For a few hours on Tuesday afternoon, it seemed just possible the Russians might be sending their planes to a base very near us.
A claim on the military and intelligence site Janes that said the Russians were seeking to base several long range aircraft in Papua, a province of Indonesia, caused a massive flurry on the election trail.
It gave heart to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton that national security might be brought into play as an election issue.
Dutton was quick to recall how in 2022 the Labor opposition jumped on the Morrison government for apparently being caught by surprise at what was going on in the Pacific, when a security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands turned into a campaign issue.
Had the Albanese government been caught unawares?
The Janes report said: “Jakarta has received an official request from Moscow, seeking permission for Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) aircraft to be based at a facility in Indonesia’s easternmost province.
“Separate sources from the Indonesian government have confirmed with Janes that the request was received by the office of Minister of Defence Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin following his meeting with Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu in February 2025.
“In the request, Russia seeks to base several long-range aircraft at the Manuhua Air Force Base, which shares a runway with the Frans Kaisiepo Airport, documents that have been presented to Janes reveal.
“The airbase is situated in Biak Numfor in the Indonesian province of Papua, and it is home to the Indonesian Air Force’s Aviation Squadron 27, which operates a fleet of CN235 surveillance aircraft.”
The government sought urgent clarification, while Dutton – now struggling in the polls – sought to score a quick political point without waiting for confirmation. Both government and opposition agreed on one thing, however: nobody wanted to see the Russians get such a foothold.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, “We are seeking further information, we obviously do not want to see Russian influence in our region, very clearly.”
“We have a good relationship with our friends in Indonesia, and we’re seeking further clarification.”
Dutton said it would be “a catastrophic failure of diplomatic relations if Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese didn’t have forewarning” about such a Russian move before it was made public.
“This is a very, very troubling development. The prime minister and the foreign affairs minister should have the depth of relationship with Indonesia to have had forewarning of this,” Dutton said.
“My message to President Putin is that he’s not welcome in our neighbourhood. We don’t share any values with President Putin, and we do not want a presence, a military presence, from Russia in our region, which would be destabilising for south-east Asia.”
Late Tuesday, the air went out of the balloon.
In a statement Defence Minister Richard Marles said, “I have spoken to my counterpart, HE Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin the Minister for Defence, and he has said to me in the clearest possible terms, reports of the prospect of Russian aircraft operating from Indonesia are simply not true”.
Earlier Marles said that last year Australia signed a defence cooperation agreement with Indonesia, “which really is the deepest level defence agreement we’ve ever had with Indonesia”.
“We are seeing increasing cooperation between Australia and Indonesia at a defence level.”
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: State University of Management – Official website of the State –
On April 16, the State University of Management will host the traditional GUU Nora Day.
The traditional voluntary action of the State University of Management to collect donor blood has been held at our university since 2013.
We invite everyone to take part in this good deed, because every drop of your blood is a chance for recovery for many people.
The event is intended for participants over 18 years old. Don’t forget to bring your passport.
Be sure to read the information on how to properly prepare for donating blood so that your contribution is as useful as possible.
We are waiting for you on April 16 from 9:00 to 12:00 on the Dance Floor of the Central Control Room.
Donor’s memo
Subscribe to the tg channel “Our State University” Announcement date: 04/16/2025
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Source: Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University – Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University –
Students of the Polytechnic University took third place in the All-Russian Olympiad in the Theory of Automatic Control, and also became prize winners of the Republican Olympiad in the field of “Technology of Transport Processes”.
The team of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering, Materials and Transport of SPbPU took part in the All-Russian student Olympiad in the theory of automatic control, which was held at the Ivanovo State Power Engineering University named after V. I. Lenin.
The honor of the Polytechnic University was defended by 3rd-year students of the Higher School of Automation and Robotics of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering, Materials and Transport Egor Meshkov, Elizaveta Skornyakova, Sofia Sokolova and Violetta Khomenko, as well as 3rd-year student of the Higher School of Mechanics and Control Processes of the Physics and Mechanical Institute Mikhail Subbotin. The preparation was supervised by Associate Professor of the Higher School of Automation and Robotics of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering, Materials and Transport Dmitry Tretyakov, who was also a member of the jury of the Olympics.
The event was held in person as a team and individual championship among the leading technical universities of the country. Representatives of Bauman Moscow State Technical University, National Research University “MPEI”, PNRPU, TPU, GUAP, LETI, SFU and other universities participated.
The competition consisted of nine tasks of increased complexity. Teams solved problems related to the analysis of dynamic systems in the state space, stability assessment, construction of time and frequency characteristics, and assessment of the quality of system regulation.
The Polytechnicians took 3rd place in the overall team standings, scoring 116.5 points. The victory was won by the teams of GUAP (149 points) and ISEU (119 points). In addition, students Egor Meshkov and Mikhail Subbotin took 3rd place in the individual standings of the Olympiad.
This year, preparation and participation were carried out as part of a joint team of two institutes – IMMiT and PhysMech, which are famous for their long-standing traditions of teaching the theory of automatic control at the Polytechnic University. Third-year students performed for the first time and were immediately able to impose a fight on multiple participants and universities-winners of previous years. I am proud of our Polytechnic students. I am sure that many victories await them ahead, – noted the team leader Dmitry Tretyakov.
In addition, the IMMiT team demonstrated a high level of training in the second stage of the Republican Open Student Olympiad in the field of “Transport Process Technology”. The event was attended by 66 students from 16 Russian universities.
The participants solved ten tasks remotely on the MOODL platform. 4th-year students of the Higher School of Transport Sofia Klepikova, Maria Ugleva, Inna Golovushkina and Kirill Kamaev became second-degree winners, and Sardorbek Abdukarimov took 3rd place.
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.
Source: Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Saint Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering – Alexandra Polyanskaya and Anastasia Perlina, authors of the winning project “Kirovsk: the bank of the Neva behind the Mayak shopping center”
The III Leningrad Region Architectural Competition for Landscaping among students of specialized universities was a triumph for SPbGASU students: two projects were recognized as winners and four were prize winners. A brilliant result is not only recognition in the profession and at the regional government level, but also a good chance to implement projects: the competition was held by the Leningrad Region Competence Center and the Committee for Housing and Public Utilities of the region with information support from the Committee for Urban Development Policy of the Leningrad Region. The final took place on April 1.
The jury includes government members, experts, and teachers.
At the initial stage of the competition, the participants chose the areas for design and nomination by lot. Then they surveyed the territories, listened to the preferences of local residents in order to make the areas not only beautiful and well-kept, but also comfortable. And only then did they start designing. The finals of the competition included projects by students from our university in three nominations: “Large cities (up to 80 thousand residents)”, “Medium cities (up to 40 thousand residents)” and “Small cities (up to 20 thousand residents)”.
The participants presented their projects to an expert jury, which included Deputy Chairman of the Leningrad Region Government for Construction and Housing and Utilities Evgeny Baranovsky, First Deputy Chairman of the Leningrad Region Urban Development Policy – Chief Architect of the Leningrad Region Sergey Lutchenko, President of the St. Petersburg Union of Architects Vladimir Grigoriev, Deputy Chairman of the Leningrad Region Government Vladimir Tsoi, Chairman of the Leningrad Region Committee for Housing and Utilities Yegor Misheryakov, Director of the Autonomous Non-Commercial Organization “Competence Center of the Leningrad Region” Igor Yurin, Head of the Landscape Architecture Department of St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering Alexander Demin, Associate Professor of the Landscape Architecture Department Nadezhda Kerimova, and representatives of other universities.
A triumphant victory!
The mentors of our university teams are teachers of the Department of Landscape Architecture Daria Barkeeva and Elena Kutaliya.
In the nomination “Cities up to 20 thousand residents” the second place was taken by the project “Boksitogorsk: Cherry Orchard”. It was worked on by Elizaveta Devyatykh (second year), Alexandra Kutolkina (third year), Ekaterina Renzhina (fourth year), Lyubomila Spiridonova (second year) and Maria Zubova (second year).
The project “Syasstroy: territory on Kosmonavtov Street, 7” was awarded third place. It was completed by Daniil Sinyakov (second year), Polina Tambova (third year) and Polina Ryabova (third year).
The winner in the nomination “Cities from 20 to 40 thousand residents” was the project “Kirovsk: the bank of the Neva behind the TRC “Mayak”. Its authors: Anastasia Perlina (third year), Daria Antipina (third year), Maria Oshchepkova (first year of the master’s program) and Alexandra Polyanskaya (second year of the master’s program).
The project “Kommunar: the territory along the river from the Izhora park “Quiet Harbor”” is in second place. It was developed by Elizaveta Kalashnikova (first-year master’s student), Maria Shirokova (fifth year), Evgeniya Tereshchenko (fourth year), Ekaterina Romanova (fourth year) and Maria Baran (fourth year).
The winner in the nomination “Cities with 40 to 80 thousand residents” was the project “Sosnovy Bor: the territory along Solnechnaya Street, 14”. Its authors: Alexander Khon (first year master’s student), Artem Chernov (second year), Alexander Stulnikov (first year master’s student), Arina Boyko (second year), Ekaterina Shumanskaya (first year master’s student), Anastasia Kurakina (second year) and Nikolay Shavrygin (first year master’s student).
The project “Vyborg: a park near school No. 6” by first-year master’s student Valeria Filimonova was awarded second place.
Identity and comfort according to the wishes of residents
The authors of the winning project “Sosnovy Bor: territory along Solnechnaya St., 14” tried to take into account the wishes of the residents of the house whose courtyard they were designing.
“Residents asked to preserve the existing landscaping as much as possible, increase the number of parking spaces and create separate recreation areas for the elderly and young people. During the inspection of the site, we noticed a large number of large stones. We integrated them into the quiet recreation area, creating a natural atmosphere and preserving the identity of the courtyard,” the winners said.
The winners of the project “Kirovsk: the bank of the Neva behind the Mayak shopping center” consider participation in the competition to be a very interesting and important experience, including in the process of project sessions and communication with residents.
“We had the opportunity to immerse ourselves in a fairly detailed design process in a short period of time, right down to finding out the prices for elements and landscaping work, in order to draw up an estimate. That is, we were not just creating some kind of image, but also working out possible implementation. The territory is notable for its relief, in connection with which we proposed interesting solutions, incorporating an amphitheater and various zones into it,” the winners explained.
The winners’ projects will be implemented next year.
According to information posted on the VKontakte page of the Leningrad Region Administration, the works will be presented at the federal vote on the national project “Infrastructure for Life”. The projects supported by residents will be implemented in 2026.
“The improvement projects were developed by students: they walked around the territories in nine cities and met with residents. The work was carried out jointly with architects, urbanists, specialists from the Competence Center and our committee, manufacturers of equipment and materials. We took into account everything: from communications and funding limits to trees, from the history of the cities to the predominant industry,” said Yegor Misheryakov, Chairman of the Committee for Housing and Public Utilities of the Leningrad Region.
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.
Source: Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University – Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University –
The first meeting of the updated executive committee of the Russian Student Sports Union was held at the Olympic Committee of the country. The event was attended by members of the RSSU executive committee, representatives of sports and educational organizations.
The main event of the meeting was the presentation of new principles for organizing the work of the union. In addition to the existing structures – the regional development council, student sports leagues and the expert council – additional areas will appear in the RSSS system. One of them is the development of physical education and sports in educational organizations. The commission for interaction with educational departments for physical education and sports was headed by the director of the Institute of Physical Education, Sports and Tourism of SPbPU Valery Sushchenko.
Each council will be assigned thematic commissions and curators, who will be members of the RSSS Executive Committee and leading experts in the field of student sports.
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.
Source: Novosibirsk State University – Novosibirsk State University –
From March 3 to April 10, Novosibirsk State University hosted a large-scale career event, Career Days 2025. This year, the NSU Career Development Center team came up with an unusual format for the event in the atmosphere of Career Games, which brought together students and employers. More than 35 individual events were held as part of the Career Days: workshops, master classes, and excursions to company offices. The Career Games traditionally ended with two poster sessions in the Laboratory and Educational Buildings — on April 8 and 10.
In 2025, the NSU Career Development Center will for the first timeimplemented game mechanics for participation in Career Day events— together with students of the Institute of Intelligent Robotics of NSU, we created a Career BotHTTPS: //t. Tu/tsareerkusud_ns_not, which allowed students to accumulate points for participating in events from employers, and at the poster sessions on April 8 and 10, to spend points on purchasing valuable branded prizes from companies and the NSU Career Development Center. Also Career botHTTPS: //t. Tu/tsareerkusud_ns_notThroughout the 2025 Career Days period, we sent students notifications with important information about upcoming events.
— The idea to create a bot came from the theme of these Career Days, that is, “Career Games”, collecting internal currency is a typical story for many games. In addition to simply following the theme, there was another thought behind it – guys are usually shy to approach companies directly and ask any questions. Points were supposed to motivate guys to communicate and show themselves in order to overcome their fear.
