experts, and security officers, to those overseeing investor relationships and the CEO managing the board relationship.

    Being focused on customer experience, even in times of deepening crisis, marketers instinctively think about the benefits and barriers experienced by consumers.

    Talking points between the company’s departments should focus on moral, as well as legal, options for protecting consumer data. Communications should consider the negative effect of the crisis on consumers, beyond the firm stressing its victimhood and seeking sympathy.

    Marketers can put the consumer’s point of view front and centre. They can highlight issues that others in the business may not consider, such as who drafts consumer communications, how messages are communicated and monitored, and how consumers can reach out to the brand to seek or offer help.

    At the end of the day, M&S has been the victim of a crime. Known as a “victim crisis”, a data breach is instigated exclusively by criminal actors. The way and pace at which M&S has communicated the data theft to its customers could potentially leave it open to criticism, however.

    The issue of when the retailer learned about the theft versus when it decided to share the information with its customers remains unclear. Also uncertain is how much personal data was taken, whether this includes any profiling data the retailer conducted on customers (things like their purchase frequency, coupon redemption and product choices). It should also share any plans it is devising to tackle potential identity thefts.

    M&S has come a long way since first opening up a stall at Kirkgate Market in Leeds in 1884.
    annaj77/Shutterstock

    M&S’s current crisis management activities could seem to be about preserving its bottom line while arguably the focus should be on caring for customers. As a legacy retailer which is nearly 141 years old, M&S can do better than following the typical “let me tell you” approach. This is where communication flows in one direction only and is pushed out on to the public, and is what M&S appears to have done in response to the attack.

    Instead, it should consider the more transparent “let’s work together” approach. This may promote better customer trust and brand image, allowing M&S to seek customer cooperation (things like reporting unusual emails or misinformation where a critical mass may identify a meaningful pattern). This could help to spot data breaches and criminal activities like identity theft and fraud.

    Kokho Jason Sit is affiliated with the Chartered Institute of Marketing (UK).

    – ref. M&S cyberattack: how can retailers regain customers’ trust after a hack? A marketing expert explains – https://theconversation.com/mands-cyberattack-how-can-retailers-regain-customers-trust-after-a-hack-a-marketing-expert-explains-257142

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Is Donald Trump doing the world a favour by isolating the United States?

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Shaun Narine, Professor of International Relations and Political Science, St. Thomas University (Canada)

    United States President Donald Trump’s tariffs against most of the world tanked stock markets, disrupted the U.S. bond market and destabilized the global economy.

    Trump has economically and politically threatened American allies, shattering the unity of the western world. But Trump’s chaos may have inadvertently produced an opportunity to create a better world.

    Some western commentators argue that the U.S. has been a benevolent superpower.

    That may have been true for a small group of mostly western states that have benefitted from American domination. But much of the Global South was victimized by American military, economic and political interventions.

    Losing dominance?

    The West could be in the midst of losing its dominant position in the global order. This is probably inevitable, but it may not be the tragedy some western commentators assume it to be.

    In most of the world, there is a desire for a more equitable world order that doesn’t feature the moral, racial and cultural double standards of the western-dominated system. A world where American and western power is limited and contained could not only end up being more peaceful but, over time, more prosperous.

    Without the co-operation of the allies alienated by Trump, it may be harder for the U.S. to initiate conflict around the world as it often has since the end of the Cold War.

    In a recent Foreign Affairs article, American political scientist Stacie Goddard argues the emerging multipolar, post-American world will be one in which great powers — primarily the U.S., Russia and China — will divide the globe into “spheres of influence.”

    The U.S. is seeking to maintain disproportionate power in Asia. Closer to home, neighbours of the U.S. have reason to fear American expansionism.

    By contrast, even if it has imperialist ambitions, Russia doesn’t have the military might to dominate Europe. It’s a country of 144 million people with one-sixth the GDP of the European Union. Russia can cause trouble within countries with sizable Russian minorities, but its ability to project power is limited, as demonstrated by its grinding war in Ukraine.



    Read more:
    After another call with Putin, it looks like Trump has abandoned efforts to mediate peace in Ukraine

    China’s stance

    The Chinese have scored a win against Trump’s tariffs with a 90-day tariff pause that’s being hailed as vindication of China’s defiant negotiating strategy. China called Trump’s bluff and won as global stocks soared.



    Read more:
    China-US trade war: the next 90 days are a big deal for Beijing as it seeks long-term solutions

    This has bolstered China’s goal to have a sphere of influence. However, Chinese foreign policy is largely non-interventionist and, compared to the U.S., remarkably restrained.

    China may intimidate its rivals in the South China Sea, Senkaku Islands, and Taiwan, but it does not easily resort to military force. China has not resorted to military force since its war with Vietnam in 1979.

    China is committed to most of the guiding structures of the current international system and values a stable and mutually beneficial global economic order that enables it to focus on and improve its domestic development.

    Its export-oriented economic sectors need customers abroad. Unlike the West, China has a vested interest in helping the Global South develop and prosper in order to create those customers.

    Asian trade alliance?

    The Chinese are using their resources to promote economic and technological development in the Global South.

    As China spreads its renewable energy technologies globally, some of the poorest countries may leapfrog carbon-based fuels and go directly to renewable energy to make development affordable and attainable, and to mitigate climate change.



    Read more:
    What Canada can learn from China on effectively engaging with Africa

    In response to Trump’s tariffs, China, South Korea and Japan have discussed a renewed free-trade arrangement. President Xi Jinping has toured Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia to encourage a common front against American actions.

    Asian states are wary of China, but they remain committed to global trade. The U.S. may be retreating from globalization, but the rest of the world is not, though China’s manufacturing dominance concerns many states.

    Emerging international order

    New institutions may help to manage the evolving world order. The BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates — have created the New Development Bank (NDB). China has created the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

    The United Nations remains the favoured instrument of global diplomacy, even if western states have been accused of undermining its authority and efficacy.

    The European Union will continue as a major global power in the emerging international order, but on a more even footing with the rest of the world.

    Europe is reconsidering its trade war with China. In the words of Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission: “The West as we knew it no longer exists.”

    Western states will undoubtedly continue to try to exercise disproportionate global influence. Canada has suggested that “like-minded states” form an alliance to promote international trade and institutions that remain dominated by western interests. This idea seems designed to continue marginalizing the Global South in the international decision-making process.

    Most Global South states are not high-functioning liberal democracies. Many struggle with the legacies of colonialism while managing an international system dominated by the West that keeps them subservient. Others have created governments that fit their particular circumstances, cultures and levels of development.

    But many weaker countries generally share a commitment to international law that is seemingly stronger than the West. They need a stable, predictable, fairly applied set of global rules more than stronger nations. Ironically, the decline of the U.S. may facilitate a much more genuine and legitimate rules-based international order.

    America’s loosening grip

    Readjusting the world economy away from the U.S. to a more diverse, evenly distributed economic model will be difficult and disruptive.

    Nonetheless, loosening the American grip on global power is an essential first step towards achieving a more just and balanced international order.

    For putting this process in motion, the world may owe Trump a measure of thanks.

    Shaun Narine is affiliated with Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East and Jewish Voice for Peace.

    – ref. Is Donald Trump doing the world a favour by isolating the United States? – https://theconversation.com/is-donald-trump-doing-the-world-a-favour-by-isolating-the-united-states-252671

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Financial firms are driving up rent in Toronto — and targeting the most vulnerable tenants

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Cloé St-Hilaire, PhD Candidate in Planning, University of Waterloo

    In recent years, Canadians have increasingly seen financial firms — such as private equity firms and real estate investment trusts (REITs) — buying up apartment buildings. The largest 25 financial landlords in Canada hold nearly 20 per cent of the country’s private, purpose-built rental stock.

    At the same time, Canada’s housing affordability crisis has exploded. A 2022 report found that in 93 per cent of Canadian neighbourhoods, a full-time minimum wage worker cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment.

    Many observers have connected this financialization of housing to rising unaffordability. But until recently, a lack of data has made it challenging to prove it.

    Our recent study, based on building-level rent and ownership data in the Greater Toronto Area, is the first to decisively show that financial firms charge higher rents and raise them more quickly than other landlords. We also found that financial firms raise rents most aggressively in lower-income areas with more racialized residents.

    Why does financialization raise rents?

    Financialization refers to the growing role of the finance sector in various parts of the economy. In the rental housing market, it involves the purchase of rental buildings by financial firms like asset managers, REITs and pension funds.

    These “financial landlords” treat housing as an investment product, not as a basic human need.



    Read more:
    Housing is both a human right and a profitable asset, and that’s the problem

    Financial landlords act differently from other landlords. Unlike smaller landlords, they are guided by the “shareholder value maximization” principle, which means their primary goal is to maximize returns for their shareholders.

    While smaller landlords are most likely also motivated by profit, they do not have a duty to external investors like financial firms do and they do not have access to the same strategies to manage their properties. Financial landlords have the scale and sophistication to pursue these profits in ways that smaller-scale landlords cannot.

    Research shows that financial landlords in Canada are associated with increased cost burdens for renters, higher eviction filing rates and higher rates of building disrepair. Our study adds to this evidence by showing they also charge higher rents.

    Financial firms openly promote higher rents

    Even before conducting our analysis, we had reason to believe financial firms would charge higher rents, in part because many of them have publicly said so.

    In a 2018 investor presentation, Minto REIT wrote that they charged “the highest in-place rent” among their public peers.

    Similarly, Centurion REIT published a report in 2020 featuring a graph demonstrating that its rent increases were outpacing both inflation and average rents.

    In a 2019 white paper, Canada’s largest private landlord, Starlight Investments, wrote about how their “value add strategy” for upgrading apartments sets them apart from other types of landlords. In the same publication, they reported increasing the monthly rent in one property by $411 — a 31 per cent increase.

    Financial firms charge the highest rent premiums

    Our analysis reveals that financial firms do indeed charge more.

    Our study compared building-level quarterly rent data to average rents from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation for 1,602 buildings between 2022 and 2024.

    We found that when landlords advertise a unit to rent, they typically charge more than the average neighbourhood rent. We call this upcharge a rent “premium” — the dollar or percentage difference between the rent posted for an available unit and the average neighbourhood rent for a unit of the same size.

    We found that financial firms charged the highest premiums across the GTA, posting 44 per cent higher rents — or $670 more — than local averages. By comparison, non-financial chain landlords — those with multiple buildings but not classified as financial firms — charged a 30 per cent, or $477, premium.

