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Category: Universities

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: The Edwardians: Age of Elegance – a glimpse into royal patronage of the arts in the early 20th century

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jane Hamlett, Professor of Modern British History, Royal Holloway University of London

    King Edward VII, the son of Queen Victoria, ascended the throne upon her death in 1901, but unlike his mother, he ruled for a very short period and died in 1910. His reign, along with the years immediately before the outbreak of the first world war in 1914, are known as the Edwardian period.

    Taking in this particular era, The Edwardians: Age of Elegance at the King’s Gallery in Buckingham Palace, focuses on the artistic patronage of Edward VII and his wife Alexandra of Denmark, and their son George V and his wife Mary of Teck.

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    Edward and Alexandra were married in 1863, and as Prince and Princess of Wales the pair were leading tastemakers in Victorian upper-class society in the years before Edward came to the throne at the beginning of the 20th century.

    This is often regarded as a golden age before the carnage and disruption of the great war saw the world indelibly change. However, the exhibition is not confined to these years and also reaches back into the Victorian period (1837-1901).

    Those hoping to experience some of the glamour of the royal family won’t be disappointed. The first room takes visitors into the heady atmosphere of the Marlborough House set which centred around Edward and Alexandra’s residence in St James’s. One case commemorates the 1871 Waverley Ball which marked the centenary of popular Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott. Alexandra’s elaborate Mary Queen of Scots costume – a silk dress with gold lacings – is on display.

    The pageantry of the court is communicated through a series of stunning narrative paintings including the Danish artist Laurits Tuxen’s The Garden Party at Buckingham Palace (1897-1900) and The Family of Queen Victoria in 1887 (1887) painted for her golden jubilee in 1887.

    This theme is picked up in the second large room, which focuses on the lavish world of the court. Here, the opulent 1911 coronation robes of George and Mary and a case of necklaces and jewellery take centre stage. This exhibit is the star of the show with plenty of visitors posing for photographs in front of it.

    Royals as art collectors

    But beneath all the glitz and glamour there’s a subtler story about how the royal family worked as collectors and their wider role in Britain and beyond. One of the most interesting things about the exhibition is that it reveals the personal taste of the royals, through what they chose to collect.

    Horses, dogs and yachts are prominent. Edward’s dog Caesar, the wire-haired fox terrier who famously followed his funeral procession in 1910, appears in several images, and his race horse Persimmon is also represented.

    Edward and Alexandra were patrons of leading artists of the day – he owned a number of works by the popular Victorian painter Frederic Leighton, while she collected art by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne Jones. Alexandra also supported Minton’s pottery studio in the 1870s, which employed many women artists.

    The exhibition also reveals Alexandra’s personal artistic activities. Like many upper-class Victorian women, she was a keen photographer and creator of photo albums. In the second half of the 19th century, album-making offered women an outlet for creativity and emotional expression. An album of designs made by Alexandra in the 1860s features photos arranged in a spiders web, with family and friends transformed into butterflies and insects.

    Royal patronage was often about international connections. Alexandra’s Danish heritage is expressed through pieces from the Royal Copenhagen porcelain manufacturing company, including a massive porcelain cabinet, featuring an ornamental roof topped by a group of dancing monkeys surrounding a large swan.

    A larger room is devoted to objects amassed on visits and through diplomatic exchange with the colonies which at the time included India, part of Africa, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Increasingly speedy travel networks brought the world closer in the late 19th century and the royal family were able to travel further and more frequently than ever before. These visits played an important role in Britain’s imperial identity, and underlined the nation’s global power.

    Between 1875 and 1876 Edward toured India. This trip produced a dazzling array of diplomatic gifts, such as a case filled with ornately decorated Indian weapons. After the visit Edward created a special Indian room for them at Marlborough House. Today, they sparkle in their cabinet for the exhibition’s visitors.

    The exhibition does a good job of revealing the importance of imperial connections to the royal collections and the role of the royals in the larger colonial project, but in places I would have liked to know more about the stories behind these objects.

    There’s a tension between the precise attribution of the work of British and European artists and the objects that have been gifted from the colonies – almost all labelled “unidentified maker”.

    The absence of such information is the product of longstanding curatorial habits that shaped these collections in the past and continue to determine what we know about them today. This does mean that there are some absences about the origins and makers of these things, which could have been acknowledged more in some of the exhibition text.

    This was particularly evident when looking at a large portrait of the Maori dancer Terewai Horomona by Gottfried Lindauer. The image has an elaborate frame with a plaque declaring it was presented to the Prince of Wales by the New Zealand commissioner for the Colonial and India Exhibition, 1886.

    The commentary states that Edward was “enchanted” with the portrait which was “promptly gifted” to him. But this might have been better used as an opportunity to give some thought to the woman whose image was framed, presented and exchanged.

    Overall, though, this is an enjoyable exhibition that reveals the royal social world, patronage and imperial connections, and tells a fascinating story about the artistic taste and activities of the lesser-known monarchs of the early 20th century.

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

    – ref. The Edwardians: Age of Elegance – a glimpse into royal patronage of the arts in the early 20th century – https://theconversation.com/the-edwardians-age-of-elegance-a-glimpse-into-royal-patronage-of-the-arts-in-the-early-20th-century-259909

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Golden eagles were reintroduced to Ireland, but without prey they’re now struggling to thrive

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Fiona McAuliffe, Lecturer of Ecology, Scotland’s Rural College

    Dennis Jacobsen/Shutterstock

    In the early 2000s, golden eagles soared once again over the hills of Donegal in northwest Ireland, for the first time in nearly a century. Their return was celebrated as a landmark in Irish conservation, a hopeful sign that one of the island’s most iconic predators was back.

    But two decades on, the reality is sobering. The population remains small with just five territorial pairs and an estimated total population of just 20-25 birds. Breeding success is poor, and the golden eagle’s future in Ireland is uncertain. So what went wrong?

    Our research published in the Irish Naturalists’ Journal suggests the problem isn’t with the eagles themselves – it’s with the landscape they were released into. On paper, Donegal’s uplands looked ideal: open terrain, low human disturbance and ample wild prey. But over time, key parts of that ecosystem have quietly unravelled.

    Golden eagles rely on a steady supply of prey to thrive and raise chicks – notably red grouse and Irish hares. Yet, during our recent surveys along transects (predetermined lines through an area) and footage from camera traps in and around Glenveagh national park, the uplands seemed eerily quiet. Not just quiet of eagles, but of the smaller animals they prey on for food. The landscape looked wild, but had lost some of its vital living components.

    When comparing the available prey biomass, that’s the combined weight of grouse and hares per unit area, Donegal had 74-83% less prey than equivalent areas in the Scottish Highlands where golden eagles are thriving. That’s an enormous shortfall. Without enough food, adult eagles must travel further to hunt and spend more energy – and so are less likely to raise chicks successfully. A few lean years can tip a small population like this into crisis.

    Why is prey so scarce? One of the main culprits is overgrazing. Red deer numbers have exploded across Ireland in recent decades. In places such as Donegal, their constant browsing and grazing has severely degraded upland habitats. This damages the heather moorlands that grouse and hares depend on, leaving them with less cover and fewer food sources.

    Red deer were the most common species recorded during camera trap surveys.
    Queen’s University Belfast

    Add to this the growing pressure from medium-sized predators, including foxes and badgers. Without apex predators such as wolves or lynx to keep them in check, these “mesopredators” flourish. This well-documented phenomenon is known as mesopredator release where populations of mid-sized predators increase after the loss of top predators, often leading to greater pressure on prey species, such as ground-nesting birds and young hares, compounding the challenges for these struggling prey species.

    And while Ireland’s conservation laws look strong on paper, implementation often lags behind. Some protected areas remain heavily grazed, burned or unmanaged. Management plans are either missing, unenforced or outdated. This weakens the very protections meant to sustain wildlife.

    A lesson for rewilding

    The reintroduction of golden eagles was based on the best available knowledge at the time. But ecosystems aren’t static. What may have been viable habitat in the 1990s no longer meets the needs of a breeding eagle population today.

    Reintroducing a species isn’t enough. The systems that sustain it also need to be restored. The clichéd paradigm that nature-is-good and humans-are-bad isn’t helpful. Instead modern landscapes are often so degraded that they can’t recover if left alone.

    Upland areas within Glenveagh national park are overgrazed, leading to exposed peat and erosion.
    Fiona McAuliffe

    Conservation can facilitate active recovery. Real rewilding is about more than simply “putting animals back” and “letting nature take its course”. It is about putting systems back: predators, prey, plants and the processes that connect them.

    Despite the challenges, the golden eagle population has not failed in Ireland – not yet at least. To turn the tide, conservation efforts must go beyond charismatic species and focus on landscape restoration. That means reducing overgrazing, supporting prey recovery, rebalancing predator dynamics and making sure protected areas are actually protected.

    Encouragingly, Glenveagh national park has begun some of this work, by reducing deer overgrazing and regenerating native woodlands. If this landscape restoration is sustained and expanded, golden eagles could still thrive in a more balanced, functioning upland ecosystem.

    These birds are more than just a symbol of wildness. They are a litmus test of ecosystem health. Right now, they’re telling us something important. Something those calling for the reintroduction of other top predators, including wolves, would do well to consider.

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

    – ref. Golden eagles were reintroduced to Ireland, but without prey they’re now struggling to thrive – https://theconversation.com/golden-eagles-were-reintroduced-to-ireland-but-without-prey-theyre-now-struggling-to-thrive-258832

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: The Shrouds: new Cronenberg film is an elusive meditation on death, grief and environmental ethics

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Laura O’Flanagan, PhD Candidate, School of English, Dublin City University

    American filmmaker David Cronenberg is a leading figure in body horror, a film genre that explores disturbing and often grotesque aspects of the human body. Films such as The Fly (1986), eXistenZ (1999) and Crimes of the Future (2022) depict scenes of physical mutilation, illness and technological invasion to represent deeper fears about identity, society and the human condition.

    Through intense bodily imagery, Cronenberg’s films raise powerful questions about human relationships with technology and nature. As our relationship with technology rapidly evolves alongside escalating environmental catastrophe, there is a timely significance in these ideas.

    His latest film, The Shrouds, evokes the writing of Stacy Alaimo, a scholar known for her work exploring the connections between the human body, the environment, and the social forces that shape both. Alaimo’s work combines feminist and materialist ideas and examines how our bodies are physically connected to the world around us – not separate from nature or society, but shaped by both ecological systems and social structures.

    Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

    Like Cronenberg, Alaimo is interested in the entanglement of human flesh with more-than-human worlds, alongside the interplay between bodies and objects.

    In The Shrouds, the body, specifically that of Becca (Diane Kruger) is placed firmly at the centre of the story. Appearing both as a decaying corpse and naked in dream sequences, her body bears fresh surgical scars which are unbandaged and exposed.

    Becca’s body is shown as intensely vulnerable, a gendered depiction of femaleness which is controlled literally by the male gaze through the “shroud”, a piece of sci-fi wearable tech. It comprises a suit of MRI and X-ray cameras which encases a corpse, allowing decomposition to be monitored through a live video link with an app.

    This conceit embeds Becca both in the Earth and in technology, creating deeply memorable imagery which challenges viewers to think about death, grief and the environmental ethics surrounding human burial.

    The presentation of Becca’s body evokes Alaimo’s concept of transcorporeality. In her 2010 book Bodily Natures, Alaimo describes transcorporeality as the idea that “the human is ultimately inseparable from ‘the environment’” – continually transformed through interactions with the landscape, chemicals, technology and non-human forces. Becca’s corpse, decaying in real-time on a live link, highlights this connection.

    Grief: the fictional and the personal

    The film opens with Karsh (Vincent Kassel), Becca’s bereaved husband, in a dentist’s chair being told, “Grief is rotting your teeth”. The film as a whole can be read as a meditation on how grief seeps into and changes the body.

    Written following the death of David Cronenberg’s wife (and initially conceived of as a Netflix series), Cronenberg has rejected the idea that it is fully autobiographical. It is, however, difficult to fully separate the director from the story.

    Cassel as Karsh physically resembles Cronenberg in the film, blurring the boundary between fiction and the personal. Physical duplication is a disorienting motif of the film. Kruger reappears as Becca’s sister Terri and as an animated AI assistant named Honey.

    Alongside the grotesque images of her decaying body, these versions of Kruger are especially striking. Cassel’s performance as the controlling and obsessive Karsh is nuanced and understated. His desire to monitor Becca’s decomposition is presented as a logical step to regain possession of her from her illness, and is deeply disturbing.

    It also has ominous and timely resonance in our modern world, where controversial technology exists that permits artificial intelligence to create avatars of the dead to comfort the bereaved.

    The film becomes a mimetic piece on grief, where boundaries between imagination and reality dissolve. Cronenberg’s frequent collaborator Howard Shore provides an ambient score that reinforces this dissolution. Ethereal and bass-rich, it features spacious, slowly evolving melodies wrapped in velvety synth textures which evoke a dream-like soundscape.

    As the plot progresses into a tangle of conspiracy theories, lines blur between Karsh’s dreams and reality. Background plots drift unresolved, characters are vaguely sketched. Themes of environmental activism versus capitalist enterprise, the exploitation of technology, illegal surveillance and government corruption are all threaded through the story, but none are fully realised. This is not a film which offers a straightforward narrative or closure. Like grief, it remains raw, fluid and difficult to contain.

    Throughout, the film returns to Becca’s decaying body, encased in a shroud that is described as both toxic and radioactive, an object of controversy for eco-activists. “She’s dead, remember, she can’t do anything,” Karsh’s companion reminds him.

    But this is not true for Becca. In death, her body is watched and consumed by systems of surveillance and ecological anxiety. Symbolising Alaimo’s concept of transcorporeality, Becca’s decaying corpse, wrapped in technology, but buried in the Earth, is deeply connected to the environment and cannot be separated from it. Her body is influenced by both its natural surroundings and social factors such as the shroud’s technology, outside interference and Karsh’s control.

    Karsh asserts that burial is a complex matter, converging politics, religion and economics. The Shrouds raises questions that touch on all of these, but provides no tangible answers. Some viewers will be frustrated by the film’s lack of logical structure and resolution. But it is also fair to say that this is how it mirrors the pathways of grief itself: unwieldy, unpredictable and consuming.

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

    – ref. The Shrouds: new Cronenberg film is an elusive meditation on death, grief and environmental ethics – https://theconversation.com/the-shrouds-new-cronenberg-film-is-an-elusive-meditation-on-death-grief-and-environmental-ethics-260009

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Norman Tebbit, Conservative minister known as Thatcher’s enforcer, dies at 94

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Martin Farr, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History, Newcastle University

    No man more embodied Thatcherism in the eyes of the public in the 1980s than Norman Tebbit, who died on July 7, aged 94.

    Though certainly no yuppie, Lord Tebbit entitled his memoirs Upwardly Mobile. Margaret’s Thatcher’s triumph was also his. She saw in the Essex MP just the uncompromising approach to transforming Britain to which she too was committed.

    Both had been disgusted by the Conservative government of Edward Heath blinking when it sought to face down trade unions in the early 1970s. The experience was elemental to their plan for government.

    Others were more important to the New Right/neoliberal project elected in 1979: Conservative minister Keith Joseph, and Thatcher’s two chancellors, Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson.

    But Tebbit provided something no one else in Thatcher’s cabinet could: an innate connection with white, working-class voters, who may once have been Labour – Tebbit lauded Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin – but whose values were held to have been washed away in the postwar tide of union militancy, social permissiveness, European integration, and mass immigration.

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

    He became a Conservative almost because, rather than in spite, of his background. “Essex man” was a presiding personification of the period.

    Unlike almost all of Thatcher’s ministers, Tebbit did not go to university, but left school at 16 to encounter the “closed shop”: that one had to be a member of a particular union to work in a particular workplace. He became determined at that moment to end this practice, and with it so much else of postwar social democracy.

    Thirty years later he did, as Thatcher’s secretary of state for employment. Tebbit’s 1982 Employment Act avenged the unions’ defeat of Heath. Union rights were weakened, never to be restored, and those of employers emboldened. It was a significant contribution to Thatcherism’s ledger.

    As secretary of state for trade and industry, Tebbit pursued privatisation – the return (as its proponents, simply, put it) of nationalised industries to the private sector – with passion. The postwar settlement in Britain was being upended.

    Public image

    In an age before the televising of parliament (much less 24-hour news and social media), Tebbit cut through in a way few politicians did.

    At at a time of inner-city violence, the public knew Tebbit’s unemployed father, decades earlier, didn’t riot but “got on his bike and looked for work”. No one else could have been called – in the words of Labour’s Michael Foot – a “semi-house-trained polecat”. TV’s puppet satire Spitting Image portrayed him as the “Chingford Strangler”, dressed in biker leathers.

    Tebbit felt no need for his contempt for socialism to be leavened by charm or humour. There was invariably a slight sense of menace. He had no interest in ingratiating or propitiating. And so he was as loved by Conservative party members as he was hated by the left. He welcomed their hatred.