The mechanics of the bot are simple – for their activities, the guys received points, which they could later spend, and also see their place in the ranking. However, even this already generated some kind of competitive spirit, motivating the guys from the top ten to be even more active.
In general, everything went very smoothly. Probably, one of the most difficult tasks for me personally was maintaining the server for the bot during career days – this was largely due to the limited resources and the fact that the bot needed to be provided with uninterrupted operation. A couple of times we came across bugs, but in general – everything really went without a hitch, – said Sergey Bespalov, one of the creators of the Career Bot and a 4th-year student of the Institute of Intelligent Robotics of NSU.
Over 1.5 months, more than 560 students have registered in the Career Bot.
— We implemented gamification to further motivate students to participate in Career Day activities: attend employer events, communicate at stands, solve problems and leave feedback. We wanted students to associate the search for their first job with an exciting and inspiring process. We work with young talents and try to speak the same language with them.
Gamification is actively used in education and business and shows excellent results. At Career Days 2025, we saw this in practice: 567 students registered in the bot, and it really affected engagement – our partners also noted this. One of the interesting effects: students paid much less attention to the merch that companies raffled off according to their own rules, and went with more enthusiasm to those who exchanged gifts through the bot.
We are currently preparing improvements and will begin refining the mechanics this summer to make the NSU Autumn Career Forum even more interesting and useful for students and companies, commented Daria Balandina, the author of the career quest concept and leading specialist at the NSU Career Development Center.
The creation and launch of the Career Bot was the result of well-coordinated teamwork. We thank Daria Balandina, the author of the career quest concept and leading specialist of the NSU Career Development Center, for the idea and coordination of the project. We also express our gratitude to the students of the NSU Institute of Intelligent Robotics for developing the technical part: Sergey Bespalov, Alexey Spirkin, Polina Novikova. Special thanks to Svetlana Valeryevna Dovgal, Director of the NSU Career Development Center, and Victoria Maltseva, leading specialist of the Center, for developing the career quest economy. Thanks to this team, we managed to implement not only a technically stable, but also a well-thought-out system in terms of mechanics, which inspired the students and enlivened the event format.
— Career Days 2025 has a special atmosphere, this year it is the theme of artificial intelligence and career games. We and the Career Development Center team have done a tremendous job — a unique design of the Career Games was developed, which reflected the theme of all career events, looked at the participants from banners, badges and T-shirts. Most importantly, a computer bot was used for the first time, which definitely became a special part of the Career Games.
For one and a half months, we held thematic meetings with companies and excursions to enterprises for university students every week. A pleasant surprise was not only the large total number of participating companies, but also the increase in the number of SB RAS institutes among the participants of the poster sessions.
The main message that we convey with all our events and career meetings is that in order for students to trust you, you need to treat them with a pure heart and an open soul. It seems to me that the sincerity and friendliness of the NSU Career Development Center staff, their willingness to help with employment issues, and offer career counseling, encourages students to engage in dialogue. Many thanks to the CDC team, without them such a large-scale event would not have been possible. We have many new ideas and events ahead, for example, in a month we will host the Association of Career Centers with participants from Moscow to Vladivostok, – summed up the Career Days Svetlana Dovgal, Director of the NSU Career Development Center.
Some statistics: a total of 65 companies and more than 3,000 students took part in the events, and 60 volunteers helped organize and conduct the events.
Traditionally, Career Days 2025 will not end on the planned date – until the end of April, there will be several more meetings between students and employers and a series of excursions to defense industry enterprises. Calendar of eventspublished here
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
This phrase, which sounds technical but is actually nonsense, has become a “digital fossil” – an error preserved and reinforced in artificial intelligence (AI) systems that is nearly impossible to remove from our knowledge repositories.
Like biological fossils trapped in rock, these digital artefacts may become permanent fixtures in our information ecosystem.
The case of vegetative electron microscopy offers a troubling glimpse into how AI systems can perpetuate and amplify errors throughout our collective knowledge.
A bad scan and an error in translation
Vegetative electron microscopy appears to have originated through a remarkable coincidence of unrelated errors.
First, twopapers from the 1950s, published in the journal Bacteriological Reviews, were scanned and digitised.
However, the digitising process erroneously combined “vegetative” from one column of text with “electron” from another. As a result, the phantom term was created.
Excerpts from scanned papers show how incorrectly parsed column breaks lead to the term ‘vegetative electron micro…’ being introduced. Bacteriological Reviews
Decades later, “vegetative electron microscopy” turned up in some Iranian scientific papers. In 2017 and 2019, two papers used the term in English captions and abstracts.
Vegetative electron microscopy began to appear more frequently in the 2020s. To find out why, we had to peer inside modern AI models – and do some archaeological digging through the vast layers of data they were trained on.
Empirical evidence of AI contamination
The large language models behind modern AI chatbots such as ChatGPT are “trained” on huge amounts of text to predict the likely next word in a sequence. The exact contents of a model’s training data are often a closely guarded secret.
To test whether a model “knew” about vegetative electron microscopy, we input snippets of the original papers to find out if the model would complete them with the nonsense term or more sensible alternatives.
The results were revealing. OpenAI’s GPT-3 consistently completed phrases with “vegetative electron microscopy”. Earlier models such as GPT-2 and BERT did not. This pattern helped us isolate when and where the contamination occurred.
We also found the error persists in later models including GPT-4o and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5. This suggests the nonsense term may now be permanently embedded in AI knowledge bases.
Screenshot of a command line program showing the term ‘vegetative electron microscopy’ being generated by GPT-3.5 (specifically, the model gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct). The top 17 most likely completions of the provided text are ‘vegetative electron microscopy’, and these suggestions are 2.2 times more likely than the next most likely prediction. OpenAI
By comparing what we know about the training datasets of different models, we identified the CommonCrawl dataset of scraped internet pages as the most likely vector where AI models first learned this term.
The scale problem
Finding errors of this sort is not easy. Fixing them may be almost impossible.
One reason is scale. The CommonCrawl dataset, for example, is millions of gigabytes in size. For most researchers outside large tech companies, the computing resources required to work at this scale are inaccessible.
Another reason is a lack of transparency in commercial AI models. OpenAI and many other developers refuse to provide precise details about the training data for their models. Research efforts to reverse engineer some of these datasets have also been stymied by copyright takedowns.
When errors are found, there is no easy fix. Simple keyword filtering could deal with specific terms such as vegetative electron microscopy. However, it would also eliminate legitimate references (such as this article).
More fundamentally, the case raises an unsettling question. How many other nonsensical terms exist in AI systems, waiting to be discovered?
Implications for science and publishing
This “digital fossil” also raises important questions about knowledge integrity as AI-assisted research and writing become more common.
We do not yet know if other such quirks plague large language models, but it is highly likely. Either way, the use of AI systems has already created problems for the peer-review process.
For instance, observers have noted the rise of “tortured phrases” used to evade automated integrity software, such as “counterfeit consciousness” instead of “artificial intelligence”. Additionally, phrases such as “I am an AI language model” have been found in other retracted papers.
Some automatic screening tools such as Problematic Paper Screener now flag vegetative electron microscopy as a warning sign of possible AI-generated content. However, such approaches can only address known errors, not undiscovered ones.
Living with digital fossils
The rise of AI creates opportunities for errors to become permanently embedded in our knowledge systems, through processes no single actor controls. This presents challenges for tech companies, researchers, and publishers alike.
Tech companies must be more transparent about training data and methods. Researchers must find new ways to evaluate information in the face of AI-generated convincing nonsense. Scientific publishers must improve their peer review processes to spot both human and AI-generated errors.
Digital fossils reveal not just the technical challenge of monitoring massive datasets, but the fundamental challenge of maintaining reliable knowledge in systems where errors can become self-perpetuating.
Aaron J. Snoswell receives funding from the Australian Research Council funded Discovery Project “Generative AI and the future of academic writing and publishing” (DP250100074) and has previously received research funding from OpenAI.
Kevin Witzenberger receives funding from the Australian Research Council funded Discovery Project “Generative AI and the future of academic writing and publishing” (DP250100074)
Rayane El Masri does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne
The significant turn-around in the federal polls ahead of the 2025 federal election, with the momentum now moving firmly in Labor’s direction.
A national Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted April 9–13 from a sample of 1,642, gave Labor a 53.5–46.5 lead, a 3.5-point gain for Labor since the previous Resolve poll that was conducted after the March 25 budget. In late February, the Coalition had led by 55–45 in Resolve, so this is a big turnaround for Labor.
Primary votes were 34% Coalition (down three), 31% Labor (up two), 13% Greens (steady), 6% One Nation (down one), 12% independents (up three) and 5% others (steady).
Independents were probably offered as an option everywhere. Future Resolve polls are likely to account for the declaration of nominations on Friday by giving voters in each seat a full ballot readout. Only viable independents will attract significant support, so the overall independent vote will drop.
The preferencing method isn’t stated, but Resolve has used respondent preferences for its headline in its previous polls. By 2022 election preference flows, this poll would be about 53.5–46.5 to Labor, so it’s likely there was no difference between the two methods.
Anthony Albanese’s net approval surged 12 points to +1, with 45% saying he was doing a good job and 44% a poor job. Albanese had suffered negative double digit ratings for more than a year. Peter Dutton’s net approval slumped eight points to -18. Albanese led Dutton as preferred PM by 46–30 (42–33 previously).
Now 68% believed Donald Trump’s election was bad for Australia, up from 60% in the post-budget poll that was taken before the stock market slump that followed Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement on April 2.
On Trump’s influence on the election, 33% said it made them less likely to vote for the Coalition while 14% said more likely (35–15 with uncommitted voters). When this question was asked of Labor, it was 22% more likely to vote Labor and 21% less likely (24–24 with uncommitted).
The Liberals continued to lead Labor on economic management by 36–31 (36–29 previously). On keeping the cost of living low, Labor and the Liberals were tied at 30–30 (31–27 to the Liberals previously). The last time the Liberals didn’t lead on cost of living was in October 2023.
Two other national polls also had Labor gaining, with Labor now leading by 50–45 including undecided in Essential, and by 54.5–45.5 in Morgan. Here is the poll graph.
With Labor’s two-party vote between 52% and 54.5% in the five most recent national polls (YouGov, Newspoll, Essential, Morgan and Resolve), they would be very likely to win a majority in the House of Representatives if the election results reflect this polling.
Single-member systems are not proportional. If Labor wins the national two-party vote by about 53–47, they will win a large majority of the seats in two-party terms against the Coalition. While Labor would lose some of their two-party win seats to Greens and independents, they would still win enough seats for a clear House majority.
Does the Coalition have any chance?
The current polls were taken after a period of stock market turmoil following Trump’s tariffs announcement. If there are no more major stock market slumps before the May 3 election, perhaps the Coalition can recover. Or Albanese could perform badly in Wednesday night’s ABC debate with Dutton. In-person early voting begins next Tuesday, so there’s less time left for recovery before many votes are cast.
The current polls all used respondent preferences for their headline, but there was no difference between respondent and 2022 election flows. Previously, polls were showing a difference of about one point in the Coalition’s favour. The Trump effect has increased Labor’s share of respondent preferences.
The Coalition’s main chance is that the polls are overstating Labor. In 2022, Labor’s primary vote was overstated, but preference flows were better for Labor than expected, causing cancellation of errors. In 2019, the polls suggested Labor would win by 51.5–48.5, but they lost by that margin.
In the US, polls have understated Trump in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections. I don’t believe that we should expect the polls are overstating Labor just because they overstated them in 2019 and 2022. But this is the Coalition’s best hope of an unexpected good result on election night.
Essential poll: Labor gains five-point lead
A national Essential poll, conducted April 9–13 from a sample of 2,254 (double the normal sample), gave Labor a 50–45 lead including undecided by respondent preferences (a 48–47 Labor lead in the post-budget Essential poll). This is Labor’s biggest lead in Essential since October 2023. If the undecided were excluded, Labor would lead by 53–47 according to The Guardian’s poll report.
Primary votes were 32% Coalition (down two), 31% Labor (up one), 13% Greens (up one), 9% One Nation (steady), 2% Trumpet of Patriots (steady), 9% for all Others (up one) and 4% undecided (down one). By 2022 election flows, this would give Labor about a 53–47 lead.
Albanese’s net approval was down one to -3 (47% disapprove, 44% approve), while Dutton’s net approval was down three to -9, his worst in Essential since May 2023. Albanese was trusted over Dutton on addressing cost of living by 34–28. By 50–33, voters thought the country was on the wrong track (52–32 previously).
By 49–18, voters wanted Australia’s annual immigration intake to decrease, with 33% wanting it to stay about the same. By 81–19, voters said they don’t pay for news via subscriptions or donations. On where they get information about news and current events, 54% selected commercial media, 24% public broadcasters, 14% social media influencers and 7% podcasters.