    Meanwhile, smaller-scale owners owners of just a few buildings charged a smaller rent premium of 15-22 per cent. We found financial firms charged the highest premiums regardless of whether the building was brand new or in need of repairs.

    Algorithmic pricing and rent inflation

    One of the landlords with the highest rent premiums is private equity firm Woodbourne, which said they used RealPage’s YieldStar platform, an algorithmic pricing software.

    This software is at the centre of a lawsuit alleging more than a dozen landlords and property managers conspired to artificially inflate rents across Canada.

    The use of AI-driven pricing tools in Canada’s rental market is now under investigation by the Competition Bureau.

    Our study also found that, over time, financial firms raised rents more aggressively than other landlords. On average, they increased asking rents by five per cent — or $96 — every quarter. By comparison, smaller-scale landlords owning just one property raised asking rents by 3.6 per cent, or $59.

    Using a regression model, we demonstrated that out of all ownership types, financial ownership was the strongest predictor for higher rents and higher rent premiums. Using our model, we estimated that a tenant would pay 13 per cent more for their unit if it was owned by a financial firm instead of a single property owner.

    Low-income, marginalized tenants are exposed

    Our study also found that the highest rent premiums were being charged in Toronto’s “neighbourhood improvement areas.” These are areas the city has identified as having inequitable social and economic outcomes.

    While we found that all landlords charge higher premiums in these neighbourhoods, financial landlords were the most aggressive, charging a 49 per cent premium compared to 41 per cent elsewhere.

    We also identified a spatial connection between high rent premiums and the number of racialized residents in a neighbourhood: areas with higher rent premiums often had a greater percentage of racialized residents.

    These findings suggest that financial firms are complicit in driving gentrification in marginalized neighbourhoods, targeting areas with lower-income and racialized renters for the most aggressive rent increases.

    Reining in financial landlords

    While financial firms report on record breaking annual returns and “rental uplifts” of 15 per cent, Canada faces a dire housing affordability crisis.

    Financialization is detrimental to the right to adequate housing. We show that financialization is worsening affordability in Toronto: a trend that will continue, especially since financial landlords are the largest acquirers of suites in the city and the country’s largest landlords.

    To address this issue, we support recent policy recommendations aimed at reining in the power of financial landlords. These include better tracking of who landlords are, stricter tenant protections and more social housing.

    If left unchecked, financialization will continue to deepen the affordability crisis, with the greatest harms falling on those who can least afford it.

    Cloé St-Hilaire receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship). She previously received funding from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec.

    Martine August receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Government of Ontario Early Researcher Award.

    – ref. Financial firms are driving up rent in Toronto — and targeting the most vulnerable tenants – https://theconversation.com/financial-firms-are-driving-up-rent-in-toronto-and-targeting-the-most-vulnerable-tenants-255935

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI United Nations: 20 May 2025 News release Director-General’s Award for Global Health given to Professor Awa Marie Coll Seck and Professor Sir Brian Greenwood

    Source: World Health Organisation

    In recognition of their lifetime achievements in global health, specifically in malaria elimination and beyond, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has given his Award for Global Health this year to Professor Awa Marie Coll Seck and Professor Sir Brian Greenwood.  

    The Director-General’s Award for Global Health, established in 2019, was conferred during the High-Level segment on Tuesday, 20 May, at the Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly and this year included an honorary lifetime achievement award to each recipient.  

    “Their invaluable contributions have helped to alleviate the burden of malaria and other vaccine-preventable diseases and to build sustainable health system capacity in Africa,” said Dr Tedros.

    Noting Professor Coll Seck’s achievements, Dr Tedros said, “While serving as Senegal’s Minister of Health, Professor Awa Marie Coll Seck led landmark reforms, expanded universal access to care and integrated disease control programmes.” 

    In addition to making significant contributions to scientific literature, Professor Coll Seck was, from 2004–2011, the Executive Director of the Roll Back Malaria (RMB) partnership, where she mobilized political will to accelerate malaria interventions in low-income countries.  

    She has also been active on several high-profile boards and advisory groups, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, PATH, and other international NGOs and initiatives working on health financing, vaccines, and health system strengthening. She is currently the President of Forum Galien Afrique.

    Professor Coll Seck was born in Senegal and trained as a physician with a specialization in infectious diseases. She earned her medical degree from the University of Dakar and pursued further specialization in bacteriology and virology in France.

    “I’ve had the privilege of contributing to notable progress but I’ve also borne witness to ongoing challenges and emerging emergencies whether they be in terms of climate, demography or technology. This prize is all the more important in that it symbolizes trust in the values that I defend: solidarity between peoples, science in the service of humanity and the leadership of women in the health system,” said Professor Coll Seck.

    Professor Greenwood is best known for his pivotal work in malaria control. He has also played a central role in shaping global health policy and research strategies, serving on numerous advisory boards, including those of WHO.

    “Over the last five decades, Professor Sir Greenwood performed pioneering research and made major contributions to infectious disease control. His work on malaria has been instrumental in shaping modern approaches to control this devastating disease. His contributions range from the introduction of insecticide-treated bed nets to groundbreaking trials for the RTS,S malaria vaccine, the first vaccine to be recommended for widespread use,” said Dr Tedros.

    Professor Greenwood’s early career focused on infectious disease research in Nigeria and The Gambia, where he lived for decades and led a multidisciplinary programme targeting diseases like malaria, pneumonia, measles, and HIV2. In The Gambia, he demonstrated the effectiveness of insecticide-treated nets in reducing child mortality and morbidity and contributed to malaria control through seasonal antimalarial drug administration.

    In 1996, Professor Greenwood returned to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, continuing his research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He contributed to the successful use of the MenAfriVac vaccine in the African meningitis belt, which helped stop epidemics in Chad. He also advocated for combining seasonal vaccination with seasonal malaria chemoprevention. 

    Reflecting on his career, which began in Nigeria as a young doctor about 60 years ago, Professor Greenwood said, “The pediatric wards were full of measles, meningitis, malaria, polio, there were still even occasions with smallpox coming to hospital. The under-5 child mortality was about 400 per thousand in parts of west Africa. So, how that’s changed in one person’s lifetime. Many of those diseases are not gone but are much reduced and there has been a dramatic improvement in under-5 child mortality. In The Gambia where I also worked, that’s now 40, a 10-fold drop.”

    MIL OSI United Nations News –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Hospitals need to be prepared for war – report

    Source: Anglia Ruskin University

    Ambulances parked near a hospital in Kyiv, Ukraine

    Hospitals need to learn lessons from Ukraine and Syria as they increasingly become targets for military activity during times of conflict, according to research carried out by Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and published by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

    The 96-page guidance document for underground shelters in hospitals, informed by research led by Dr Nebil Achour, is the first of its kind ever published and is based on the experiences of 617 Ukrainian hospitals during the ongoing war and other international health facilities in warzones.

    The research draws on lessons learned from the conflict in Ukraine as well as Syria, and cites an urgent need for renovations, structural upgrades and adherence to standards in hospitals across the world.

    Since the start of the conflict in February 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) has documented more than 2,300 attacks on health care facilities across Ukraine, severely disrupting the delivery of services and endangering the lives of patients and staff.

    Despite the shelling, damaged infrastructure, and lack of essential equipment, health professionals have continued to provide care under emergency conditions.

    Many hospitals have been forced to repurpose older underground shelters, many built during the Cold War, as makeshift health-care facilities to continue serving the population amidst the conflict.

    While the majority (82%) of hospitals in Ukraine have shelters, approximately 70% of hospitals have 20 or fewer beds in their shelters, therefore giving them very limited capacity and ability to deal with mass casualties.

    A quarter of shelters had modifications such as new ventilation systems, water and power supply networks, and showers and toilets. A total of 57% reported minor modifications such as flooring, painting and furniture, and 19% did not report any work at all.

    Findings suggest that there are many difficulties facing the renovation and improvement of shelters, such as shortage of human resources, time, know-how and finance.

    Irina Stanislavovna Tkachenko, medical director at Mykolaiv Regional Children’s Clinical Hospital, stated in the report: “One of our biggest challenges has been converting our old Soviet-era basements into makeshift shelters. These shelters were not originally intended for such use, so we had to quickly adapt them – cleaning out debris, installing water supplies, and creating spaces for incubators and medical equipment.

    “The situation became even more complicated when people from the nearby community sought refuge during air raids. While we couldn’t turn them away, we simply didn’t have enough room to accommodate everyone.”

    Iryna Dyuzhnyk, Deputy Director of General Affairs at Children’s Hospital #5 in Zaporizhzhia, said: “When the war began, we quickly realized that while we had a functioning shelter, it was not in a condition to handle the demands of this situation. We had to act swiftly.

    “With support from international partners and funds allocated by our city council, we were able to transform it into a fully autonomous anti-radiation shelter. Now, it’s supported by a diesel-powered generator, a ventilation system, patient rooms, an operating theatre, sanitary facilities and a stockpile of necessary medical supplies.”

    The WHO report provides actionable steps and a detailed checklist for repurposing existing structures and operating shelters to maintain health services during challenges such as structural damage, infectious diseases, cases of radiation poisoning and significant increase in patient numbers.

    “With political uncertainty growing across the world, this first-ever guidance of its kind is timely. Even countries such as the UK should be prepared to learn lessons from Ukraine and Syria during these times.

    “Our research is designed to assist hospitals and health authorities in enhancing and expanding their underground shelters to offer protection and maintain health services during crises, including those involving chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear events.

    “Hospital shelters are very important in a world of turbulent political environment and high risk of conflicts. These must be designed and operated according to stricter resilience standards to allow health services to continue.

    “Hospital staff, no matter of their professions and hierarchical level, also need to be trained to deal with disasters of all types, natural and manmade.”

    Dr Achour, Associate Professor in Disaster Mitigation at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU)

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Nature-Based “Horizontal Levees” Reduce Flood Risk in San Francisco Bay

    Source: US Geological Survey

    Researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz and USGS have found that these hybrid structures—wetland buffers that slope gently out in front of traditional levees—can reduce the risk of floodwater overtopping by up to 30%, while also supporting valuable marsh habitat.

    Reimagining Levees for a Changing Climate

    Unlike conventional levees, which often rely solely on height and bulk to hold back water, horizontal levees incorporate a gradual, vegetated slope on the water-facing side. This natural buffer helps absorb wave energy, reducing the pressure on the levee itself. The result: a more resilient system that blends engineering with ecosystem restoration.