    Tebbit in particular despised the swinging 60s – fittingly, he entered parliament in the election in which Harold Wilson’s government was unexpectedly ejected – and its legacy of “insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy”. Thus his trenchancy on immigration, overseas aid (a “sink of iniquity, corruption and violence”), sexuality (he was one of the few still to use the word “sodomite”) and Europe (he was a Eurosceptic before Euroscepticism).

    In 1990 Tebbit asked of British-born people of Asian heritage: “Which side do they cheer for? Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?”. Tebbit’s “cricket test” is second only to Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech in the annals of inflammatory – they and their supporters would say candid – rhetoric relating to immigration. Neither would mind the association.



    Read more:
    Tory humiliation down to campaign length and cult of May – Norman Tebbit Q&A

    What silenced most – if not quite all – of his critics, was Tebbit at his most vulnerable. Following the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel Brighton in 1984, live television footage of him, only partially clad in his pyjamas, covered in dust, being stretchered out of the rubble, became the defining image of the atrocity.

    The following year Thatcher moved him from trade and industry to, less happily, chairman of the Conservative party. It was a job that required a lighter touch than Tebbit’s.

    Nevertheless, as chairman, he delivered the Conservatives’ third election victory, of 1987 – ensuring the permanence of the transformation – only to immediately retire to the backbenches. Margaret, his wife, had been paralysed by the bomb, and he devoted himself to her care for more than 30 years until her death.

    As warranted as his departure from government may have been, Thatcher “bitterly regretted” losing him, a feeling she felt for few. Her defenestration in November 1990 is much harder to imagine had Tebbit still been in the cabinet.

    Norman Tebbit’s conservatism and nationalism harked back to an earlier age, yet presaged the populism of the 2020s. In his remarks following the news of Tebbit’s death, Nigel Farage said he thought him “a great man”.

    Tebbit’s values endure in public discourse, in more ways than he might have expected even a few years ago. But in his last months he was either unable, or unwilling, to say whether those values were those of the Conservatives, the traditional party of the right, or of another project. That may be a final Tebbit “test”.

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

    – ref. Norman Tebbit, Conservative minister known as Thatcher’s enforcer, dies at 94 – https://theconversation.com/norman-tebbit-conservative-minister-known-as-thatchers-enforcer-dies-at-94-260716

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Norman Tebbit, Conservative minister known as Thatcher’s enforcer, dies at 94

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Martin Farr, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History, Newcastle University

    No man more embodied Thatcherism in the eyes of the public in the 1980s than Norman Tebbit, who died on July 7, aged 94.

    Though certainly no yuppie, Lord Tebbit entitled his memoirs Upwardly Mobile. Margaret’s Thatcher’s triumph was also his. She saw in the Essex MP just the uncompromising approach to transforming Britain to which she too was committed.

    Both had been disgusted by the Conservative government of Edward Heath blinking when it sought to face down trade unions in the early 1970s. The experience was elemental to their plan for government.

    Others were more important to the New Right/neoliberal project elected in 1979: Conservative minister Keith Joseph, and Thatcher’s two chancellors, Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson.

    But Tebbit provided something no one else in Thatcher’s cabinet could: an innate connection with white, working-class voters, who may once have been Labour – Tebbit lauded Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin – but whose values were held to have been washed away in the postwar tide of union militancy, social permissiveness, European integration, and mass immigration.

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

    He became a Conservative almost because, rather than in spite, of his background. “Essex man” was a presiding personification of the period.

    Unlike almost all of Thatcher’s ministers, Tebbit did not go to university, but left school at 16 to encounter the “closed shop”: that one had to be a member of a particular union to work in a particular workplace. He became determined at that moment to end this practice, and with it so much else of postwar social democracy.

    Thirty years later he did, as Thatcher’s secretary of state for employment. Tebbit’s 1982 Employment Act avenged the unions’ defeat of Heath. Union rights were weakened, never to be restored, and those of employers emboldened. It was a significant contribution to Thatcherism’s ledger.

    As secretary of state for trade and industry, Tebbit pursued privatisation – the return (as its proponents, simply, put it) of nationalised industries to the private sector – with passion. The postwar settlement in Britain was being upended.

    Public image

    In an age before the televising of parliament (much less 24-hour news and social media), Tebbit cut through in a way few politicians did.

    At at a time of inner-city violence, the public knew Tebbit’s unemployed father, decades earlier, didn’t riot but “got on his bike and looked for work”. No one else could have been called – in the words of Labour’s Michael Foot – a “semi-house-trained polecat”. TV’s puppet satire Spitting Image portrayed him as the “Chingford Strangler”, dressed in biker leathers.

    Tebbit felt no need for his contempt for socialism to be leavened by charm or humour. There was invariably a slight sense of menace. He had no interest in ingratiating or propitiating. And so he was as loved by Conservative party members as he was hated by the left. He welcomed their hatred.

    Tebbit in particular despised the swinging 60s – fittingly, he entered parliament in the election in which Harold Wilson’s government was unexpectedly ejected – and its legacy of “insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy”. Thus his trenchancy on immigration, overseas aid (a “sink of iniquity, corruption and violence”), sexuality (he was one of the few still to use the word “sodomite”) and Europe (he was a Eurosceptic before Euroscepticism).

    In 1990 Tebbit asked of British-born people of Asian heritage: “Which side do they cheer for? Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?”. Tebbit’s “cricket test” is second only to Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech in the annals of inflammatory – they and their supporters would say candid – rhetoric relating to immigration. Neither would mind the association.



    Read more:
    Tory humiliation down to campaign length and cult of May – Norman Tebbit Q&A

    What silenced most – if not quite all – of his critics, was Tebbit at his most vulnerable. Following the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel Brighton in 1984, live television footage of him, only partially clad in his pyjamas, covered in dust, being stretchered out of the rubble, became the defining image of the atrocity.

    The following year Thatcher moved him from trade and industry to, less happily, chairman of the Conservative party. It was a job that required a lighter touch than Tebbit’s.

    Nevertheless, as chairman, he delivered the Conservatives’ third election victory, of 1987 – ensuring the permanence of the transformation – only to immediately retire to the backbenches. Margaret, his wife, had been paralysed by the bomb, and he devoted himself to her care for more than 30 years until her death.

    As warranted as his departure from government may have been, Thatcher “bitterly regretted” losing him, a feeling she felt for few. Her defenestration in November 1990 is much harder to imagine had Tebbit still been in the cabinet.

    Norman Tebbit’s conservatism and nationalism harked back to an earlier age, yet presaged the populism of the 2020s. In his remarks following the news of Tebbit’s death, Nigel Farage said he thought him “a great man”.

    Tebbit’s values endure in public discourse, in more ways than he might have expected even a few years ago. But in his last months he was either unable, or unwilling, to say whether those values were those of the Conservatives, the traditional party of the right, or of another project. That may be a final Tebbit “test”.

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

    – ref. Norman Tebbit, Conservative minister known as Thatcher’s enforcer, dies at 94 – https://theconversation.com/norman-tebbit-conservative-minister-known-as-thatchers-enforcer-dies-at-94-260716

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Why many kidney patients are still choosing hospital dialysis – and how the NHS can help more people access care at home

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Leah McLaughlin, Research Fellow in Health Services, Bangor University

    PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    Every week, thousands of people with kidney disease in the UK spend long hours in hospital receiving life-saving dialysis. For many, this means travelling to a kidney unit three times a week and sitting through sessions that last four hours or more. It’s a huge commitment that affects people’s ability to work, travel and maintain a normal social life.

    But for many with kidney failure, there’s another option: dialysis at home. It’s more flexible, often less disruptive and, in the long run, more cost-effective for the NHS. So why do most people still choose hospital dialysis?

    A parliamentary summit in May reflected on how to make dialysis more accessible to patients at home. My colleagues and I published research on this topic in 2019. Working in partnership with people who have kidney disease, their families, NHS staff, dialysis providers and kidney charities, we explored the barriers to home dialysis, and how to overcome them.

    People with kidney failure need either a transplant or regular dialysis to filter waste from their blood. Despite NHS guidance that at least 20% of people on dialysis should be supported to have this treatment at home, this target isn’t being met in many parts of the UK.

    A kidney dialysis machine.
    ali.can0707/Shutterstock

    Our research team, which included people who had experienced dialysis, held discussions with 50 people from across Wales. Many told us that hospital dialysis was presented by healthcare staff as the default option. For those who had not yet come to terms with needing dialysis, or who had delayed planning due to the unpredictable nature of kidney disease, hospital treatment felt like the path of least resistance.

    Some were concerned about the disruption home dialysis might bring. This included changes to their living space or worries that partners or family members might become their carers. Others valued the routine and regular social contact of hospital dialysis.

    Healthcare professionals may unintentionally reinforce this choice. Some feel more comfortable monitoring patients in clinical settings or are unsure about how to support home dialysis effectively. In some cases, home dialysis isn’t an option because local services don’t have the infrastructure to support it.

    Rather than simply identifying problems, we worked together to develop practical solutions. In 2021, working with patients, healthcare professionals, charities, commissioners and industry, we devised a new service plan that outlines how kidney services could be redesigned to support more people to choose home dialysis.

    One important finding was the power of talking to others already doing it. It’s not just about practical advice, but reassurance that it can work.

    We also identified the need for better training for both professionals and patients. People told us they wanted to understand their options earlier, ideally a year before dialysis starts. That means tackling difficult topics, such as advance care planning, sooner and with the right support.

    Social care also has an important role to play. People with complex needs – like living alone, having mobility challenges, or experiencing financial hardship – may need home support, welfare advice or help navigating the system.

    The cost of choice

    In a linked study, published in 2022, we analysed the costs of different dialysis options. Home dialysis was found to cost between £16,000 and £23,000 per person per year.

    Hospital dialysis costs more, between £20,000 and £24,000, rising to over £30,000 when ambulance transport is needed. This suggests that encouraging more people to have dialysis at home could deliver savings for the NHS.

    In Wales, where all kidney services are coordinated through a single clinical network, home dialysis is more widely available. But in England, services are more fragmented, so access can depend on where you live.

    Even if these changes were implemented, fundamental issues may still prevent progress. Beneath the surface of patient satisfaction lies a deeper problem – the NHS dialysis service is no longer working as intended.

    Transport is one of the most frequently cited concerns among people receiving hospital dialysis, and no one seems satisfied with current arrangements. But satisfaction surveys fail to capture the complexity of the situation.

    People often begin dialysis in a unit that isn’t closest to home due to availability. Later, when given the option to move closer or switch to home dialysis, they may decline. These dialysis units begin to function as surrogate families, offering comfort, routine and social interaction, especially for people who live alone or are isolated.

    This emotional connection can obscure the bigger picture. Patients may focus on transport as the issue, rather than recognising that their own decisions – shaped by understandable human needs and system design – are part of the wider challenge.

    shutterstock.
    ali.can0707/Shutterstock

    Staff are caught in the same dynamic. They worry about losing patients they’ve built relationships with or fear someone may not cope alone. But as a result, the service ends up operating not to help people live well for longer but to preserve a sense of satisfaction with a suboptimal status quo.

    By focusing too heavily on keeping people content with the status quo, we risk obscuring what’s truly working, or not. Worse, we may end up wasting already limited resources trying to fix problems that are byproducts of a system shaped more by sentiment than strategy.

    Meanwhile, staff are caught in the middle, trying to deliver care under mounting pressure, with increasingly blurred expectations.

    What needs to change

    To break out of this cycle, different questions should be asked, and not just whether people are satisfied, but whether they are living well, maintaining independence and receiving care that truly reflects their needs and values.

    Our research shows that people already on home dialysis are a valuable and underused resource. They can offer support and insight to others who are starting their treatment.

    The collaborative approach we used could be a model for other parts of the NHS. By designing services with people, not just for them, we can move closer to a future where more people live comfortably with kidney disease, and care that truly fits around their lives and not the other way round.

    Leah McLaughlin receives funding from Health and Care Research Wales. She is affiliated with the Wales Kidney Research Unit.

    We would like to acknowledge Dr Gareth Roberts Chief Investigator of the Dialysis Options and Choices study. Dr Gareth Roberts is a Consultant Nephrologist and Associate Medical Director at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board and is clinical lead of the Welsh Renal Clinical Network.

    – ref. Why many kidney patients are still choosing hospital dialysis – and how the NHS can help more people access care at home – https://theconversation.com/why-many-kidney-patients-are-still-choosing-hospital-dialysis-and-how-the-nhs-can-help-more-people-access-care-at-home-254747

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: The Shrouds: new Cronenberg film is an elusive meditation on death, grief and environmental ethics

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Laura O’Flanagan, PhD Candidate, School of English, Dublin City University

    American filmmaker David Cronenberg is a leading figure in body horror, a film genre that explores disturbing and often grotesque aspects of the human body. Films such as The Fly (1986), eXistenZ (1999) and Crimes of the Future (2022) depict scenes of physical mutilation, illness and technological invasion to represent deeper fears about identity, society and the human condition.

    Through intense bodily imagery, Cronenberg’s films raise powerful questions about human relationships with technology and nature. As our relationship with technology rapidly evolves alongside escalating environmental catastrophe, there is a timely significance in these ideas.

    His latest film, The Shrouds, evokes the writing of Stacy Alaimo, a scholar known for her work exploring the connections between the human body, the environment, and the social forces that shape both. Alaimo’s work combines feminist and materialist ideas and examines how our bodies are physically connected to the world around us – not separate from nature or society, but shaped by both ecological systems and social structures.

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    Like Cronenberg, Alaimo is interested in the entanglement of human flesh with more-than-human worlds, alongside the interplay between bodies and objects.

    In The Shrouds, the body, specifically that of Becca (Diane Kruger) is placed firmly at the centre of the story. Appearing both as a decaying corpse and naked in dream sequences, her body bears fresh surgical scars which are unbandaged and exposed.

    Becca’s body is shown as intensely vulnerable, a gendered depiction of femaleness which is controlled literally by the male gaze through the “shroud”, a piece of sci-fi wearable tech. It comprises a suit of MRI and X-ray cameras which encases a corpse, allowing decomposition to be monitored through a live video link with an app.

    This conceit embeds Becca both in the Earth and in technology, creating deeply memorable imagery which challenges viewers to think about death, grief and the environmental ethics surrounding human burial.

    The presentation of Becca’s body evokes Alaimo’s concept of transcorporeality. In her 2010 book Bodily Natures, Alaimo describes transcorporeality as the idea that “the human is ultimately inseparable from ‘the environment’” – continually transformed through interactions with the landscape, chemicals, technology and non-human forces. Becca’s corpse, decaying in real-time on a live link, highlights this connection.

    Grief: the fictional and the personal

    The film opens with Karsh (Vincent Kassel), Becca’s bereaved husband, in a dentist’s chair being told, “Grief is rotting your teeth”. The film as a whole can be read as a meditation on how grief seeps into and changes the body.

    Written following the death of David Cronenberg’s wife (and initially conceived of as a Netflix series), Cronenberg has rejected the idea that it is fully autobiographical. It is, however, difficult to fully separate the director from the story.

    Cassel as Karsh physically resembles Cronenberg in the film, blurring the boundary between fiction and the personal. Physical duplication is a disorienting motif of the film. Kruger reappears as Becca’s sister Terri and as an animated AI assistant named Honey.

    Alongside the grotesque images of her decaying body, these versions of Kruger are especially striking. Cassel’s performance as the controlling and obsessive Karsh is nuanced and understated. His desire to monitor Becca’s decomposition is presented as a logical step to regain possession of her from her illness, and is deeply disturbing.

    It also has ominous and timely resonance in our modern world, where controversial technology exists that permits artificial intelligence to create avatars of the dead to comfort the bereaved.

    The film becomes a mimetic piece on grief, where boundaries between imagination and reality dissolve. Cronenberg’s frequent collaborator Howard Shore provides an ambient score that reinforces this dissolution. Ethereal and bass-rich, it features spacious, slowly evolving melodies wrapped in velvety synth textures which evoke a dream-like soundscape.

    As the plot progresses into a tangle of conspiracy theories, lines blur between Karsh’s dreams and reality. Background plots drift unresolved, characters are vaguely sketched. Themes of environmental activism versus capitalist enterprise, the exploitation of technology, illegal surveillance and government corruption are all threaded through the story, but none are fully realised. This is not a film which offers a straightforward narrative or closure. Like grief, it remains raw, fluid and difficult to contain.

    Throughout, the film returns to Becca’s decaying body, encased in a shroud that is described as both toxic and radioactive, an object of controversy for eco-activists. “She’s dead, remember, she can’t do anything,” Karsh’s companion reminds him.

    But this is not true for Becca. In death, her body is watched and consumed by systems of surveillance and ecological anxiety. Symbolising Alaimo’s concept of transcorporeality, Becca’s decaying corpse, wrapped in technology, but buried in the Earth, is deeply connected to the environment and cannot be separated from it. Her body is influenced by both its natural surroundings and social factors such as the shroud’s technology, outside interference and Karsh’s control.