Morgan poll: Labor gains nine-point lead
A national Morgan poll, conducted April 7–13 from a sample of 1,708, gave Labor a 54.5–45.5 lead by headline respondent preferences, a one-point gain for Labor since the March 31 to April 4 Morgan poll.
Primary votes were 33.5% Coalition (up 0.5), 32% Labor (down 0.5), 14.5% Greens (up one), 6% One Nation (steady), 1% Trumpet of Patriots (down 0.5), 10% independents (up one) and 3% others (down 1.5). By 2022 election flows, this gave Labor an unchanged 54.5–45.5 lead.
By 48.5–34.5, voters thought the country was going in the wrong direction (52–33 previously). This is the smallest lead for wrong direction since September 2023. Morgan’s consumer confidence index was down 2.6 points to 84.2.
Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Inaugural Oceania Seabird Symposium is underway at Waipapa Taumata Rau,University of Auckland bringing experts from across Pacific region to learn more about protecting Oceania seabirds.
The inaugural Oceania Seabird Symposium 2025 got underway at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, bringing experts from across the Pacific region and the world to learn more about protecting Oceania seabirds.
The three-day symposium organised by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) runs from 14-17 April. Karen Baird, SPREP Threatened and Migratory Species Adviser, says the event is an invaluable opportunity to bring Western science, traditional culture, and knowledge together.
Keynote speakers will cover topics that include traditional knowledge and valuing relationships with Oceania seabirds, improving conservation, threats to seabirds, se abird bycatch in fisheries and the health of the ocean environment.
“This is so important because there’s so much to do. You heard already from a session this afternoon with discussions around traditional knowledge and culture about seabirds, says Baird.
“We’re really just starting out in some ways across the Pacific. This is a great opportunity to ensure we work together, bringing Western science and traditional culture and knowledge together, to protect seabirds much more effectively than if we were to try and do that separately.”
Pro Vice-Chancellor Pacific Professor Jemaima Tiatia-Siau and SPREP Deputy Director General Easter Catherine Chu Shing opened the symposium.
“Our goal is to conserve seabirds and their habitats, recognising the traditions and aspirations of the peoples of the Pacific Ocean and islands,” says Ms Chu Shing.
Professor Tiatia-Siau spoke of the significance of hosting an event dedicated to one of the guardians of our oceans—our seabirds.
“It is an honour to give an opening address at this important gathering, dedicated to one of the guardians of our oceans.
“Across the vast Pacific, seabirds have long been more than just creatures of the sea and sky. They are carriers of ancestral knowledge, navigators of weather and ocean currents, and messengers that connect our islands to one another and to the wider world… We have employed the frigatebird, or manumanu ne caqi in na vosa vaka Viti (the Fijian language), as the metaphor to ground our university’s inaugural Pacific strategy entitled – Ala o le Moana (or pathways through the ocean)…
“Seabirds are part of our identity as peoples of the Pacific,” says Professor Tiatia-Siau.
Associate Professor Brendon Dunphy from the University of Auckland’s School of Biological Sciences says the symposium is timely, given the need for greater investment and research across the Pacific region. Ninety percent of Aotearoa New Zealand’s seabird species are under threat, warmer oceans and reduced food sources, and fishing nets and lines are all having an impact.
“This is a very important symposium because it’s bringing together scientists. We’re in the seabird capital of the world. Seabirds are just messengers of what’s going on over the horizon and out at sea. They tell us about tuna stocks, fisheries, and all these impacts.
“They live on land and feed out at sea. They bridge the important gap between land and sea; they integrate so many different stresses.”
Associate Professor Dunphy says just by observing seabirds, there was so much information that could be gained.
“Simply by looking at seabirds, from looking at their feathers, how they live, their chicks, there is so much we can gain from it. We see the Pacific as an area needing a lot of work. We need to put in a lot of research and investment, as there is so much change happening.”
Esteemed Tohunga Tohorā (whale expert) Dr Ramari Stewart (Ngāti Awa) received an Honorary Doctor of Science from Waipapa Taumata Rau three years ago and was a keynote speaker on day one; she talked about the importance of relationships, seabirds and people.
Renowned internationally for her commitment to mātauranga Māori (Indigenous knowledge) and science practices surrounding whales, she has extensive knowledge of the ngahere (forest) and the moana (ocean) as well as being a leading practitioner of rongoa (Māori medicine) and a trained nurse.
Stewart told the audience about passing on stories and walking backwards into the future, of the need for stories to be perfect when passed on from one generation to the next, to avoid crucial information being lost.
“Because stories are passed from one generation to another, it’s so important when they’re retold by the next generation, they need to be perfect… there is a whole lot of the tale that gets dropped out. Those details are so important.”
As well as an esteemed programme of keynote experts still to present, the three-day symposium will also include a number of workshops around seabird identification, colony surveying and monitoring, restoration, and a necropsy (autopsy of seabirds) workshop.
Symposium guests also have the opportunity to attend a number of field trips: a boat trip for seabird watching to the Poor Knights Islands and beyond, Tawharanui Open Sanctuary – a model for seabird restoration, Motuora Island, restoration island, and also a visit to Auckland’s west coast, working to save remnant colonies in Te Henga (Bethells Beach) and Muriwai.
Our personal information is more valuable than ever. The most recent government cyber threat report warns that foreign state actors have an “enduring interest” in obtaining sensitive and personally identifiable information about Australians.
In recent weeks, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese noted “there is a cyber attack in Australia roughly every six minutes. This is a regular issue.”
In some situations, it can be difficult to protect our info even when we’re aware of the risks. Notably, in Australia many rental providers and their agents collect, store and disclose excessive personal information on potential tenants. Sometimes, they collect more info than what’s needed to get a government security clearance.
With about one-third of Australian households being renters, the handling of renters’ data is a major concern for Australia’s information security.
So what information are real estate agents collecting, and how can we mitigate the risks?
With renters competing for housing, rental providers are empowered to command larger rent increases. They also require potential tenants to provide extensive personal information.
For tenants, sharing – or oversharing – of personal information in the hope of securing a home might seem acceptable.
However, the collection and handling of this information raises serious security concerns. If Australians’ sensitive personal data falls into the hands of cyber criminals, or foreign agents, this has security implications for the entire nation.
What info are renters asked for?
Potential tenants need to provide information to the satisfaction of the real estate agent and their client, the rental provider. This information is increasingly collected online via rental application websites where the form questions are controlled by real estate agents.
The rental application websites seem to recognise that this information is extensive: one rental application website started selling a privacy service where they vouch for the applicant instead of sharing their information with the real estate agents.
In some cases, the requested data matches or even exceeds the requirements for a government security clearance. The Australian Government Security Vetting Agency (AGSVA) has a clear public privacy statement. It explains how data is collected and handled and used only for the assessment of a security clearance. Rental providers don’t necessarily follow the same stringent rules.
Information collected by some rental application forms may include five or more years of address history. Others request five or more years of employment history. In addition, financial information such as payslips and bank statements are also required.
Other sensitive – and irrelevant – information includes vehicle registration numbers and pet names.
Potential tenants are also usually asked to attach personal identification documents including passports, driver licences and Medicare cards. They may be asked to list up to two personal and one business references.
A rental agent may require five years of employment history. Author provided
If any of this information falls into the wrong hands, it easily exposes the person to social engineering, personalised scams or identity and account theft.
Who can access the info?
The names of family members and pet names are a common – albeit unsafe – choice of password. The rental application forms collect both. In Australia, research by Telstra and YouGov found that 20% of Australians used pets’ names as passwords, and 17% used their birth dates.
Pet names may be required on rental applications. This can give away some people’s passwords. Author provided
If a rental provider, or their agent, shares applicant information with others, it can be a security breach. This makes the storage, handling and sharing of this information by private rental providers a major concern.
More importantly, after the information is sent to the owner of the rental property, there is no visibility as to who that is, or what they do with the information.
Example of a privacy agreement on a rental application form. Author provided
Too much info to rent a home
Having to share extensive personal information is more than an inconvenience for renters – it’s a serious security concern. The government should put explicit limits on personal information requested by rental providers.
One technological solution to this problem could be “access tokens” provided by banks. People in Australia are protected by the Consumer Data Right. This allows consumers to authorise a data holder, such as a bank, to share data with an accredited recipient.
Australian banks are held to strict information security requirements. They already handle highly sensitive data, such as client identity, income sources and other financial information.
If real estate agents require proof of this info to vet potential rental applicants, they could request it through an authorisation token with the applicant’s bank. This way, proof of identity and financial status could be shared without having to disclose actual sensitive personal information, limiting the cyber security risk.
In the meantime, rental providers and their agents should request the least possible amount of personal information – it’s the responsible thing to do.
The article gives the example of the Consumer Data Right, a government standard managed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Moataz ElQadi worked previously for the ACCC, in a different team.
Harvard University on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s demands to make sweeping changes to its governance, hiring and admissions practices, despite billions of dollars in federal funding being at risk if it fails to comply.
“We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights,” Harvard University President Alan M. Garber wrote in a letter to members of the Harvard Community.
“The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government,” Garber argued.
“Harvard is committed to fighting antisemitism and other forms of bigotry in its community,” two attorneys representing the university wrote in a letter Monday, while noting that “Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”
Trump administration officials on Friday sent a letter to Harvard, demanding that the university make “meaningful governance reform and restructuring,” noting that “an investment is not an entitlement.”
“Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment,” the letter read.
“We therefore present the below provisions as the basis for an agreement in principle that will maintain Harvard’s financial relationship with the federal government,” according to the administration’s letter.
The administration’s demands include: adopting and implementing merit-based hiring and admissions policies, and ceasing all preferences based on race, color, and national origin; reforming the recruitment, screening, and admissions of international students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions, including students supportive of terrorism or antisemitism; reforming programs with “egregious records of antisemitism”; and shutting down all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
The Trump administration has threatened to cut federal funding to the country’s top universities, pressuring them to implement major changes.
It recently announced that it was reviewing 9 billion dollars in federal funding to Harvard and its affiliates.
Columbia University, which was at the heart of last year’s pro-Palestinian protests, became the first institution to face consequences, losing 400 million dollars in federal funding last month. University officials said they are currently in ongoing discussions with the administration to have the funding reinstated.
Environment Minister Penny Simmonds has today announced two new appointments and two reappointments to the Waste Advisory Board.
The Waste Advisory Board provides independent advice to the Minister for the Environment on matters relating to the Waste Minimisation Act 2008 and waste minimisation.
“I am very pleased to welcome Dr Terri-Ann Berry and Michelle Kazor to the Waste Advisory Board,” Ms Simmonds says.
“Dr Berry is an Associate Professor at the School of Future Environments at Auckland University of Technology and the founder and Co-Director of the Environmental Innovation Centre, a private research institute focused on improving sustainability outcomes, especially in the construction industry.
“Ms Kazor has more than 20 years’ experience in waste, resource efficiency, and climate policy, and has worked across government, corporate, and non-profit sectors in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States.”
In addition to the new appointments, Ms Simmonds also reappointed Board Chair Darren Patterson, and Board member Don Chittock.
“Mr Patterson has more than 25 years’ experience in industry, local and central government, and community projects, as well as significant board experience. He has provided sound leadership to the Board during the last six years as Chair and his reappointment will ensure continuity of knowledge and experience.
“Likewise, Mr Chittock brings a wide range of industry experience and has led some of the more technical pieces of the Board’s work. His reappointment means he will continue to provide the group with experience in the more technical aspects of the industry.”
Ms Simmonds thanked outgoing Board members Denise Roche, Jacqui Forbes and Sue Coutts.
“These members provided expertise and advice during their time on the Board. I thank them for their contribution and look forward to working with the new members as they begin their terms,” Ms Simmonds says.
Source: Novosibirsk State University – Novosibirsk State University –
The annual University Kettlebell Biathlon Championship was held, in which students who know how to work with heavy “iron” took part. Athletes in four weight categories for men and in the absolute for girls competed in two types of the program: jerk of two kettlebells from the chest and snatch of a kettlebell with one hand. They were given 10 minutes to perform each exercise.
Among the girls, based on the total results of the two exercises (12 kg kettlebells), the prize places were distributed as follows:
1) Anna Yakovleva (FEN), 106.5
2) Alina Titenko (IMPZ), 78.5
3) Ekaterina Kashina (SUNC), 59.5
The prize winners among men (16 kg kettlebells) were:
Weight category up to 70 kg
1) Dmitry Demidov (FIT), 199.5
2) Alexander Dedov (SUNC), 153.5
3) Ilya Rivvo (EF), 120.5
Weight category up to 80 kg
1) Vladimir Kozhevnikov (FF), 224
2) Andrey Chekusov (SUNC), 211.5
3) Timofey Kadukov, 156.5
Weight category up to 90 kg
1) Mikhail Kokh (MMF), 246.5
2) Gleb Miroshnikov (SUNC), 225
3) Semyon Mironov (FEN), 208
Weight category 90 kg
1) Daniil Narseev (GGF), 188
2) Alexander Ponomarev (FEN), 173
3) Gleb Zobnin (GGF), 150
A new NSU record was set in the push-up exercise – Mikhail Kokh (MMF) performed 150 lifts in 10 minutes. The tournament was held at a high level, and many participants demonstrated a very good level of preparation.