    To test the effectiveness of these designs, the team used a hydrodynamic model (XBeach non-hydrostatic) to simulate storm-driven waves and flooding in a range of scenarios across San Francisco Bay, both under current sea levels and future projections.

    Their findings showed that as sea levels rise, the risk of levee overtopping during storms will grow significantly. However, horizontal levees with wider and more gradual slopes can significantly reduce this risk. These designs not only buffer storm surge, but also provide new intertidal wetland habitat, which is crucial for ecosystem function and carbon storage.

    Depiction of a horizontal levee (A) and study location in San Francisco Bay (B and C). Transects used in the hydrodynamic simulations are shown by the white lines in (C).

    Maximizing Benefits with Nature-based Design

    The study also offers insight into how to design horizontal levees for maximum impact: broader, gently sloped wetland areas are far more effective at wave attenuation than narrower or steeper versions.

    The benefits of these nature-based systems go beyond flood control. Wetlands can filter pollutants, support fisheries and wildlife populations, and serve as carbon sinks—while also providing scenic green spaces for nearby communities.

    San Francisco Bay, with its mix of dense urban development and tidal marsh ecosystems, is an ideal testing ground for this kind of climate adaptation. The study’s approach could also apply to other wave-exposed urban estuaries around the world.

    With billions of dollars projected to be spent on sea-level rise adaptation over the coming decades, horizontal levees offer a cost-effective and ecologically sound alternative or complement to traditional infrastructure. 

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Starmer: Year One conference to take place at ARU

    Source: Anglia Ruskin University

    A street sign at Downing Street

    The Labour History Research Unit at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) is hosting the first ever conference to focus on the record to date of Sir Keir Starmer’s government.

    The public event, called Starmer: Year One, is taking place at Anglia Ruskin’s Cambridge campus on Saturday, 14 June, and will feature a number of high-profile speakers, including a former advisor at Number 10 Downing Street.

    Bringing together policy specialists, political scientists, historians and other experts, the conference will examine various aspects of the current Labour government, from its handling of the economy and the Ukraine crisis, to issues such as gender, immigration, and the NHS.

    In addition to analysing and debating the Labour government’s progress, the Labour History Research Unit aims to use the day to develop the first academic study on Sir Keir Starmer’s government.

    Confirmed speakers include Professor Tim Bale (Queen Mary University of London), Dr Emily Stacey (independent researcher), Professor Jonathan Portes (King’s College London), and Dr Kevin Hickson (University of Liverpool).

    Other participants include Jovan Owusu-Nepaul who stood for Labour in Clacton last year against Nigel Farage, and Professor Patrick Diamond, a former head of policy planning at Downing Street.

    “This is the first conference to review the record of the new government and by the time of the event, Labour will have been in power for almost a year.

    “However, the results of May’s local elections show that the political landscape of Britain has continued to shift significantly since last year’s General Election and there is evidence that voters have become disenchanted with the two-party political system.

    “This is a government that promised change in 2024 but its tone so far has proven to be one of caution. Why is this, and what does it tell us about the challenges of governing in the mid-2020s? What is the new political landscape and how should the Starmer government seek to shape it? This Labour History Research Unit event promises to be a ‘must’ for anyone interested in contemporary politics.”

    Rohan McWilliam, Professor of Modern British History and Director of the Labour History Research Unit at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU)

    The conference is open to all and tickets cost £25, which includes lunch and refreshments. For further information, visit https://www.aru.ac.uk/arts-humanities-education-and-social-sciences/humanities-and-social-sciences/research/labour-history-research-unit/news/starmer-year-one

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The Coin by Palestinian writer Yasmin Zaher wins the Dylan Thomas Prize – an expert from the judging panel explains why

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Daniel G. Williams, Professor of English Literature, Swansea University

    Yasmin Zaher’s remarkable novel The Coin has won the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize for writers under the age of 40.

    This is not a story that begins at the beginning. Instead, its narrator starts with dirt and an obsession with cleanliness, but suggests later that the coin of the title – an Israeli shekel that she accidentally swallowed on a family road trip in which her parents were killed in a car crash – would have been an equally appropriate place to begin.

    Long forgotten, the swallowed coin begins to make its presence felt, somewhere in her body, following her move to America. The narrator is a wealthy young Palestinian woman, teaching boys at a New York City middle school. Her wealth, however, is in the hands of a brother who controls her allowance. She responds by developing a scheme to resell luxury handbags with a homeless con-artist, known throughout as “Trenchcoat”.

    This is one of several attempts at shaping the world around her: she revels in her sexuality and ability to redefine herself through fashionable clothes and accessories; she teaches her class about black power and takes them on a trip to listen to the “dagger poems” of a black nationalist poet in New Jersey.

    I assume this poet is Amiri Baraka since they eat “Black Dada Nihilismus” burgers, a reference to his poem of the same name. But such acts of resistance, if not futile, are limited. Like the swallowed coin, the levers of control, whether material or psychic, lie out of reach as we witness the narrator’s gradual unravelling.

    It is perhaps appropriate that a novel set in New York should win the prize named after Swansea’s most famous poet. New York both enticed and frightened Dylan Thomas. It was the city in which he died. The city, also, in which he recorded the ground-breaking reading of A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

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    In that story, as in his earlier Return Journey, his childhood self is a ghostly presence wandering among the “blitzed flat graves” of shops “marbled with snow and headstoned with fences”. The snow hides devastation. The destruction of the city that Thomas knew as a child. The 44 air raids mounted on Swansea between 1940 and 1943 killed 390 people. And it’s the similar loss of people and places, and the suffering in Gaza today, which Zaher’s novel examines.

    Palestine is a persistent and troubling presence in the The Coin. For Dylan the devastation of Swansea was a metonym for a wider world where civilians were increasingly the victims of war. His world is, regrettably, still ours in that sense. The Coin is a profound meditation on our contemporary world and our complicity in the destruction of another place and people.

    In a moving scene, the narrator recalls a Jewish friend, “a very gentle girl who dreamed of becoming a ballerina”. She lived in a house that once belonged to “a Palestinian family that had been expelled in 1948”. The friend tells her about two underground rooms in the garden. One of the rooms, “the poop room”, allows access to the second which contains “a big wooden chest full of treasures and gold”. The narrator keeps “thinking of that secret chamber off the shit room, the wooden chest inside, full of silverware and gold of the family who thought they would return.”

    The swallowed coin. The inaccessible allowance. The wooden chest full of treasures and gold. Unreachable currency functions as a powerful symbolic centre connecting the brief scenes and meditations that constitute this appropriately fragmented novel. Lost somewhere in the narrator’s entrails, removed from economic exchange, the coin belongs with the excrement and detritus of urban life, which is the object of the narrator’s disgusted obsessions.

    New York in this novel is a repository of failed circulation – the filth of the city’s streets offering a gothic underside to the endless flows of capitalism, frustrating the narrator’s obsessive attempts at keeping herself clean. Narratives and circulation end in the stasis of dirt. Palestinian history ends in dispossession. Swallowed coin, inaccessible allowance and a buried treasure chest are symbolic repositories of Palestinian traumatic memory.

    Zaher shows us how the novel form can still offer a unique way of understanding the world, of mapping our contemporary disorientation. It does this not by offering clarity, but by lingering in the spaces where movement, value and meaning break down. This is a novel about circulation – of money, of bodies and of meaning.

    The swallowed coin is itself a kind of resistance, a refusal to go along with the restless movement of capital that defines our world. The coin refuses liquidity and thereby refuses complicity; its removal from the economic system mimics a kind of muted protest. Beneath the novel’s often frenetic and energetic surface hides a resistant counter-politics of inaction.

    Daniel G. Williams was a judge of this years’ Dylan Thomas Prize.

    – ref. The Coin by Palestinian writer Yasmin Zaher wins the Dylan Thomas Prize – an expert from the judging panel explains why – https://theconversation.com/the-coin-by-palestinian-writer-yasmin-zaher-wins-the-dylan-thomas-prize-an-expert-from-the-judging-panel-explains-why-257063

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: Sobyanin and Murashko opened the Moscow Medical TechnoCenter after reconstruction

    Translation. Region: Russian Federal

    Source: Moscow Government – Government of Moscow –

    Sergei Sobyanin and the Minister of Health of the Russian Federation Mikhail Murashko opened the Moscow Medical Technocenter (Engineering Scientific and Practical Center “Gormedtekhnika”) after a comprehensive reconstruction.

    “Moscow has enormous medical capacities – hundreds of thousands of units of very complex medical equipment that require daily attention, operation, repair, and maintenance at a high level of readiness. In fact, the quality of medical care for citizens and their health largely depend on this. And, of course, without creating structures that would deal with this, it is impossible to operate such a volume of equipment in Moscow today. Therefore, we essentially recreated Gormedtekhnika, created the Moscow Medical Technocenter, reconstructed buildings for it, and equipped it with all the necessary technologies. With the support of the Russian Ministry of Health, we provide personnel with higher education from the leading universities of our country – Baumanka, Sechenov University and other universities. This synergy, of course, ensures the reliable operation of the entire technological complex of the Moscow medical system,” said Sergei Sobyanin.

    In turn, the Minister of Health of the Russian Federation Mikhail Murashko noted that more than 300 thousand large medical devices alone are purchased in Russia every year. In order to service this equipment, it is necessary to train specialists who will carry out verification, preventive examinations and necessary repairs. Currently, the country is training specialists with specialized higher and secondary technical education, who are in great demand in the healthcare system. 2.5 thousand organizations have already received licenses for the technical maintenance of medical equipment.

    “Moscow as a leader in the healthcare system, as a city that is implementing the very first new technologies, of course, needs such a division as today, in which we are present. This is an opportunity to train specialists and, if necessary, to tell medical workers in more detail how this or that equipment works already in some technical details, for a better understanding of the diagnostic and treatment process. We believe that what Moscow is doing today, Sergey Semenovich, is an absolutely leading position not only in our country, but also in the world,” said Mikhail Murashko.

    The capital occupies a leading position in the development of healthcare not only in the country, but also in the world. This is facilitated, in particular, by the fact that, on the instructions of the President of Russia, a number of national projects are being implemented today. They provide not only for the supply of equipment to medical institutions, but also for the implementation of tasks related to scientific developments. This includes health-preserving technologies, which require the creation of new drugs and medical products.

    “Of course, this requires competence, this requires specialists, so such a center is definitely in demand, and it has great serious prospects,” concluded Mikhail Murashko.