    Karsh asserts that burial is a complex matter, converging politics, religion and economics. The Shrouds raises questions that touch on all of these, but provides no tangible answers. Some viewers will be frustrated by the film’s lack of logical structure and resolution. But it is also fair to say that this is how it mirrors the pathways of grief itself: unwieldy, unpredictable and consuming.

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

    – ref. The Shrouds: new Cronenberg film is an elusive meditation on death, grief and environmental ethics – https://theconversation.com/the-shrouds-new-cronenberg-film-is-an-elusive-meditation-on-death-grief-and-environmental-ethics-260009

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: I rode the Tour de France to study its impact on the human body – here’s what I learned

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Steve Faulkner, Senior Lecturer in Exercise Physiology, Nottingham Trent University

    The Tour de France is often called the world’s biggest annual sporting event. Each July up to 12 million people line the roadside, while the cumulative TV audience tops 3 billion viewers across 190 countries.

    In 2025, 184 riders will compete in teams of eight, racing a punishing 3,500 km route with nearly 50,000 metres of climbing – roughly the height of Mount Everest six times over. Across 21 stages riders tackle time trials, flat sprints and brutal mountain passes through the Alps, Pyrenees and Massif Central.

    Professional cyclists possess extraordinary endurance and are capable of generating high power outputs day after day. Yet, despite having far less training and support, in recent years a number of amateur cyclists have begun riding the Tour route just days before the pros. The Tour 21 is one such effort and offers cyclists a chance to follow in the tyre tracks of the elite while raising money for a good cause.

    In 2021 I joined 19 others to ride the full route in support of Cure Leukaemia, with a shared goal of raising £1 million for blood cancer research. As a blood cancer survivor diagnosed at 16, this challenge combined my love of cycling, my background in science and my deep desire to give back to the community that helped save my life. It was also a unique opportunity to study how amateur cyclists cope with one of the most demanding endurance events in the world.

    The research findings were published in the Journal of Science and Cycling, to coincide with 2025’s Grand Départ (the official start of the race) in Lille.

    Training for the impossible

    Originally, the study planned to include lab-based physiological assessments of the amateur cyclists undertaking the Tour de France route, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to adapt and rely instead on data from training diaries. These gave us insight into how much (or little) training had been done leading up to the ride, and how riders managed the physical and mental strain during the event itself.

    While professional cyclists typically train 20–25 hours a week – often at altitude, with tailored coaching and racing schedules – our group of amateurs had full-time jobs, were typically 15–20 years older than the pros and trained around seven to ten hours a week.

    Our preparation was far from ideal, averaging just 47km per ride and 350 metres of climbing; a fraction of what the Tour demands. In fact, this amounted to less than 10% of the required climbing during the mountain stages.

    Once the ride began, the contrast between training and reality was stark. The group averaged nearly seven hours of riding a day, a 300% increase from their usual routine. Within four days signs of overtraining began to emerge: riders were no longer able to elevate their heart rates, a classic marker of central nervous system fatigue and excessive physical stress.

    As the days progressed, performance metrics continued to decline: heart rates dropped, power outputs fell and mood scores deteriorated. The cumulative fatigue was undeniable.

    Surprisingly, when we compared our amateur data to metrics from professional riders, we found that although pros ride at much higher power outputs, amateurs were subject to greater relative stress. On some days they spent almost double the time in the saddle, which meant they operated closer to their physical limits, with far less time for recovery – and often suboptimal sleep and nutrition.

    By the final week many of the riders could no longer produce the same power they had in the first few days. In some cases, heart rates wouldn’t rise above 100 beats per minute – a clear sign of accumulated fatigue and physiological overload.

    How to prepare for an ultra-endurance challenge

    If you’re planning to take on a major endurance event – whether it’s cycling, running, or hiking – here are some lessons from the road:

    1. Train specifically for the event

    Your training should mirror the challenge ahead. For the Tour, this meant preparing for long, back-to-back days with significant climbing. Mimic the intensity, volume and terrain as closely as possible.

    2. Understand how quickly fatigue builds

    Over multiple days, fatigue doesn’t just accumulate – it compounds. Listen to your body, adapt your plan and include plenty of recovery time.

    3. Prioritise nutrition and recovery

    These two factors can make or break your performance. You’ll need to consume enough energy to fuel the effort, but avoid excessive intake that leads to unnecessary weight gain. Recovery – through sleep, rest and refuelling – is equally vital.

    4. Work with an experienced coach

    More than fancy bikes or high-tech gear, a good coach is your best investment. They can help tailor your training plan, track your progress and adapt strategies as needed. Don’t underestimate this support.

    A ride to remember

    Completing the Tour de France route is a monumental achievement for any cyclist — amateur or pro. In 2021, our team not only rode the full route, but also raised over £1 million for Cure Leukaemia. For me, it marked a deeply personal milestone in my cancer journey.

    Throughout those 21 days, I thought often of the physical and emotional battles I faced during treatment; moments when I didn’t know if I’d survive, let alone ride across France. That experience gave me the resilience to keep going, even when my body was screaming to stop.

    Riding the Tour taught me that we’re capable of far more than we realise, especially when we ride with purpose.

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

    – ref. I rode the Tour de France to study its impact on the human body – here’s what I learned – https://theconversation.com/i-rode-the-tour-de-france-to-study-its-impact-on-the-human-body-heres-what-i-learned-260524

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Norman Tebbit, Conservative minister known as Thatcher’s enforcer, dies at 94

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Martin Farr, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History, Newcastle University

    No man more embodied Thatcherism in the eyes of the public in the 1980s than Norman Tebbit, who died on July 7, aged 94.

    Though certainly no yuppie, Lord Tebbit entitled his memoirs Upwardly Mobile. Margaret’s Thatcher’s triumph was also his. She saw in the Essex MP just the uncompromising approach to transforming Britain to which she too was committed.

    Both had been disgusted by the Conservative government of Edward Heath blinking when it sought to face down trade unions in the early 1970s. The experience was elemental to their plan for government.

    Others were more important to the New Right/neoliberal project elected in 1979: Conservative minister Keith Joseph, and Thatcher’s two chancellors, Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson.

    But Tebbit provided something no one else in Thatcher’s cabinet could: an innate connection with white, working-class voters, who may once have been Labour – Tebbit lauded Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin – but whose values were held to have been washed away in the postwar tide of union militancy, social permissiveness, European integration, and mass immigration.

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    He became a Conservative almost because, rather than in spite, of his background. “Essex man” was a presiding personification of the period.

    Unlike almost all of Thatcher’s ministers, Tebbit did not go to university, but left school at 16 to encounter the “closed shop”: that one had to be a member of a particular union to work in a particular workplace. He became determined at that moment to end this practice, and with it so much else of postwar social democracy.

    Thirty years later he did, as Thatcher’s secretary of state for employment. Tebbit’s 1982 Employment Act avenged the unions’ defeat of Heath. Union rights were weakened, never to be restored, and those of employers emboldened. It was a significant contribution to Thatcherism’s ledger.

    As secretary of state for trade and industry, Tebbit pursued privatisation – the return (as its proponents, simply, put it) of nationalised industries to the private sector – with passion. The postwar settlement in Britain was being upended.

    Public image

    In an age before the televising of parliament (much less 24-hour news and social media), Tebbit cut through in a way few politicians did.

    At at a time of inner-city violence, the public knew Tebbit’s unemployed father, decades earlier, didn’t riot but “got on his bike and looked for work”. No one else could have been called – in the words of Labour’s Michael Foot – a “semi-house-trained polecat”. TV’s puppet satire Spitting Image portrayed him as the “Chingford Strangler”, dressed in biker leathers.

    Tebbit felt no need for his contempt for socialism to be leavened by charm or humour. There was invariably a slight sense of menace. He had no interest in ingratiating or propitiating. And so he was as loved by Conservative party members as he was hated by the left. He welcomed their hatred.

    Tebbit in particular despised the swinging 60s – fittingly, he entered parliament in the election in which Harold Wilson’s government was unexpectedly ejected – and its legacy of “insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy”. Thus his trenchancy on immigration, overseas aid (a “sink of iniquity, corruption and violence”), sexuality (he was one of the few still to use the word “sodomite”) and Europe (he was a Eurosceptic before Euroscepticism).

    In 1990 Tebbit asked of British-born people of Asian heritage: “Which side do they cheer for? Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?”. Tebbit’s “cricket test” is second only to Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech in the annals of inflammatory – they and their supporters would say candid – rhetoric relating to immigration. Neither would mind the association.



    Read more:
    Tory humiliation down to campaign length and cult of May – Norman Tebbit Q&A

    What silenced most – if not quite all – of his critics, was Tebbit at his most vulnerable. Following the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel Brighton in 1984, live television footage of him, only partially clad in his pyjamas, covered in dust, being stretchered out of the rubble, became the defining image of the atrocity.

    The following year Thatcher moved him from trade and industry to, less happily, chairman of the Conservative party. It was a job that required a lighter touch than Tebbit’s.

    Nevertheless, as chairman, he delivered the Conservatives’ third election victory, of 1987 – ensuring the permanence of the transformation – only to immediately retire to the backbenches. Margaret, his wife, had been paralysed by the bomb, and he devoted himself to her care for more than 30 years until her death.

    As warranted as his departure from government may have been, Thatcher “bitterly regretted” losing him, a feeling she felt for few. Her defenestration in November 1990 is much harder to imagine had Tebbit still been in the cabinet.

    Norman Tebbit’s conservatism and nationalism harked back to an earlier age, yet presaged the populism of the 2020s. In his remarks following the news of Tebbit’s death, Nigel Farage said he thought him “a great man”.

    Tebbit’s values endure in public discourse, in more ways than he might have expected even a few years ago. But in his last months he was either unable, or unwilling, to say whether those values were those of the Conservatives, the traditional party of the right, or of another project. That may be a final Tebbit “test”.

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

    – ref. Norman Tebbit, Conservative minister known as Thatcher’s enforcer, dies at 94 – https://theconversation.com/norman-tebbit-conservative-minister-known-as-thatchers-enforcer-dies-at-94-260716

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: As Netanyahu meets Trump in Washington, what hope for peace in Gaza? Expert Q&A

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor

    The US government “remains upbeat” about the prospects for at least a ceasefire in Gaza, according to the latest reports from Washington, where the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been meeting the US president, Donald Trump.

    Netanyahu handed the US president a letter nominating him for the Nobel peace prize, saying he deserved it for “forging peace, as we speak, in one country in the region after another”. But as yet there are no signs that either Hamas or Israel have moved any closer to accepting each other’s terms.

    In fact, reports emerging from the White House meeting are that the two leaders discussed the displacement of much of the Palestinian population. And a plan revealed by the Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, proposed the contruction of a “humanitarian city” at Rafah in the north of the Gaza Strip to house more than 600,000 Palestinians.

    The Conversation’s senior international affairs editor, Jonathan Este, spoke with Middle East expert, Scott Lucas, of University College Dublin to address this and other questions.

    The two leaders’ discussions in Washington seemed to centre around displacement of the Palestinian population in lieu of a two-state solution. What does this tell you about the chance of a ceasefire deal?

    I am fascinated – and sometimes disillusioned – by how some media outlets, led by the nose, miss the main story. Last week Donald Trump pronounced on social media that Israel had agreed to a 60-day ceasefire and Hamas “should take this deal”.

    But the Netanyahu government has not accepted the framework, circulated by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, let alone consented to a halt of their attacks, which have continued even as the Israeli prime minister travelled to Washington to meet the US president.

    As Trump hosted Netanyahu in the White House on Monday, the line was that the US president was “upbeat on Gaza ceasefire talks”. Meanwhile, few of them seemed to notice the important development. Hamas responded to the US framework with proposals for the staged release of 28 of the remaining 50 Israeli hostages over the 60 days while Israeli troops withdrew from positions inside the Strip and humanitarian aid was restored.

    But the Israeli government has thus far not given a substantive response. Instead, while pursuing a plan for the long-term military occupation of Gaza, it may also be seeking the displacement of a large portion of the more than 2.2 million population.

    Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

    Hard-right members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, such as finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and internal security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, have long called for more than a million Gazans to be moved out of the territory. Reports over the weekend confirmed that this is not rhetoric. Israeli businessmen and venture capitalists have reportedly been working on plans for postwar Gaza, to include a “Trump riviera”, mirroring the displacement declaration by the US President, and an “Elon Musk smart manufacturing zone”.

    On Tuesday, security cabinet member Ze’ev Elkin, a Netanyahu loyalist, proclaimed “a substantial chance” for a ceasefire. But Qatari negotiators have said there are currently no talks, only discussions with each side about the framework for talks.

    Meanwhile, citing the killing of five Israeli soldiers in Gaza on Sunday night by an improvised explosive device, Ben-Gvir said: “We should not negotiate with those who kill our soldiers. They should be crushed to pieces, starved to death, and not resuscitated with humanitarian aid that gives them oxygen.”

    He called for “a complete siege, crushing them militarily” and reiterated the plan for “encouraging [Palestinian] immigration and [Jewish] settlement — these are the keys to complete victory”.

    Smotrich also called for a ban on any aid to Gaza: “In addition, I demand … that any territory that was conquered and cleansed of terror with the blood of our fighters not be abandoned.”

    So I am not optimistic at the moment.

    Looking at the region as a whole, two events have ‘reset’ the Middle East: the October 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s recent 12-day war. Can you tell me more about the kaleidoscope effect these two events had?

    In October 2023, there was no open-ended war in Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu’s focus was on curbing the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, blocking any possibility of a two-state solution. His tactic was to ease the economic pressure on Gaza and Hamas, maintaining that organisation as a balance against its West Bank rivals.

    Hamas ripped up that approach with its mass murder on October 7 – the first of the two kaleidoscope moments which changed the whole picture in a matter of hours. The attack triggered the deadly Israeli response that continues 21 months later. That response did not “destroy” Hamas, as Netanyahu pledged, but it led the Israelis to take on other foes in the region.

    Pursuing its “octopus doctrine”, Israel severely damaged one of the tentacles, Hezbollah, when it destroyed much of the Lebanese group’s leadership in the autumn of 2024. It assassinated senior Iranian commanders and officials in Damascus, and received a further boost when Turkish-backed factions toppled the Assad regime in December.

    The 12-day war in June aimed to destroy the head of the octopus: Iran. Israel’s strikes and assassinations killed much of the country’s military leadership and many of its top nuclear scientists. The supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, hid in a bunker, only emerging on July 6. But Israel failed to topple his regime, as it had hoped.

    The war was another kaleidoscope moment. Israel had its regional victory. But paradoxically, because there has been no resolution in Gaza, this has come at the cost of further international isolation. Gulf States, having moved away from “normalisation” with Israel, put out tougher statements about “genocide” of Gazans and the violation of Iranian sovereignty. Saudi Arabia’s state media highlighted a letter from Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi to Saudi counterpart Faisal bin Farhan for “ways to support and enhance [relations] across all fields”.

    This implies that for any normalisation to occur, Israel must end its military operation in Gaza?

    That question cuts to the chase. The Gulf states, with the notable exception of Qatar, are no friends of Hamas. They might even have accepted the destruction of the group if Israel had been able to accomplish it quickly.

    But there is no way that they can publicly acquiesce in the killing of almost 60,000 Gazans, the large majority of them civilians, and the humanitarian blockade that threatens every single person living in the Gaza Strip. Nor will they want to see Israel export Gazans across the region in an echo of the 1948 “Nakba” whose legacy is the millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps across the Middle East.

    Netanyahu can pursue his “absolute destruction” of Hamas by pursuing the destruction and displacement of Gazans. Or he can try to capitalise on his war with Iran through links with Arab countries. He cannot do both.

    Will Donald Trump get his Nobel peace prize?

    I don’t know, for that is a question which does not have a logical answer.

    Herny Kissinger was the US secretary of state who oversaw an escalation of the Vietnam war in which up to 3 million Vietnamese, 310,000 Cambodians, 62,000 Laotians and 58,220 US service members died. The singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer aptly noted: “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

    We are in a world where having caused so much disorder and chaos, having enabled violence, including Israel’s open-ended war, Donald Trump may succeed in a pose as “peacemaker”.

    Some may see the least worst option as flattery, which seems to work as a strategy for dealing with the US president. They may accept the White House theatre in which Netanyahu, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, personally hands Trump a peace prize nomination.

    Meanwhile, in the past 24 hours, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, the number of casualties in Gaza rose to 57,575 people killed and 136,879 wounded. Twenty hostages spent another day in limbo. That’s what matters here.

    – ref. As Netanyahu meets Trump in Washington, what hope for peace in Gaza? Expert Q&A – https://theconversation.com/as-netanyahu-meets-trump-in-washington-what-hope-for-peace-in-gaza-expert-qanda-260722

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: How to support someone who is grieving: five research-backed strategies

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lucy Poxon, Senior Lecturer in Counselling Psychology, Department of Social Work Counselling & Social Care , School of Childhood and Social Care, University of East London

    PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    When someone we care about is grieving the loss of a loved one, our natural instinct is to ease their pain. But when words feel clumsy and gestures fall short, it can be hard to know how to help.

    Drawing on both my research as a counselling psychologist and 18 years of supporting bereaved clients in therapy, I’ve identified five compassionate, research-backed ways to walk alongside someone who is mourning.

    Whether you’re a close friend, family member, or caring colleague, these approaches will help you offer support in meaningful and authentic ways.

    1. Grief wears many disguises

    Our expectations of how grief should look are often shaped by culture, the media or personal experience, and they may bear little resemblance to how grief is actually lived.

    Grief can appear as physical symptoms like exhaustion, loss of appetite, or insomnia; as behaviour like withdrawing from others or drinking more; and as thoughts or emotions ranging from apathy and numbness to anger or intense sadness.

    It can be loud and overwhelming or quiet and barely perceptible. Some people feel deep sorrow immediately; others feel nothing for weeks or even months. A lack of overt sadness isn’t necessarily cause for concern; it may reflect relief that a loved one is no longer suffering, or be a sign of early adjustment.



    Read more:
    Not all mourning happens after bereavement – for some, grief can start years before the death of a loved one

    One of the most compassionate things you can do is validate whatever shape grief takes. Reassure the person that there’s no “right” way to grieve and support them in tuning into what their body and emotions need.

    2. Acknowledge the death and don’t rush the tears

    Nearly every grieving client I’ve worked with has described someone, often a friend, colleague, or even family member, who avoided or ignored them after the loss. It’s one of the most painful experiences for someone already feeling vulnerable.

    Often, the avoidance isn’t malicious. It’s driven by fear of saying the wrong thing or not knowing how to help. But by avoiding the subject, we send an unintended message: your grief is too much.

    Acknowledging the death, even simply by saying “I’m so sorry to hear about your loss”, is not a reminder of their pain, it’s a sign that you see it and honour it. Inviting someone out, even if they decline, communicates that they still belong and are welcome.

    If someone begins to cry, it’s natural to want to fix things, to offer comfort, or even to pass a tissue. But giving a tissue too soon can inadvertently signal that they should stop crying. Sometimes the most supportive thing you can do is to sit with your own discomfort, and simply be present. That silent witness can help a grieving person feel less alone.

    3. Let go of the “stages of grief” myth

    Many people are still taught to expect a tidy progression of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, popularised by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in the 1960s. While these emotions are real and common, research shows that most people don’t experience them in a neat order, or even experience all five at all.

    Despite being widely critiqued, stage-based models are still found in healthcare training manuals and TV scripts, and they can leave people feeling like they’re grieving “wrong”.

    If your loved one is worried they should feel more sadness, or wonders why they haven’t yet felt angry, remind them: grief is personal and unpredictable. There’s no timeline, no script and no shame in not following one.

    Helping someone let go of these expectations may ease guilt, reduce internal pressure and encourage gentler self-care.

    4. Encourage communication – with the living and the lost

    Grief often comes with emotional loneliness, a deep sense of aloneness that persists even in the presence of others. It’s different from social isolation; it’s the ache of missing someone irreplaceable.



    Read more:
    What we can learn from death rites of the past will help us treat the dead and grieving better today

    While you can’t fix that loneliness, you can help the bereaved maintain a continuing bond with their loved one. This might include writing letters to the person who has died, speaking to them at a graveside or special place, saying prayers or engaging in meditation or creating memory boxes or rituals.

    These forms of connection can help integrate the loss into a new reality. You might offer to visit a meaningful place together, or support them in planning a small memorial gesture.

    5. Make specific, practical offers

    It’s common to say “Let me know if you need anything”, but for someone in deep grief, reaching out can feel impossible. Emotional overwhelm, fatigue and even shame can prevent them from asking for help, even when they desperately need it.

    Instead, make intentional, concrete offers that remove decision-making and emotional labour. These might include:

    • delivering a home-cooked meal once a week

    • taking care of pets or houseplants

    • helping with funeral admin or paperwork

    • offering regular lifts to appointments

    • updating others on their behalf

    • messaging with a clear “no need to reply” reassurance

    If you live far away, sending a card, text, or voice note can still be powerful; just be mindful that they may receive many, and feel pressure to respond. A line like, “No need to write back, just wanted you to know I’m thinking of you” can go a long way.

    Grief is not a puzzle to solve or a wound to fix. It’s a human response to love and loss – and it’s different for everyone.

    The most powerful thing you can do? Be there. Stay present. Listen without judgement. And remember that it’s okay not to have the perfect words. Showing up with authenticity, patience and compassion is what matters most.

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

    – ref. How to support someone who is grieving: five research-backed strategies – https://theconversation.com/how-to-support-someone-who-is-grieving-five-research-backed-strategies-260265

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Brics is sliding towards irrelevance – the Rio summit made that clear

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amalendu Misra, Professor of International Politics, Lancaster University

    The Brics group of nations has just concluded its 17th annual summit in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. But, despite member states adopting a long list of commitments covering global governance, finance, health, AI and climate change, the summit was a lacklustre affair.

    The two most prominent leaders from the group’s founding members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – were conspicuously absent. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, only attended virtually due to an outstanding arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court over his role in the war in Ukraine.

    China’s Xi Jinping avoided the summit altogether for unknown reasons, sending his prime minister, Li Qiang, instead. This was Xi’s first no-show at a Brics summit, with the snub prompting suggestions that Beijing’s enthusiasm for the group as part of an emerging new world order is in decline.

    Perhaps the most notable takeaway from the summit was a statement that came not from the Brics nations but the US. As Brics leaders gathered in Rio, the US president, Donald Trump, warned on social media: “Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy.”

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

    Trump has long been critical of Brics. This is largely because the group has consistently floated the idea of adopting a common currency to challenge the dominance of the US dollar in international trade.

    Such a move makes sense if we focus on trade figures. In 2024, the value of trade among the Brics nations was around US$5 trillion, accounting for approximately 22% of global exports. Member nations have always felt their economic potential could be fully realised if they were not reliant upon the US dollar as their common currency of trade.

    During their 2024 summit, which was held in the Russian city of Kazan, the Brics nations entered into serious discussions around creating a gold-backed currency. At a time when the Trump administration is waging a global trade war, the emergence of an alternative to the US dollar would be a very serious pushback against US economic hegemony.



    Read more:
    Why Donald Trump’s election could hasten the end of US dollar dominance

    But the freshly concluded Brics summit did not present any concrete move towards achieving that objective. In fact, the 31-page Rio de Janeiro joint declaration even contained some reassurances about the global importance of the US dollar.

    There are two key obstacles hindering Brics from translating its vision of a common currency into reality. First is that some founding member nations are uncomfortable with adopting such an economic model, in large part due to internal rivalries within Brics itself.

    India, currently the fourth-largest economy in the world, has a history of periodic confrontation and strategic competition with China. It is reticent about adopting an alternative to the US dollar, concerned that this could make China more powerful and undercut India’s long-term interests.

    Second is that the Brics member nations are dependent on their bilateral trade with the US. Simply put, embracing an alternative currency is counterproductive when it comes to the current economic interests of individual countries. Brazil, China and India, for example, all export more to the US than they import from it.

    In December 2024, following his election as US president, Trump said: “We require a commitment from these countries that they will neither create a new Brics currency nor back any other currency to replace the mighty US dollar or they will face 100% tariffs and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful US economy”. This blunt message all but killed any enthusiasm that was there for this grand economic model.

    Caught in contradiction

    The Brics group is a behemoth. Its full 11 members account for 40% of the world’s population and economy. But the bloc is desperately short of providing any cohesive alternative global leadership.

    While Brazil used its position as host to highlight Brics as a truly multilateral forum capable of providing leadership in a new world order, such ambitions are thwarted by the many contradictions plaguing this bloc.

    Among these are tensions between founding members China and India, which have been running high for decades.

    There are other contradictions, too. In their joint Rio declaration, the group’s members decried the recent Israeli and US attacks on Iran. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, also used his position as summit host to criticise the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

    But this moral high ground appears hollow when you consider that the Russian Federation, a key member of Brics, is on a mission to destroy Ukraine. And rather than condemning Russia, Brics leaders used the Rio summit to criticise recent Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s railway infrastructure.

    Brics declared intention to address the issue of climate change is also problematic. The Rio declaration conveyed the group’s support for multilateralism and unity to achieve the goals of the Paris agreement. But, despite China making significant advances in its green energy sector, Brics contains some of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases as well as several of the largest oil and gas producers.

    Brics can only stay relevant and provide credible leadership in a fast-changing international order when it addresses its many inner contradictions.

    Amalendu Misra is a recipient of British Academy and Nuffield Foundation Fellowships.

    – ref. Brics is sliding towards irrelevance – the Rio summit made that clear – https://theconversation.com/brics-is-sliding-towards-irrelevance-the-rio-summit-made-that-clear-260653

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Why many kidney patients are still choosing hospital dialysis – and how the NHS can help more people access care at home

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Leah McLaughlin, Research Fellow in Health Services, Bangor University

    PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    Every week, thousands of people with kidney disease in the UK spend long hours in hospital receiving life-saving dialysis. For many, this means travelling to a kidney unit three times a week and sitting through sessions that last four hours or more. It’s a huge commitment that affects people’s ability to work, travel and maintain a normal social life.

    But for many with kidney failure, there’s another option: dialysis at home. It’s more flexible, often less disruptive and, in the long run, more cost-effective for the NHS. So why do most people still choose hospital dialysis?

    A parliamentary summit in May reflected on how to make dialysis more accessible to patients at home. My colleagues and I published research on this topic in 2019. Working in partnership with people who have kidney disease, their families, NHS staff, dialysis providers and kidney charities, we explored the barriers to home dialysis, and how to overcome them.

    People with kidney failure need either a transplant or regular dialysis to filter waste from their blood. Despite NHS guidance that at least 20% of people on dialysis should be supported to have this treatment at home, this target isn’t being met in many parts of the UK.

    A kidney dialysis machine.
    ali.can0707/Shutterstock

    Our research team, which included people who had experienced dialysis, held discussions with 50 people from across Wales. Many told us that hospital dialysis was presented by healthcare staff as the default option. For those who had not yet come to terms with needing dialysis, or who had delayed planning due to the unpredictable nature of kidney disease, hospital treatment felt like the path of least resistance.

    Some were concerned about the disruption home dialysis might bring. This included changes to their living space or worries that partners or family members might become their carers. Others valued the routine and regular social contact of hospital dialysis.

    Healthcare professionals may unintentionally reinforce this choice. Some feel more comfortable monitoring patients in clinical settings or are unsure about how to support home dialysis effectively. In some cases, home dialysis isn’t an option because local services don’t have the infrastructure to support it.

    Rather than simply identifying problems, we worked together to develop practical solutions. In 2021, working with patients, healthcare professionals, charities, commissioners and industry, we devised a new service plan that outlines how kidney services could be redesigned to support more people to choose home dialysis.

    One important finding was the power of talking to others already doing it. It’s not just about practical advice, but reassurance that it can work.

    We also identified the need for better training for both professionals and patients. People told us they wanted to understand their options earlier, ideally a year before dialysis starts. That means tackling difficult topics, such as advance care planning, sooner and with the right support.

    Social care also has an important role to play. People with complex needs – like living alone, having mobility challenges, or experiencing financial hardship – may need home support, welfare advice or help navigating the system.

    The cost of choice

    In a linked study, published in 2022, we analysed the costs of different dialysis options. Home dialysis was found to cost between £16,000 and £23,000 per person per year.

    Hospital dialysis costs more, between £20,000 and £24,000, rising to over £30,000 when ambulance transport is needed. This suggests that encouraging more people to have dialysis at home could deliver savings for the NHS.

    In Wales, where all kidney services are coordinated through a single clinical network, home dialysis is more widely available. But in England, services are more fragmented, so access can depend on where you live.

    Even if these changes were implemented, fundamental issues may still prevent progress. Beneath the surface of patient satisfaction lies a deeper problem – the NHS dialysis service is no longer working as intended.

    Transport is one of the most frequently cited concerns among people receiving hospital dialysis, and no one seems satisfied with current arrangements. But satisfaction surveys fail to capture the complexity of the situation.

    People often begin dialysis in a unit that isn’t closest to home due to availability. Later, when given the option to move closer or switch to home dialysis, they may decline. These dialysis units begin to function as surrogate families, offering comfort, routine and social interaction, especially for people who live alone or are isolated.

    This emotional connection can obscure the bigger picture. Patients may focus on transport as the issue, rather than recognising that their own decisions – shaped by understandable human needs and system design – are part of the wider challenge.

    shutterstock.
    ali.can0707/Shutterstock

    Staff are caught in the same dynamic. They worry about losing patients they’ve built relationships with or fear someone may not cope alone. But as a result, the service ends up operating not to help people live well for longer but to preserve a sense of satisfaction with a suboptimal status quo.

    By focusing too heavily on keeping people content with the status quo, we risk obscuring what’s truly working, or not. Worse, we may end up wasting already limited resources trying to fix problems that are byproducts of a system shaped more by sentiment than strategy.

    Meanwhile, staff are caught in the middle, trying to deliver care under mounting pressure, with increasingly blurred expectations.

    What needs to change

    To break out of this cycle, different questions should be asked, and not just whether people are satisfied, but whether they are living well, maintaining independence and receiving care that truly reflects their needs and values.

    Our research shows that people already on home dialysis are a valuable and underused resource. They can offer support and insight to others who are starting their treatment.

    The collaborative approach we used could be a model for other parts of the NHS. By designing services with people, not just for them, we can move closer to a future where more people live comfortably with kidney disease, and care that truly fits around their lives and not the other way round.

    Leah McLaughlin receives funding from Health and Care Research Wales. She is affiliated with the Wales Kidney Research Unit.

    We would like to acknowledge Dr Gareth Roberts Chief Investigator of the Dialysis Options and Choices study. Dr Gareth Roberts is a Consultant Nephrologist and Associate Medical Director at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board and is clinical lead of the Welsh Renal Clinical Network.

    – ref. Why many kidney patients are still choosing hospital dialysis – and how the NHS can help more people access care at home – https://theconversation.com/why-many-kidney-patients-are-still-choosing-hospital-dialysis-and-how-the-nhs-can-help-more-people-access-care-at-home-254747

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: I rode the Tour de France to study its impact on the human body – here’s what I learned

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Steve Faulkner, Senior Lecturer in Exercise Physiology, Nottingham Trent University

    The Tour de France is often called the world’s biggest annual sporting event. Each July up to 12 million people line the roadside, while the cumulative TV audience tops 3 billion viewers across 190 countries.

    In 2025, 184 riders will compete in teams of eight, racing a punishing 3,500 km route with nearly 50,000 metres of climbing – roughly the height of Mount Everest six times over. Across 21 stages riders tackle time trials, flat sprints and brutal mountain passes through the Alps, Pyrenees and Massif Central.

    Professional cyclists possess extraordinary endurance and are capable of generating high power outputs day after day. Yet, despite having far less training and support, in recent years a number of amateur cyclists have begun riding the Tour route just days before the pros. The Tour 21 is one such effort and offers cyclists a chance to follow in the tyre tracks of the elite while raising money for a good cause.

    In 2021 I joined 19 others to ride the full route in support of Cure Leukaemia, with a shared goal of raising £1 million for blood cancer research. As a blood cancer survivor diagnosed at 16, this challenge combined my love of cycling, my background in science and my deep desire to give back to the community that helped save my life. It was also a unique opportunity to study how amateur cyclists cope with one of the most demanding endurance events in the world.

    The research findings were published in the Journal of Science and Cycling, to coincide with 2025’s Grand Départ (the official start of the race) in Lille.

    Training for the impossible

    Originally, the study planned to include lab-based physiological assessments of the amateur cyclists undertaking the Tour de France route, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to adapt and rely instead on data from training diaries. These gave us insight into how much (or little) training had been done leading up to the ride, and how riders managed the physical and mental strain during the event itself.

    While professional cyclists typically train 20–25 hours a week – often at altitude, with tailored coaching and racing schedules – our group of amateurs had full-time jobs, were typically 15–20 years older than the pros and trained around seven to ten hours a week.

    Our preparation was far from ideal, averaging just 47km per ride and 350 metres of climbing; a fraction of what the Tour demands. In fact, this amounted to less than 10% of the required climbing during the mountain stages.

    Once the ride began, the contrast between training and reality was stark. The group averaged nearly seven hours of riding a day, a 300% increase from their usual routine. Within four days signs of overtraining began to emerge: riders were no longer able to elevate their heart rates, a classic marker of central nervous system fatigue and excessive physical stress.

    As the days progressed, performance metrics continued to decline: heart rates dropped, power outputs fell and mood scores deteriorated. The cumulative fatigue was undeniable.

    Surprisingly, when we compared our amateur data to metrics from professional riders, we found that although pros ride at much higher power outputs, amateurs were subject to greater relative stress. On some days they spent almost double the time in the saddle, which meant they operated closer to their physical limits, with far less time for recovery – and often suboptimal sleep and nutrition.

    By the final week many of the riders could no longer produce the same power they had in the first few days. In some cases, heart rates wouldn’t rise above 100 beats per minute – a clear sign of accumulated fatigue and physiological overload.

    How to prepare for an ultra-endurance challenge

    If you’re planning to take on a major endurance event – whether it’s cycling, running, or hiking – here are some lessons from the road:

    1. Train specifically for the event

    Your training should mirror the challenge ahead. For the Tour, this meant preparing for long, back-to-back days with significant climbing. Mimic the intensity, volume and terrain as closely as possible.

    2. Understand how quickly fatigue builds

    Over multiple days, fatigue doesn’t just accumulate – it compounds. Listen to your body, adapt your plan and include plenty of recovery time.

    3. Prioritise nutrition and recovery

    These two factors can make or break your performance. You’ll need to consume enough energy to fuel the effort, but avoid excessive intake that leads to unnecessary weight gain. Recovery – through sleep, rest and refuelling – is equally vital.

    4. Work with an experienced coach

    More than fancy bikes or high-tech gear, a good coach is your best investment. They can help tailor your training plan, track your progress and adapt strategies as needed. Don’t underestimate this support.

    A ride to remember

    Completing the Tour de France route is a monumental achievement for any cyclist — amateur or pro. In 2021, our team not only rode the full route, but also raised over £1 million for Cure Leukaemia. For me, it marked a deeply personal milestone in my cancer journey.

    Throughout those 21 days, I thought often of the physical and emotional battles I faced during treatment; moments when I didn’t know if I’d survive, let alone ride across France. That experience gave me the resilience to keep going, even when my body was screaming to stop.

    Riding the Tour taught me that we’re capable of far more than we realise, especially when we ride with purpose.

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

    – ref. I rode the Tour de France to study its impact on the human body – here’s what I learned – https://theconversation.com/i-rode-the-tour-de-france-to-study-its-impact-on-the-human-body-heres-what-i-learned-260524

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: As Netanyahu meets Trump in Washington, what hope for peace in Gaza? Expert Q&A

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor

    The US government “remains upbeat” about the prospects for at least a ceasefire in Gaza, according to the latest reports from Washington, where the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been meeting the US president, Donald Trump.

    Netanyahu handed the US president a letter nominating him for the Nobel peace prize, saying he deserved it for “forging peace, as we speak, in one country in the region after another”. But as yet there are no signs that either Hamas or Israel have moved any closer to accepting each other’s terms.

    In fact, reports emerging from the White House meeting are that the two leaders discussed the displacement of much of the Palestinian population. And a plan revealed by the Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, proposed the contruction of a “humanitarian city” at Rafah in the north of the Gaza Strip to house more than 600,000 Palestinians.

    The Conversation’s senior international affairs editor, Jonathan Este, spoke with Middle East expert, Scott Lucas, of University College Dublin to address this and other questions.

    The two leaders’ discussions in Washington seemed to centre around displacement of the Palestinian population in lieu of a two-state solution. What does this tell you about the chance of a ceasefire deal?

    I am fascinated – and sometimes disillusioned – by how some media outlets, led by the nose, miss the main story. Last week Donald Trump pronounced on social media that Israel had agreed to a 60-day ceasefire and Hamas “should take this deal”.

    But the Netanyahu government has not accepted the framework, circulated by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, let alone consented to a halt of their attacks, which have continued even as the Israeli prime minister travelled to Washington to meet the US president.

    As Trump hosted Netanyahu in the White House on Monday, the line was that the US president was “upbeat on Gaza ceasefire talks”. Meanwhile, few of them seemed to notice the important development. Hamas responded to the US framework with proposals for the staged release of 28 of the remaining 50 Israeli hostages over the 60 days while Israeli troops withdrew from positions inside the Strip and humanitarian aid was restored.

    But the Israeli government has thus far not given a substantive response. Instead, while pursuing a plan for the long-term military occupation of Gaza, it may also be seeking the displacement of a large portion of the more than 2.2 million population.

    Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

    Hard-right members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, such as finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and internal security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, have long called for more than a million Gazans to be moved out of the territory. Reports over the weekend confirmed that this is not rhetoric. Israeli businessmen and venture capitalists have reportedly been working on plans for postwar Gaza, to include a “Trump riviera”, mirroring the displacement declaration by the US President, and an “Elon Musk smart manufacturing zone”.

    On Tuesday, security cabinet member Ze’ev Elkin, a Netanyahu loyalist, proclaimed “a substantial chance” for a ceasefire. But Qatari negotiators have said there are currently no talks, only discussions with each side about the framework for talks.

    Meanwhile, citing the killing of five Israeli soldiers in Gaza on Sunday night by an improvised explosive device, Ben-Gvir said: “We should not negotiate with those who kill our soldiers. They should be crushed to pieces, starved to death, and not resuscitated with humanitarian aid that gives them oxygen.”

    He called for “a complete siege, crushing them militarily” and reiterated the plan for “encouraging [Palestinian] immigration and [Jewish] settlement — these are the keys to complete victory”.

    Smotrich also called for a ban on any aid to Gaza: “In addition, I demand … that any territory that was conquered and cleansed of terror with the blood of our fighters not be abandoned.”

    So I am not optimistic at the moment.

    Looking at the region as a whole, two events have ‘reset’ the Middle East: the October 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s recent 12-day war. Can you tell me more about the kaleidoscope effect these two events had?

    In October 2023, there was no open-ended war in Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu’s focus was on curbing the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, blocking any possibility of a two-state solution. His tactic was to ease the economic pressure on Gaza and Hamas, maintaining that organisation as a balance against its West Bank rivals.

    Hamas ripped up that approach with its mass murder on October 7 – the first of the two kaleidoscope moments which changed the whole picture in a matter of hours. The attack triggered the deadly Israeli response that continues 21 months later. That response did not “destroy” Hamas, as Netanyahu pledged, but it led the Israelis to take on other foes in the region.

    Pursuing its “octopus doctrine”, Israel severely damaged one of the tentacles, Hezbollah, when it destroyed much of the Lebanese group’s leadership in the autumn of 2024. It assassinated senior Iranian commanders and officials in Damascus, and received a further boost when Turkish-backed factions toppled the Assad regime in December.

    The 12-day war in June aimed to destroy the head of the octopus: Iran. Israel’s strikes and assassinations killed much of the country’s military leadership and many of its top nuclear scientists. The supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, hid in a bunker, only emerging on July 6. But Israel failed to topple his regime, as it had hoped.

    The war was another kaleidoscope moment. Israel had its regional victory. But paradoxically, because there has been no resolution in Gaza, this has come at the cost of further international isolation. Gulf States, having moved away from “normalisation” with Israel, put out tougher statements about “genocide” of Gazans and the violation of Iranian sovereignty. Saudi Arabia’s state media highlighted a letter from Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi to Saudi counterpart Faisal bin Farhan for “ways to support and enhance [relations] across all fields”.

    This implies that for any normalisation to occur, Israel must end its military operation in Gaza?

    That question cuts to the chase. The Gulf states, with the notable exception of Qatar, are no friends of Hamas. They might even have accepted the destruction of the group if Israel had been able to accomplish it quickly.

    But there is no way that they can publicly acquiesce in the killing of almost 60,000 Gazans, the large majority of them civilians, and the humanitarian blockade that threatens every single person living in the Gaza Strip. Nor will they want to see Israel export Gazans across the region in an echo of the 1948 “Nakba” whose legacy is the millions of Palestinians living in refugee camps across the Middle East.

    Netanyahu can pursue his “absolute destruction” of Hamas by pursuing the destruction and displacement of Gazans. Or he can try to capitalise on his war with Iran through links with Arab countries. He cannot do both.

    Will Donald Trump get his Nobel peace prize?

    I don’t know, for that is a question which does not have a logical answer.

    Herny Kissinger was the US secretary of state who oversaw an escalation of the Vietnam war in which up to 3 million Vietnamese, 310,000 Cambodians, 62,000 Laotians and 58,220 US service members died. The singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer aptly noted: “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

    We are in a world where having caused so much disorder and chaos, having enabled violence, including Israel’s open-ended war, Donald Trump may succeed in a pose as “peacemaker”.

    Some may see the least worst option as flattery, which seems to work as a strategy for dealing with the US president. They may accept the White House theatre in which Netanyahu, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, personally hands Trump a peace prize nomination.

    Meanwhile, in the past 24 hours, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, the number of casualties in Gaza rose to 57,575 people killed and 136,879 wounded. Twenty hostages spent another day in limbo. That’s what matters here.

    – ref. As Netanyahu meets Trump in Washington, what hope for peace in Gaza? Expert Q&A – https://theconversation.com/as-netanyahu-meets-trump-in-washington-what-hope-for-peace-in-gaza-expert-qanda-260722

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: How to support someone who is grieving: five research-backed strategies

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lucy Poxon, Senior Lecturer in Counselling Psychology, Department of Social Work Counselling & Social Care , School of Childhood and Social Care, University of East London

    PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock

    When someone we care about is grieving the loss of a loved one, our natural instinct is to ease their pain. But when words feel clumsy and gestures fall short, it can be hard to know how to help.

    Drawing on both my research as a counselling psychologist and 18 years of supporting bereaved clients in therapy, I’ve identified five compassionate, research-backed ways to walk alongside someone who is mourning.

    Whether you’re a close friend, family member, or caring colleague, these approaches will help you offer support in meaningful and authentic ways.

    1. Grief wears many disguises

    Our expectations of how grief should look are often shaped by culture, the media or personal experience, and they may bear little resemblance to how grief is actually lived.

    Grief can appear as physical symptoms like exhaustion, loss of appetite, or insomnia; as behaviour like withdrawing from others or drinking more; and as thoughts or emotions ranging from apathy and numbness to anger or intense sadness.

    It can be loud and overwhelming or quiet and barely perceptible. Some people feel deep sorrow immediately; others feel nothing for weeks or even months. A lack of overt sadness isn’t necessarily cause for concern; it may reflect relief that a loved one is no longer suffering, or be a sign of early adjustment.



    Read more:
    Not all mourning happens after bereavement – for some, grief can start years before the death of a loved one

    One of the most compassionate things you can do is validate whatever shape grief takes. Reassure the person that there’s no “right” way to grieve and support them in tuning into what their body and emotions need.

    2. Acknowledge the death and don’t rush the tears

    Nearly every grieving client I’ve worked with has described someone, often a friend, colleague, or even family member, who avoided or ignored them after the loss. It’s one of the most painful experiences for someone already feeling vulnerable.

    Often, the avoidance isn’t malicious. It’s driven by fear of saying the wrong thing or not knowing how to help. But by avoiding the subject, we send an unintended message: your grief is too much.

    Acknowledging the death, even simply by saying “I’m so sorry to hear about your loss”, is not a reminder of their pain, it’s a sign that you see it and honour it. Inviting someone out, even if they decline, communicates that they still belong and are welcome.

    If someone begins to cry, it’s natural to want to fix things, to offer comfort, or even to pass a tissue. But giving a tissue too soon can inadvertently signal that they should stop crying. Sometimes the most supportive thing you can do is to sit with your own discomfort, and simply be present. That silent witness can help a grieving person feel less alone.

    3. Let go of the “stages of grief” myth

    Many people are still taught to expect a tidy progression of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, popularised by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in the 1960s. While these emotions are real and common, research shows that most people don’t experience them in a neat order, or even experience all five at all.

    Despite being widely critiqued, stage-based models are still found in healthcare training manuals and TV scripts, and they can leave people feeling like they’re grieving “wrong”.

    If your loved one is worried they should feel more sadness, or wonders why they haven’t yet felt angry, remind them: grief is personal and unpredictable. There’s no timeline, no script and no shame in not following one.

    Helping someone let go of these expectations may ease guilt, reduce internal pressure and encourage gentler self-care.

    4. Encourage communication – with the living and the lost

    Grief often comes with emotional loneliness, a deep sense of aloneness that persists even in the presence of others. It’s different from social isolation; it’s the ache of missing someone irreplaceable.



    Read more:
    What we can learn from death rites of the past will help us treat the dead and grieving better today

    While you can’t fix that loneliness, you can help the bereaved maintain a continuing bond with their loved one. This might include writing letters to the person who has died, speaking to them at a graveside or special place, saying prayers or engaging in meditation or creating memory boxes or rituals.

    These forms of connection can help integrate the loss into a new reality. You might offer to visit a meaningful place together, or support them in planning a small memorial gesture.

    5. Make specific, practical offers

    It’s common to say “Let me know if you need anything”, but for someone in deep grief, reaching out can feel impossible. Emotional overwhelm, fatigue and even shame can prevent them from asking for help, even when they desperately need it.

    Instead, make intentional, concrete offers that remove decision-making and emotional labour. These might include:

    • delivering a home-cooked meal once a week

    • taking care of pets or houseplants

    • helping with funeral admin or paperwork

    • offering regular lifts to appointments

    • updating others on their behalf

    • messaging with a clear “no need to reply” reassurance

    If you live far away, sending a card, text, or voice note can still be powerful; just be mindful that they may receive many, and feel pressure to respond. A line like, “No need to write back, just wanted you to know I’m thinking of you” can go a long way.

    Grief is not a puzzle to solve or a wound to fix. It’s a human response to love and loss – and it’s different for everyone.

    The most powerful thing you can do? Be there. Stay present. Listen without judgement. And remember that it’s okay not to have the perfect words. Showing up with authenticity, patience and compassion is what matters most.

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

    – ref. How to support someone who is grieving: five research-backed strategies – https://theconversation.com/how-to-support-someone-who-is-grieving-five-research-backed-strategies-260265

    MIL OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Submissions: Brics is sliding towards irrelevance – the Rio summit made that clear

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Amalendu Misra, Professor of International Politics, Lancaster University

    The Brics group of nations has just concluded its 17th annual summit in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. But, despite member states adopting a long list of commitments covering global governance, finance, health, AI and climate change, the summit was a lacklustre affair.

    The two most prominent leaders from the group’s founding members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – were conspicuously absent. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, only attended virtually due to an outstanding arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court over his role in the war in Ukraine.

    China’s Xi Jinping avoided the summit altogether for unknown reasons, sending his prime minister, Li Qiang, instead. This was Xi’s first no-show at a Brics summit, with the snub prompting suggestions that Beijing’s enthusiasm for the group as part of an emerging new world order is in decline.

    Perhaps the most notable takeaway from the summit was a statement that came not from the Brics nations but the US. As Brics leaders gathered in Rio, the US president, Donald Trump, warned on social media: “Any Country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS, will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10% Tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy.”

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

    Trump has long been critical of Brics. This is largely because the group has consistently floated the idea of adopting a common currency to challenge the dominance of the US dollar in international trade.

    Such a move makes sense if we focus on trade figures. In 2024, the value of trade among the Brics nations was around US$5 trillion, accounting for approximately 22% of global exports. Member nations have always felt their economic potential could be fully realised if they were not reliant upon the US dollar as their common currency of trade.

    During their 2024 summit, which was held in the Russian city of Kazan, the Brics nations entered into serious discussions around creating a gold-backed currency. At a time when the Trump administration is waging a global trade war, the emergence of an alternative to the US dollar would be a very serious pushback against US economic hegemony.



    Read more:
    Why Donald Trump’s election could hasten the end of US dollar dominance

    But the freshly concluded Brics summit did not present any concrete move towards achieving that objective. In fact, the 31-page Rio de Janeiro joint declaration even contained some reassurances about the global importance of the US dollar.

    There are two key obstacles hindering Brics from translating its vision of a common currency into reality. First is that some founding member nations are uncomfortable with adopting such an economic model, in large part due to internal rivalries within Brics itself.

    India, currently the fourth-largest economy in the world, has a history of periodic confrontation and strategic competition with China. It is reticent about adopting an alternative to the US dollar, concerned that this could make China more powerful and undercut India’s long-term interests.

    Second is that the Brics member nations are dependent on their bilateral trade with the US. Simply put, embracing an alternative currency is counterproductive when it comes to the current economic interests of individual countries. Brazil, China and India, for example, all export more to the US than they import from it.

    In December 2024, following his election as US president, Trump said: “We require a commitment from these countries that they will neither create a new Brics currency nor back any other currency to replace the mighty US dollar or they will face 100% tariffs and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful US economy”. This blunt message all but killed any enthusiasm that was there for this grand economic model.

    Caught in contradiction

    The Brics group is a behemoth. Its full 11 members account for 40% of the world’s population and economy. But the bloc is desperately short of providing any cohesive alternative global leadership.

    While Brazil used its position as host to highlight Brics as a truly multilateral forum capable of providing leadership in a new world order, such ambitions are thwarted by the many contradictions plaguing this bloc.

    Among these are tensions between founding members China and India, which have been running high for decades.

    There are other contradictions, too. In their joint Rio declaration, the group’s members decried the recent Israeli and US attacks on Iran. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, also used his position as summit host to criticise the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

    But this moral high ground appears hollow when you consider that the Russian Federation, a key member of Brics, is on a mission to destroy Ukraine. And rather than condemning Russia, Brics leaders used the Rio summit to criticise recent Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s railway infrastructure.

    Brics declared intention to address the issue of climate change is also problematic. The Rio declaration conveyed the group’s support for multilateralism and unity to achieve the goals of the Paris agreement. But, despite China making significant advances in its green energy sector, Brics contains some of the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases as well as several of the largest oil and gas producers.

    Brics can only stay relevant and provide credible leadership in a fast-changing international order when it addresses its many inner contradictions.

    Amalendu Misra is a recipient of British Academy and Nuffield Foundation Fellowships.

    – ref. Brics is sliding towards irrelevance – the Rio summit made that clear – https://theconversation.com/brics-is-sliding-towards-irrelevance-the-rio-summit-made-that-clear-260653

    MIL OSI –

  • UP: Meerut gets Agritech Innovation Hub to boost rural farming technology

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (4)

    Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Minister of State for Skill Development and Education Jayant Chaudhary on Tuesday inaugurated an Agritech Innovation Hub and Startup Technology Showcase at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel University of Agriculture and Technology (SVPUAT) in Meerut, aiming to promote precision farming and sustainable agriculture in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

    Pradhan said the initiative is part of a broader push to modernise India’s farming sector and increase farmers’ incomes, adding that the vision of a developed India remains incomplete without prosperous villages and self-reliant farmers.

    The new hub will deploy artificial intelligence, machine learning and real-time data analytics to help farmers increase productivity while adopting chemical-free, natural farming practices.

    “India’s services sector has reached global standards, but the soul of India still resides in its fields and barns,” Pradhan said, crediting Prime Minister Narendra Modi for encouraging technology-driven farming solutions.

    The centre is being developed in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar, which will contribute IoT-enabled sensors, automation technologies and cloud computing infrastructure worth up to Rs. 75 lakhs. An MoU was signed between IIT Ropar and SVPUAT to expand research and academic collaboration in agritech.

    Speaking at the launch, Chaudhary said the project would create a collaborative ecosystem for farmers, startups and researchers to co-develop practical solutions for the agriculture sector.

    The event also featured an exhibition of 20 agritech startups, a demonstration at SVPUAT’s Model Smart Farm and the felicitation of farmers adopting modern and sustainable practices.

    The hub will work with Krishi Vigyan Kendras and Farmer Producer Organisations to train rural youth and farmers, with the aim of scaling region-specific solutions across North India.

  • UP: Meerut gets Agritech Innovation Hub to boost rural farming technology

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (4)

    Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Minister of State for Skill Development and Education Jayant Chaudhary on Tuesday inaugurated an Agritech Innovation Hub and Startup Technology Showcase at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel University of Agriculture and Technology (SVPUAT) in Meerut, aiming to promote precision farming and sustainable agriculture in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

    Pradhan said the initiative is part of a broader push to modernise India’s farming sector and increase farmers’ incomes, adding that the vision of a developed India remains incomplete without prosperous villages and self-reliant farmers.

    The new hub will deploy artificial intelligence, machine learning and real-time data analytics to help farmers increase productivity while adopting chemical-free, natural farming practices.

    “India’s services sector has reached global standards, but the soul of India still resides in its fields and barns,” Pradhan said, crediting Prime Minister Narendra Modi for encouraging technology-driven farming solutions.

    The centre is being developed in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar, which will contribute IoT-enabled sensors, automation technologies and cloud computing infrastructure worth up to Rs. 75 lakhs. An MoU was signed between IIT Ropar and SVPUAT to expand research and academic collaboration in agritech.

    Speaking at the launch, Chaudhary said the project would create a collaborative ecosystem for farmers, startups and researchers to co-develop practical solutions for the agriculture sector.

    The event also featured an exhibition of 20 agritech startups, a demonstration at SVPUAT’s Model Smart Farm and the felicitation of farmers adopting modern and sustainable practices.

    The hub will work with Krishi Vigyan Kendras and Farmer Producer Organisations to train rural youth and farmers, with the aim of scaling region-specific solutions across North India.

  • UP: Meerut gets Agritech Innovation Hub to boost rural farming technology

    Source: Government of India

    Source: Government of India (4)

    Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Minister of State for Skill Development and Education Jayant Chaudhary on Tuesday inaugurated an Agritech Innovation Hub and Startup Technology Showcase at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel University of Agriculture and Technology (SVPUAT) in Meerut, aiming to promote precision farming and sustainable agriculture in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

    Pradhan said the initiative is part of a broader push to modernise India’s farming sector and increase farmers’ incomes, adding that the vision of a developed India remains incomplete without prosperous villages and self-reliant farmers.

    The new hub will deploy artificial intelligence, machine learning and real-time data analytics to help farmers increase productivity while adopting chemical-free, natural farming practices.

    “India’s services sector has reached global standards, but the soul of India still resides in its fields and barns,” Pradhan said, crediting Prime Minister Narendra Modi for encouraging technology-driven farming solutions.

    The centre is being developed in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar, which will contribute IoT-enabled sensors, automation technologies and cloud computing infrastructure worth up to Rs. 75 lakhs. An MoU was signed between IIT Ropar and SVPUAT to expand research and academic collaboration in agritech.

    Speaking at the launch, Chaudhary said the project would create a collaborative ecosystem for farmers, startups and researchers to co-develop practical solutions for the agriculture sector.

    The event also featured an exhibition of 20 agritech startups, a demonstration at SVPUAT’s Model Smart Farm and the felicitation of farmers adopting modern and sustainable practices.

    The hub will work with Krishi Vigyan Kendras and Farmer Producer Organisations to train rural youth and farmers, with the aim of scaling region-specific solutions across North India.

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: expert reaction to study looking at underlying mechanisms of the known, rare side effect, vaccine-induced immune thrombosis and thrombocytopenia (VITT), associated with adenoviral Covid vaccines

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    A study published in the NIHR’s Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation journal looks at the mechanisms of a known rare side effect, vaccine-induced immune thrombosis (VITT) and thrombocytopenia, associated with adenoviral Covid vaccines.

    Prof Adam Finn, Professor of Paediatrics, University of Bristol, said:

    “This is a summary of the findings to date of several distinct pieces of research intended to increase our understanding of VITT.  The work was extensive, took a number of different approaches, and provided some additional evidence around the potential pathogenetic mechanisms.  However, a complete understanding of the genetic and environmental factors which drive these rare reactions remains elusive, partly because of the relatively small number of individuals affected who could be studied.”

    ‘Understanding mechanisms of thrombosis and thrombocytopenia with adenoviral SARS-CoV-2 vaccines: a comprehensive synopsis’ by Phillip LR Nicolson et al. was published in the NIHR’s Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation journal.

    DOI: 10.3310/FFSS9010

    Declared interests

    Prof Adam Finn: “Adam Finn is a member of JCVI subcommittees relating to varicella-zoster, pneumococcal and respiratory syncytial virus vaccines and of the WHO working group on COVID19 vaccines.  He leads epidemiological research for the University of Bristol funded by Pfizer.  He undertakes paid consultancy for multiple vaccine development and manufacturing companies.  He was an investigator in trials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID19 vaccine during the pandemic.”

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Boozman Recognized for Support of Medical Education and Research

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Arkansas – John Boozman

    WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR) was recognized with the 2025 Champion of Academic Medicine Award from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) for demonstrating extraordinary leadership advancing priorities that benefit patients, medical educators, academic institutions and the broader health care system. 

    “I’m proud to champion the vital work of our nation’s academic medical centers, medical schools and the future physicians they train. Strengthening our health care workforce, especially in rural and underserved communities, is critical to improve access to care and support the next generation of providers in Arkansas and across the country for years to come. I look forward to further advocating key policies that protect and enhance medical education,” Boozman said.

    AAMC President and CEO Dr. David Skorton, along with Founding Dean and CEO of Alice L. Walton Medical School Dr. Sharmila Makhija and University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences outgoing Chancellor Dr. Cam Patterson, presented Boozman with the award in his Washington office.

    “We applaud Sen. Boozman for his tireless efforts to highlight and support the critical work of the nation’s academic health systems and teaching hospitals in driving innovation and improving patient care,” Skorton said. “His strong support and steadfast leadership has paved the way for lawmakers to better understand what’s at stake –– a growing nationwide physician shortage, a dire need for the United States to remain competitive in health care innovation and economic growth, and an urgent need to invest in the advancements that save patient lives.” 

    In March, Boozman introduced the Physicians for Underserved Areas Act and the Resident Education Deferred Interest (REDI) Act to increase available medical residency spots, prioritize placement in rural and underserved areas and ease financial burdens on medical professionals completing their medical training. 

    Boozman has also been at the forefront of a bipartisan push to lift the 25-year freeze on Medicare-supported graduate medical education positions, including helping to secure more than 1,000 new residency slots.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI: Ageas and BlackRock, Inc.: Transparency notification

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    In accordance with the rules on financial transparency*, BlackRock, Inc. has notified Ageas on 3 July 2025 that, on 1 July 2025, its interest has exceeded the legal threshold of 5% of the shares issued by Ageas. Its current shareholding stands at 7,78%.

    Reason for the notification
    Acquisition or disposal of the control of an undertaking that holds a participating interest in an issuer

    Notification by
    A parent undertaking or a controlling person

    Persons subject to the notification requirement
    See annex 1a

    Date on which the threshold is crossed
    1 July 2025

    Threshold that is crossed (in %)
    5%

    Denominator
    198.938.286

    Notified details
    See annex 1 b

    Chain of controlled undertakings through which the holding is effectively held, if applicable
    The full chain of command can be found on https://www.ageas.com/investors/shareholders

    Additional information
    As a result of the acquisition of HPS Investment Partners, there has been a change to BlackRock’s group structure. Upon the close of the transaction, BlackRock, Inc. contributed all of its equity interests in BlackRock Finance, Inc. and Global Infrastructure Management, LLC to BlackRock Saturn Subco, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company.

    This press release and the notifications received by Ageas are available on the website.

    * article 14, paragraph 1 of the law of 2 May 2007 on disclosure of major holdings us provisions.

    Ageas is a Belgian rooted listed international insurance Group with a heritage spanning 200 years. It offers Retail and Business customers Life and Non-Life insurance products designed to suit their specific needs, today and tomorrow, and is also engaged in reinsurance activities. As one of Europe’s larger insurance companies, Ageas concentrates its activities in Europe and Asia, which together make up the major part of the global insurance market. It operates successful insurance businesses in Belgium, the UK, Portugal, Türkiye, China, Malaysia, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Singapore, and the Philippines through a combination of wholly owned subsidiaries and long term partnerships with strong financial institutions and key distributors. Ageas ranks among the market leaders in the countries in which it operates. It represents a staff force of about 50,000 people and reported annual inflows of EUR 18.5 billion in 2024.

    ANNEX 1a

    Name Address (for legal entities)
    BlackRock, Inc. 50 Hudson Yards, New York, NY, 10001, U.S.A.
    BlackRock (Singapore) Limited 20 Anson Road #18-01, Singapore, 79912, Singapore
    BlackRock Advisors (UK) Limited 12 Throgmorton Avenue, London, EC2N 2DL, U.K.
    BlackRock Advisors, LLC 50 Hudson Yards, New York, NY, 10001, U.S.A.
    BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited 161 Bay Street, Suite 2500, Toronto, Ontario, M5J 2S1, Canada
    BlackRock Asset Management Deutschland AG Lenbachplatz 1 1st Floor, Munich, 80333-MN3, Germany
    BlackRock Asset Management North Asia Limited 15/F, 16/F, 17/F Citibank Tower & 17/F ICBC Tower, 3 Garden Road, Central, Hong Kong
    BlackRock Financial Management, Inc. 50 Hudson Yards, New York, NY, 10001, U.S.A.
    BlackRock Fund Advisors 400 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA, 94105, U.S.A.
    BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, National Association 400 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA, 94105, U.S.A.
    BlackRock International Limited Exchange Place One, 1 Semple Street, Edinburgh, EH3 8BL, U.K.
    BlackRock Investment Management (Australia) Limited Level 37 Chifley Tower, 2 Chifley Square, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia
    BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Limited 12 Throgmorton Avenue, London, EC2N 2DL, U.K.
    BlackRock Investment Management, LLC 1 University Square Drive, Princeton, NJ, 8540, U.S.A.
    BlackRock Japan Co., Ltd. 1-8-3 Marunouchi Chiyoda-ku, Trust Tower Main, Tokyo, 100-8217, Japan
    Aperio Group, LLC 3 Harbor Dr Suite 204, Sausalito, CA 94965, U.S.A.
    SpiderRock Advisors, LLC Corporation Service Company, 251 Little Falls Drive, Wilmington, DE 19808, U.S.A.

    ANNEX 1b

    A) Voting rights Previous notification After the transaction  
      # of voting rights # of voting rights % of voting rights  
    Holders of voting rights   Linked to securities Not linked to the securities Linked to securities Not linked to the securities S
    BlackRock, Inc. 0 0   0,00%   1
    BlackRock (Singapore) Limited 26.755 26.310   0,01%   1
    BlackRock Advisors (UK) Limited 2.917.790 3.172.318   1,59%   1
    BlackRock Advisors, LLC 203.203 332.981   0,17%   1
    BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited 147.243 262.978   0,13%   1
    BlackRock Asset Management Deutschland AG 1.811.227 1.362.308   0,68%   1
    BlackRock Asset Management North Asia Limited 25.474 25.829   0,01%   1
    BlackRock Financial Management, Inc. 50.348 190.132   0,10%   1
    BlackRock Fund Advisors 3.769.688 3.810.650   1,92%   1
    BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, National Association 2.088.675 2.690.187   1,35%   1
    BlackRock International Limited 1.637 12.647   0,01%   1
    BlackRock Investment Management (Australia) Limited 69.199 56.242   0,03%   1
    BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Limited 895.264 1.142.495   0,57%   1
    BlackRock Investment Management, LLC 418.682 373.405   0,19%   1
    BlackRock Japan Co., Ltd. 285.173 300.448   0,15%   1
    Aperio Group, LLC 18.343 21.757   0,01%   1
    Subtotal 12.728.700 13.780.688   6,93%   S
      TOTAL 13.780.688 0 6,93% 0,00%  
    B) Equivalent financial instruments After the transaction
    Holders of equivalent
    financial instruments    		 Type of financial instrument Expiration date Exercise period or date # of voting rights that may be acquired if the instrument is exercised % of voting rights Settlement  
    BlackRock Advisors, LLC Contract Difference     641.303 0,32% cash  
    BlackRock Financial Management, Inc. Contract Difference     513.136 0,26% cash  
    BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, National Association Contract Difference     326.027 0,16% cash  
    BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Limited Contract Difference     13.097 0,01% cash  
    BlackRock Investment Management, LLC Contract Difference     845 0,00% cash  
    Aperio Group, LLC Depositary Receipt     195.684 0,10%    
    SpiderRock Advisors, LLC Depositary Receipt     158 0,00%    
      TOTAL   1.690.250 0,85%    
      TOTAL (A & B)     # of voting rights % of voting rights    
          CALCULATE 15.470.938 7,78%    

            

    Attachment

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Alcohol sales changed subtly after Canada legalized cannabis

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Michael J. Armstrong, Associate Professor, Operations Research, Brock University

    In Canada, some studies indicate alcohol consumption declined slightly as medical cannabis use became more common. Did similar decreases follow recreational legalization? (Unsplash+)

    Before Canada legalized recreational cannabis in October 2018, it was unclear how the change might affect beverage alcohol consumption. Would consumers drink less or more after cannabis became legal?

    Drinking might decrease, for example, if people used cannabis in place of alcohol. That switch potentially could reduce alcohol-related harms. But economically, it would mean any gains in the cannabis industry would likely come at the expense of alcohol producers.

    Conversely, drinking might increase if people used alcohol along with cannabis. That could boost alcohol industry profits and government tax revenues, but at the cost of increased health risks of both substances.

    In response to this uncertainty, some businesses diversified. One alcohol producer bought a cannabis grower, while a cannabis firm took took over several beer brewers.

    Research from the United States into the relationship between alcohol and cannabis use is inconclusive. Some studies report that alcohol use decreased in states that allowed cannabis, while others said usage increased or didn’t significantly change. Those conflicting conclusions might reflect the complex legal situation in the United States, where cannabis remains illegal under federal law, even in states that allow its use.

    In Canada, some studies indicate alcohol consumption declined slightly as medical cannabis use became more common. Did similar decreases follow recreational legalization?

    To investigate this question, I first collaborated with health science researchers Daniel Myran, Robert Talarico, Jennifer Xiao and Rachael MacDonald-Spracklin to study Canada’s overall alcohol sales.

    Total sales looked stable

    We started our research by examining annual alcohol sales from 2004 to 2022. During that period, beer sales gradually fell, while the sale of coolers and other drinks steadily rose. That left total sales basically unchanged.

    So consumers were apparently switching from beer to other beverages. But there were no obvious effects from 2018’s cannabis legalization.

    Annual Canadian beverage alcohol sales from 2004 to 2022, in litres of ethanol content per capita. The vertical gray bar marks cannabis legalization.
    (Statistics Canada), CC BY-ND

    We also compared monthly sales during the 12 months before legalization versus the 12 after. This included national average sales by liquor retailers and beer producers. In both cases, sales trends showed no significant changes in October 2018.

    However, this research on Canada-wide sales was mainly designed to detect large changes. To find subtler ones, I focused on the province of Nova Scotia.

    Some liquor stores sold cannabis

    When Canada legalized cannabis, most provinces banned liquor stores from selling it to avoid tempting alcohol drinkers into trying cannabis.

    Nova Scotia did the opposite. Its government-owned liquor corporation became the main cannabis retailer. After legalization in October 2018, most provincial liquor stores kept selling only alcohol, but some began selling cannabis as well.

    This unique situation prompted me to study the province’s sales. I focused on the 17 months before and 17 months after legalization.

    The corporation’s total alcohol sales initially fell in October 2018, then slowly regrew. As a result, monthly sales after legalization averaged about $500,000 below their earlier levels.

    More interestingly, the changes differed between the cannabis-selling stores and the alcohol-only ones. At the alcohol-only stores, sales immediately fell. They averaged $800,000 below previous levels.

    But at cannabis-sellers, alcohol sales began growing. Total monthly sales from October 2018 to February 2020 averaged $300,000 above earlier levels.

    Seasonally adjusted Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation retail sales of beverage alcohol in Canadian dollars, from May 2017 to February 2020. The vertical gray bar marks cannabis legalization.
    (Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation), CC BY-ND

    The divergence in sales was larger for beers than for spirits or wines.

    Interestingly, alcohol-only stores located near cannabis-selling stores had changes similar to those located farther away, suggesting that cannabis-seller proximity didn’t matter.

    Switching substances or stores?

    My data can’t say why the sales split occurred, but I can speculate.

    Consider the immediate sales drop at alcohol-only stores — this could suggest some consumers switched from alcohol to cannabis right after legalization.

    Meanwhile, the lack of a drop at cannabis sellers might mean some consumers simply changed where they shopped. Instead of visiting their local alcohol-only retailer, they went to cannabis sellers to shop for alcohol and cannabis together.

    The cannabis sellers’ ongoing growth might reflect people increasingly buying cannabis from licensed stores instead of illegal dealers. They went to those stores to buy weed, but picked up some extra booze while they were there.

    Looking ahead

    My research so far has focused on the initial post-legalization period, from October 2018 to February 2020.

    I plan to study later periods next, when cannabis retailing was more widespread and perhaps more influential.

    That will be more challenging, however, because COVID-19 arrived in March 2020. The pandemic disrupted sales of alcohol, though not of cannabis. It will be tricky to separate cannabis effects from pandemic ones, or from Canadian consumers’ evolving drinking habits in general.

    My guess is that cannabis legalization had little short-term impact on existing drinkers overall. Most Canadians didn’t suddenly consume cannabis with their cabernet or replace vodka with vapes.

    Instead, we might see gradual long-term shifts. Young Canadians now reach legal age in a context where cannabis and alcohol are both allowed. Some folks who previously would have started drinking alcohol might now choose cannabis instead, or in addition.

    For now, alcohol drinking is still three times more common than cannabis use. Whether that continues, only time will tell.

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

    – ref. Alcohol sales changed subtly after Canada legalized cannabis – https://theconversation.com/alcohol-sales-changed-subtly-after-canada-legalized-cannabis-260375

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Alcohol sales changed subtly after Canada legalized cannabis

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Michael J. Armstrong, Associate Professor, Operations Research, Brock University

    In Canada, some studies indicate alcohol consumption declined slightly as medical cannabis use became more common. Did similar decreases follow recreational legalization? (Unsplash+)

    Before Canada legalized recreational cannabis in October 2018, it was unclear how the change might affect beverage alcohol consumption. Would consumers drink less or more after cannabis became legal?

    Drinking might decrease, for example, if people used cannabis in place of alcohol. That switch potentially could reduce alcohol-related harms. But economically, it would mean any gains in the cannabis industry would likely come at the expense of alcohol producers.

    Conversely, drinking might increase if people used alcohol along with cannabis. That could boost alcohol industry profits and government tax revenues, but at the cost of increased health risks of both substances.

    In response to this uncertainty, some businesses diversified. One alcohol producer bought a cannabis grower, while a cannabis firm took took over several beer brewers.

    Research from the United States into the relationship between alcohol and cannabis use is inconclusive. Some studies report that alcohol use decreased in states that allowed cannabis, while others said usage increased or didn’t significantly change. Those conflicting conclusions might reflect the complex legal situation in the United States, where cannabis remains illegal under federal law, even in states that allow its use.

    In Canada, some studies indicate alcohol consumption declined slightly as medical cannabis use became more common. Did similar decreases follow recreational legalization?

    To investigate this question, I first collaborated with health science researchers Daniel Myran, Robert Talarico, Jennifer Xiao and Rachael MacDonald-Spracklin to study Canada’s overall alcohol sales.

    Total sales looked stable

    We started our research by examining annual alcohol sales from 2004 to 2022. During that period, beer sales gradually fell, while the sale of coolers and other drinks steadily rose. That left total sales basically unchanged.

    So consumers were apparently switching from beer to other beverages. But there were no obvious effects from 2018’s cannabis legalization.

    Annual Canadian beverage alcohol sales from 2004 to 2022, in litres of ethanol content per capita. The vertical gray bar marks cannabis legalization.
    (Statistics Canada), CC BY-ND

    We also compared monthly sales during the 12 months before legalization versus the 12 after. This included national average sales by liquor retailers and beer producers. In both cases, sales trends showed no significant changes in October 2018.

    However, this research on Canada-wide sales was mainly designed to detect large changes. To find subtler ones, I focused on the province of Nova Scotia.

    Some liquor stores sold cannabis

    When Canada legalized cannabis, most provinces banned liquor stores from selling it to avoid tempting alcohol drinkers into trying cannabis.

    Nova Scotia did the opposite. Its government-owned liquor corporation became the main cannabis retailer. After legalization in October 2018, most provincial liquor stores kept selling only alcohol, but some began selling cannabis as well.

    This unique situation prompted me to study the province’s sales. I focused on the 17 months before and 17 months after legalization.

    The corporation’s total alcohol sales initially fell in October 2018, then slowly regrew. As a result, monthly sales after legalization averaged about $500,000 below their earlier levels.

    More interestingly, the changes differed between the cannabis-selling stores and the alcohol-only ones. At the alcohol-only stores, sales immediately fell. They averaged $800,000 below previous levels.

    But at cannabis-sellers, alcohol sales began growing. Total monthly sales from October 2018 to February 2020 averaged $300,000 above earlier levels.

    Seasonally adjusted Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation retail sales of beverage alcohol in Canadian dollars, from May 2017 to February 2020. The vertical gray bar marks cannabis legalization.
    (Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation), CC BY-ND

    The divergence in sales was larger for beers than for spirits or wines.

    Interestingly, alcohol-only stores located near cannabis-selling stores had changes similar to those located farther away, suggesting that cannabis-seller proximity didn’t matter.

    Switching substances or stores?

    My data can’t say why the sales split occurred, but I can speculate.

    Consider the immediate sales drop at alcohol-only stores — this could suggest some consumers switched from alcohol to cannabis right after legalization.

    Meanwhile, the lack of a drop at cannabis sellers might mean some consumers simply changed where they shopped. Instead of visiting their local alcohol-only retailer, they went to cannabis sellers to shop for alcohol and cannabis together.

    The cannabis sellers’ ongoing growth might reflect people increasingly buying cannabis from licensed stores instead of illegal dealers. They went to those stores to buy weed, but picked up some extra booze while they were there.

    Looking ahead

    My research so far has focused on the initial post-legalization period, from October 2018 to February 2020.

    I plan to study later periods next, when cannabis retailing was more widespread and perhaps more influential.

    That will be more challenging, however, because COVID-19 arrived in March 2020. The pandemic disrupted sales of alcohol, though not of cannabis. It will be tricky to separate cannabis effects from pandemic ones, or from Canadian consumers’ evolving drinking habits in general.

    My guess is that cannabis legalization had little short-term impact on existing drinkers overall. Most Canadians didn’t suddenly consume cannabis with their cabernet or replace vodka with vapes.

    Instead, we might see gradual long-term shifts. Young Canadians now reach legal age in a context where cannabis and alcohol are both allowed. Some folks who previously would have started drinking alcohol might now choose cannabis instead, or in addition.

    For now, alcohol drinking is still three times more common than cannabis use. Whether that continues, only time will tell.

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

    – ref. Alcohol sales changed subtly after Canada legalized cannabis – https://theconversation.com/alcohol-sales-changed-subtly-after-canada-legalized-cannabis-260375

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Alcohol sales changed subtly after Canada legalized cannabis

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Michael J. Armstrong, Associate Professor, Operations Research, Brock University

    In Canada, some studies indicate alcohol consumption declined slightly as medical cannabis use became more common. Did similar decreases follow recreational legalization? (Unsplash+)

    Before Canada legalized recreational cannabis in October 2018, it was unclear how the change might affect beverage alcohol consumption. Would consumers drink less or more after cannabis became legal?

    Drinking might decrease, for example, if people used cannabis in place of alcohol. That switch potentially could reduce alcohol-related harms. But economically, it would mean any gains in the cannabis industry would likely come at the expense of alcohol producers.

    Conversely, drinking might increase if people used alcohol along with cannabis. That could boost alcohol industry profits and government tax revenues, but at the cost of increased health risks of both substances.

    In response to this uncertainty, some businesses diversified. One alcohol producer bought a cannabis grower, while a cannabis firm took took over several beer brewers.

    Research from the United States into the relationship between alcohol and cannabis use is inconclusive. Some studies report that alcohol use decreased in states that allowed cannabis, while others said usage increased or didn’t significantly change. Those conflicting conclusions might reflect the complex legal situation in the United States, where cannabis remains illegal under federal law, even in states that allow its use.

    In Canada, some studies indicate alcohol consumption declined slightly as medical cannabis use became more common. Did similar decreases follow recreational legalization?

    To investigate this question, I first collaborated with health science researchers Daniel Myran, Robert Talarico, Jennifer Xiao and Rachael MacDonald-Spracklin to study Canada’s overall alcohol sales.

    Total sales looked stable

    We started our research by examining annual alcohol sales from 2004 to 2022. During that period, beer sales gradually fell, while the sale of coolers and other drinks steadily rose. That left total sales basically unchanged.

    So consumers were apparently switching from beer to other beverages. But there were no obvious effects from 2018’s cannabis legalization.

    Annual Canadian beverage alcohol sales from 2004 to 2022, in litres of ethanol content per capita. The vertical gray bar marks cannabis legalization.
    (Statistics Canada), CC BY-ND

    We also compared monthly sales during the 12 months before legalization versus the 12 after. This included national average sales by liquor retailers and beer producers. In both cases, sales trends showed no significant changes in October 2018.

    However, this research on Canada-wide sales was mainly designed to detect large changes. To find subtler ones, I focused on the province of Nova Scotia.

    Some liquor stores sold cannabis

    When Canada legalized cannabis, most provinces banned liquor stores from selling it to avoid tempting alcohol drinkers into trying cannabis.

    Nova Scotia did the opposite. Its government-owned liquor corporation became the main cannabis retailer. After legalization in October 2018, most provincial liquor stores kept selling only alcohol, but some began selling cannabis as well.

    This unique situation prompted me to study the province’s sales. I focused on the 17 months before and 17 months after legalization.

    The corporation’s total alcohol sales initially fell in October 2018, then slowly regrew. As a result, monthly sales after legalization averaged about $500,000 below their earlier levels.

    More interestingly, the changes differed between the cannabis-selling stores and the alcohol-only ones. At the alcohol-only stores, sales immediately fell. They averaged $800,000 below previous levels.

    But at cannabis-sellers, alcohol sales began growing. Total monthly sales from October 2018 to February 2020 averaged $300,000 above earlier levels.

    Seasonally adjusted Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation retail sales of beverage alcohol in Canadian dollars, from May 2017 to February 2020. The vertical gray bar marks cannabis legalization.
    (Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation), CC BY-ND

    The divergence in sales was larger for beers than for spirits or wines.

    Interestingly, alcohol-only stores located near cannabis-selling stores had changes similar to those located farther away, suggesting that cannabis-seller proximity didn’t matter.

    Switching substances or stores?

    My data can’t say why the sales split occurred, but I can speculate.

    Consider the immediate sales drop at alcohol-only stores — this could suggest some consumers switched from alcohol to cannabis right after legalization.

    Meanwhile, the lack of a drop at cannabis sellers might mean some consumers simply changed where they shopped. Instead of visiting their local alcohol-only retailer, they went to cannabis sellers to shop for alcohol and cannabis together.

    The cannabis sellers’ ongoing growth might reflect people increasingly buying cannabis from licensed stores instead of illegal dealers. They went to those stores to buy weed, but picked up some extra booze while they were there.

    Looking ahead

    My research so far has focused on the initial post-legalization period, from October 2018 to February 2020.

    I plan to study later periods next, when cannabis retailing was more widespread and perhaps more influential.

    That will be more challenging, however, because COVID-19 arrived in March 2020. The pandemic disrupted sales of alcohol, though not of cannabis. It will be tricky to separate cannabis effects from pandemic ones, or from Canadian consumers’ evolving drinking habits in general.

    My guess is that cannabis legalization had little short-term impact on existing drinkers overall. Most Canadians didn’t suddenly consume cannabis with their cabernet or replace vodka with vapes.

    Instead, we might see gradual long-term shifts. Young Canadians now reach legal age in a context where cannabis and alcohol are both allowed. Some folks who previously would have started drinking alcohol might now choose cannabis instead, or in addition.

    For now, alcohol drinking is still three times more common than cannabis use. Whether that continues, only time will tell.

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

    – ref. Alcohol sales changed subtly after Canada legalized cannabis – https://theconversation.com/alcohol-sales-changed-subtly-after-canada-legalized-cannabis-260375

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Alcohol sales changed subtly after Canada legalized cannabis

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Michael J. Armstrong, Associate Professor, Operations Research, Brock University

    In Canada, some studies indicate alcohol consumption declined slightly as medical cannabis use became more common. Did similar decreases follow recreational legalization? (Unsplash+)

    Before Canada legalized recreational cannabis in October 2018, it was unclear how the change might affect beverage alcohol consumption. Would consumers drink less or more after cannabis became legal?

    Drinking might decrease, for example, if people used cannabis in place of alcohol. That switch potentially could reduce alcohol-related harms. But economically, it would mean any gains in the cannabis industry would likely come at the expense of alcohol producers.

    Conversely, drinking might increase if people used alcohol along with cannabis. That could boost alcohol industry profits and government tax revenues, but at the cost of increased health risks of both substances.

    In response to this uncertainty, some businesses diversified. One alcohol producer bought a cannabis grower, while a cannabis firm took took over several beer brewers.

    Research from the United States into the relationship between alcohol and cannabis use is inconclusive. Some studies report that alcohol use decreased in states that allowed cannabis, while others said usage increased or didn’t significantly change. Those conflicting conclusions might reflect the complex legal situation in the United States, where cannabis remains illegal under federal law, even in states that allow its use.

    In Canada, some studies indicate alcohol consumption declined slightly as medical cannabis use became more common. Did similar decreases follow recreational legalization?

    To investigate this question, I first collaborated with health science researchers Daniel Myran, Robert Talarico, Jennifer Xiao and Rachael MacDonald-Spracklin to study Canada’s overall alcohol sales.

    Total sales looked stable

    We started our research by examining annual alcohol sales from 2004 to 2022. During that period, beer sales gradually fell, while the sale of coolers and other drinks steadily rose. That left total sales basically unchanged.

    So consumers were apparently switching from beer to other beverages. But there were no obvious effects from 2018’s cannabis legalization.

    Annual Canadian beverage alcohol sales from 2004 to 2022, in litres of ethanol content per capita. The vertical gray bar marks cannabis legalization.
    (Statistics Canada), CC BY-ND

    We also compared monthly sales during the 12 months before legalization versus the 12 after. This included national average sales by liquor retailers and beer producers. In both cases, sales trends showed no significant changes in October 2018.

    However, this research on Canada-wide sales was mainly designed to detect large changes. To find subtler ones, I focused on the province of Nova Scotia.

    Some liquor stores sold cannabis

    When Canada legalized cannabis, most provinces banned liquor stores from selling it to avoid tempting alcohol drinkers into trying cannabis.

    Nova Scotia did the opposite. Its government-owned liquor corporation became the main cannabis retailer. After legalization in October 2018, most provincial liquor stores kept selling only alcohol, but some began selling cannabis as well.

    This unique situation prompted me to study the province’s sales. I focused on the 17 months before and 17 months after legalization.

    The corporation’s total alcohol sales initially fell in October 2018, then slowly regrew. As a result, monthly sales after legalization averaged about $500,000 below their earlier levels.

    More interestingly, the changes differed between the cannabis-selling stores and the alcohol-only ones. At the alcohol-only stores, sales immediately fell. They averaged $800,000 below previous levels.

    But at cannabis-sellers, alcohol sales began growing. Total monthly sales from October 2018 to February 2020 averaged $300,000 above earlier levels.

    Seasonally adjusted Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation retail sales of beverage alcohol in Canadian dollars, from May 2017 to February 2020. The vertical gray bar marks cannabis legalization.
    (Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation), CC BY-ND

    The divergence in sales was larger for beers than for spirits or wines.

    Interestingly, alcohol-only stores located near cannabis-selling stores had changes similar to those located farther away, suggesting that cannabis-seller proximity didn’t matter.

    Switching substances or stores?

    My data can’t say why the sales split occurred, but I can speculate.

    Consider the immediate sales drop at alcohol-only stores — this could suggest some consumers switched from alcohol to cannabis right after legalization.

    Meanwhile, the lack of a drop at cannabis sellers might mean some consumers simply changed where they shopped. Instead of visiting their local alcohol-only retailer, they went to cannabis sellers to shop for alcohol and cannabis together.

    The cannabis sellers’ ongoing growth might reflect people increasingly buying cannabis from licensed stores instead of illegal dealers. They went to those stores to buy weed, but picked up some extra booze while they were there.

    Looking ahead

    My research so far has focused on the initial post-legalization period, from October 2018 to February 2020.

    I plan to study later periods next, when cannabis retailing was more widespread and perhaps more influential.

    That will be more challenging, however, because COVID-19 arrived in March 2020. The pandemic disrupted sales of alcohol, though not of cannabis. It will be tricky to separate cannabis effects from pandemic ones, or from Canadian consumers’ evolving drinking habits in general.

    My guess is that cannabis legalization had little short-term impact on existing drinkers overall. Most Canadians didn’t suddenly consume cannabis with their cabernet or replace vodka with vapes.

    Instead, we might see gradual long-term shifts. Young Canadians now reach legal age in a context where cannabis and alcohol are both allowed. Some folks who previously would have started drinking alcohol might now choose cannabis instead, or in addition.

    For now, alcohol drinking is still three times more common than cannabis use. Whether that continues, only time will tell.

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

    – ref. Alcohol sales changed subtly after Canada legalized cannabis – https://theconversation.com/alcohol-sales-changed-subtly-after-canada-legalized-cannabis-260375

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Alcohol sales changed subtly after Canada legalized cannabis

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Michael J. Armstrong, Associate Professor, Operations Research, Brock University

    In Canada, some studies indicate alcohol consumption declined slightly as medical cannabis use became more common. Did similar decreases follow recreational legalization? (Unsplash+)

    Before Canada legalized recreational cannabis in October 2018, it was unclear how the change might affect beverage alcohol consumption. Would consumers drink less or more after cannabis became legal?

    Drinking might decrease, for example, if people used cannabis in place of alcohol. That switch potentially could reduce alcohol-related harms. But economically, it would mean any gains in the cannabis industry would likely come at the expense of alcohol producers.

    Conversely, drinking might increase if people used alcohol along with cannabis. That could boost alcohol industry profits and government tax revenues, but at the cost of increased health risks of both substances.

    In response to this uncertainty, some businesses diversified. One alcohol producer bought a cannabis grower, while a cannabis firm took took over several beer brewers.

    Research from the United States into the relationship between alcohol and cannabis use is inconclusive. Some studies report that alcohol use decreased in states that allowed cannabis, while others said usage increased or didn’t significantly change. Those conflicting conclusions might reflect the complex legal situation in the United States, where cannabis remains illegal under federal law, even in states that allow its use.

    In Canada, some studies indicate alcohol consumption declined slightly as medical cannabis use became more common. Did similar decreases follow recreational legalization?

    To investigate this question, I first collaborated with health science researchers Daniel Myran, Robert Talarico, Jennifer Xiao and Rachael MacDonald-Spracklin to study Canada’s overall alcohol sales.

    Total sales looked stable

    We started our research by examining annual alcohol sales from 2004 to 2022. During that period, beer sales gradually fell, while the sale of coolers and other drinks steadily rose. That left total sales basically unchanged.

    So consumers were apparently switching from beer to other beverages. But there were no obvious effects from 2018’s cannabis legalization.

    Annual Canadian beverage alcohol sales from 2004 to 2022, in litres of ethanol content per capita. The vertical gray bar marks cannabis legalization.
    (Statistics Canada), CC BY-ND

    We also compared monthly sales during the 12 months before legalization versus the 12 after. This included national average sales by liquor retailers and beer producers. In both cases, sales trends showed no significant changes in October 2018.

    However, this research on Canada-wide sales was mainly designed to detect large changes. To find subtler ones, I focused on the province of Nova Scotia.

    Some liquor stores sold cannabis

    When Canada legalized cannabis, most provinces banned liquor stores from selling it to avoid tempting alcohol drinkers into trying cannabis.

    Nova Scotia did the opposite. Its government-owned liquor corporation became the main cannabis retailer. After legalization in October 2018, most provincial liquor stores kept selling only alcohol, but some began selling cannabis as well.

    This unique situation prompted me to study the province’s sales. I focused on the 17 months before and 17 months after legalization.

    The corporation’s total alcohol sales initially fell in October 2018, then slowly regrew. As a result, monthly sales after legalization averaged about $500,000 below their earlier levels.

    More interestingly, the changes differed between the cannabis-selling stores and the alcohol-only ones. At the alcohol-only stores, sales immediately fell. They averaged $800,000 below previous levels.

    But at cannabis-sellers, alcohol sales began growing. Total monthly sales from October 2018 to February 2020 averaged $300,000 above earlier levels.

    Seasonally adjusted Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation retail sales of beverage alcohol in Canadian dollars, from May 2017 to February 2020. The vertical gray bar marks cannabis legalization.
    (Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation), CC BY-ND

    The divergence in sales was larger for beers than for spirits or wines.

    Interestingly, alcohol-only stores located near cannabis-selling stores had changes similar to those located farther away, suggesting that cannabis-seller proximity didn’t matter.

    Switching substances or stores?

    My data can’t say why the sales split occurred, but I can speculate.

    Consider the immediate sales drop at alcohol-only stores — this could suggest some consumers switched from alcohol to cannabis right after legalization.

    Meanwhile, the lack of a drop at cannabis sellers might mean some consumers simply changed where they shopped. Instead of visiting their local alcohol-only retailer, they went to cannabis sellers to shop for alcohol and cannabis together.

    The cannabis sellers’ ongoing growth might reflect people increasingly buying cannabis from licensed stores instead of illegal dealers. They went to those stores to buy weed, but picked up some extra booze while they were there.

    Looking ahead

    My research so far has focused on the initial post-legalization period, from October 2018 to February 2020.

    I plan to study later periods next, when cannabis retailing was more widespread and perhaps more influential.

    That will be more challenging, however, because COVID-19 arrived in March 2020. The pandemic disrupted sales of alcohol, though not of cannabis. It will be tricky to separate cannabis effects from pandemic ones, or from Canadian consumers’ evolving drinking habits in general.

    My guess is that cannabis legalization had little short-term impact on existing drinkers overall. Most Canadians didn’t suddenly consume cannabis with their cabernet or replace vodka with vapes.

    Instead, we might see gradual long-term shifts. Young Canadians now reach legal age in a context where cannabis and alcohol are both allowed. Some folks who previously would have started drinking alcohol might now choose cannabis instead, or in addition.

    For now, alcohol drinking is still three times more common than cannabis use. Whether that continues, only time will tell.

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

    – ref. Alcohol sales changed subtly after Canada legalized cannabis – https://theconversation.com/alcohol-sales-changed-subtly-after-canada-legalized-cannabis-260375

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI Analysis: Alcohol sales changed subtly after Canada legalized cannabis

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Michael J. Armstrong, Associate Professor, Operations Research, Brock University

    In Canada, some studies indicate alcohol consumption declined slightly as medical cannabis use became more common. Did similar decreases follow recreational legalization? (Unsplash+)

    Before Canada legalized recreational cannabis in October 2018, it was unclear how the change might affect beverage alcohol consumption. Would consumers drink less or more after cannabis became legal?

    Drinking might decrease, for example, if people used cannabis in place of alcohol. That switch potentially could reduce alcohol-related harms. But economically, it would mean any gains in the cannabis industry would likely come at the expense of alcohol producers.

    Conversely, drinking might increase if people used alcohol along with cannabis. That could boost alcohol industry profits and government tax revenues, but at the cost of increased health risks of both substances.

    In response to this uncertainty, some businesses diversified. One alcohol producer bought a cannabis grower, while a cannabis firm took took over several beer brewers.

    Research from the United States into the relationship between alcohol and cannabis use is inconclusive. Some studies report that alcohol use decreased in states that allowed cannabis, while others said usage increased or didn’t significantly change. Those conflicting conclusions might reflect the complex legal situation in the United States, where cannabis remains illegal under federal law, even in states that allow its use.

    In Canada, some studies indicate alcohol consumption declined slightly as medical cannabis use became more common. Did similar decreases follow recreational legalization?

    To investigate this question, I first collaborated with health science researchers Daniel Myran, Robert Talarico, Jennifer Xiao and Rachael MacDonald-Spracklin to study Canada’s overall alcohol sales.

    Total sales looked stable

    We started our research by examining annual alcohol sales from 2004 to 2022. During that period, beer sales gradually fell, while the sale of coolers and other drinks steadily rose. That left total sales basically unchanged.

    So consumers were apparently switching from beer to other beverages. But there were no obvious effects from 2018’s cannabis legalization.

    Annual Canadian beverage alcohol sales from 2004 to 2022, in litres of ethanol content per capita. The vertical gray bar marks cannabis legalization.
    (Statistics Canada), CC BY-ND

    We also compared monthly sales during the 12 months before legalization versus the 12 after. This included national average sales by liquor retailers and beer producers. In both cases, sales trends showed no significant changes in October 2018.

    However, this research on Canada-wide sales was mainly designed to detect large changes. To find subtler ones, I focused on the province of Nova Scotia.

    Some liquor stores sold cannabis

    When Canada legalized cannabis, most provinces banned liquor stores from selling it to avoid tempting alcohol drinkers into trying cannabis.

    Nova Scotia did the opposite. Its government-owned liquor corporation became the main cannabis retailer. After legalization in October 2018, most provincial liquor stores kept selling only alcohol, but some began selling cannabis as well.

    This unique situation prompted me to study the province’s sales. I focused on the 17 months before and 17 months after legalization.

    The corporation’s total alcohol sales initially fell in October 2018, then slowly regrew. As a result, monthly sales after legalization averaged about $500,000 below their earlier levels.

    More interestingly, the changes differed between the cannabis-selling stores and the alcohol-only ones. At the alcohol-only stores, sales immediately fell. They averaged $800,000 below previous levels.

    But at cannabis-sellers, alcohol sales began growing. Total monthly sales from October 2018 to February 2020 averaged $300,000 above earlier levels.

    Seasonally adjusted Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation retail sales of beverage alcohol in Canadian dollars, from May 2017 to February 2020. The vertical gray bar marks cannabis legalization.
    (Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation), CC BY-ND

    The divergence in sales was larger for beers than for spirits or wines.

    Interestingly, alcohol-only stores located near cannabis-selling stores had changes similar to those located farther away, suggesting that cannabis-seller proximity didn’t matter.

    Switching substances or stores?

    My data can’t say why the sales split occurred, but I can speculate.

    Consider the immediate sales drop at alcohol-only stores — this could suggest some consumers switched from alcohol to cannabis right after legalization.

    Meanwhile, the lack of a drop at cannabis sellers might mean some consumers simply changed where they shopped. Instead of visiting their local alcohol-only retailer, they went to cannabis sellers to shop for alcohol and cannabis together.

    The cannabis sellers’ ongoing growth might reflect people increasingly buying cannabis from licensed stores instead of illegal dealers. They went to those stores to buy weed, but picked up some extra booze while they were there.

    Looking ahead

    My research so far has focused on the initial post-legalization period, from October 2018 to February 2020.

    I plan to study later periods next, when cannabis retailing was more widespread and perhaps more influential.

    That will be more challenging, however, because COVID-19 arrived in March 2020. The pandemic disrupted sales of alcohol, though not of cannabis. It will be tricky to separate cannabis effects from pandemic ones, or from Canadian consumers’ evolving drinking habits in general.

    My guess is that cannabis legalization had little short-term impact on existing drinkers overall. Most Canadians didn’t suddenly consume cannabis with their cabernet or replace vodka with vapes.

    Instead, we might see gradual long-term shifts. Young Canadians now reach legal age in a context where cannabis and alcohol are both allowed. Some folks who previously would have started drinking alcohol might now choose cannabis instead, or in addition.

    For now, alcohol drinking is still three times more common than cannabis use. Whether that continues, only time will tell.

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

    – ref. Alcohol sales changed subtly after Canada legalized cannabis – https://theconversation.com/alcohol-sales-changed-subtly-after-canada-legalized-cannabis-260375

    MIL OSI Analysis –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Attorney General James Takes Action to Block Unlawful Termination of Environmental Justice Grant Program

    Source: US State of New York

    EW YORK – New York Attorney General Letitia James co-led a coalition of 19 other attorneys general in filing an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for unlawfully terminating the Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program. The grant program, created and funded by Congress through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, is designed to provide critical support to communities disproportionately impacted by pollution and climate change. Attorney General James and the coalition argue EPA’s abrupt and unlawful termination of the program and cancellation of grants has already caused widespread harm across their states, particularly in low-income communities and communities of color, and are urging the court to block the program termination while the lawsuit continues.

    “These climate and environmental justice grants are a lifeline for communities that have been historically left behind,” said Attorney General James. “From Buffalo to Far Rockaway, New Yorkers were counting on these funds to access clean energy, clean up air pollution, and prepare for climate disasters. When the federal government breaks its promises to our most vulnerable communities, the consequences can be devastating, even deadly. My office is fighting to ensure this grant program is restored so that New Yorkers are protected as we combat the climate crisis.”

    In the brief filed today in Appalachian Voices v. EPA, Attorney General James and the coalition emphasize that by terminating this grant program, the federal government is inflicting serious, lasting harm on vulnerable communities already grappling with disproportionate pollution burdens and the escalating effects of climate change. These communities, which are often low-income, communities of color, indigenous, or in rural areas, face overlapping environmental and public health crises. The attorneys general explain that these challenges have only been made worse by historical discriminatory policies, including racial segregation, redlining, and a systemic lack of investment in disadvantaged neighborhoods. These communities are under-resourced, have less access to infrastructure like clean drinking water and sanitation, and end up bearing the brunt of the burden from extreme weather disasters, since they are less equipped to recover from devastating events or easily adapt to a changing climate.

    In 2022, Congress created the grant program under the Inflation Reduction Act, mandating that EPA distribute $3 billion in funding specifically to help address these disparities. In New York alone, 22 grantees were awarded more than $70 million in funding to carry out projects to protect vulnerable residents from extreme heat, flooding, air pollution, and other environmental hazards. Another grantee, Fordham University in the Bronx, was awarded $50 million to provide as grants to community-based organizations in New York, as well as New Jersey, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and eight Indigenous Nations, for environmental justice projects. Grantees, often in partnership with non-profit organizations, academic institutions, and city agencies, would use the funds to protect residents from extreme weather events in Albany, Rochester, and Buffalo; combat flooding and excess heat in the Bronx and Yonkers; protect the Rockaways from storm surges; and more.

    Now, the sudden termination of these grants has forced grantees to lay off staff, halt programming, and freeze hiring. Attorney General James and the coalition argue that EPA’s mass cancellation of the environmental and climate justice grant program violates clear congressional mandates and fundamental constitutional principles. Congress directed the EPA to distribute these funds using mandatory language in the Inflation Reduction Act, leaving the agency no discretion to unilaterally withdraw support. The attorneys general emphasize that the executive branch cannot override Congress’s appropriations decisions based on its own policy preferences, and that in doing so, the administration violated the U.S. Constitution.

    Attorney General James and the coalition are urging the court to grant the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction and ensure that the environmental justice grants will remain available for the communities that so desperately need them.

    Joining Attorney General James in filing this brief, which was co-led with Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell and California Attorney General Rob Bonta, are the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia.

    MIL OSI USA News –