Congratulations to the winners, thanks to all the athletes for their participation, and to the senior lecturer of the Department of Physical Education Alexander Sozinov for organizing the competition!
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.
Both products have a minimum 24% milk solids. The egg has a marginally higher percentage of cocoa solids (28%) than the block (27%).
So if they contain pretty much the same ingredients, what else is going on?
It’s more about the taste, texture and smell
The difference between Easter chocolate and regular chocolate is more about how we experience the flavour of chocolate – via taste, texture and smell.
Taste is the recognition of simple ingredients dissolving in saliva and entering the taste pores on our tongue. In the case of chocolate, we perceive the taste as sweet (sugar), fatty (cocoa butter) and potentially bitter (caffeine and other cocoa-based compounds).
However, texture and smell make us most likely to tell the difference between Easter and regular chocolate.
The mouth is incredibly sensitive to the texture of foods. We perceive multiple physical qualities of a food, which we call “mouthfeel”.
Smoothness, creaminess and mouthcoating (for example, an oily feeling) are important components of chocolate’s mouthfeel.
Consumers also expect round-shaped chocolate to be creamier than angular-shape chocolate.
So even before we’ve taken a bite, we perceive a chocolate egg will be creamier than a block. These expectations can shape how we experience the flavour of chocolate.
However, if the chocolate egg is not as creamy as expected, this can be disappointing.
The temperature at which chocolate is made and stored also impacts its texture. Sometimes chocolate gets a whitish haze on its surface called chocolate bloom. This is when the fat and sugar separate from each other, forming fat or sugar crystals.
Because the demand is so high during Easter, chocolate manufacturers sometimes use rapid-cooling techniques to produce hollow Easter eggs at a faster rate. This may make them more susceptible to chocolate bloom. Cheaper Easter chocolates using these rapid procedures may have a different texture than chocolate made the traditional way.
Finally, smell contributes the most to how we perceive flavour in foods. When chocolate starts to melt in our mouth, aromas are released. These aromas make their way through the back of the nose where we smell the complex scents and notes of chocolate. Depending on the chocolate, this could include fruity, earthy, buttery or floral aromas.
The shape of chocolate
We’ve already heard the shape of chocolate influences how creamy we think it is. But the shape of chocolate also influences other aspects of our eating experience.
Easter chocolate in the shape of an egg or an animal provides a large contact area inside the mouth meaning it will melt faster than a block. This impacts how quickly aroma compounds are released from the chocolate.
Biting into hollow chocolate, such as eggs and animals, may also require more time to chew and swallow. This results in Easter chocolate spending longer in our mouths with a greater release of aromas. This means we perceive a greater intensity or diversity of flavours compared to eating small squares.
How someone eats chocolate can also change its flavour. One study categorised people who ate chocolate as “suckers” or “chewers”.
Chewers tend to swallow chocolate more quickly and may perceive it to have a weaker flavour because of the shorter time for aromas to be released.
So how a person eats Easter chocolate may also impact whether they prefer it over regular chocolate.
Easter is only once a year
Last of all, eating Easter eggs (and hunting for them) are often part of a shared family ritual. This can make Easter chocolate seem special. No wonder we enjoy the whole Easter egg experience.
So whether you are a sucker or a chewer, Easter is a great time to slow down and celebrate with loved ones. Enjoy and savour your Easter chocolate in moderation, egg-shaped or otherwise.
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.
ER Report: Here is a summary of significant articles published on EveningReport.nz on April 15, 2025.
Social media is the new election battleground. Is embracing influencers smart, risky or both? Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Grantham, Lecturer in Communication, Griffith University From Abbie Chatfield and Hannah Ferguson to Ozzy Man, influencers have never been more central to an Australian election campaign. Much has been made of the increasingly common site of politicians on TikTok or Instagram reels. Some political groups don’t
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From Abbie Chatfield and Hannah Ferguson to Ozzy Man, influencers have never been more central to an Australian election campaign.
Much has been made of the increasingly common site of politicians on TikTok or Instagram reels. Some political groups don’t like it, as don’t some in traditional media.
But in the first election in which Millennials and Gen Z voters will outnumber Baby Boomers, it’s an inevitable, politically necessary change – though not without its pitfalls.
A messy scene
Politics in the social media sphere is already starting to get messy.
A few weeks ago, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) investigated whether influencer content promoting political messages constitutes electoral advertising.
This doesn’t seem to breach electoral rules, but the lines are being blurred, particularly given the content included glowing remarks about Spender and only suggested they were created “in collaboration”, not as a paid advertisement. This has since been fixed.
The scrutiny reveals growing discomfort around this emerging form of political communication – including from politicians themselves.
As influencer Chatfield said:
there’s this like moral panic about influencers in politics as well, this whole idea influencers can’t be trusted with something as serious and as high brow as politics.
But is that the case, especially if money has changed hands?
A politicised sphere
In what is perhaps a sign of the globally uncertain times, influencing is more political than ever.
Look at the recent clash involving Holly MacAlpine, who is mounting a legal challenge to the Liberal Party’s social media strategy. She accused them of deliberately editing a clip of her supporting The Greens to make it look like she was instead criticising the party. Last night she launched a crowdfunding campaign for legal representation that reached its goal amount within hours.
Influencers are becoming more than messengers. They are political actors in their own right.
In response, TikTok has adjusted its algorithm to recognise political content at the point of upload. The content is now being held for review prior to going live.
However, at the time of writing, these guidelines don’t appear on all content that discusses politics or elections. It doesn’t appear to be attached to Australian political content in the same way this style of guideline was used during other events, like COVID.
Politics with personality
All this matters because younger generations don’t get their political information from newspapers or nightly news bulletins.
The algorithms that drive these platforms reward familiarity and engagement. When a well-known face appears on screen, users linger, boosting the reach of that post. Political messages, even subtle ones, can travel far beyond the original audience.
Influencers have a lot to contribute to political discourse, particularly in podcasts, but the way they formulate and deliver messages varies widely.
Some are not explicitly aligned with a political party, while others are transparent about where their preferences sit. How much they affect the election campaign heavily depends on their specific niche and how that relates to broader election commentary.
Glenn James, host of the Money Money Money podcast and a figure in the personal finance space was recently invited to the budget lock-up. He asked questions about student debt.
His content sits at the intersection of finance and policy, making it particularly powerful in an election where cost-of-living pressures and education debt are key issues for younger voters.
It’s an example that not all political influence on social media is overtly partisan. Sometimes, it’s about asking the right questions.
Reaching eyeballs
Perhaps influencers’ most significant contribution is not just persuasive power, but reach.
Their ability to cut through and capture attention is unmatched in today’s fragmented media landscape. In the past, audiences followed specific news outlets aligned with their values.
Now, thanks to TikTok’s “For You” Page and Instagram Reels’ algorithmic curation, users are increasingly exposed to political content from creators they don’t necessarily follow and would not otherwise encounter.
Another example is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s recent use of “delulu with no solulu” (delusional with no solution) in parliament following a dare from podcast Happy Hour with Lucy and Nikki.
Even though it made no sense to a portion of the population, it gained significant momentum and was trending across platforms.
Adopting the blueprint
Influencers aren’t journalists, and most aren’t claiming to be. They’re generally upfront about the fact they’re not wedded to journalistic standards of impartiality, objectivity and holding the powerful to account.
So in an attempt to ensure traditional media reporting is also noticed by social media users, media outlets are using similar techniques, albeit through a journalistic lens.
From playing to the algorithm to providing behind the scenes content from the campaign trail, traditional media are solidifying their place in this election commentary and getting noticed.
It’s a new playing field in political campaigning. But whether it meaningfully shifts voter behaviour, or just adds to the already overwhelmed digital chatter, remains to be seen.
Susan Grantham 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.
Police authorities in Harbin, in northeast China’s Heilongjiang province, said on Tuesday that they are pursuing three operatives affiliated with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) over suspected cyberattacks against China. The Harbin public security bureau said that the three operatives — Katheryn A. Wilson, Robert J. Snelling, and Stephen W. Johnson — had been engaged in cyberattacks targeting the Asian Winter Games held in the city in February. Investigations by Chinese technical teams revealed that the cyberattacks were carried out by the Office of Tailored Access Operations of the NSA. To conceal the origins of its attacks and secure its cyber weapons, the office used multiple affiliated front organizations to purchase IP addresses from various countries and anonymously rented servers located in regions including Europe and Asia. Investigations revealed that the NSA focused its pre-event cyberattacks on critical systems of the Asian Winter Games, including registration, arrival/departure management, and competition entry platforms, authorities said. These systems, essential for pre-event operations, stored vast amounts of sensitive personal data of individuals associated with the Games. From Feb. 3, coinciding with the first ice hockey match, NSA cyberattacks peaked, primarily targeting critical operational systems such as the event’s official information platforms. These systems were vital for ensuring the smooth running of the Games, and the NSA attempted to disrupt them to undermine their normal operations. Meanwhile, the NSA launched cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure sectors in Heilongjiang province, including energy, transportation, water resources, telecommunications, and defense research institutions, authorities said. Technical teams also discovered that during the Asian Winter Games, the NSA transmitted unknown encrypted data packets to specific devices running Microsoft Windows operating systems within the province. These packets are suspected to have been attempts to activate or trigger pre-implanted backdoors in the Windows systems, authorities added. Further investigations revealed that the three NSA operatives had repeatedly launched cyberattacks against China’s critical information infrastructure and participated in cyber operations targeting companies such as Huawei. Technical teams also uncovered evidence implicating the University of California and Virginia Tech in the coordinated cyber campaign against the Asian Winter Games, authorities stated.
This photo taken on April 13, 2025 shows Chinese bamboo weaving designs at an exhibition of Milan Design Week in Milan, Italy. [Photo/Xinhua]
As one of the most anticipated fixtures in the global design calendar, the 2025 Milan Design Week, which closed on Sunday, brought a vibrant burst of color and creativity, drawing designers and enthusiasts from around the world.
Among the kaleidoscope of international exhibits, a splash of Chinese red has stood out, symbolizing the rising global presence of Chinese design.
China Week of creativity
On April 7, the second edition of the China and Design exhibition opened in Milan’s Paolo Sarpi district – often dubbed the city’s Chinatown. Known as “China Week,” the event features dozens of exhibitions and activities focused on industrial cooperation, brand localization, and community integration, aiming at fostering deeper cultural exchange and helping Chinese design concepts take root and flourish overseas.
At the heart of China Week is the Chinese cultural and creative design exhibition, which showcases a range of creative works, including a limited-edition “Snake Dwen Dwen” mascot for the Year of the Snake (a spin-off of the beloved Beijing Winter Olympics figure), a specially crafted bronze wine vessel inspired by the ancient Sanxingdui archaeological site in southwest China, and an intricately carved statue of the legendary “Monkey King” from Journey to the West. These exhibits have captivated large crowds of international visitors.
Models perform at “The Gift,” a light mix design of Milan Design Week by Chinese designer Chen Yaoguang, at the University of Milan, in Milan, Italy, April 11, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]
To complement the main displays, the streets of the Paolo Sarpi district have been transformed into a festive cultural landscape. Arches themed around the Year of the Snake – decorated with traditional symbols such as dragons, dumplings, and serpentine patterns – have been erected along the streets.
“Through both its immersive exhibits and the festive street atmosphere, China Week brought Chinese design vividly to life in Milan – not only as a showcase of creativity but as a celebration of cultural dialogue, urban engagement, and global visibility,” said Michele Brunello, director of the China Design Centre in Milan.
China Week has hosted a series of high-level dialogues featuring professors and scholars from top Chinese institutions and Italian design leaders to explore the localization of Chinese design in international markets.
Lin Cunzhen, curator of the exhibition, described the event as a bridge connecting Eastern and Western design philosophies. “On the other side of the bridge stands a new generation of Chinese designers – confident, open and globally minded.”
Innovation on wheels
During the opening ceremony of China Week, the Turin Automotive Design Award was launched for the first time. Jointly initiated by the Turin Auto Show and the China Design Centre in Milan, the award aims to spotlight outstanding Chinese automotive designs already present in the European market. The winners will be announced in September at the Turin Auto Show.
“We hope this award will strengthen cooperation between the European and Chinese automotive industries and foster cross-cultural synergy,” said Barbara Santise, press officer for the Turin Auto Show.
People try a BYD Denza Z9GT vehicle at an exhibition of Milan Design Week in Milan, Italy, April 11, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]
Santise added that Chinese vehicles are not only technically advanced but also competitively priced, making them strong contenders in the European market.