    The Moscow Medical Technocenter is a unique institution, which has no analogues in Russia, which provides the entire life cycle of medical equipment: from purchase and maintenance to disposal. The motto of the Technocenter is “We treat what people are treated with.”

    The comprehensive reconstruction of the main building of Gormedtekhnika, built in 1978, which houses the Moscow Medical Technocenter, was completed in May of this year. During the work, which took about two and a half years, the six-story building with an area of 13.7 thousand square meters was virtually completely rebuilt and equipped with the latest equipment.

    Thus, repair areas were modernized, including those authorized by key manufacturers of medical equipment. A stand class “Medtechlab” was created with unique equipment for training engineers and students. There are devices for computer (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in section, artificial lung ventilation (ALV), anesthesia and respiratory (ANR) and video endoscopic devices.

    “Our task is not only to cooperate with manufacturers, but also to develop our own capacities. The specialists of the updated Moscow Medical Technocenter will be able to handle even the most complex equipment,” Sergei Sobyanin wrote in

    on his telegram channel.

    Source: Sergei Sobyanin’s Telegram channel @mos_sobyanin

    Comfortable conditions were created for the employees to work. In particular, the assembly hall was reconstructed and re-equipped, the area of the canteen was increased to 100 seats, and the adjacent territory was landscaped.

    History of the Moscow Medical Technocenter

    The Moscow Medical Technocenter (State Autonomous Institution “Engineering Scientific and Practical Center “Gormedtekhnika”) was founded in 1949 as an electromechanical plant for the repair and restoration of medical equipment. In 1965, a city department for sales, installation and repair was created on its basis under the name “Medtekhnika”. One of the tasks of the organization, along with the previous ones, was the supply of medical equipment. In 1972, the enterprise was transformed into the Moscow Experimental Plant of Medical Equipment.

    Gormedtekhnika received the status of an engineering scientific and practical center in 2024. Thus, the repair and service institution became a full-fledged technology center with international certification from leading manufacturers of medical equipment and a base for specialized education in the field of repair and maintenance of relevant equipment.

    In particular, the Moscow Medical TechnoCenter is a licensed service center for repair of Olympus endoscopic equipment and Mindray, Philips, B. Braun medical equipment. Its specialists regularly undergo training from leading manufacturers.

    The institution has licenses for radiation safety and for the implementation of activities for the technical maintenance of all groups of medical devices, as well as accreditation in the field of ensuring the uniformity of measurements and testing of products.

    The main tasks of the Moscow Medical Technocenter

    The main activities of the Moscow Medical TechnoCenter include maintenance, repair, dismantling, relocation and disposal of medical equipment. Its engineers maintain over 147 thousand units of medical equipment of Moscow healthcare institutions. In 2023–2024 alone, specialists restored the functionality of over 24 thousand units of various medical equipment. The average repair period was 15 days. Since 2020, specialists have dismantled over 550 units of heavy equipment.

    “In recent years, city hospitals and clinics

    installed more than 480 thousand units of medical equipment. Everything must work without failures. That is why it is so important to carry out timely and high-quality maintenance and repairs,” Sergei Sobyanin wrote in on your telegram channel.

    Source: Sergei Sobyanin’s Telegram channel @mos_sobyanin

    In addition, the institution is engaged in metrological maintenance, verification of measuring instruments and control of operational parameters of medical devices. Every year, its specialists carry out metrological maintenance of more than 180 thousand units of medical devices. In addition, they carry out acceptance tests of high-tech equipment for radiation diagnostics, therapy and other medical equipment.

    Over the past five years, the volume of medical equipment inspected has exceeded 381 thousand units. Among them are over 1.4 thousand units of heavy equipment, such as X-ray machines, CT scanners, angiographs, magnetic resonance tomographs, and 3.5 thousand ultrasound machines and other high-tech equipment.

    In 2024, a testing laboratory for blood glucose monitoring systems was opened at the Moscow Medical TechnoCenter. It controls the quality of glucometers and test strips. The laboratory is accredited in the national accreditation system. Today, state standard samples of glucose solution are being developed here together with specialists from the All-Russian Research Institute of Physical, Technical and Radiotechnical Measurements.

    The functions of the center also include transportation and storage of medical equipment, as well as its commissioning.

    The Moscow Medical TechnoCenter is the largest centralized customer of medical equipment for the capital’s healthcare system. Specialists purchase high-tech equipment, including as part of programs to modernize outpatient clinics and reconstruct large multidisciplinary hospitals. Thus, in 2023-2025, more than 80 thousand of its units were installed and put into operation.

    Currently, 135 life cycle contracts have been concluded, under which more than seven thousand units of heavy equipment and other high-tech medical equipment have been purchased, including angiographs, MRI, CT, X-ray machines, mammographs, C-arm and ultrasound machines, and endoscopic stands (rigid and flexible).

    More than 3.5 thousand units of equipment under life cycle contracts have been delivered to Moscow clinicsCapital doctors conducted 150 thousand examinations using new ultrasound machinesSobyanin: Hospitals and clinics have begun using more than 220 units of medical equipment

    The Moscow Medical TechnoCenter provides technical support and control over the execution of government contracts for the supply of medical equipment, coordination and control over the execution of preparatory, installation and commissioning works, storage, delivery and transfer of medical equipment in accordance with the required conditions, as well as conducting control and technical tests. The area of warehouse premises used for these purposes is 35.8 thousand square meters.

    In addition, the institution is an expert center for the acceptance of equipment for the healthcare system. From 2022 to 2024, its engineers inventoried and labeled about 150 thousand units of medical equipment.

    Another area of the center’s activity is the examination of the technical condition of medical equipment for its licensing and write-off. It is carried out every year to ensure a continuous process of updating medical equipment.

    In addition, the technocenter is engaged in the design and development of medical equipment and its operating conditions. A design department has been created on the basis of the institution, where prototypes of innovative products are developed and prepared for their mass production. Among the projects currently being implemented are:

    — the Proximus-250 lifting and rail system for transporting patients, which will be in demand in intensive care, traumatology, neurology and other departments;

    — electric portable aspirator Torr-30 for equipping ambulances — a device with a reduced noise level and a high vacuum level, adapted for operation in low temperature conditions (down to minus 30 degrees).

    The technology center also monitors food supplies to more than 200 milk distribution points to provide for preferential categories of city residents: pregnant women and nursing mothers, as well as children under three years old, children from large families (from three to seven years old), with chronic diseases (from three to 15 years old), and disabled children (from three to 18 years old).

    Since 2021, this social support measure has been transferred to a digital format – the mos.ru portal has online services “Submitting an application to receive food at a milk kitchen” and “Ordering food at a milk kitchen, choosing a milk distribution point and a schedule for receiving food.”

    For over two years, food has been provided by electronic referral without the need for monthly visits to the clinic and issuing of a paper prescription. As a result, the number of visits to medical institutions and milk distribution points not related to receiving products has been reduced by eight million per year.

    Training of engineering personnel

    The Moscow Medical TechnoCenter employs over 1,500 specialists, including over 300 engineers. This is one of the sites for practical training of students from Moscow colleges and universities. The main partners include the First Moscow State Medical University named after I.M. Sechenov, Moscow State Technical University named after N.E. Bauman, Russian Technological University, Moscow Aviation Institute (National Research University), and National Research University “MPEI”. In 2020–2025, over 230 students completed their internships here.

    Since 2022, the targeted career project “Engineer Trainee” has been implemented, thanks to which 53 young specialists have come to work at the institution.

    Over the years of the technology center’s work, an electronic library has been formed – the so-called knowledge base, containing a wide range of educational materials.

    Experienced engineers who work for Moscow’s medical organizations also undergo practical training here. In 2020–2025, more than 3.1 thousand specialists took part in various advanced training programs.

    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.

    Please Note; This Information is Raw Content Directly from the Information Source. It is access to What the Source Is Stating and Does Not Reflect

    HTTPS: //vv.mos.ru/mayor/tkhemes/12778050/

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI: Bel Appoints Lynn Hutkin as Chief Financial Officer

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    WEST ORANGE, N.J., May 20, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Board of Directors of Bel Fuse Inc. (Nasdaq: BELFA and BELFB) (“Bel” or the “Company”) today announced the appointment of Lynn Hutkin as Bel’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) effective immediately following Bel’s Annual Meeting of Shareholders to be held May 27, 2025. She will be responsible for Bel’s financial strategies and will lead the global finance organization, including planning, treasury, tax, reporting and investor relations. In her new role Ms. Hutkin is succeeding Farouq Tuweiq, Bel’s current CFO, who as previously announced will vacate his CFO role immediately following Bel’s 2025 Annual Meeting of Shareholders to be held May 27, 2025, upon Mr. Tuweiq’s assumption of the President and CEO role on that same date.

    Ms. Hutkin joined Bel in 2007 and has held roles with increasing responsibilities, most recently serving in the role of Vice President of Financial Reporting and Investor Relations along with her designation as Principal Accounting Officer for Bel, which she will continue in her new role (together with her newly added designation as Principal Financial Officer). In addition to her primary roles, throughout her tenure at Bel, she has also been a leader in a variety of other areas including mergers and acquisitions, bank financing, corporate insurance and employee benefit programs. Ms. Hutkin started her career at Arthur Andersen within the audit group and subsequently held roles of increasing responsibility within finance at companies ranging from an IT consulting start-up to a $250 million publicly-traded courier company prior to joining Bel. Ms. Hutkin earned her B.S. of Accountancy from Bentley University and is an active CPA in the State of New Jersey.

    “I am excited to continue working with Lynn and to build upon the accomplishments we have achieved since we began working together in 2021,” said Farouq Tuweiq, Bel’s current CFO. “Bel has gone through a number of transformational steps over the past four years and Lynn has been integral in strengthening best practices at Bel and enhancing financial discipline, financial reporting and internal procedures and controls throughout the organization.”

    “I’m beyond honored to step into the CFO role and very excited for the new journey ahead,” said Lynn Hutkin. “I look forward to the continued partnership with Farouq and our talented team in attaining our future goals.”

    About Bel
    Bel (www.belfuse.com) designs, manufactures and markets a broad array of products that power, protect and connect electronic circuits. These products are primarily used in the defense, commercial aerospace, networking, telecommunications, computing, general industrial, high-speed data transmission, transportation and eMobility industries. Bel’s portfolio of products also finds application in the automotive, medical, broadcasting and consumer electronics markets. Bel’s product groups include Power Solutions and Protection (front-end, board-mount, industrial and transportation power products, module products and circuit protection), Connectivity Solutions (expanded beam fiber optic, copper-based, RF and RJ connectors and cable assemblies), and Magnetic Solutions (integrated connector modules, power transformers, power inductors and discrete components). The Company operates facilities around the world.