Just a few kilometers away, in Milan’s Brera district, the Z9GT, a flagship luxury electric sedan by Chinese automaker DENZA under BYD, made its European debut. With flowing curves inspired by Eastern aesthetics, the vehicle stood in poetic harmony with the surrounding Baroque architecture. Lines of international visitors queued for test drives, offering enthusiastic praise.
Across Milan, Chinese auto brands such as XPeng, GAC, and Geely have launched their own showcases, drawing attention from passersby. Once the stronghold of Western luxury brands, the high-end auto market is undergoing a transformation – one where Chinese firms are competing not on cost, but with cutting-edge design, innovation, and bold vision.
A woman visits the booth of BYD Denza at an exhibition of Milan Design Week in Milan, Italy, April 11, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]
Design as cultural fusion
Chinese design also found an artistic expression at the University of Milan. In the university’s central courtyard, a circular mirror installation titled Gift, created by Hangzhou-based designer Chen Yaoguang, reflected the surrounding Renaissance architecture like a shimmering slice of modernity. The sculpture bore the word “Gift” in Latin, Italian, and Chinese-symbolizing the fusion of two rich cultures.
“It looks like a pizza sliced from above. It’s really fun,” said an Italian visitor who only gave his first name as Stefano. “It blends perfectly into the environment. I’m truly impressed by the level of Chinese design.”
Devoting more than six decades to the preservation and study of the music of the Mongolian ethnic group in China, Wu Lanjie, an 87-year-old Chinese musicologist and educator, has made significant contributions to the inheritance and development of the music, with his important monographs forming a theoretical framework for Mongolian music history.
Born into a family of folk song artists on the Horqin Grassland in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Wu was immersed in Mongolian folk songs from an early age and developed a deep passion for music, which later evolved into a lifelong pursuit.
As Wu described it, he has spent nearly his entire life creating an extensive “coordinate system” for Mongolian music, with the horizontal axis representing the timeline of its development from ancient times to the present, and the vertical axis categorizing the various forms of the music—such as folk songs, instrumental music, and epics—thus forming a comprehensive theoretical framework.
In particular, his landmark work, a book titled “A History of Mongolian Music,” serves as an academic compass tracing the vibrant evolution of Mongolian music, advancing the theorization and systematization of the music.
The work was a result of more than 30 years of painstaking efforts starting from 1959, when he was studying at the musicology department of China’s Central Conservatory of Music.
“After studying the history of music from different parts of the world, I couldn’t help but wonder—Mongolian ethnic music is so rich and diverse, how could it not have a history of its own?” Wu recalled, noting that a simple yet powerful idea took root in his mind at the time: to write a book on the history of Mongolian ethnic music.
In the decades that followed, Wu embarked on a monumental project to collect, analyze, and categorize Mongolian ethnic music.
“In the past, most studies of Mongolian ethnic music remained at the level of general overviews, lacking theoretical depth, systematic structure, and professional rigor,” Wu said.
“In such circumstances, no matter how abundant the musical works are, musical creation and music education cannot develop in a systematic way. Only by elevating musical practices of the Mongolian people to the level of music theory and history can we lay a solid foundation for their inheritance and development,” he explained.
In an effort to compile a comprehensive history of Mongolian ethnic music, Wu nearly exhausted every available source he could find. He combed through a vast range of materials—from ancient Mongolian-language texts and classical Chinese literature, such as the treatise on ritual and music in the “Book of Han”, to collections of works by literary figures and scholars from the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties.
He also consulted foreign works, including “The Travels of Marco Polo”, and explored archaeological findings in search of historical references to Mongolian ethnic music.
Realizing that he couldn’t rely solely on books, Wu also took to the grasslands to conduct field research. During the summers of 1963 and 1964, he traveled from village to village, consulting with local folk singers and documenting what he heard.
The journeys were long and often dangerous—he once encountered wolves, and on another occasion nearly drowned while crossing a river. Instinctively, he held his backpack full of folk song transcriptions above his head, which caught the attention of a passerby who came to his rescue.
Through his fieldwork, Wu collected and preserved over 300 folk songs, including more than 90 long-tune songs (Urtyn duu), which are praised as a “living fossil” of Mongolian music.
“At that time, many people thought that the long-tune folk songs from the Horqin Grassland were on the verge of disappearing, with only about a dozen surviving. However, I managed to collect over 90 of them,” Wu recalled.
Based on his rescue efforts that contributed to the preservation of the long-tune folk songs from the Horqin Grassland, Wu published a book on the traditional form of folk music.
Wu’s extensive fieldwork laid a solid foundation for his scholarship. After more than 30 years of research and documentation, he began writing “A History of Mongolian Music” in 1993. The book was published five years later, earning widespread acclaim and being included in the inaugural Yang Yinliu nomination for academic achievements in music by the Chinese National Academy of Arts. The nomination represents one of the most prestigious honors for musicians in China.
Yet he didn’t stop there. A revised edition came out in 2019, enriched with new findings, updated theories and historical data, as well as contemporary developments.
A photo of Wu Lanjie, an 87-year-old Chinese musicologist and educator, in his earlier years. [Photo courtesy of the interviewee]
Today, he remains deeply engaged in the preservation and development of ancient folk songs. As a researcher at Minzu University of China and a special doctoral supervisor at the China Conservatory of Music, he continues to mentor young scholars and advocate for the fusion of tradition and innovation.
Hanggai, a band with ethnic Mongolian musicians, has successfully blended traditional Mongolian music with modern elements, attracting more modern audiences to Mongolian folk songs, Wu said, noting that this kind of revival is what he hopes for.
Despite health challenges and a worn-out knee from years of travel, Wu still works with untiring vigor. He is busy with mentoring students, promoting music, and conducting academic research.
“There’s still a lot I haven’t finished,” he said. “I have a ‘510 writing plan’—the materials I’ve collected from fieldwork could still form the basis for five theoretical monographs; the folklore and historical stories I’ve accumulated over the years could fill 10 more books. I am determined to finish writing all these and leave more research materials for the younger generation.”
After announcing Liberation Day – stiff “retaliatory” tariffs on every country and penguin-inhabited island in the world – US President Donald Trump rescinded the vast majority of tariffs eight days later when stock and bond markets crashed.
He followed that with more exemptions for phones, computers and computer chips two days later. Ten percent tariffs remain across the board, along with rates up to 145% on China.
Is Trump aligned with previous Reagan on tariffs?
As with anything related to Trump, perceptions overwhelm reality. Trump’s showmanship – call him a carnival barker if you must – obfuscates what is really happening.
Trump is seen as a protectionist and a populist. By comparison, former president Ronald Reagan was seen as a principled free trader and more ideologically conservative. Both images are misleading.
Reagan slapped tariffs on cars, steel, lumber, computers, computer chips, motorcycles, machine tools, even clothes pins. The great guru of free markets, Milton Friedman, is reported to have said that the Reagan administration has been “making Smoot-Hawley look positively benign.” (Smoot-Hawley was an infamous tariff law enacted in 1930 at the beginning of the Great Depression.)
Reagan went back and forth on tariffs, even attacking them in a radio address when Japan tried to impose them. At the end of the day, his record on the issue was as mixed as that of any American president.
Trump’s politics, if not his showmanship, look a lot more like traditional Republican approaches in the cold light of day. The showmanship – provocative statements, grand exaggerations, outright falsehoods and even stand-up-comic-like aspects – is purposeful.
Keeping Republicans united
The main goal of Trump’s tariff showmanship, largely unreported in the press, is keeping congressional Republicans unified as he pushes his domestic policy agenda of lower taxes, budget cuts, expanded energy production and tougher immigration policies.
Congressional Republicans have been working for months on legislating this agenda through the complex budget reconciliation process. This legislative process is difficult and involves passing budget resolutions through the Senate and the House on a specific schedule. This process is required because it allows for a path around the 60-vote filibuster in the Senate. With only 53 Republican senators and a Democratic Party that is committed to resisting Trump on almost every policy choice, Trump needs the reconciliation process to work this year.
In one sense, all of Trump’s activities since his inauguration – the “waste”-cutting DOGE, spending cuts, ending foreign aid programs, laying off federal workers – have given him the political space with congressional Republicans, particularly fiscal conservatives, to advance his legislative agenda. It is important to know that Congressional Republicans have been ungovernable for quite some time.
Over the past ten years, there have been five Republican Speakers of the House – John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Patrick McHenry (acting) and now Mike Johnson. This unprecedented turnover is caused by a virtually unmanageable Republican coalition of mainstream business-oriented conservatives and the fiscal hawks who generally populate the Freedom Caucus. The Freedom Caucus is more than willing to vote against other Republicans – indeed they are proud of it. Because of this, speaker after speaker has had to reach out to Democrats for votes to pass legislation, ultimately dooming their time in the position.
Trump has managed to keep this ungovernable group of House Republicans united, and this may be his true political gift.
To achieve this, he has engaged in a comprehensive campaign of maximum pressure on just about everything: Canada, Greenland, NATO, Europe, China, Ukraine, American universities, federal workers, illegal immigrants, big law firms and even paper straws.
Congressional Republicans, in appreciation of this shock and awe campaign, have stayed united. This means Trump’s legislative agenda can move forward.
With his global tariff plan, Trump saw Republicans beginning to defect. In one Senate vote in April, four Republicans sided with Democrats against tariffs on Canada. Senator Ted Cruz warned that Republicans might lose the 2026 election because of tariffs. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the oldest senator and one of the most conservative, indicated he would support bringing tariff authority back to Congress and away from the president.
Trump can read a room as well as anyone. When he saw Republican unity was at risk because of his tariff plan, he quickly pivoted to a much more moderate version. While Trump’s grandiosity is often highly criticised, it is that quality that gives him the ability to keep his party together, and therefore to govern.
Sparking panic among Democrats
The other major effect of Trump’s tariffs strategy is to sow discord among his opponents.
Democrats, who want to criticise Trump but know their own party has often endorsed tariffs in the past, are reeling. Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said she understood Trump’s “motivation behind the tariffs” and even agreed with Trump that we “need to make more stuff in America”. She was immediately criticised by fellow Democrats.
Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, tried a slightly more aggressive anti-Trump approach. He said:
Tariffs, when properly utilized, have a role to play in trying to make sure that you have a competitive environment for our workers and our businesses. That’s not what’s going on right now. This is a reckless economic sledgehammer that Donald Trump and compliant Republicans in the Congress are taking to the economy, and the American people are being hurt enough.
This response won’t help Democrats climb out of their deep hole of unpopularity, measured last month at an historic low.
Lester Munson receives funding from the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.
Parents who exercise together with their teenagers are more likely to have kids with better physical and mental health.
From bike rides to backyard footy, parents who exercise together with their teenagers are more likely to have kids with better physical and mental health, according to new research from the University of South Australia.
Conducted in collaboration with Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute (CHEO RI) and a team of Canadian partners, a study showed that teenagers who exercise more frequently with their families were more likely to:
meet physical activity guidelines of 60+ minutes per day (23%)
meet recommended screentime guidelines of two hours or less per day (74%)
report better mental health (81%) including higher life satisfaction (67%), and lower stress (86%), anxiety (73%) and depression (89%).
The study also showed that the more regularly the family exercises together, the better the outcomes.
“We know that regular exercise is great for both body and mind. But with more teenagers glued to screens and devices, it’s easy for sedentary habits to take hold,” Dr Lang says.
“Getting teenagers up and moving is crucial to reversing the slide into inactivity – and as our study shows, the key may be in getting the whole family involved.
“We found that teenagers who exercise daily with their families are twice as likely to meet activity and screen time guidelines – and four times more likely to report stronger mental health and greater life satisfaction.
“The message is simple: when parents get active with their teens and lead by example, everyone wins. Teens feel better, move more, and their mental health is stronger.”
It found that only 11% of teenagers met national guidelines of 60 minutes of medium-to-vigorous physical activity per day; and just over half (56%) of teenagers engaged in less than two hours of recreational screen time per day.
Co-researcher, CHEO RI’s Dr. JP Chaput, says parents play a powerful role in influencing behaviours in their children.
“Exercising as a family does more than get hearts pumping – it may strengthen bonds, builds confidence, and can have a real impact on teenagers’ mental wellbeing,” Dr. Chaput says.
“When parents take an active role in their teens’ physical activity, it can build stronger emotional bonds, improves communication, and helps create a protective buffer against mental health challenges like stress, anxiety, and depression.
“So, when families prioritise being active together, they’re not only building healthy habits – they’re also investing in their teenagers’ long-term wellbeing.
“Ultimately, it’s a reminder that even small, shared moments of movement can make a big difference.”
The University of South Australia and the University of Adelaide are joining forces to become Australia’s new major university – Adelaide University. Building on the strengths, legacies and resources of two leading universities, Adelaide University will deliver globally relevant research at scale, innovative, industry-informed teaching and an outstanding student experience. Adelaide University will open its doors in January 2026. Find out more on theAdelaide University website.
In the face of dwindling global funding, tariffs, and geopolitical tensions, African Development Bank Group President Akinwumi Adesina said on Friday that Africa must wean itself from aid dependency and urgently chart its future through self-reliance, strategic partnerships, and leveraging its vast natural resources.
He spoke on Friday in Abuja at the 14th Convocation Ceremony of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), where he delivered a thought-provoking lecture.
The address “Advancing Africa’s Positioning within Global Development and Geopolitical Dynamics” outlined a bold vision for Africa’s future in a rapidly changing global landscape.
“The recent dismantling of the official development aid agency in the US, and similar anti-aid measures in other parts of Europe, means that the old development models that Africa has always relied on will no longer work,” he told the audience.
“The era of aid or free money is gone. African countries must now learn to develop via investment discipline. Countries can no longer rely on aid for growth or count it as part of government revenue, as has been the case for decades. Benevolence is not an asset class,” the Bank Group president said.
At Nigeria’s largest open university, Adesina emphasized that Africa must overhaul its approach to achieving fast-paced growth and development. He said for the continent to spur growth it should rapidly ensure the full implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area: “Produce local, buy local, trade more locally,” he charged the continent.
Adesina highlighted several critical challenges facing the continent, including declining development aid, restrictive immigration policies, undervalued natural capital, and global tariff wars. However, he positioned these challenges as opportunities for Africa to redefine its global standing.
The African Development Bank is leading the development of a new framework to re-estimate Africa’s GDP based on the proper valuation of its vast natural capital. This will lower Africa’s debt to re-estimated GDP and expand its ability to borrow more resources to finance its development. The Bank believes properly valuing Africa’s green wealth will improve the risk profiles and credit ratings of countries across the continent.
He said of recent global tariff tensions: “47 out of 54 African countries have been placed under higher US tariffs. The immediate direct effects of the tariffs on African countries will be a significant reduction in exports and foreign exchange availability. This will send other shock waves through African economies.”
He continued: “Local currencies will weaken on the back of reduced foreign exchange earnings. Inflation will increase as costs of imported goods rise and currencies devalue against the US dollar. The cost of servicing debt as a share of government revenue will rise, as expected revenues decline.”
To build resilient economies, Adesina said: “Africa must chart its future, relying not on the benevolence of others but on its own determination for self-reliance, building reliable alliances, leveraging opportunities in the global dynamics, while putting Africa first. Only then will Africa be great again!”
AfDB president Akinwumi Adesina performs groundbreaking ceremony for the Regional Training and Research Institute for Distance and Open Learning building at the National Open University of Nigeria Abuja
Some key initiatives led by the African Development Bank under Adesina’s leadership include the establishment of the Africa Financing Stability Mechanism to help African countries refinance debt service payments; the development of Security-Indexed Investment Bonds to rebuild areas devastated by conflict; the creation of the African Credit Risk Agency to fairly assess Africa’s investment risks; the implementation of the $25 billion African Adaptation Acceleration Program to support the continent’s resilience to climate change; and the development of a framework to revalue Africa’s GDP based on its natural capital wealth.
The Bank Group president emphasized the importance of adding value and processing natural resources, explaining that this is the key to Africa’s future prosperity. He also cautioned that Africa must also carefully negotiate its engagement in the global geopolitical rush for critical minerals and rare earth elements.
“Africa can be competitive in these global value chains. It must move away from exporting raw minerals and move into processing and value addition to benefit from the high returns at the top of global value chains,” Adesina said who was accompanied by his wife Grace Yemisi Adesina.
He called for greater value addition to everything Africa produces, from oil to gas, minerals, metals, rare earths, and agricultural products.
The African Development Bank is working with the African Union and the Economic Commission for Africa to develop the African Green Minerals Strategy. The strategy will support countries in embracing strong corporate governance, transparency, environmental protection, and sound mineral stewardship, including social responsibility and protection of communities’ lands and rights.
“Africa must end the exports of its raw materials,” Adesina warned. “The export of raw materials is the door to poverty. The export of value-added products is the highway to wealth. And Africa is tired of being poor.”
The lecture also addressed the importance of investments in youth education and entrepreneurship. With Africa’s population projected to reach 2.4 billion by 2050 and 75% under 35, Adesina stressed the need for quality education and skills development aligned with the digital economy.
As he approaches the end of his second five-year term as president of the African Development Bank Group in September, Adesina reflected on his legacy of strengthening and transforming the institution. Under his leadership, the Bank’s general capital increased from $93 billion in 2014 to $318 billion today, while achieving recognition as the Most Transparent Financial Institution in the world for two consecutive years.
Adesina will be awarded an honorary doctorate from NOUN on Saturday. He is dedicating the honor to his late father, Roland F. Adesina, whom he credits with instilling in him the value of education.
The National Open University of Nigeria is considered Africa’s largest and the world’s second largest open learning university. Through distance learning and online education, NOUN offers over 2,000 courses to more than 600,000 students, providing accessible and quality education to all Nigerians.
The Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof. Olufemi Peters, told the gathering that Adesina was carefully chosen to deliver this year’s convocation lecture “to enable Nigerians to benefit from his outstanding global experience”.
Adesina also performed the groundbreaking ceremony for the Regional Training and Research Institute for Distance and Open Learning building at the university. The institute is a flagship open and distance learning center in West Africa.
Nigeria’s Cross River State became the second to mark construction of a Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zone after the country’s Vice President Kashim Shettima and African Development Bank President Dr. Akinwumi Adesina broke ground at the project site on Thursday 10 April.
The SAPZ aims to tackle food insecurity, enhance local production, and position Nigeria as a food export leader by leveraging Cross River’s ports and research assets to boost global trade, reduce food imports, and drive prosperity through the agro-industrialization of crops like cocoa and cassava.
The groundbreaking in Cross River follows that of Kaduna which took place few days earlier. Six other states – Kano, Kwara, Imo, Ogun, Oyo, and the Federal Capital Territory – are included in Phase 1 of the $538 million SAPZ program, with plans to expand to the remaining 28 states this year pending the African Development Bank’s Executive Board approval for Phase 2 funding.
Shettima emphasized the project’s priority and need for national collaboration: “The SAPZ program has been recognized as a national priority for food security in Nigeria.” He noted, “There is no better time than now for the federal and state governments, development partners, the private sector, and our communities to work hand in hand to ensure the success of the SAPZ project.”
Adesina celebrated the milestone, saying, “Today is a big day for Nigeria,” and added, “The Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones is bringing good news to Nigeria, State Governments and Local Governments. Good news to farmers, agribusinesses, and all rural areas of Nigeria. Good news of jobs, wealth, and prosperity with agriculture as a business.
“With the abundant arable land, cheap labor and vast agro-ecological areas, Nigeria should not be importing food,” said Adesina who was accompanied by his wife Grace Yemisi Adesina.
The Bank Group president highlighted Cross River’s export potential: “Bakasi deep seaport will turn the state into a logistics hub in Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea, enabling trade with Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and Guinea Bissau.”
The 130-hectare Agro-Industrial Hub in Adiabo will leverage the Calabar Sea Port, Bakassi Deep Sea Port, a 23 kVA power plant in Tinapa, and a 630 kVA Calabar Power Plant. Its Agricultural Transformation Centre, supported by the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria and the University of Calabar, lies less than 45 minutes from Ikom, Etung, and Boki, boosting cocoa production for global markets.
Governor Bassey Otu outlined the state’s vision, saying, “For us in Cross River State, the establishment of clusters of smallholder farmers focused on staple and cash crops such as rice, cassava, millet, cocoa, and oil palm is a vital step toward agro-industrialization.”
“These initiatives are aimed at strengthening food security, diversifying our state’s economy toward export-oriented agriculture, and boosting our GDP,” added Governor Otu, saying the state should expect to see a big difference in two years.
Vice President Kashim Shettima, African Development Bank President Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Governor Bassey Out, and other dignitaries unveil the plaque for the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zone in Adiabo, Cross River State, on April 10, 2025, harnessing the state’s ports to boost global trade in cocoa and cassava.
The African Development Bank Group is investing $210 million, including $50 million from its Africa Growing Together Fund. The Islamic Development Bank is contributing $150 million, the International Fund for Agricultural Development is contributing $100 million, the Green Climate Fund is contributing $60 million, and the government is contributing $18 million.
Speaking during the occasion, the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s Country Director, Dede Ekoue, noted that the SAPZ will build on the Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprises in the Niger Delta (LIFE-ND) project which has empowered 26,000 youth and women agripreneurs in the Niger Delta, including 4,000 in Cross River, with plans to scale to 100,000 by 2028.
The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, said, “The SAPZ program is a powerful catalyst for economic growth and import substitution. By investing in agro-processing development, we are investing in the future of our communities.”
The African Development Bank Group has committed $934 million to SAPZs in 11 African countries. The 2024 Africa Investment Forum, held in Morocco, recorded $2.2 billion in investor interest for 28 Nigerian states, which make up the second phase of the project.
Adesina explained that with the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones, Nigeria will reduce food imports, conserve foreign exchange, expand local production and processing of food and agricultural commodities, strengthen the Naira, and attract significant private investment into the development of agricultural value chains.
The Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones will also revive and transform rural economies and create millions of jobs.
Adesina was accompanied by the African Development Bank Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development Dr Beth Dunford, the Director General for Nigeria Dr Abdul Kamara, Prof Oyebanji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, Senior Special Adviser on Industrialisation, Director Richard Ofori-Mante, Director of the Agricultural Finance and Rural Development Department, and Dr Yusuf Kabir, National Coordinator for SAPZ, Nigeria.
Hundreds of university staff and students in Melbourne and Sydney called on their vice-chancellors to cancel pro-Israel events earlier this month, write Michael West Media’s Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon
While Australia’s universities continue to repress pro-Palestine peace protests, they gave the green light to pro-Israel events earlier this month, sparking outrage from anti-war protesters over the hypocrisy.
Israeli lobby groups StandWithUs Australia (SWU) and Israel-IS organised a series of university events this week which featured Israel Defense Force (IDF) reservists who have served during the war in Gaza, two of whom lost family members in the Hamas resistance attack on October 7, 2023.
The events were promoted as “an immersive VR experience with an inspiring interfaith panel” discussing the importance of social cohesion, on and off campus.”
Hundreds of staff and students at Monash, Sydney Uni, UNSW and UTS signed letters calling on their universities to “act swiftly to cancel the SWU event and make clear that organisations and individuals who worked with the Israel Defense Forces did not have a place on UNSW campuses.”
SWU is a global charity organisation which supports Israel and fights all conduct it perceives to be “antisemitic”. It campaigns against the United Nations and international NGOs’ findings against Israel and is currently supporting actions to suspend United States students supporting Palestine.
It established an office in Sydney in 2022 and Michael Gencher, who previously worked at the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, was appointed as CEO.
The event’s co-sponsor, Israel-IS, is a similar propaganda outfit whose mission is to “connect with people before they connect with ideas” particularly through “cutting edge technologies like VR and AI.”
Among their 18 staff, one employee’s role is “IDF coordinator’” while two employees serve as “heads of Influencer Academy”.
The events were a test for management at Monash, UTS, UNSW and USyd to see how far each would go in cooperating with the Israel lobby.
Some events cancelled At Monash, an open letter criticising the event was circulated by staff and students. The event was then cancelled without explanation.
At UNSW, 51 staff and postgraduate students signed an open letter to vice-chancellor Atilla Brungs, calling for the event’s cancellation. It was signed on their behalf by Jessica Whyte, an associate professor of philosophy in arts and law and Noam Peleg, associate professor in the Faculty of Law and Justice.
Prior to the scheduled event, Michael West Media sent questions to UNSW. After the event was scheduled to occur, the university responded to MWM, informing us that it had not taken place.
As of today, two days after the event was scheduled, vice-chancellor Brungs has not responded to the letter.
UTS warning to students The UTS branch of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students partnered with Israel-IS in organising the UTS event, in alignment with their core “pillars” of Zionism and activism. The student group seeks to “promote a positive image of Israel on campus” to achieve its vision of a world where Jewish students are committed to Israel.
UTS Students’ Association, Palestinian Youth Society and UTS Muslim Student Society wrote to management but deputy vice-chancellor Kylie Readman rejected pleas. She replied that the event’s organisers had guaranteed it would be “a small private event focused on minority Israeli perspectives” and that speakers would only speak in a personal capacity.
While acknowledging the conflict in the Middle East was stressful for many at UTS, she then warned students, “UTS has not received formal notification of any intent to protest, as is required under the campus policy. As such, I must advise that any protest activity planned for 2nd April will be unauthorised. I would urge you to encourage students not to participate in an unauthorised protest.”
Students who allegedly breach campus policies can face disciplinary proceedings that can lead to suspension.
UTS Student Association president Mia Campbell told MWM, “The warning given by UTS about protesting definitely felt intimidating and frightening to a number of students, including myself.