    Company Contact:
    Farouq Tuweiq
    Chief Financial Officer
    ir@belf.com

    Investor Contact:
    Three Part Advisors
    Jean Marie Young, Managing Director or Steven Hooser, Partner
    631-418-4339
    jyoung@threepa.com; shooser@threepa.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Africa: Working Group to assess impact of US fund withdrawal  

    Source: South Africa News Agency

    Tuesday, May 20, 2025

    Science, Technology and Innovation Minister, Professor Blade Nzimande has announced the 12 members of the Working Group on Science, Technology, and Innovation Funding (STI-WG).

    The aim of the working group is to advise the Minister on the implications and impact of the recent withdrawal of funding by the United States of America (USA) government from key research and development programmes in South Africa.

    The Working Group comprises  the following persons:
    •    Dr Derrick Swartz – NMU, Working Group Chairperson
    •    Prof Ari Sitas – Acting Director, Institute of African Alternatives, Cape Town
    •    Prof Sarah Mosoetsa – CEO, Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC)
    •    Dr Mlungisi Cele – CEO, National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI)
    •    Prof Francis Petersen – Chair, Universities South Africa
    •    Prof Thokozani Majozi – President and Chair, Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)
    •    Prof Sibusiso Moyo – Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research, Stellenbosch University
    •    Prof Ntobeko Ntusi – CEO, South African Medical Research Council
    •    Dr Fulufhelo Nelwamondo – CEO, National Research Foundation
    •    Prof Sibongile Muthwa – Vice-Chancellor, Nelson Mandela University
    •    Prof Xolisa Mtose – Vice-Chancellor, University of Zululand
    •    Dr Thulani Dlamini – CEO, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)

    Minister Nzimande on 2 May 2025, announced that he was in the process of appointing a working group.

    The terms of reference of the Working Group are to analyse the impact and implications of the USA withdrawal of funds to South African public research and innovation.

    Other terms of the working group are: 
    •    To analyse the current geo-political risks related to STI and how South Africa should position itself to deal with the current situation
    •    To propose policy and strategic responses to enhance the long-term security and sustainability of the STI system and the role of the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI) members of the Working Group

    “The Working Group is expected to provide the Minister with its first draft report within four weeks after assumption of the task, and the final report is expected by 30 June 2025,” said the DSTI on Monday. – SAnews.gov.za 
     

    MIL OSI Africa –

  • MIL-OSI USA: NIST Moonlight Data Will Help Satellites Get a More Accurate Look at Earth

    Source: US Government research organizations

    NASA’s ER-2 taking off with the air-LUSI moonlight collection equipment on board.

    Credit: NASA photo/Ken Ulbrich

    Weather forecasting, mineral prospecting and farming all could improve from a trove of data the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently gathered about moonlight, late at night and far above the clouds.

    NIST’s measurements of the Moon’s brightness — 10 times more accurate than previously available data — are a valuable commodity for engineers, who can use the data to calibrate the visual sensors aboard Earth-observing satellites. Proper calibration can help ensure that these satellites are accurately recording the actual amounts and colors of light from the ground, water and vegetation far below. NIST obtained its new set of moonlight measurements by deploying its equipment on a high-altitude NASA aircraft. 

    “Our goal with this data release is to help the satellite industry develop better models of lunar irradiance,” said Joe Rice, the NIST group leader for the project. “Using the data will help ensure that scientists have a more accurate understanding of what images of Earth from orbit actually mean.”

    Before a satellite can take reliable visuals of the planet, the satellite’s sensors need to be calibrated to make sure they are recording accurate data. Without this vital step, a sensor might indicate that a swath of territory is a different shade or intensity of color than it really is, leading farmers or prospectors to base their decisions on the inaccuracy.

    Measuring Moonlight from the Edge of the Atmosphere

    Researchers want to accurately measure the spectrum of moonlight so that the Moon can be used as a reference to calibrate satellite imagers. However, measuring this spectrum from the ground is challenging because the atmosphere distorts the moonlight, shifting the spectrum. This animation illustrates the NIST team’s solution, which is to place the measurement equipment in a high-altitude plane called the ER-2 and take the spectrum measurement above 95% of Earth’s atmosphere. Credit: Sean Kelley/NIST

    Sometimes engineers calibrate satellites before launch, but it costs time, money and effort, partly because a rocket ride to space puts a lot of stress on a satellite. The acceleration of launch subjects a satellite to forces that are the equivalent of many times Earth’s gravity, and powerful vibrations during flight shake and rattle the instruments vigorously, potentially undoing the effects of the calibrations.

    Larger satellites might carry devices that allow them to self-calibrate after launch, but such devices add weight and use up valuable real estate. And not all satellites are large enough even to have this option. In cubesats, built from a few cubic modules that are 10 centimeters to a side, volume is at a premium.

    An easier approach is to use light from the Moon, which has reflectance properties that change very little over time and therefore offers a consistent benchmark. From time to time, a satellite sensor may take an image that includes the Moon, and the sensor can be calibrated to the different wavelengths of light reflecting from its surface.

    Land-based telescopes have trouble getting accurate details of the Moon’s irradiance because our planet’s constantly changing atmosphere introduces too much uncertainty. So NIST physicist John Woodward and his colleagues arranged to mount a special telescope on a NASA ER-2 aircraft that flies at 70,000 feet, or 21 kilometers, which is higher than 95% of the atmosphere. The mission, called the Airborne Lunar Spectral Irradiance Mission (air-LUSI), flew from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center. After several years of engineering and test flights, the project began gathering data in 2022 and conducted its most recent measurements in early 2025.

    The air-LUSI telescope during a calibration. The light on the other side of the room is an “artificial moon,” a stable source of light that has already been well characterized.

    Credit: NASA photo/Ken Ulbrich

    The new dataset allows distinct improvements over previous lunar irradiance models, which were good at measurements that could show how a sensor’s performance was changing over time but made it difficult to know if and how the Earth itself was changing. The new data not only reduces the uncertainty inherent in ground-based data, but it is also directly tied to the International System of Units (SI), making it easier to apply. 

    “This dataset is 10 times more accurate than the data people previously had to use,” said Woodward. “It will permit a distinct improvement over the other ways we have calibrated satellites.”

    The dataset, now available through NIST’s data portal, is in the netCDF format widely used by the scientific community. It contains irradiance measurements along with the time, location and uncertainty associated with them. It includes information about the instrument NIST used, to help people make useful comparisons with their own sensors’ performance. Also available are details of how to read and display the data along with guidance to help users get started working with it.

    Woodward said he was optimistic about the future use of the dataset. One reason is because accurate, consistent calibration among satellites would enable observers on the ground to spot trends more effectively. 

    “Satellites are expensive national assets, and you want them to be as useful as possible,” he said. “If we calibrate them using the Moon, satellite observations could become more valuable. For example, we’d know whether the color of farmland had changed because rain had improved crop health, rather than because two different satellites took two different images at different times.” 

    The air-LUSI project is a collaboration between scientists and engineers from NASA, NIST, the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Ontario’s McMaster University.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: How mindfulness therapy could help those left behind by depression treatment

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Thorsten Barnhofer, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, School of Psychology, University of Surrey

    Yuri A/PeopleImages.com/Shutterstock

    For some people, depression is like an unwanted guest who moves in and refuses to leave. Even with therapy and medication, the heavy fog of low mood, exhaustion and hopelessness never fully lifts for long. For around 30% of people with depression, this is a daily reality.

    It’s not just a personal burden. Difficult-to-treat depression affects families, workplaces and communities – and carries a huge cost for society.

    In England, the NHS Talking Therapies programme is the first place many adults turn when they’re struggling with depression or anxiety. In 2023-24, it supported more than 1.26 million people. Yet, for all its reach, around half of those who complete treatment still feel depressed by the end. And if the therapy hasn’t worked, there are often no further options available.

    Most people in this situation are sent back to their GP. A small number may be referred to more specialist mental health services, but those are typically reserved for the most severe cases. That leaves a significant number of people in limbo – still unwell, but without a clear route to further care.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    This is part of a wider problem in mental health services: the so-called “missing middle”. These are people whose needs are too complex for primary (GP) care, but not severe enough for secondary services. As a result, they fall through the cracks.

    For many of these people, medication is often the only treatment on offer. But our study, with colleagues, suggests that a different approach, using mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), could offer a way forward.

    Promising results

    We worked with more than 200 patients who had completed NHS Talking Therapies but were still experiencing symptoms of depression. Half were offered an eight-week MBCT course, delivered in small online groups. The others continued with their usual care.

    MBCT blends traditional cognitive therapy (which aims to reduce negative thinking patterns) with intensive mindfulness training. Participants learn how to stay present, recognise harmful thought spirals early, and respond to difficult emotions with greater awareness and compassion. Most importantly, they gain skills they can use for the rest of their lives.

    The results were promising. People who took part in the mindfulness programme reported bigger improvements in their depressive symptoms than those who didn’t. Six months later, the benefits had not only lasted – they had consolidated and slightly strengthened.

    What’s more, those in the MBCT group used fewer health and social care services overall. The programme was also inexpensive to run, costing less than £100 per person. In a time when health systems are under extreme financial pressure, that’s a big deal. Our research suggests MBCT is not just effective, it’s cost-saving too.

    When depression doesn’t respond to standard treatment, it can upend lives. People may struggle to work, maintain relationships, or care for their families. Children are especially affected when a parent has long-term depression. Without the right support, things often get worse – and the costs, both personal and financial, continue to grow.

    MBCT is already being used for relapse prevention – and there is a trained workforce to deliver it. Consisting of just eight group-based sessions, it is accessible and designed to equip people with practical tools. We believe it can offer hope to those who do not benefit sufficiently from existing services, and should be made available to more people.

    Beyond the promise of MBCT itself, this research offers a wider message: we need to invest in psychological therapies for people in the “missing middle”. These are people who are often overlooked but stand to gain the most from targeted, practical support.

    In times of tight budgets, the idea that we can improve lives and save money is more than compelling – it’s necessary. This is a clear opportunity to improve outcomes, reduce strain on overstretched services, and help people move forward with their lives.

    Thorsten Barnhofer is the author of a book on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). He regularly provides workshops on mindfulness-based interventions. He is co-investigator of a programme grant evaluating an adapted MBCT course for adolescents experiencing depression and is among the investigators for the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit-funded trial described in this article.