“Especially as a law student, misconduct allegations can affect your admission to the profession . . . but with all other avenues of communication exhausted between us and the university, it felt like we didn’t have a choice.
I don’t want to look back on what I was doing during this genocide and have done any less than what was possible at the time.
A UTS student reads the names of Gaza children killed in Israel’s War on Gaza. Image: Wendy Bacon/MWM
Sombre, but quietly angry protest The UTS protest was sombre but quietly angry. Speakers read from lists naming dead Palestinian children.
One speaker, who has lost 120 members of his extended family in Gaza, explained why he protested: “We have to be backed into a corner, told we can’t protest, told we can’t do anything. We’ve exhausted every single policy . . . Add to all that we are threatened with misconduct.”
Do you think we can stay silent while there are people on campus who may have played a part in the killings in Gaza?
SWU at University of Sydney University of Sydney staff and students who signed an open letter received no reply before the event.
Activists from USyd staff in support of Palestine, Students Against War and Jews Against the Occupation ‘48 began protesting outside the Michael Spence building that houses the university’s senior executives on the Wednesday evening, April 2.
Escorted by UTS security, three SWU representatives arrived. A small group was admitted. Soon afterwards, the participants could be seen from below in the building’s meeting room.
A few protesters remained and booed the attendees as they left. These included Mark Leach, a far right Christian Zionist and founder of pro-Israeli group Never Again is Now. Later on X, he condemned the protesters and described Israel as a “multi-ethnic enclave of civilisation.”
Warning letters for students Several student activists have received letters recently warning them about breaching the new USyd code of conduct regulating protests. USyd has also adopted a definition of anti-semitism which critics say could restrict criticism of Israel.
A Jews against Occupation ’48 speaker, Judith Treanor, said, “Welcoming this organisation makes a mockery of this university’s stated values of respect, non-harassment, and anti-racism.
“In the context of this university’s adoption of draconian measures to stifle freedom of expression in relation to Palestine, the decision to host this event promoting Israel reveals a shocking level of hypocrisy and a huge abuse of power.”
Jews Against the Occupation ‘48: L-R Suzie Gold, Laurie Izaks MacSween and Judith Treanor at the protest. Image: Vivienne Moore/MWM
No stranger to USyd Michael Gencher is no stranger to USyd. Since October 2023, he has opposed student encampments and street protests.
On one occasion, he visited the USyd protest student encampment in support of Palestine with Richard Kemp, a retired British army commander who tirelessly promotes the IDF. Kemp’s most recent X post congratulates Hungary for withdrawing from “the International Criminal Kangaroo Court. Other countries should reject this political court and follow suit.”
Kemp and Gencher filmed themselves attempting to interrogate students about their knowledge of conflict in the Middle East on May 21, 2024, but the students refused to be provoked and declined to engage.
In May 2024, Gercher helped organise a joint rally at USyd with Zionist Group Together with Israel, a partner of far-right group Australian Jewish Association. Extreme Zionist Ofir Birenbaum, who was recently exposed as covertly filming staff at an inner city cafe, Cairo Takeaway, helped organise the rally.
Students at the USyd encampment told MWM that they experienced provocative behaviour towards them during the May rally.
Opposition to StandWithUs Those who oppose the SWU campus events draw on international findings condemning Israel and its IDF, explained in similar letters to university leaders.
After the USyd event, those who signed a letter received a response from vice-chancellor Mark Scott.
He explained, “We host a broad range of activities that reflect different perspectives — we recognise our role as a place for debate and disagreeing well, which includes tolerance of varied opinions.”
His response ignored the concerns raised, which leaves this question: Why are organisations that reject all international and humanitarian legal findings, including ones of genocide and ethnic cleansing,
being made to feel ‘safe and welcome’ when their critics risk misconduct proceedings?
SWU CEO Michael Gencher went on the attack in the Jewish press:
“We’re seeing a coordinated attempt to intimidate universities into silencing Israeli voices simply because they don’t conform to a radical political narrative.” He accused the academics of spreading “provable lies, dangerous rhetoric, and blatant hypocrisy.”
SWU regards United Nations and other findings against Israel as false.
Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was professor of journalism at UTS. She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS and the Greens.
Yaakov Aharon is a Jewish-Australian living in Wollongong. He enjoys long walks on Wollongong Beach, unimpeded by Port Kembla smoke fumes and AUKUS submarines. This article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission of the authors.
Source: United States Senator for Massachusetts – Elizabeth Warren
April 10, 2025
President Trump’s promises that Social Security benefits will not be cut are providing little reassurance to Massachusetts residents, advocates and employees who are witnessing changes to the program firsthand.
The Trump administration has slashed the nearly 90-year-old agency’s workforce as part of an effort to downsize the federal government. Though no cuts have been made to individual benefits, service delays and staffing reductions are creating anxiety for people across the state.
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“They may not be cutting the dollar amount that an individual has earned and is slated to receive, but it’s still a cut if that individual can’t access those funds,” said Betsy Connell, executive director of the Massachusetts Councils on Aging. “If you cut staff, and you cut access to the administration of those services, you’re going to impede people from accessing those benefits.”
Nearly 1.5 million people in the state — about one in five residents — receive Social Security. The federal program provides retirement benefits and disability income to qualified people and often serves as their primary — or only — source of income, advocates say. Massachusetts is home to the highest percentage of older adults in the country living alone and in poverty, according to the Gerontology Institute at UMass Boston.
In recent weeks, phones have been ringing at local councils on aging, elected officials’ offices and Social Security field offices. Often it’s people expressing concern and confusion, advocates say, but there have also been complaints about delayed benefits, long wait times and unexplained errors.
Changes at the agency
The Social Security Administration has cut some 7,000 jobs, including about 3,000 employees who accepted a buyout offer or early retirement. More staff reductions are expected at the agency in the coming weeks.
Rich Couture, a spokesman for the union representing Social Security workers, said the exodus has damaged the agency, which was already at a 50-year staffing low. He said it has caused rising wait times on the national information hotline and longer approval periods for benefits.
In Massachusetts, many field offices in and around Boston were not meeting the agency’s goal of processing 83% of claims within two weeks of filing before the cuts.
Camillie Piñeiro, who works in the Springfield office, said the site is already understaffed by 13 employees, and five more plan to take the early retirement offer.
“People with the most experience have been incentivized to walk away,” Piñeiro said. “The more understaffed we are, the bigger the burden on those that stay.”
The smaller workforce could pose an even bigger problem starting April 14, when many people seeking benefits will need in-person appointments to verify their identities. The new policy was scaled back after advocates and lawmakers raised concerns about barriers to service. Still, Piñeiro said half the calls she answers on the general inquiry line are from people worried their benefits will be stopped if they can’t make it into the office.
Some Social Security beneficiaries don’t live near a field office or lack access to public transportation. In Massachusetts, the Greenfield field office closed over a decade ago, leaving a gap in Franklin County, a largely rural area where 18,925 residents receive Social Security, according to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s office.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., joined at right by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, criticizes efforts by President Trump, Elon Musk, and Republicans in Congress to compromise the Social Security program, in Washington, D.C. Tuesday, April 1, 2025. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Concerns about in-person service have been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s plans to close federal buildings. No Massachusetts sites are on the list of Social Security offices closing this year. But the Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. Federal Building in Boston, which houses a Social Security office, was on a list of buildings to sell that the Trump administration posted and later took down in March. Union spokesman Couture worries the federal government will again target the O’Neill building for closure.
“All these federal buildings — well, that’s one avenue for closure,” Couture said. “So the entire system is under attack.”
Another change causing concern is a new overpayment policy, Piñeiro said. In the past, the agency deducted 10% of a recipient’s monthly benefit if they had received more than they were entitled to. This can result from a mistake on Social Security’s part or a failure to make updates that might impact a person’s benefits.
Now, the agency is withholding all funds until any overpayment is addressed.
“That brings people into the office in a state of desperation,” Piñeiro said. “Retirees cannot afford to lose for one month their benefit.”
Billionaire Elon Musk, who is helming DOGE, the White House’s cost-cutting unit, has repeatedly cited Social Security fraud as a significant problem. But Couture said the fraud rate is far less than 1% of payments a year.
“One of the ways to mitigate this is to provide the agency with resources,” Couture said. “Overpayments could be avoided with adequate staffing.”
Delays and confusion
Some Massachusetts residents have reported long wait times, payment delays and confusing messages in their online account portals.
Carolyn Villers, executive director of the Massachusetts Senior Action Council, said her organization joined a lawsuit filed last Wednesday alleging DOGE and the Social Security Administration’s actions violate laws protecting the benefit. Villers said her group has received concerning reports in recent weeks that include payment delays.
Two individuals who were set to receive benefits on March 26 didn’t receive their checks until April 1, leaving one woman unable to pay her rent on time, Villers said, calling it “alarming.”
“I have worked with Mass Senior Action 20 years this fall, and I have never heard of people getting delayed or late payments, certainly without explanation,” she said.
She said she has also heard reports of phone wait times exceeding three hours and limited availability for in-person appointments. One woman was told she would have to wait 40 days — more than a month — for an appointment at any of the six offices in her region, Villers said.
“Until recently, I had not heard of people who called and were told ‘no available appointments,’ ” Villers said. “We have seen and heard from our members and the larger community that there has been a noticeable shift in a lack of access.”
Error reports also appear to be on the rise, Villers said. Concerns have circulated on social media from people who found notices in their online accounts that said they are no longer receiving benefits.
Tom and Christine, a Westborough couple who asked WBUR to withhold their last name because they fear retribution for speaking out, received one such notice. They logged in March 31 to check the account of their son Ned, who has autism. He gets Social Security disability benefits that help pay for the group home where he receives 24/7 care.
The notice on his account caused them to panic, said Chistine. She said she worried that she might have to reapply for her son’s benefits. It turned out to be an error, and the payment arrived on time the following day.
The family also had to wait three weeks to schedule an appointment for Ned’s Medicare benefits. Christine said these experiences have shaken her confidence in the system.
“These are not people we need to stress more, and these are not families we need to stress more,” she said.
Taking action
Massachusetts’ two U.S. senators, both Democrats, say they’re fighting to preserve Social Security benefits.
Last week, Sen. Warren and three other Democratic senators launched a “Social Security War Room” to educate the public about cuts and encourage grassroots activism.
“It is about having a place to bring the stories, so we can have all of the American people privy to what we hear when we’re back home,” Warren told reporters.
Sen. Ed Markey said his office has contacted Social Security officials about complaints from his constituents.
“My office is contacted daily by senior citizens who are terrified that they will lose the earned benefits they rely on to eat and to keep a roof over their head,” he told reporters last month.
Musk and his DOGE team have yet to comment on the lawsuit the Massachusetts Senior Action Council and four other groups filed with seven beneficiaries.
“We keep hearing the administration and Trump say, ‘We’re not gonna cut Social Security.’ Well, they are,” Villers said. “These delays and disruptions that are creating barriers to people accessing their earned benefits are absolutely a cut.”
This story is part of a partnership between WBUR and the Boston University Department of Journalism.
The Tertiary Education Union’s opposition to free speech legislation shows exactly why free speech policies are needed at university, says ACT Tertiary Education spokesperson Dr Parmjeet Parmar.
“We know that university staff want the power to decide what ideas are allowed on campus. We’re telling them no.
“Universities are primarily funded by the taxpayer, and we all have an interest in ensuring they are fostering genuine debate and disagreement.
“Universities have historically, and rightly, offered space for contrasting ideas to be tested in debate. In fact, the whole project of academic inquiry and enlightenment hinges on the premise that any idea can be aired and challenged.
“Free expression includes the right to seek different perspectives. If students invite a willing speaker – whether it’s Don Brash or an extremist like Tamatha Paul – that speaker should be allowed to speak. No-one is forced to listen, and the political opinions of university staff shouldn’t come into it.
“The suggestion that a free speech policy is ‘nanny state’ regulation is laughable. ACT secured the free speech commitment precisely to get busybody university staff out of the business of regulating speech. We have set out clear requirements for a complaints process precisely because we have seen universities fail to uphold their students’ speech rights.”
Harvard University on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s demands to make sweeping changes to its governance, hiring and admissions practices, despite billions of dollars in federal funding being at risk if it fails to comply.
“We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights,” Harvard University President Alan M. Garber wrote in a letter to members of the Harvard Community.
“The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government,” Garber argued.
“Harvard is committed to fighting antisemitism and other forms of bigotry in its community,” two attorneys representing the university wrote in a letter Monday, while noting that “Harvard is not prepared to agree to demands that go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.”
Trump administration officials on Friday sent a letter to Harvard, demanding that the university make “meaningful governance reform and restructuring,” noting that “an investment is not an entitlement.”
“Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment,” the letter read.
“We therefore present the below provisions as the basis for an agreement in principle that will maintain Harvard’s financial relationship with the federal government,” according to the administration’s letter.
The administration’s demands include: adopting and implementing merit-based hiring and admissions policies, and ceasing all preferences based on race, color, and national origin; reforming the recruitment, screening, and admissions of international students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions, including students supportive of terrorism or antisemitism; reforming programs with “egregious records of antisemitism”; and shutting down all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
The Trump administration has threatened to cut federal funding to the country’s top universities, pressuring them to implement major changes.
It recently announced that it was reviewing 9 billion dollars in federal funding to Harvard and its affiliates.
Columbia University, which was at the heart of last year’s pro-Palestinian protests, became the first institution to face consequences, losing 400 million dollars in federal funding last month. University officials said they are currently in ongoing discussions with the administration to have the funding reinstated.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brenton Griffin, Casual Lecturer and Tutor in History, Indigenous Studies, and Politics, Flinders University
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced it will build 15 new temples in countries across the world, including one in Liverpool, New South Wales.
This follows a similar announcement last year of plans to build a second temple for Queensland, in South Brisbane.
The two new structures – together with existing temples in Sydney (1984), Adelaide (2000), Melbourne (2000), Perth (2001) and Brisbane (2003) – will bring the total number of Australian temples to seven.
In a nation with fewer than 160,000 practising Mormons, these new buildings seek to increase the legitimacy and visibility of the church.
The Melbourne temple was erected in 2000, as was the temple in Adelaide. Wikimedia
The significance of temples
There are currently at least 200 completed Mormon temples around the globe, with an additional 182 under construction or announced.
Temples have a different purpose and scope to Mormon chapels, which are far more common: Australia has about 190 Mormon chapels.
Chapels are used for weekly sacrament (or communion) and weekly sermons. They are open to visitors, and often hold cultural events, extra church activities and family history centres.
Temples, on the other hand, represent the blending of the divine and temporal. According to the Mormon worldview and doctrines, they are the world’s most sacred structures.
Each temple is emblazoned with the phrase “The House of the Lord, Holiness to the Lord”. This isn’t just symbolic. Mormons believe each temple is literally the house of God, in which his presence may be felt.
Given the gravity of this belief, these spaces are reserved for those who have been deemed worthy to enter by Mormon leaders.
Inside the House of the Lord
The church itself maintains that temples are “sacred, not secret”. It has long worked to dispel speculation over what happens within temple bounds.
One way it does this is through “open houses”, in which a newly-built temple may be toured by anyone for a brief period. Once the open house has ended and the temple has been “dedicated” by a church leader – a process that includes blessing the building and those who will use it – it becomes entirely closed to the public.
Within the temples, the most sacred rituals and knowledge of “the gospel” are imparted upon faithful members. Rituals can be performed for both living people and deceased ancestors. They must never be conducted – or even discussed – outside the sacred temple space.
One of these rituals is baptism and confirmation for the dead by proxy (baptisms for the living are conducted in chapels or other spaces). This provides the deceased individuals “ordinances” that are necessary for salvation, which they did not receive during life.
These baptisms have been controversial at times, with ordinances performed on individuals who were not direct ancestors of Latter-day Saints, including Holocaust victims and historical figures such as Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Even prominent Australians such as Ned Kelly, Malcolm Fraser, Neville Bonner and Truganini have allegedly appeared as “baptised” in Mormon records.
The rituals are accompanied by various stages of knowledge progression for attendees. As with the rituals, temple knowledge is not to be discussed outside.
Local opposition
The air of secrecy and exclusivity surrounding Mormon temples has resulted in a flood of negative attention from Australian media, other religious institutions and society at large. News reports from as far back as the early 20th century sought to expose “Mormon temple secrets”.
The first temple, built in Sydney in 1984, was widely protested by community groups and organisations. The building had to be modified by the church before it was eventually approved. A similar situation transpired in Brisbane in the early 2000s.
In other cities, such as Adelaide and Melbourne, temples were not directly protested, but were still critiqued for their lavishness, with the average Australian temple costing around A$8 million in the late 1990s/early 2000s.
Given the cost of living crisis, and contention over the place of religion in contemporary Australia, the two proposed temples will likely also face criticism.
Reputational management
The church’s reputation in Australia has become ever more complicated over the past 20 years, not least due to several controversies.
In 2022 and 2023, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald reported the church was allegedly abusing tax laws, to the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars. This was addressed, but not confirmed or denied, in the November 2022 Senate Estimates by Australian Tax Office Assistant Commissioner Jeremy Hirschhorn, after questioning by Greens Senator David Shoebridge. Accusations of tax evasion have also been made in New Zealand and the United States.
The new Australian temples will be completed under a pall of critiques and accusations around church finances and other controversies. And while they might be briefly open to the public, their doors will just as quickly shut – adding more fuel to the speculation.
Brenton Griffin was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but is no longer a practising member of the church. His current research is focused on the religion’s place in Australian and New Zealand popular culture, politics, and society from the nineteenth century to present.
The number of marine mammal species in New Zealand classified as Threatened or At Risk has increased from 10 in 2019 to 14 today, with the sperm whale, pygmy blue whale, southern right whale dolphin, goose-beaked whale, and pygmy sperm whale added to the list. Leopard seals were moved from at-risk to migrant.
A ‘Threatened’ species status is given to animals in serious trouble. New Zealand has the highest proportion of threatened indigenous species in the world – more than 4000 native species are currently threatened or at risk of extinction.
Panel lead and DOC Senior Science Advisor, Dr Dave Lundquist, says several species have been shifted to a more threatened conservation status. This includes sperm whales, which were moved from Data Deficient to At Risk – Declining.
“Research published by the University of Otago in 2022 shows a long-term decline in the number of sperm whales seen off Kaikōura during summer,” says Dave Lundquist.
“We don’t yet know if this reflects a broader drop in sperm whale numbers across New Zealand, but the panel has taken a precautionary approach and assumed it could be.”
Thanks to improved population data, eight other marine mammal species previously considered Data Deficient now have updated conservation statuses. This includes pygmy blue whales, now listed as Threatened – Nationally Vulnerable.
The New Zealand sea lion has also been moved to a higher risk category – from Nationally Vulnerable to Threatened – Nationally Endangered. This is due to a smaller estimated number of breeding adults and a faster rate of population decline than previously thought.
“Estimates suggest sea lion numbers could decline by 30–70% over the next 30 years, which is about three generations. Multiple human-caused threats are likely to be contributing to this decline,” says Dave Lundquist.
Bottlenose dolphins are the only species whose status has improved – from Threatened – Nationally Endangered to Threatened – Nationally Vulnerable. However, Dave Lundquist says this change is due to better information, not an actual increase in numbers.
“We previously estimated fewer than 1000 coastal bottlenose dolphins in New Zealand, plus an unknown number of oceanic ones. We now know there are over 1000 oceanic dolphins, which improved the overall status. But coastal populations are still at risk and depend on local conservation efforts to survive.”
Dave Lundquist says the positive takeaway is that when people act to reduce threats and protect nature, it makes a real difference.
“This information is valuable for everyone involved in marine mammal conservation – including iwi, community groups, businesses, fishers, councils and government.
“When we understand the conservation status of marine mammals, we’re all better equipped to make informed decisions to help protect them and their habitats.”
The conservation status of 57 marine mammal types found in New Zealand waters was reviewed by an independent panel of national and international experts. They used the New Zealand Threat Classification System (NZTCS) – a tool that assesses the extinction risk of native species.
NZTCS assessments are reviewed roughly every five years and are based on factors such as population size, trends, and distribution. DOC uses these results to prioritise conservation work, guide resource allocation, and shape policy decisions. The assessments also support collaboration with iwi, researchers, community groups, and others working to protect native species.
The NZTCS is a rule-based system for experts to assess the risk of extinction faced by organisms in Aotearoa New Zealand. The NZTCS is administered by the Department of Conservation (DOC) and complements the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Independent panels of experts assess groups of taxa (for examples, birds, reptiles or marine mammals. Species, subspecies, varieties and forms are collectively known as taxa, singular = taxon), approximately every five years, using criteria of population state, size and trend.
Knowing a species’ risk of extinction provides a basis for setting priorities and making decisions, planning recovery programmes and research, monitoring the effectiveness of management and gaining support for habitat protection. Taxa assessed as ‘Threatened’ face greater risk of extinction because they have small population with greatest rate of decline. Taxa assessed as ‘At Risk’ are not considered Threatened, but they could quickly become so if conservation management reduces, if a new threat arises, or if the declines continue.
The expert panel assessed the conservation status of 57 taxa of whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, fur seals and sea lions.
Thirteen species have changed status since last assessed in 2019. One has a more threatened status, one has a less threatened status, and the remainder are neutral status changes (into and out of the category Data Deficient).
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Meade, Adjunct Associate Professor, Griffith University, Centre for Applied Energy Economics and Policy Research, Griffith University
Winter is coming to New Zealand and Australia, and with it come those inevitably higher power bills from heating our homes.
But even without that seasonal spike, household power bills were already set to rise by NZ$10 to $25 a month in New Zealand and up to A$9 a month in parts of Australia.
This is not, as some might assume, because electricity suppliers are acting uncompetitively. It’s because regulators are increasing charges for long-distance electricity transmission (pylons and substations) and short-distance distribution (poles and wires).
Those charges together make up around 40% of power bills on average, so the price increases matter. In New Zealand, an average 15% of household budgets is spent on electricity. The proportion going towards those infrastructure costs is higher for low-income, regional and rural households.
To put this another way, these fixed parts of our power bills can equal what a typical household spends on mobile phones, public transport or water services.
Transmission and distribution services are regulated because they are provided by monopolies. Regulators such as the Commerce Commission in New Zealand and the Australian Energy Regulator in eastern Australia try to set reasonable prices while still allowing those firms enough money to provide reliable services.
However, this old regulatory model is being challenged by changing consumer behaviour. Households are increasingly electrifying, switching to heat pumps for space and water heating, and electric vehicles (EVs) for personal transport.
Regulators want to ensure the reliability of electricity supply doesn’t significantly decline. But households that rely on electricity want greater reliability – especially with growing demand for “smart” appliances that can be damaged by outages.
Quality versus quantity
Unfortunately, history is a poor guide to how regulation should ensure these future reliability needs are met. Furthermore, electricity is an unusual “product” – the quantity we consume is often an afterthought, while the affordability and quality of supply are more top of mind.
Importantly, quality means much more to consumers than just reliability. It includes how well outages are planned and communicated, how easy it is to get help and updates when things go wrong, new connection times, and the voltage stability modern appliances require.
What constitutes good service might also include customer charters or other guarantees of minimum acceptable expectations, as well as compensation schemes.
Beyond these options, however, the very basis for regulation is being upturned as households invest in rooftop solar panels, home batteries and electric vehicles (EVs). The competition offered by these new technologies means distribution companies are no longer monopoly providers because households can get electricity in new ways.
This also means households expect new services from those providers – such as being able to sell electricity to others (including to distribution companies themselves to help them maintain reliable supply).
Smart appliances, solar power and EVs are all changing consumer expectations of the electricity market. Shutterstock
What customers really want
Historically, electricity regulation has responded to emerging challenges like these with “bolt-on” solutions. Each one tries to address a specific issue individually, but not in a coherent and joined-up way.
Overall, how and why we regulate electricity transmission and distribution need rethinking from the ground up, not more rounds of regulatory whack-a-mole. Consumer preferences need to be more than a vague overriding objective. They need to be at the heart of regulation.
New Zealand’s Commerce Commission already exempts many distribution firms from much regulation because they are owned and governed by customers. And regulators in other English-speaking countries, including Australia, increasingly rely on consumer forums and other channels to indirectly and only partially identify consumer preferences.
But neither model obtains directly usable information about what consumers want – from those consumers themselves. Unsurprisingly, customer preferences are not widely or systematically reflected in regulation.
Besides, asking customers about quality and reliability of service assumes they can clearly articulate what they care about and what value they attach to them in ways regulators can use.
Value for money
One solution is to use a direct measure of consumer satisfaction. We developed and applied a version of this in recent research involving a survey of Swedish electricity customers.
We measured satisfaction by asking consumers to rate the “value for money” they perceived from their distribution firm, ranging from zero (lowest) to five (highest).
Perceptions of quality can vary and are inherently subjective. But value for money can be interpreted as a ratio of quality to price: higher quality means higher value for money, higher price means lower value for money. From this, we obtained an objective measure of overall customer satisfaction levels.
As might be expected, we found value for money tended to be higher for customers of distribution firms owned and controlled by those customers. But directly measuring customer satisfaction in this way could be a good basis for regulation reform in general.
We still need to better understand how customer satisfaction is affected by regulatory decisions. This has always been the case, but it is especially true now that fundamental changes are happening in the sector.
Electricity customers heading into winter might be happier with rising transmission and distribution prices if they were confident regulation genuinely improved their overall value for money.
Business as usual, on the other hand, may offer them only cold comfort.
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.