    Barney Dunn receives funding from the National Institute of Health Research for mental health treatment trials at the University of Exeter, including the Research for Patient Benefit Funding for the RESPOND trial discussed in this article. He co-directs an NHS commissioned psychological therapies service, which delivers Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy.

    Clara Strauss is co-lead for Sussex Mindfulness Centre (SMC), part of Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, and has received funding to conduct MBCT research from NIHR and other funders, funding to deliver MBCT courses and funding to train MBCT therapists within SMC.

    – ref. How mindfulness therapy could help those left behind by depression treatment – https://theconversation.com/how-mindfulness-therapy-could-help-those-left-behind-by-depression-treatment-256547

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Labour governments have always struggled with immigration – here’s what Keir Starmer could learn from them

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Erica Consterdine, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, Lancaster University

    The government has outlined its plans to reduce net migration to the UK. The proposals are generally restrictive: scrapping social care visas, tightening work visas, longer residency requirements, tougher English tests and restructuring student visas.

    While Reform’s recent success at the local elections hardened Keir Starmer’s rhetoric in announcing the changes, the thrust of this policy was to be expected. But will the political calculation pay off?

    Immigration has long been a headache for Labour. It is a topic that cuts across the party’s ideological factions – its protectionist roots, its universalist values, and its market-friendly third way leanings. Each of these calls for a different approach on immigration.

    Labour’s record on immigration is historically patchy. Previous Labour governments have been responsible for some of the most deplorable immigration acts, including the racially discriminatory 1968 act, which restricted non-white immigration in a betrayal of Kenyan Asians fleeing persecution.

    Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.

    The British public then was far more illiberal on immigration than it is today. Trade unions were historically anti-immigrant, perceiving foreign labour as a threat to wages and job displacement. Labour, like their Tory counterparts, mostly operated on a bipartisan consensus of limiting immigration, on the idea that this was better for cohesion.

    This is exemplified in the Hattersley equation (named for former MP Roy Hattersley), a bipartisan political consensus that lasted from the postwar years up until Thatcher’s government. The compromise was between restrictive immigration policy and liberal integration measures (the Race Relations Act) to appease Labour’s liberal base.

    New Labour embraced the Thatcherite, neoliberal agenda, with Tony Blair declaring that there is no alternative to globalisation and therefore immigration. Framing immigration as an economic good, and humanitarian mobility as the bogeyman, Labour’s regime radically transformed the immigration system from one of the most restrictive in Europe to one of the most liberal labour regimes. But this was never for the benefit of migrants – it was simply economic calculation.

    We know what happened next: the political battleground, the cursed net migration target, Brexit and the lurches to the right ever since. In opposition, Labour has never been able to resolve this.

    Starmer’s approach

    A sticking point since 2010 has been traditionally working-class Labour constituents, viewed as “left behind” due to globalisation, and who now make up the red wall. The narrative goes that these voters have drifted rightwards due to dissatisfaction with immigration.

    But overall, Labour voters are still more positive than Conservatives towards immigration. A regressive policy on migrant rights could lose Labour some of its voter base.

    What’s more, net migration is likely to decrease over Labour’s term anyway, due to changes made by the last government and the tailing off of unprecedented migration from bespoke humanitarian schemes, like the one for Ukrainians. Arguably, Starmer’s reforms weren’t strictly necessary.

    Starmer could have framed the same policies around a softer rhetoric, one that embraces multicultural Britain while making the case for reforming the labour market. The enemy could have easily been cast as the Conservative government that neglected investment in the people at the expense of global corporations.

    Data from the Institute of Public Policy Research suggests that the UK public has become softer on immigration, but they want fairness. The easy way out here was to praise the benefits that immigration can bring while emphasising the need for control to maximise those benefits.

    Denigrating the current system as a “squalid chapter” of history is playing to Reform voters – arguably a foolish move, given that evidence shows you can’t beat the far right at its own game.

    Will the proposals work?

    If these proposals do reduce migration, it will come at a high cost for the country, not least in the consequences for the higher education and social care sectors. It may even increase irregular migration, as more people go underground in their attempts to reach Britain.

    The crux of the government’s problem is promising to reduce immigration in a system dependent on labour market flexibility. The proposals would make the UK extortionately expensive for both applicants and the employers who sponsor them, and make it economically unviable for the sectors that rely on foreign labour to recruit.

    A more social democratic immigration policy would invest in training, skills and wages of domestic workforces, while providing rights to the migrants who already reside here.

    Labour’s policy does not do this. It curtails rights significantly, for example in the doubling of the waiting period to apply for the right to stay indefinitely, and the plans to review how the right to family life is applied. Both of these are arguably counterproductive to the aims of integration and out of step with other countries.

    The theory behind the government reforms is that migrant workers will be replaced by the economically inactive domestic labour force – a win-win. Aside from the suspect simplicity of this equation, it will require more than sticks on employers and migrants. It necessitates a radical overhaul of the system, the economic model and a more interventionist state to move towards a coordinated market economy, one with more organisation and regulation on the labour market.

    Despite the government’s significant majority, a disciplined cabinet and an infighting opposition, the government appears reluctant to make such dramatic change, wedded to the existing paradigms of neoliberal free markets in a quest for growth in stagnating economies. If it wants its plans to work, Labour will have to be bolder and provide carrots to go with the sticks.

    Erica Consterdine 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. Labour governments have always struggled with immigration – here’s what Keir Starmer could learn from them – https://theconversation.com/labour-governments-have-always-struggled-with-immigration-heres-what-keir-starmer-could-learn-from-them-256737

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: After another call with Putin, it looks like Trump has abandoned efforts to mediate peace in Ukraine

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

    After a two-hour phone call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on May 19, US president Donald Trump took to social media to declare that Russia and Ukraine will “immediately start negotiations” towards a ceasefire and an end to the war. He did, however, add that the conditions for peace “will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be”.

    With the Vatican, according to Trump, “very interested in hosting the negotiations” and European leaders duly informed, it seems clear that the US has effectively abandoned its stalled mediation efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

    It was always a possibility that Trump could walk away from the war, despite previous claims he could end it in 24 hours. This only became more likely on May 16, when the first face-to-face negotiations between Ukraine and Russia for more than three years predictably ended without a ceasefire agreement.

    When Trump announced shortly afterwards that he would be speaking to his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts by phone a few days later, he effectively mounted the beginning of a rearguard action. This was further underlined when, shortly before the Trump-Putin call, Vice-President J.D. Vance, explicitly told reporters that the US could end its shuttle diplomacy.

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    The meagre outcomes of the talks between Russia and Ukraine – as well as between Trump and Putin – are not surprising. Russia is clearly not ready for any concessions yet. It keeps insisting that Ukraine accept its maximalist demands of territorial concessions and future neutrality.

    Putin also continues to slow-walk any negotiations. After his call with Trump, he reportedly said that “Russia will offer and is ready to work with Ukraine on a memorandum on a possible future peace agreement”, including “a possible ceasefire for a certain period of time, should relevant agreements be reached.”

    The lack of urgency on Russia’s part to end the fighting and, in fact, the Kremlin’s ability and willingness to continue the war was emphasised the day before the Trump-Putin call. Russia carried out its largest drone attack against Ukraine so far in the war, targeting several regions including Kyiv.

    There has been no let-up in the fighting since. And the fact that Putin spoke to Trump while visiting a music school in the southern Russian city of Sochi does not suggest that a ceasefire in Ukraine is high on the Russian leader’s priority list.

    A large part of the Kremlin’s calculation seems to be its desire to strike a grand bargain with the White House on a broader reset of relations between the US and Russia. It is signalling clearly that this is more important than the war in Ukraine and might even happen without the fighting there ending.

    This also appears to be driving thinking in Washington. Trump foreshadowed an improvement in bilateral relations by describing the “tone and spirit” of his conversation with Putin as “excellent”. He also seemed pleased about the prospects of “large-scale trade” with Russia.

    Abandoning European allies

    Trump is on record as saying that there would be no progress towards peace in Ukraine until he and Putin get together. But it is worth bearing mind that very little movement towards a ceasefire in Ukraine – let alone a peace agreement – occurred after the last phone call between the two presidents in February.

    Part of this lack of progress has been Trump’s reluctance to put any real pressure on Putin. And despite agreement in Brussels and preparations in Washington for an escalation in sanctions against Russia, it is unlikely that Trump will change his approach.

    In this context, the sequence in which the calls occurred is telling. Trump and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, had a short call before the former spoke with Putin. Zelensky said he told Trump not to make decisions about Ukraine “without us”.

    But rather than presenting Putin with a clear ultimatum to accept a ceasefire, Trump apparently discussed future relations with Putin at great length before informing Zelensky and key European allies that the war in Ukraine is now solely their problem to solve.

    This has certainly raised justifiable fears in Kyiv and European capitals that, for the sake of a reset with Russia, the US might yet completely abandon its allies across the Atlantic.

    However, if a reset with Russia at any cost really is Trump’s strategy, it is bound to fail. As much as Putin seems willing to continue with his aggression against Ukraine, Zelensky is as unwilling to surrender. Putin can rely on China’s continued backing while Zelensky can count on support from Europe.

    Supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine is essential for China to keep Moscow on side in its rivalry with the US. And for Europe, supporting Ukraine has become an existential question of deterring and containing a revisionist Russia hell-bent on restoring a Soviet-style sphere of influence in central and eastern Europe.

    In a world that has been in flux since Trump’s return to the White House, these are some of the emerging constants. And they make a US-Russia reset highly improbable.

    Even if it were to happen, it would not strengthen Washington’s position with Beijing. Walking away from Ukraine and Europe now will deprive the US of the very allies it will need in the long term to prevail in its rivalry with China.

    By abandoning his mediation between Moscow and Kyiv, Trump may have broken the deadlock in his efforts to achieve a reset with Russia. But getting this deal over the line will be a pyrrhic victory.

    Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

    – ref. After another call with Putin, it looks like Trump has abandoned efforts to mediate peace in Ukraine – https://theconversation.com/after-another-call-with-putin-it-looks-like-trump-has-abandoned-efforts-to-mediate-peace-in-ukraine-257021

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why do protestors use disruptive, confrontational tactics? New research shows they’re not just a last resort

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mete Sefa Uysal, Lecturer in Social & Political Psychology, University of Exeter

    HJBC/Shutterstock

    Public protests are on the rise globally, from climate marches and university occupations to roadblocks and mass political demonstrations. These actions may sometimes include confrontational tactics such as civil disobedience, disruption and, at times, violent resistance.

    At Columbia University in the US, for instance, pro-Palestine student protests recently captured global attention for their tactics. They ranged from non-confrontational actions such as gatherings and sit-ins to campus encampments and occupations aimed at disrupting daily activities, which eventually led to confrontations with police.

    Actions like these often spark debate. Are activists acting strategically, or simply reacting out of desperation and rage? Our new research sheds light on this question. Contrary to popular belief, people do not only turn to confrontational protest because they are desperate or lack political alternatives.

    Confrontational protests are frequently portrayed negatively. They are often associated with extremism, disorder, or desperation. So it’s long been a mystery why people choose such confrontational forms of protest, especially given more conventional options like petitions or authorised rallies offer broader public support and visibility.

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    In our surveys of 3,833 people across three countries – Germany, Turkey and the UK – we found that people choose confrontational action when they believe it is effective and legitimate for achieving their group’s political goals.

    That said, in some protests, confrontational tactics may emerge spontaneously as a self-defence, driven by immediate threats. But it is not simply an emotional outburst or a last resort: it can be a strategic choice.

    This challenges a widely discussed idea in social and political psychology called the “nothing-to-lose” hypothesis. According to this view, people are driven to confrontational protest when they see non-confrontational action (such as voting, petitioning, or authorised marches) as ineffective. This is often because they have little political trust or are oppressed. Our studies ultimately tested this hypothesis.

    We found that most people rated non-confrontational actions as more effective than confrontational ones. But they still saw confrontational tactics as worthwhile if they also seemed effective and justifiable.

    Interestingly, we discovered that low political trust – a lack of belief that the political system works fairly – did not predict confrontational protest. In fact, it was only weakly linked to perceived effectiveness and legitimacy of such tactics.

    While previous theories suggested that people with nothing to lose would be the ones most drawn to radical action, our findings paint a more complex picture. People don’t necessarily need to lose all faith in the political system before considering disruptive protest. Rather, they judge whether a specific tactic will advance their cause and align with their collective moral values.

    Just Stop Oil protestors with hands glued to the frame of da Vinci’s The Last Supper.
    wikipedia, CC BY-SA

    We also found that when people think that protests are more likely to be met with state violence, they are more likely to view confrontational tactics as legitimate and effective. In other words, when crowds foresee push-back, they recalibrate their strategies rather than withdrawing altogether from activism.

    Constructive disruption

    This research matters now more than ever. From climate movement and pro-Palestine rallies in many countries to anti-government and pro-democracy protests in the US, Turkey, Serbia and Argentina, we are witnessing a global wave of protest crowds.

    Understanding what drives people to disruptive and confrontational actions can help both policymakers and the public make sense of protest in today’s divided world. This may be a better option than moralising about good versus bad forms of protests, which serves to silence and criminalise disruptive and confrontational actions.

    The former UK home secretary Suella Braverman labelled climate protesters “extremists” and pro-Palestinian protests “hate marches”. She also proposed harsher crackdowns. But such an approach is only likely to make the protests more disruptive.

    Similarly, several government responses to UK parliamentary reports on protest policing distinguish “right to peaceful protest” from any kind of disruptive and confrontational activism. They also highlight that the legal definition of “serious disruption” has been widened.

    But viewing all disruptive protests as being outside of legal boundaries is likely to create pushback among activists and limit the potential constructive social influence of such protests.

    We argue that it’s time to rethink how we talk about confrontational and disruptive protests. Rather than viewing them as irrational, extreme or born of despair, we should understand it as part of a wider repertoire of political action.

    Here, labelling a set of protests through binary, moralised terms can lead to overlooking and silencing a crucial and effective protest strategy: constructive disruption. Constructive disruption relies on carefully balancing non-violent but disruptive actions. This can apply pressure for change while signalling positive intent that encourages a conciliatory response to protest.

    As a group of social psychologists recently showed, constructive disruption could generate support even among those who are most resistant.

    If we recognise that such tactics are often grounded in a sense of justice and strategic reasoning, we can move away from moralistic judgements and toward democratic dialogue by better engaging with the underlying demands that drive them.

    As protest movements continue to shape political life around the world, we believe it’s time to take their strategies seriously – not just their slogans.

    Mete Sefa Uysal received funding from the International Society of Political Psychology Scholar Under Threat Fund for a part of this study.

    John Drury and Yasemin Gülsüm Acar 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. Why do protestors use disruptive, confrontational tactics? New research shows they’re not just a last resort – https://theconversation.com/why-do-protestors-use-disruptive-confrontational-tactics-new-research-shows-theyre-not-just-a-last-resort-256716

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: New Director of Public Health Appointed for the Isle of Wight 20 May 2025 The Isle of Wight Council has announced the appointment of a new Director of Public Health

    Source: Aisle of Wight

    The Isle of Wight Council has announced the appointment of a new Director of Public Health who will lead the Island’s Public Health service as it transitions to a fully independent model.

    Following a national recruitment process, Kate Harvey has been appointed to this crucial statutory role and will join the council’s senior leadership team in the coming months.

    The appointment follows a decision by the council’s Cabinet earlier this year not to renew the long-standing partnership with Hampshire County Council for public health services beyond August 2025. This change reflects the council’s commitment to strengthening local leadership, improving health outcomes, and delivering a public health service tailored specifically to the needs of Island communities.

    Kate brings to the role a wealth of experience across health protection, health improvement and system leadership, including partnership working across the NHS, local authorities, and the voluntary and community sector. Her career has been defined by a strong focus on reducing health inequalities and improving the building blocks for good health.

    Kate said: “I am delighted to be joining the Isle of Wight Council at such an important time for the Public Health service. The opportunity to lead a locally focused, place-based approach to health and wellbeing is one I truly value. I look forward to working with colleagues across the council and with our many partners to ensure we deliver the best possible public health outcomes for Island residents.”

    The new director will oversee a growing team of specialists as part of the council’s enhanced Public Health structure — a move designed to ensure robust leadership and continued improvements in service delivery.

    Wendy Perera, the council’s chief executive, said:

    “We would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank Simon Bryant, Director of Public Health for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, for his dedicated leadership over many years. Simon has played an instrumental role in shaping and guiding the Island’s public health function, providing stability, expertise and strong partnership working throughout his tenure.”

    “We look forward to welcoming Kate to the senior management team at the council. Her substantial knowledge and skills will lead the way in shaping a service tailored precisely to the needs of those it supports. Putting our residents and our community at the heart of what we do is essential to providing an excellent service for them. In Kate, we have an inspirational director who is committed to driving forward our vision, with a passion to support our communities into the future.”

    Councillor Debbie Andre, Cabinet member for adult social care and public health, said: “There are some challenging issues to deal with in the coming months, but the appointment of Kate means we will be in an excellent place to address these issues. Kate brings the right mix of leadership, experience, and passion to help us deliver excellent public health outcomes and ensure that we are responsive to the Island’s specific needs.”

    Here Kate discusses her vision and plans for the future:

    Can you introduce yourself and share a bit about your background in public health?

    I am originally from the Isle of Wight and am thrilled to be returning to work in a place so dear to my heart.  After starting my career in the voluntary sector, I’ve worked in senior public health roles in Local Government and the NHS for over 10 years, in London, Dorset and most recently Southampton. I also worked closely with the University of Southampton to support the creation and use of high-quality evidence to inform decisions that can improve health and reduce inequalities.  This breadth of experience will be invaluable on the Island. Working together for the residents that we serve offers the best potential for the Island to become a fairer and healthier place for all.

    What is your vision for public health on the Isle of Wight?

    I’m thrilled to be joining the Isle of Wight as the new Director of Public Health. I’m very much looking forward to working with residents, communities and colleagues within and outside of the council to improve health and wellbeing. The strength of our local Public Health team and legacy of the partnership with Hampshire, mean that it is an ideal time to be launching the Island’s own public health service. I’m particularly excited about the opportunities to work with residents and the communities that are the heart of the Island to improve the building blocks for good health and reduce inequalities.

    What unique challenges do you think the Isle of Wight faces in terms of public health? How do you plan to address these challenges?

    The beautiful Island has many strong communities, a vibrant voluntary sector and clear sense of place. Despite so many strengths, not everyone has the same opportunity for good health and wellbeing. Providing the Island’s own public health leadership is an exciting opportunity to work more closely with residents, communities and local partners to improve the building blocks for good health and reduce inequalities so that the Island can be a fairer and healthier place for all.

    Subject to the appointment process, Kate is expected to take up the post at the end of August, allowing for a smooth transition ahead of the end of the Hampshire partnership.

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Mayor welcomes EY new office at Ebrington

    Source: Northern Ireland – City of Derry

    Mayor welcomes EY new office at Ebrington

    20 May 2025

    Mayor of Derry City and Strabane District Council, Cllr Lilian Seenoi Barr has warmly welcomed the official opening of EY’s new office in the Ebrington Plaza. Mayor Barr said it was a significant business investment and highlighted the growing appeal of Derry and the wider North West region as a vibrant business hub.

    She acknowledged that this investment also marks a crucial step in EY’s ambitious expansion plans across Northern Ireland.

    EY, a leading global professional services organisation, supports businesses across a diverse range of industries and sectors, offering expertise in areas such as Audit, Corporate Finance, Tax and Law, Consulting, AI, and Data Analytics. The establishment of this new location will accommodate up to 120 professionals, a blend of newly recruited talent and existing EY Northern Ireland staff.

    Mayor Barr said:  “This is a truly significant day for our city. The arrival of a globally recognised firm like EY to Ebrington Plaza is a powerful vote of confidence in the talent and potential that Derry Strabane and the wider North West region has to offer. This investment will not only create valuable, high-quality jobs but will also enrich our local business ecosystem by bringing in a wealth of expertise and opportunities.”

    “The new office in Derry will play a vital role in EY’s broader strategy to strengthen its regional presence within Northern Ireland. Furthermore, it reinforces EY Northern Ireland’s commitment made at the Northern Ireland Investment Summit in September 2023 to generate 1,000 new jobs across the region over the next five years.

    “Derry City and Strabane District Council is delighted that EY has chosen Derry as a key location for their expansion. Their commitment to creating new jobs and delivering market-leading services from this base aligns perfectly with our city’s ambitions for economic growth and prosperity set out in our Strategic Growth Plan. We look forward to a strong and collaborative partnership with EY as they embed themselves in our community.”

    The Mayor added: “This significant investment by EY in our city is fantastic news for the people of the North West. It will deliver a wide range of exciting job opportunities right here in Derry, whether you’re just starting your career or looking to take the next step. This commitment truly highlights the immense talent we have coming through our local schools, the North West Regional College, and Ulster University, ensuring a bright future for our community.”

    The Mayor concluded by wishing EY every success in their new venture at Ebrington Plaza and reiterated the city’s commitment to supporting their growth and integration into the local business landscape.

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: The Mashuk Development Center will teach university employees how to develop the KVN movement

    Translation. Region: Russian Federal

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

    On May 19, 2025, the Mashuk Knowledge Center launched an educational seminar, “School of Creative Leaders,” which brought together vice-rectors and specialists responsible for the development of the KVN movement in higher education institutions.

    The project is organized by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation together with the Methodological Center for the Study and Strengthening of the KVN Movement in Higher Education Institutions (KVN Center), created at the State University of Management.

    At the opening of the program, the participants were greeted via video link by Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation Olga Petrova and Deputy General Director of the television creative association “AMiK”, Director of the KVN Center Viktor Vdovichenko.

    Vice-Rector of the State University of Management Pavel Pavlovsky told why the country needs KVN and what the KVN Center at the State University of Management does.

    Also speaking to the participants were the adviser of the department for ensuring the implementation of youth policy and educational activities of the Department of State Youth Policy and Educational Activities of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia, Daria Gul, and the general director of the Mashuk Knowledge Center, Anton Serikov.

    The school is a comprehensive educational program aimed at developing the professional competencies of specialists responsible for the KVN movement in universities.

    The training will last three days: from May 19 to May 22, 2025. During the events, participants will gain practical skills in organizing and developing KVN teams, master modern methods of creating humorous content and learn how to effectively integrate KVN into the educational system of higher education.

    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 –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The UK might have accepted the idea of youth mobility with the EU, but it’s not happening any time soon

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Simon Usherwood, Professor of Politics & International Studies, The Open University

    View Apart/Shutterstock

    The language might be dry, but the political shift is significant. Monday’s summit between the UK and EU leaders in London resulted in an acknowledgement of the “mutual interest to deepen our people-to-people ties, particularly for the younger generation”.

    This announcement is an important step forward in the creation of a youth mobility scheme between the EU and UK, even if it has required a name change to become a “youth experience scheme”. It is the first time that a British government has formally accepted this as something to negotiate and implement.

    However, there is scant detail about how it will work in practice and what the inevitable limits will be. While the permitted activities (“work, studies, au-pairing, volunteering, or simply travelling”) seem extensive, they are prefaced with the dreaded words “such as” – which means no one has actually agreed any of it.

    It was clear over a year ago that the basic models that the two sides have for youth mobility differ. The EU wants lengthy exchange periods and home tuition fees for students; the UK wants shorter stays, caps on numbers and retention of international fees for EU students at UK universities. The achievement of a deal would require at least one of them to move. This week makes this difference now the formal position, rather than showing whether movement is possible.

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    It’s possible that discussion of British participation in the Erasmus+ scheme for student mobility might be a partial stopgap, making exchanges within study programmes easier. However, the ambition for creating those deeper people-to-people ties will need more to make it meaningful.

    As the troubled history of this idea should indicate, there’s still a very long way to go before anyone gets to use the scheme in practice.

    The founding irony of a youth mobility scheme with the EU after Brexit is that it was originally a British idea. It was produced under Rishi Sunak following his conclusion of the Windsor Framework on Northern Ireland, when he was looking for areas to rebuild ties with Europe.

    In 2023, feelers had been put out to various EU member states about concluding bilateral deals with the UK. While there was some interest, the general feeling was that this was best handled at an EU level, to avoid any cherrypicking of countries by London.

    A summary of UK-EU youth mobility proposals.
    Simon Usherwood, CC BY-NC-SA

    In April 2024, the European Commission produced an ambitious proposal for a scheme. It put forward that 18- to 30-year-olds would be able to get a visa for up to four years for any purpose – work, study, travel – without quotas on numbers.

    Both the Conservative government and the Labour opposition had rejected the proposal out of hand. This was partly out of concerns over the potential impact on immigration figures and on student finances: the commission suggested EU students should be able to pay UK university fees. Mostly, however, it came from a desire not to be seen to make a big agreement with the EU that looked a bit like freedom of movement.

    To be clear, youth mobility is very much not freedom of movement. The latter implies no limits on entry, length or purpose of stay, as well as access to any kinds of public services as if you were a resident national. The former still means paying for a visa and strict limits on those services. But such legal points remain rather marginal in the British political and media debate.

    Since last year, there has been some to and fro, but largely behind closed doors and with the incoming Labour government continuing the line that such a scheme wasn’t on the cards. While the UK has a number of youth mobility schemes with countries around the world, these are typically limited by quotas and time (normally to two years) and require the person to be working or studying.

    Moving on?

    On the British side, Home Office concern about immigration figures is clearly still critical, especially in the context of the recent white paper that aims to cut back migration. Universities too have been vocal about the financial impact of losing tuition fee income from EU students.

    But on the EU side, the matter is seen very differently. To some extent, the interest is in maintaining the links with the UK, especially for young people that could gain from experiencing more of how their neighbours live. But much more than this is the sense that youth mobility has become something of a test for the British government.

    Labour’s return to office last July marked the unleashing of a significant diplomatic effort to engage with European counterparts and to talk up the value of working together. Youth mobility is a test of that value for some in European capitals, both in terms of being able to negotiate an agreement and of being able to sell it to the British public.

    The coming weeks and months will therefore be a key period if the reset is to result in more sustainably improved relations. Even if the basic shape of UK-EU relations isn’t about to shift, the ability for both sides to be able to talk and act constructively will still matter in delivering from that long list of summit ambitions.

    Simon Usherwood receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, as a Senior Fellow of the UK in a Changing Europe initiative.

    – ref. The UK might have accepted the idea of youth mobility with the EU, but it’s not happening any time soon – https://theconversation.com/the-uk-might-have-accepted-the-idea-of-youth-mobility-with-the-eu-but-its-not-happening-any-time-soon-256628

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The DIY guide to checking how well you’re ageing

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marco Arkesteijn, Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Biomechanics, Aberystwyth University

    Ground Picture/Shutterstock

    A few years ago, a social media trend challenged people to see if they could stand up from the floor without using their hands. Now, it’s all about how long you can balance on one leg while brushing your teeth. These quirky “tests” promise to tell us how well we’re ageing – but do they really?

    When we talk about “ageing well”, we’re usually referring to both physical and psychological wellbeing. That includes feeling good (hedonic wellbeing) and finding meaning and purpose (eudaimonic wellbeing). Engaging in activities and monitoring ourselves plays a role in both.

    But ageing isn’t just about how strong your grip is or how fast you can walk. It’s a complex mix of physical, cognitive, emotional and social changes – and no single test captures the whole picture.

    Physically, one simple measure that gets a lot of attention is walking speed. According to one famous study, people who walk faster than 1.32 metres per second were less likely to die in the next three years – jokingly framed as “too fast for the Grim Reaper to catch”.

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    On the flip side, a slower walking speed – below 0.8 metres per second – can be a sign of sarcopenia, a condition involving reduced muscle mass, muscle strength and physical function. These are all important indicators of age-related decline.

    But while these markers are useful, they’re not easy to measure at home. Most research relies on specialist equipment and your local GP probably doesn’t have a grip-strength dynamometer sitting in a drawer. But they could time how long it takes you to stand up and sit down five times from a chair.

    How to do a DIY MOT

    So, what can you realistically do to track your own ageing?

    To truly understand how you’re ageing, it helps to think beyond physical health. Mental sharpness, emotional resilience and social connection matter just as much. One helpful idea is to assess your cognitive fitness, which includes skills like attention, memory and flexibility.

    Here are some cognitive tests you can try at home:

    Trail making test: connect numbers and letters in sequence (1, A, 2, B, etc.) and time how long it takes. This measures your ability to switch between tasks.

    Stroop task: challenges your ability to ignore competing information. Try saying the colour of a word, not the word itself – like saying “red” when you see the word “blue” printed in red ink. It’s harder than it sounds!

    Dual-task challenge: walk at your normal speed while counting backwards from 100 in threes. If your walking speed changes significantly, it could indicate cognitive strain.

    These kinds of tasks test how well your brain handles competing demands – a key ability that becomes even more important as we age. This skill is known as cognitive flexibility, and it helps you adapt to changing situations, switch between tasks and manage distractions.

    Trying out these tests is great, but how do you know if you’re improving? After all, when you have spent time trying to improve your walking speed, or Stroop ability – or even rubbing your head, patting your belly while saying the Finnish alphabet out loud – it’s important to know if you are seeing benefits.

    Some measures, like single-leg stance, can vary wildly from day to day – or even hour to hour. You might get better just from repeating it, which doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ageing better, just that you’ve practised.

    Others, like grip strength, change very slowly even with regular strength training. And some improvements are task-specific: getting better at the trail making test doesn’t necessarily make you sharper at doing Wordle.

    That’s why it helps to complete the test a few times at the start, then retest yourself once a month or so – again, doing it a couple of times – to track any improvements. Cognitive changes may be slower to notice than physical ones, so regular checks can help reveal progress over time.

    More of a puzzle than a test

    There’s no single test or score that can capture how well you’re ageing. Think of it more like a jigsaw puzzle. Physical health, mental agility, emotional balance, social connection – they all matter, and they all interact. And, of course, even if you perform well now, some changes in the future may be beyond your control. No test can fully predict what lies ahead.

    At the end of the day, maybe the best sign of ageing well isn’t how fast you walk or how long you can stand on one leg – it’s how you feel about your life. Are you feeling engaged, content, connected?

    Tools like the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience can help you take stock of your emotional wellbeing. This short, 12-question survey asks about your everyday feelings – from joy and calm to sadness and frustration – offering insight into both the pleasurable (hedonic) and meaningful (eudaimonic) sides of wellbeing.

    Ageing well isn’t about beating a stopwatch or acing a memory test. It’s about knowing yourself – your body, your mind and your values – and making small, meaningful changes that help you feel more you.

    So, go ahead, stand on one leg if you like. But don’t forget to check in with your brain, body, emotions and your sense of purpose too.

    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. The DIY guide to checking how well you’re ageing – https://theconversation.com/the-diy-guide-to-checking-how-well-youre-ageing-256297

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –