Manchester City, one of the world’s biggest sporting clubs, has been found guilty by the English Premier League of 114 breaches of its financial rules. The amount in question is close to a staggering £1 billion (A$1.9 billion).

Dyed-in-the-wool fans are acutely sensitive to slights against their teams. So, when caught up in a major sport controversy, their response is often visceral.

Sport communication researchers describe a process of “moral uncoupling” through which those fans who identify most deeply with their team separate themselves from its most troubling transgressions when experiencing “collective shame”.

While some Manchester City fans say they accept there might have been wrongdoing and are “devastated”, “angry” and “sad”, many passionate supporters find forgiveness easily for their team while not extending this understanding to competitors.

The saga and the fallout

The Sky Blues are majority-owned by Abu Dhabi United Group through its City Football Group subsidiary, along with ten other clubs (one in partnership) around the world, including Melbourne City.

Much has been written about the financial and legal implications of this long-running scandal. Manchester City’s owners deny wrongdoing and have appealed against the ruling.

But what about the dedicated fans who shell out for stadium tickets, travel, accommodation, TV subscriptions and merchandise?

When sports fandom gets intense

There is a large body of research on sport fandom. It reveals many types of fan, including hardcore supporters, those drawn to fashionable sport celebrities and clubs, and others who switch allegiances according to time, place and personal circumstances.

Most people’s sporting preferences do not have a major impact on their lives.

But the smallest and loudest species of sport fan lives and breathes their team. For these “superfans”, obsessive fandom is more than an oxymoron. They dress themselves and, as in the case of the Newcastle Knights rugby league team, even paint their houses in club colours.

They travel huge distances as supporters and communicate constantly about favourite players, terrible owners and prospects of victory.

There are various ways of becoming a so-called “superfan”. In English soccer it was traditionally based on place, class, gender and generation. Fandom, particularly for working-class men, was a matter of social being rather than choice.

Notoriously, its territoriality sometimes tips over into violent hooliganism.

In all cases, the more intense the sport fan engagement, the greater the mood swings in response to winning and losing.

The shamed and the shameless sport fan

But in sport as in politics, the maxims “never apologise, never explain” and “my team, right or wrong” apply among the most shameless of fans. This response to scandal resembles how right-wing populist movements like Make America Great Again (MAGA), Reform in the UK, and One Nation in Australia deal with issues such as lying, disinformation and financial irregularities.

In such cases, conspiracy theories can circulate. In the case of the Manchester City cheating scandal, some supporters spread ideas about how the club and its players have been targeted by nefarious forces within the game.

City’s own chief executive officer, Ferran Soriano, fuelled these suspicions by alleging an unspecified “Premier League conspiracy theory” leading to the guilty verdict. Long before the verdict, City fans complained that UEFA, Europe’s football governing body, “have always had it in for us”.

A journalist who has covered the City story for more than a decade described the “vitriol and hatred from a section of the club’s partisan fanbase, which is in denial that Manchester City have ever done anything wrong”. His treatment included doxxing, a brick through the window, and heartless baiting after the death of his wife.

The uglier aspects of digital sports fandom are emphasised in social media spaces designed for consequence-free expressions of opinion by both fans of a club and their hostile opponents.

As with their family members, it is difficult for loyal sport fans who may be internal critics to accept external condemnation of their beloved.

Crime and punishment

When a club like Manchester City is consumed by scandal, their fans must come to terms with potentially severe punishments: huge fines, trophies taken away, points deducted, compensation for other clubs, relegation to lower leagues, and even liquidation.

Read more:
Stripped titles? Compensating rivals? How the Manchester City cheating scandal could play out

There is a striking precedent of such drastic punishment.

In 2012, Scottish Premier League club Glasgow Rangers experienced administration and then liquidation after failing to discharge bank loans and pay taxes. To the fury of their fans, Rangers were re-birthed and forced to start again from the fourth tier of Scottish soccer, before winning promotion back to the Scottish Premier League in 2016.

Were Manchester City to meet a similar fate, next season their fans might be forced to exchange plush corporate venues like Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium for the modest hospitality of clubs like League Two’s Accrington Stanley and Port Vale.

A fall from grace to dismay City fans and delight their struggling lower league counterparts in equal measure.

David Rowe 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/05/anger-remorse-conspiracy-theories-how-sports-fans-cope-when-their-club-does-wrong/

Kauri are among Aotearoa New Zealand’s tallest and longest-lived trees – and their place in our cultural landscape looms equally large.

Centuries-old kauri such as Tāne Mahuta and Te Matua Ngahere are taonga, with deep cultural and spiritual significance to Māori.

Also remarkable is the amount of carbon these trees hold. Large kauri have gradually accumulated enormous amounts of biomass, leaving great quantities of carbon stored in their trunks, branches and roots.

Over the past two decades, however, these giants of our forests have faced a growing threat from kauri dieback.

The disease is caused by the soil-borne water mould Phytophthora agathidicida, which infects kauri through their roots and disrupts their ability to take up water and nutrients. As it progresses, trees can lose foliage and branches and eventually die.

The toll has been significant. Hundreds to thousands of kauri across New Zealand’s upper North Island have died, with some of the heaviest losses recorded in Northland and Auckland’s Waitākere Ranges.

As dieback spreads and affected trees decline, some of the carbon held in their living biomass is lost from that store – with direct implications for carbon sequestration and the broader health of these forest ecosystems.

Our latest research sheds some new light on these important impacts.

Tracking a decade of change

To build a clearer picture, we visited study plots in kauri forests in the Waitākere Ranges that had first been surveyed between 2011 and 2014.

Our study co-author, Toby Elliot, revisited the plots to measure the trees again, assess the condition of their canopies and record which had died or become established. We then used the size of each tree, along with the typical wood density of each species, to estimate how much living biomass the plots contained.

This allowed us to see how the amount of carbon stored in living vegetation had changed over about a decade.

We found that the more severe the kauri dieback, the less carbon forests gained through tree growth – and the more they lost as trees declined and died.

The difference was notable. For forest stands starting with an average 169 tonnes of carbon per hectare, healthy stands gained about 0.8 tonnes per hectare each year. Those showing signs of dieback instead lost about 0.1 tonnes, while severely affected stands lost around one tonne per hectare each year.

That amounts to a shift of about 1.8 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year between healthy and severely affected forest.

The reason is relatively simple. Healthy trees keep growing and accumulating carbon. Dieback slows that growth and, when trees eventually die, the carbon they contained is no longer part of the forest’s living vegetation.

When the biggest trees are lost

The largest changes occurred in forests that initially contained the most carbon – mature kauri forests with large trees that have accumulated carbon over many decades or centuries.

In our study, mature forest plots held an average of about 248 tonnes of living carbon per hectare, compared with about 88 tonnes in younger, regenerating forest.

Kauri themselves accounted for a particularly large share of this store. Where kauri were present, our modelling estimated they contributed, on average, about half of the living carbon, with their contribution becoming greater in more carbon-rich forests.

This means the impact of kauri dieback depends on which trees die, as well as how many. When a large kauri dies, the amount of carbon removed from the living vegetation pool can be significant.

Our modelling also suggests severely affected, carbon-rich stands can shift from accumulating carbon to losing it. These forests may not regain their previous carbon stocks, instead eventually stabilising with less living biomass and a reduced capacity to store and accumulate carbon.

This makes protecting mature kauri forests particularly important for maintaining the carbon stored in these ecosystems.

Where does the carbon go?

Our study measured carbon only in living vegetation, capturing just one part of the larger carbon cycle.

Because we did not directly measure carbon in dead wood, litter and soils, we cannot determine how much of the carbon lost from living vegetation ultimately remains stored elsewhere in the ecosystem, or how quickly it is returned to the atmosphere.

Longer-term measurements of these other potential stores will be needed to track where this carbon goes – and how that changes as kauri mortality increases.

Protecting kauri from dieback therefore has implications beyond the survival of individual trees.

Management approaches designed to slow disease progression and reduce symptoms, such as phosphite treatments, are being investigated and applied as part of broader kauri protection efforts.

In the meantime, preventing the spread of dieback disease remains something visitors can help with: staying on marked tracks and thoroughly cleaning footwear when entering and leaving kauri forests.

Doing so helps protect kauri as taonga – and the ecological functions of forests that have taken centuries to develop.

The authors acknowledge the support of Te Kawerau ā Maki in this research.

Pin Jia Chan received research funding for this work from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and support from the Lucy Cranwell Student Grant for Botanical Research.

Luitgard Schwendenmann received research funding for this work from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/04/kauri-dieback-threatens-more-than-trees-it-could-change-how-much-carbon-forests-store/

In a federal Redbridge poll, the total vote for One Nation and the Coalition has been steady since late August at 50%, but Anthony Albanese’s net favourability slumped ten points to a record low -27, possibly reflecting the Reserve Bank’s interest rate hike last Tuesday.

The two other federal polls were both taken before the rate hike. The total right vote was down two points to 47% in Essential and at 48% in Morgan.

A Victorian Freshwater poll gave the Coalition a 53–47 lead over Labor after preferences. With under two months until the November 28 election, the Coalition is clearly ahead in all recent polls.

Federal Redbridge poll

A national Redbridge and Accent Research poll for The Financial Review, conducted September 28 to October 2 from a sample of 1,000, gave One Nation 29% of the primary vote (up one since the late August Redbridge poll), Labor 28% (down one), the Coalition 21% (down one), the Greens 11% (down one) and all Others 11% (up two).

By respondent preferences, Labor led One Nation by an unchanged 52–48. The Coalition led Labor by 54–46, a two-point gain for the Coalition. By 2025 election preference flows, Labor and the Coalition were tied 50–50, a two-point gain for the Coalition.

Albanese’s net favourability slumped ten points to a record low -27 and Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ was down nine points to -23. Pauline Hanson’s was up two points to -10. Angus Taylor’s was down three points to -6. Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock’s was -3.

In a three-way preferred PM question, Albanese had 31% (steady), Hanson 26% (up two) and Taylor 15% (steady).

The right (One Nation and Coalition) led the left (Labor and Greens) on all the issues cited. They led by 43–26 on cost of living, 37–34 on healthcare, 39–26 on housing, 56–25 on immigration, 44–22 on crime and 44–26 on economic management. On all issues, there has been movement to the right since August.

Essential poll

A national Essential poll, conducted September 23–27 from a sample of 1,008, gave Labor 29% of the primary vote (up three since the late August Essential poll), One Nation 25% (up two), the Coalition 22% (down four), the Greens 12% (down one), all Others 6% (steady) and undecided 6% (up one).

By respondent preferences, Labor led the Coalition by 48–46, reversing a 50–45 Coalition lead in August. No two-party estimate for Labor against One Nation was provided.

Applying 2025 election preference flows to the primary votes would give Labor above a 52–48 lead over the Coalition. Weak preference flows to Labor and a low Others vote are features of Essential polls.

Albanese’s net approval was up four points to -17 (54% disapprove, 37% approve). Taylor’s net approval was down three points to an equal record low -12 (43% disapprove, 31% approve).

By 46–39, respondents thought immigration was generally positive for the country, a reversal of a 45–41 generally negative lead in April. It’s the most positive since November 2023. But 55% (up six since April) wanted Australia’s immigration intake to decrease.

On gambling ads, 39% wanted a total ban, 25% restrictions during live sport and a ban on social media and online, 15% restrictions only during live sport and 11% no restrictions.

Morgan poll

A national Morgan poll, conducted September 14–27 from a sample of 2,569, gave Labor 26% of the primary vote, One Nation 25.5%, the Coalition 22.5%, the Greens 14.5% and all Others 11%.

By respondent preferences, Labor led One Nation by 53.5–46.5 and the Coalition by 52.5–47.5. By 2025 election preference flows, Labor led by Coalition by 52–48.

Previously, Morgan had released weekly results, but this poll aggregates the previously released September 14–20 poll and September 21–27, possibly to get bigger sample sizes for demographic breakdowns.

In the September 14–20 Morgan poll, One Nation had 25.5%, Labor 25%, the Coalition 21.5%, the Greens 15.5% and all Others 12.5%. So the sample taken September 21–27 was relatively good for Labor and the Coalition and bad for the Greens and Others.

Additional questions from DemosAU polls

In additional questions from the mid-September DemosAU federal poll, by 44–27 respondents thought superannuation exists to fund retirement, and people shouldn’t be able to access it before age 60. But by 60–17, they thought people should be able to withdraw some of their super to fund a major purchase such as a housing deposit.

Respondents to a mid-June federal DemosAU poll were asked their opinions on Australian and international billionaires. Warren Buffett led with a +12 net positive score, followed by Andrew Forrest at +7, Gina Rinehart at +5 and Bill Gates at +1. Jeff Bezos was at -17, Rupert Murdoch at -22, Elon Musk at -23, Mark Zuckerberg at -25 and Clive Palmer at -35.

Victorian Freshwater poll

The Victorian election is on November 28. A Freshwater poll for The Herald Sun, conducted September 24–28 from a sample of 1,030, gave the Coalition 29% of the primary vote (down one since the Freshwater poll taken after Ben Carroll replaced Jacinta Allan as Labor leader and premier in late July).

Labor had 24% of the primary vote (down one), One Nation 22% (steady), the Greens 14% (steady) and all Others 11% (up two). The Coalition led Labor after preferences by 53–47, a one-point gain for the Coalition.

Carroll’s net favourablility was steady at -7. Liberal leader Jess Wilson’s was up one point to +19. In a two-way preferred premier question, Wilson led Carroll by 45–33 (previously 48–27). In a three-way question that included One Nation leader Warren Pickering, Wilson had 37%, Carroll 30% and Pickering 13%.

By 55–33, respondents thought it was time to give Wilson and the Coalition a chance to govern over “Labor has done enough to deserve re-election”.

I’ve added this poll to the Victorian polls graph below. Since mid-September, there have been new polls from Freshwater, DemosAU, Redbridge and Resolve. There was clear movement to Labor in DemosAU, but the other three polls have shown little change.

The Coalition is clearly ahead of Labor after preferences in all recent polls. Right-wing parties are likely to win a majority of the 88 lower house seats. Seats going to One Nation could stop the Coalition winning a majority in its own right.

NZ election update

The New Zealand election is on November 7. I wrote for the NZ edition of The Conversation last Tuesday that the right-wing parties had a lead over the left-wing parties, with Opportunity a reasonable chance to hold the balance of power. The Greens surged four points to a record 16% in the latest Verian poll for 1News.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/04/albaneses-ratings-slump-in-redbridge-poll-after-interest-rate-hike/

There is a vigorous debate going on about screen use in Australian schools and how much and what kinds are good for learning.

Education Minister Jason Clare has called for a “digital detox”, amid calls from some parents to see screens banned in primary years. New South Wales has announced screen time limits for schools, following a similar move in Victoria earlier this year.

At the same time, some researchers argue kids need digital skills to live and work – and so need to learn how to use screens at school. But amid concerns about potential risks and benefits, we lack evidence about what is actually happening in classrooms.

For a new report funded by the New South Wales Department of Education, we talked to parents, students and teachers about what is happening in schools.

Their responses suggest the reality of screen use in schools is not always what the community might assume.

Our study

Between August and November 2025, our research team conducted anonymous surveys about how screens are being used in schools in the state.

We surveyed 1,057 students, 914 teachers and 1,686 parents/carers from NSW public, Catholic and independent schools. Survey links were distributed via school principals across all NSW public and independent schools and participating Catholic dioceses. Participants self-selected to respond.

What do parents want?

Parents in our survey tended to agree that using digital devices was important for their child’s learning, though less for primary school parents (55%) compared to high school parents (71%).

We also asked parents how much time students should spend on screens in schools and then compared it to how much time students said they actually spent on screens.

Around 37% of parents surveyed did not think there should be time limits placed on learning with screens at school for their child.

But as the chart below shows, for the rest, parents’ average recommended time limits for school use were either equal to or higher than the amount of time students reported actually using screens for learning at school.

Why are screens being used?

From teachers, we were keen to understand the different ways screens may be used across all year levels for all subjects.

We found screens were most frequently used by students to conduct research, receive instruction (such as explanatory videos), write reports, practice learning (such as online maths quizzes), and organise information.

Teachers also had students use technology to communicate (such as emails and discussion forums) and engage in digital creation tasks, such as programming or multimedia production.

Students reported using a wide range of apps for learning at school. In primary school, the emphasis was on literacy and numeracy apps, as well as Google search, YouTube and the graphic design tool Canva.

In high school, there was a shift towards creating documents and presentations, as well as using communication apps such as Microsoft Teams and Gmail.

What happens in classrooms?

We also observed 68 classes, from the first year of school (called kindergarten in NSW) to Year 12, in 20 public schools to understand their technology use. These schools were selected to capture a wide range of school demographics across the state.

We observed lessons across a wide variety of subject areas that involved the use of technology by students to learn curriculum content. Researchers would typically position themselves towards the back of the classroom to observe the lesson, occasionally moving around the room if needed.

On average, the students were seen to be focusing on their learning tasks for 90% of the time. This was highest for students in the first three years of school, where students were observed to be on-task 96% of the time. This dropped to 82% by Year 9 and 10 before returning to 96% time-on-task for Year 11 and 12 classes.

Even though these lessons were selected for observation because technology was being used, students only used screens approximately half of the time. The rest of the lessons involved non-digital activities such as discussions, handwriting tasks and worksheets.

Teachers applied a range of strategies to keep students on-task, including positioning themselves strategically in the classroom to observe screen use, imposing time constraints to reduce opportunities for distraction, providing tech support, and asking students to close their device when they needed to listen.

Non-educational screen use in schools

Our survey also asked students how much they were using screens at school for leisure, such as games and social media. We asked parents how much recreational use of screens at school was appropriate in their view. Here there was a big difference.

Around 84% of parents thought there should be a limit on recreational use of screens at school, with average recommendations for those parents ranging between 19 and 33 minutes (depending on the age of their child).

The average recreational use of screens in school by primary school students was below the average parent recommendations.

But there was a huge jump in high school. Year 7 and 8 students were using screens recreationally for an average of 72 minutes, climbing to 85 minutes in Year 11 and 12.

It was not clear from the survey responses whether this was in playgrounds, during break times, or in class.

What does this mean?

Our results suggest educational screen use in schools is often moderate and for specific purposes.

However, there appears to be an extensive amount of non-educational use of screens in high schools.

This suggests we need more research and initiatives to help students develop digital self-regulation. This will require supporting both teachers and parents, as well as students.

Study limitations

One limitation of the study was that student uses of screens were self-reported in range bands, which is less accurate than recording screen use on devices.

Although we have asked teachers not to change their lessons for the classroom observations, the teachers and students were aware that they were being observed and could have modified their behaviours.

Future studies could expand to schools right across Australia, and examine the impact of interventions to improve student digital self-regulation and use of technology for learning.

Matt Bower receives funding from the NSW Department of Education. The study described in this article was funded by the NSW Department of Education.

Joanne Orlando receives funding from NSW Department of Education.

Karen Woo receives funding from NSW Department of Education.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/04/new-research-looks-at-how-screens-are-actually-being-used-in-australian-classrooms-the-results-may-surprise-you/

We often hear about the importance of meaningful friendship to our lives – and the sense of belonging, recognition and care they provide. Yet, for the vast majority, friendships remain secondary to family and romantic relationships. The latter receive legal recognition, and have a higher social ranking than the former.

Why is this the case, if friendship is indeed so important? And is it something that could – or should – come with legally binding rights and recognition?

The fluidity of friendship

Friendship can vary in intimacy, closeness and the kinds of support it provides. It can therefore be difficult to define.

Sociologist Harry Blatterer cautions that defining it too broadly risks emptying the concept of its distinct meaning.

He argues friendship is characterised by a unique “relational freedom”, and marked by a lack of institutionalisation. It is built on choice and flexibility – unlike romantic love, which is linked to the legal institution of marriage (and has historically been structured by heterosexuality).

The importance of friendship

Research has consistently linked strong friendships with greater wellbeing and health.

One 2023 systematic review of studies found that adult friendship is positively correlated with wellbeing. Longitudinal research conducted in Australia has also shown how positive relationships, including with friends, are a major predictor of life satisfaction.

Despite this, friendship continues to be decentred in favour of romantic and family ties. Sociologists Sasha Roseneil and Shelley Budgeon argue this is because our relationships were historically defined by heterosexuality and the nuclear family.

Diverse relationship models are now challenging this, with more queer couples, more people choosing to remain single, and couples choosing to live apart or remain childless.

Queer scholars have demonstrated time and again that care, commitment and intimacy can be organised beyond biological or legal kinship.

Queer French philosopher and sociologist Geoffroy de Lagasnerie wrote a friendship manifesto, in which he challenges:

the idea that life should happen in cycles: youth, studies, form a relationship, move in together, sleep in the same bed, have children […] Those are institutional roles but a lot of people feel at odds with that type of life and have other aspirations. My idea was to instead write an account of a life organised around friendship […] to make friendship a space of counterculture against the institutional norms dominating our society.

Recognising friendship

Recently, Clémence Guetté, a French member of parliament, introduced a legislative proposal to enshrine friendship in law – akin to marriage, civil partnership and family ties.

This would give friendships legal recognition, and extend certain rights relating to care-giving and bereavement leave, housing and inheritance. While the proposal faces a difficult path to becoming law, it highlights the need for laws to keep up with our changing society.

And things are slowly starting to change.

Since 2000, individuals in Belgium who live together – whether as a couple, friends or family – have been able to apply for “legal cohabitation”, which establishes mutual rights around housing, household expenses and inheritance.

Similarly, in Australia, if you live with a friend as a housemate you are entitled to unpaid carer’s leave if they fall ill. However, you cannot take carer’s leave for a friend who lives apart from you.

The challenges

Legal scholars have questioned how friendship could be defined in law, without undermining its freedom.

They identify how this freedom becomes a source of tension when considering where legal rights around friendships should begin or end, as they often don’t have clear beginnings or endings.

They also acknowledge friendships are not exclusive between two people. This raises questions about how legal rights might operate when someone has several significant friendships with competing claims.

Most importantly, trying to standardise a definition of friendship might exploit its very essence.

Challenges aside

There may be several benefits to legally recognising friendship.

First, this could be helpful for people living without traditional family ties. Recent Australian research drawing on HILDA data found about 5.7% of Australians aged 65 and over were kinless – meaning they had neither a partner nor living children.

It could also legitimise relationships that challenge the boundary between friendship and partnership, such as “platonic life partners”, who may choose to live together, buy property, or even raise children together.

Finally, beyond practical entitlements, legal recognition might help to boost the importance we collectively give to friendship. This seems beneficial, considering how important it is to wellbeing.

As demonstrated in Belgium, laws could focus less on predetermined relationship categories and more on giving individuals the power to designate which relationships matter most to them.

The challenge for institutions will be in recognising the importance of friendship, without having to put rigid boundaries on what it is.

Maddison Sideris 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/04/friendships-are-important-could-or-should-they-be-legally-recognised/

In an election centred on New Zealand’s cost-of-living crisis, it’s perhaps unsurprising to see parties return to a familiar idea for tackling rising power bills: breaking up the big electricity gentailers.

Both New Zealand First and the Greens want to split the big gentailers into separate generation and retail businesses.

The appeal is straightforward. If independent retailers could buy electricity on fairer terms, the argument goes, greater competition should bring household power prices down.

And prices are rising. The Electricity Authority found households and small businesses paid an average 6.8% more for electricity in the first half of 2026. But more than half of that increase came from higher network charges, with generation costs and retail margins accounting for much of the rest.

National, meanwhile, has focused its latest energy policy on those network costs, promising to review how lines companies are regulated.

But it hasn’t gone as far as breaking up the gentailers – something Finance Minister Nicola Willis has argued would create “massive instability”.

I have studied this area for decades. A review I conducted indeed points to some easily overlooked consequences of separating the two.

Why generation and retail go together

Combining generation and retailing gives electricity companies a critical advantage: protection against swings in wholesale power prices.

A gentailer can supply customers from its own generation, while buying or selling electricity on the wholesale market only as needed. A standalone retailer, by contrast, must secure all of its customers’ electricity through purchases or contracts.

That becomes important when wholesale prices surge because hydro lakes are low, gas is scarce or demand is high. A retailer charging households a relatively stable price can see its costs soar while its revenue does not.

Long-term contracts can reduce that exposure, but suitable cover can be costly or incomplete. Owning generation provides another way to manage the risk, because generation costs do not necessarily rise with wholesale prices.

This is more than a theoretical concern. During Britain’s wholesale energy shock of 2021-22, 29 suppliers failed, with weak finances and inadequate protection against rising prices leaving some particularly vulnerable.

New Zealand experienced something similar in 2001, when surging wholesale prices prompted Natural Gas Corporation to sell its electricity customers to generators. During California’s 2000-01 electricity crisis, separation and contracting limits also left major utilities exposed to soaring wholesale prices.

The same issue can influence investment. New generation requires substantial upfront capital and years of revenue, while retailers need dependable electricity supplies.

Combining generation and retail can give investors a ready customer base and reduce uncertainty. Separating them means those relationships must instead be established through contracts that are much less effective.

My research also suggests integration can encourage investment because more efficient generation can strengthen a company’s position in the retail market.

There is another, less obvious effect that a co-author and I have studied: wholesale price impacts. A generator with a retail arm knows higher wholesale prices can hurt that side of its business when it needs to buy electricity. A generator only selling into the wholesale market does not face the same constraint.

Separation could therefore increase incentives to seek higher wholesale prices, even as it creates more retail competition.

There is also the risk of two sets of mark-ups. If generators and retailers separately add a margin to the same electricity, customers ultimately pay both. Economists call this “double marginalisation”, which integration can avoid.

None of this means gentailers necessarily charge fair prices, or that greater competition could not benefit consumers. But any gains from breaking them up need to be weighed against the effects on risk, investment and wholesale prices.

Would more competition really mean lower bills?

Integration can make it harder for standalone retailers to compete. But measures that help independent retailers do not necessarily leave consumers better off.

A recent OECD review backed measures to help independent electricity retailers. But its example of international “best practice” involves separating monopoly electricity networks – the poles and wires – from businesses operating in competitive parts of the market. This prevents owners of essential infrastructure favouring related businesses over competitors.

Breaking up gentailers is different because generation and retailing are both competitive businesses.

The Electricity Authority has already introduced “level playing field” rules governing gentailers’ contracts with independent retailers. My analysis found such rules can benefit standalone retailers while leaving other firms and consumers worse off.

The authority considered concerns about possible consumer harm when introducing the rules, but ultimately rejected them. Their effects should be judged by what happens to bills, security of supply and investment – not simply whether more retailers enter.

The research I have reviewed and undertaken suggests forced separation is more likely to harm than help consumers.

That puts the onus on those proposing a break-up. How would separate firms manage wholesale price risk and sustain investment? Would greater retail competition outweigh the risk of higher wholesale prices and cascading profit margins?

More retailers may mean more retail competition. But the real test is whether restructuring the market delivers lower prices overall, and a more secure electricity supply.

Richard Meade was funded in 2021 by an industry body representing New Zealand electricity gentailers and retailers to survey the economic literature on vertical integration versus vertical separation in electricity sectors. In 2025 he submitted on his own account to the Electricity Authority on its proposal to force generator-retailers to offer supply to rivals on non-discriminatory terms.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/04/breaking-up-nzs-power-gentailers-sounds-appealing-the-consequences-may-not-be/

Three years ago, the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability tabled its final report, a hefty 12 volumes and 222 recommendations.

In recent days, a coalition of more than 20 disability advocacy and representative organisations marked the anniversary with Australia’s first independent progress report of how the recommendations have been implemented.

It examined ten recommendations from the royal commission – ones it says people with disability and advocates raise consistently – to see how their implementation has progressed.

It found none has been fully implemented. Four show no real action. One – better coordination of support under the National Disability Insurance Scheme or NDIS – is going backwards.

Remind me about the royal commission

The royal commission was established in April 2019, after years of advocacy by disability rights groups and a senate inquiry into violence, abuse and neglect of people with disability.

It ran for more than four years and cost almost A$600 million, making it the longest-running and most expensive royal commission in Australia’s history.

It was also the most accessible, large-scale public inquiry Australia has ever held. People could tell their stories in public hearings, private sessions, written submissions or video statements.

There was Auslan interpretation, easy-read material, and psychological and legal support for people who took part. More than 1,500 de-identified personal narratives were published. The first volume of the final report is devoted to the voices of people with disability.

The result presents extraordinary evidence about violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation, and the social conditions that produce them. It combines personal testimony with commissioned research and expert evidence, across every setting where people with disability live.

Read more:
The disability royal commission heard horrific stories of harm – now we must move towards repair

The recommendations are similarly broad.

They call for a new disability rights act, giving domestic legal force to Australia’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

They also call for a dedicated disability department and minister, and an independent, disability-led National Disability Commission to report annually to parliament on implementation of the royal commission’s recommendations.

The commissioners were divided on whether to phase out special schools, group homes and supported employment.

Read more:
Here’s why we need a disability rights act – not just a disability discrimination one

How did the government respond?

The Commonwealth government holds sole or joint responsibility for 172 of the royal commission’s 222 recommendations, with the rest falling to state and territory governments.

Governments released a joint response in July 2024. Of the 172 recommendations, the Commonwealth accepted 13 in full and 117 “in principle”. Some 36 were marked for further consideration and six were “noted”.

The 13 accepted in full are largely adjustments to existing policies or systems. Most of the substance sits in the 117 accepted in principle, a phrase that means government agrees with the policy intent but may take a different approach. These include establishing a First Nations Disability Forum, which is in the initial consultation and design stage.

High-level reforms – such as the recommended disability rights act and the National Disability Commission – remain “under further consideration” three years on. The recommendations for a dedicated disability department and minister were noted, with no intention to act.

Read more:
‘Lacklustre’ and ‘disappointing’ – experts react to the government’s disability royal commission response

Any good news?

There has been some progress. This includes a new disability employment program, progress on a plan to address violence against women and children with disability, and a new Commonwealth funding program for individual advocacy to help people access services, make decisions and uphold their rights.

But the government promised six-monthly public progress reports on implementation of the royal commission’s recommendations. The first was published four months late, in November 2025. It reported eight of the Commonwealth’s 172 recommendations had been carried out fully.

The taskforce set up to monitor implementation has since been disbanded.

An independent analysis by Queensland disability advocates found only 3% of recommendations were genuinely implemented, and there were no updates on more than half.

It also found the Queensland government had downgraded some commitments in an updated response, which the advocates only discovered by comparing documents side-by-side.

What happens next?

With so much promise and so little apparent action since, what’s the next step?

My research suggests we need to tell people what has changed because they spoke up, and explain honestly what hasn’t, and why.

Royal commissions can’t change policy themselves. Once a report is handed down, control passes to the ministers, departments and other stakeholders who decide which recommendations are taken up and how.

Disability ministers oversee implementation and so should report publicly and on time to build trust and promote accountability.

The Commonwealth still needs to give an answer on the disability rights act and the National Disability Commission. And state and territory governments that change their commitments should say so openly.

Another three years?

As Melbourne researcher Kay Wilson wrote earlier this year:

the ‘success’ of a Royal Commission is difficult to assess and may require a long timeframe.

So we may well be having this conversation again in three years’ time.

If so, the disability royal commission will still be valuable. It is a permanent public record and a benchmark against which advocates can measure the gap between Australia’s human rights obligations and the reality of people’s lives.

But it was meant to be a catalyst for reform, not only a yardstick.

The disability royal commission also raised the bar for how governments engage with people with disability. If thousands of people share painful experiences and then hear nothing back, the lesson many will draw is that speaking up changes little.

That’s a lesson that outlasts any government and makes future engagements with the disability community that much harder.

Laura Davy receives research funding from the Australian Research Council.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/04/the-disability-royal-commission-laid-bare-violence-abuse-and-neglect-three-years-on-whats-changed/

As last week’s Aerospace Summit in Christchurch made clear, New Zealand is rapidly developing capabilities and partnerships in a sector estimated to be worth NZ$2.5 billion to the national economy.

The summit’s defence session also highlighted the increasingly close links between civilian and military aerospace activities, raising important questions about the implications.

Just last month, New Zealand agreed to spend nearly $24 million to fund a military satellite led by the United Sstates Department of War for the Wideband Global SATCOM constellation.

The government also renewed participation in Operation Olympic Defender, a US-led military partnership aimed at making space safe and secure.

But becoming increasingly involved in international efforts to protect satellite services critical to infrastructure – including navigation, banking and communications – creates a dilemma.

As countries expand military capabilities to make space more secure, their actions can make others feel threatened, increasing the very tensions they are trying to prevent.

It also highlights how dual-use approaches to satellite technology could threaten the many benefits of the satellite services the country relies on.

Because it doesn’t own any of the satellites providing essential infrastructure services, if an operator decided to restrict access or withdraw coverage altogether, New Zealand would have no say.

The United Kingdom’s recently released space strategy estimates satellite services contribute 18% of its GDP. This is just one example of how dependent modern economies have become on infrastructure in orbit.

The vulnerability this creates at a time of geopolitical instability deserves greater scrutiny.

Strategic stability in space

Earlier this year, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney described a “rupture” in the world order: a shift towards intensifying great power rivalry, where countries increasingly feel they must protect themselves as the rules and institutions they once relied on come under strain.

Space is not immune to this shift. There is a marked rise in global military spending on development of space capabilities that can cause harm.

Not long after the US government announced it had deployed weapons in space, the UK announced the Space Effects Squadron, a unit dedicated to disrupt, degrade and deny hostile threats in space.

Countries are doing what they have always done: signalling their military strength to deter potential threats and protect their national interests. But in an increasingly fractured geopolitical order, these signals are a double-edged sword.

They can act as a stabiliser for one country, but also make other countries feel threatened. This is the challenge of strategic stability – balancing national security interests without escalating tensions between countries.

The dual-use nature of satellite technology complicates this further. Satellites can serve both civilian and military purposes, each with potential benefits and harms.

For example, civilian use of satellite data can support environmental monitoring. But unequal access to that data can also reinforce power imbalances in environmental governance and decision making.

Military use of satellite data can mean better preparedness for disaster management and rescue. But it can also cause harm when used for surveillance, compromising privacy and trust.

This overlap creates vulnerabilities that can be exploited. It also challenges the assumption that civilian uses of space are inherently beneficial and military uses are harmful.

As those uses become increasingly entangled, growing tensions can erode trust between countries. Even activities intended to improve safety and sustainability in space may be viewed with suspicion, making cooperation more difficult.

For instance, a spacecraft attempting to capture a defunct satellite so that it doesn’t create debris could be mistaken for hostile action.

What New Zealand can do

For New Zealand, these risks are particularly significant. While the country depends heavily on satellite infrastructure controlled overseas, its growing participation in military space partnerships also means decisions can contribute to wider tensions.

Misunderstandings in space could have consequences far beyond the orbits, including disruptions to services people depend on every day.

New Zealand has an opportunity to draw on its technical, scientific and international law expertise to support best practice, particularly through regional cooperation. This includes recognising how activities in space can contribute to, or undermine, global strategic stability.

Greater transparency and clearer communication can reduce the risks of misunderstanding and escalation, while building trust between countries. New Zealand could help advance international discussions on:

• what constitutes a use of force in space, specifically as counterspace capabilities evolve

• best practices for sharing information, including what can be shared and with whom

• how countries communicate their intentions to avoid misinterpretation of activities in space

• and how New Zealand can ensure its participation in military space partnerships also supports its commitments to the safe and sustainable use of space.

Ultimately, protecting New Zealand’s interests in space means recognising that our security is closely tied to that of others, and that building trust is just as important as building capability.

Carolle Varughese is a Space Security Research Fellow with the United Nations Institute of Disarmament Research.

Priyanka Dhopade and Sarah Hendrica Bickerton 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/04/the-same-satellite-can-have-military-and-civilian-functions-this-creates-a-dilemma-for-nz/

Since the Iran-US military conflict began earlier this year, disrupting global oil markets, Australia’s electric vehicle (EV) market has experienced an unprecedented boost.

With motorists facing sharp increases at the bowser and continuing uncertainty about fuel prices, many drivers have decided to go electric. EVs accounted for 25.8% of total car sales in the first half of 2026.

One brand in particular is capitalising on this trend, and that’s the Chinese carmaker BYD, whose name was previously spelled out as “Build Your Dreams”. It is now outselling many far older and more established competitors in Australia.

Fifteen years ago, Elon Musk poked fun at BYD, saying it was not a serious competitor in the electric vehicle business. And until just a few years ago, hardly anyone in Australia had even heard of the brand.

So how did BYD become such a formidable competitor in the EV market so quickly?

BYD’s origin story

BYD’s story began not with cars, but batteries. In 1995, 29-year-old battery specialist Wang Chuanfu founded the company in Shenzhen with a small team. BYD initially manufactured rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries, before moving into lithium-ion batteries.

The company grew quickly, and by 2000, BYD had become Motorola’s first Chinese supplier of lithium-ion batteries. Nokia followed in 2002, and the same year BYD listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

In 2003, BYD entered the automotive industry by acquiring a struggling Chinese manufacturer. Its first model, the petrol-powered F3, arrived in 2005.

By then, BYD was already looking towards electrification. In 2008, it launched the F3DM plug-in hybrid. That same year, legendary US investor Warren Buffett backed the company with an investment of about US$230 million for a 9.9% stake, which he later sold.

When Bloomberg asked Tesla chief executive Elon Musk in 2011 about BYD as a potential competitor, he laughed. “Have you seen their car?” he asked, before saying he did not see BYD as a competitor.

But, by 2023, his assessment had completely changed: “Their cars are highly competitive these days.”

What do the sales numbers say these days?

Sales figures both in Australia and overseas show just how rapidly BYD has become a formidable name in the automotive industry.

Globally, BYD went from selling about 190,000 battery or hybrid vehicles in 2020 to 4.6 million in 2025 – a roughly 24-fold increase in just five years. Of the 2025 sales, 2.26 million were fully electric, enough to overtake Tesla’s 1.64 million deliveries.

Its rise in Australia has been similarly striking. In the first eight months of 2026, BYD sold more than 68,000 vehicles, making it Australia’s second-highest-selling car brand behind Toyota. In the month of June, just 243 sales separated the two.

Among electric vehicles, over the same period, BYD sold more than 39,000 cars, overtaking Tesla to become Australia’s highest-selling electric vehicle brand.

What is BYD’s secret sauce?

BYD’s rise from a relatively unknown battery maker to a global automotive giant cannot be attributed to any single factor. But four factors have likely been instrumental to its success.

First, BYD makes an unusually large proportion of its cars itself. This includes batteries, electric motors, power electronics and even some of the semiconductors its vehicles need. This high degree of “vertical integration” reduces its reliance on outside suppliers and gives BYD greater control over both its supply chain and production costs.

The company even owns and operates its own ships to transport the vehicles to Australia and other markets.

Second, BYD did not bet everything on fully electric vehicles. It also sells a large range of plug-in hybrids. This gave buyers who are not yet ready to rely entirely on battery power another route into electrification.

Third, BYD took a different approach to battery technology. Its Blade Battery uses lithium iron phosphate chemistry, which is generally cheaper than nickel-based alternatives and requires neither nickel nor cobalt.

Fourth, BYD has benefited substantially from China’s long-running support for its electric vehicle industry. This has included direct subsidies to manufacturers as well as subsidies and tax incentives for consumers buying electric vehicles.

A history of controversy

BYD’s rapid expansion has not been without controversy.

Despite its global success, BYD has never established passenger-car sales in the United States.

More recently, high tariffs and national-security concerns about Chinese vehicles have created prohibitive barriers to entry to the US market.

Cybersecurity concerns have also attracted scrutiny in Australia. This was highlighted in a recent ABC Four Corners investigation showing a cybersecurity expert remotely accessing functions in a BYD Shark 6.

Safety concerns have emerged too. While safety regulator ANCAP awarded the Shark 6 five stars, it also applied a penalty score for posing a greater risk to oncoming vehicles due to its size, weight and front-end design. The Shark 6 is larger than many of Australia’s largest utes, including some variants of the Ford Ranger.

A new global order for autos

For decades, Australia’s car market has been dominated by Japanese brands, with US, Korean and European manufacturers also prominent. Chinese brands are now challenging that order remarkably quickly.

China made becoming a global leader in electric vehicles an industrial priority. It has largely achieved that ambition.

If current momentum continues, the badges Australians see on their roads over the coming decade could look very different from those they grew up with. BYD is one name they are likely to see much more often.

Milad Haghani 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/04/byd-is-reshaping-australias-car-market-how-did-it-get-here/

Imagine you’re worried about vaccinating your baby. A message on Facebook tells you: “Protect the community and your kids by booking their vaccinations today.”
Another asks: “Do you know all the effects of childhood vaccinations on your babies?”

Both link to the same reliable vaccination information. But in our recently published research, the second message was about 52% more likely to be clicked on.

We wanted to test whether changing the way that factual information is presented online could help it reach audiences who might otherwise overlook it. Our findings suggest the wording matters, even when the information itself stays the same.

What is misinformation?

Misinformation can appear in everyday discussions on social media, including conversations about childhood vaccination. In the Australian Facebook communities we studied, these discussions often connected with personal concerns about protecting children.

Misinformation means false information shared without an intention to cause harm. Disinformation is false information deliberately created and shared.

However, false claims are only part of the problem. Our earlier research found far-right users also shared articles from moderate news sources. They selected a narrow range of topics that fit their world views, meaning even mostly accurate news articles could reinforce those views.

Not only does this make it harder to get reliable information to people, it can also negatively affect their relationships. Our research describes people withdrawing from loved ones and mainstream information as they became more involved in fringe communities.

A misinformation minefield

Governments provide factual resources, while researchers and other organisations investigate misleading claims and provide the evidence. Fact-checking can help, but people need to trust the source and understand the explanation.

Social media platforms have also tried removing false or misleading content or making it less visible. Research on Meta’s pandemic response found many of the Facebook pages regulated by Meta and examined in the study declined in performance, although some continued growing.

Social media platforms have also tried adding warning labels to misleading posts and showing them to fewer people.

Users found ways around restrictions, such as coded language and links to less moderated platforms.

Meta stopped using independent fact-checkers in the United States in April 2025. It began introducing Community Notes, where users write and rate explanations that appear alongside posts.

So these approaches have had some impact, but they leave a question: how do you get reliable information in front of someone who isn’t looking for it?

Meet Jennifer, Patrick and Aaron

We spent months observing Australian Facebook communities sharing anti-vaccination and far-right narratives.

Alongside information, these communities offered companionship. Messages could sound like a friend sharing worries about their child.

We used these observations to develop three fictional audience profiles, known as personas.

Jennifer was a young mother concerned about vaccination. Patrick was a retired teacher worried about his grandchildren’s future. Aaron was a young man interested in fitness and technology. These profiles helped us select audiences for Facebook advertisements and write messages using familiar styles.

For Jennifer, we used personal, caring language, like a friend sharing worries about their children.

Patrick’s messages took an authoritative, explanatory tone. Aaron’s used a motivational tone, encouraging readers to take charge and check the facts for themselves.

We then compared those messages with neutral versions of the same ad. Each pair used the same image and linked to the same government or government-affiliated resource. The sponsor and advertising settings stayed the same, only the wording changed.

In 11 out of the 12 comparisons, people were more likely to click on an ad when its wording reflected the language used in the communities we studied.

Ads about school education received clicks 6% of the time when they used familiar language. The same ads with neutral wording only received clicks 1.1% of the time. This means the language inspired by communities the ads were trying to reach were roughly five times more likely to be clicked on.

For vaccination ads, those with familiar language were clicked on 0.98% of the time, compared to 0.65% for those with neutral wording.

Speaking their language

Our findings suggest communication style can help attract attention to reliable information.

They don’t show that we changed anyone’s mind. We don’t know whether people read the linked pages, and Facebook’s delivery system influenced who saw each advertisement.

We also changed several features of the wording together, so we can’t identify which feature made the difference.

But even with these caveats in mind, there are ways these findings can be used now to help combat mis- and disinformation online.

For example, public health teams could use this approach by listening to how people describe their concerns, then testing different ways of presenting the same evidence.

This doesn’t mean impersonating community members or amplifying fear to attract attention. It just means adopting language that speaks directly to questions and concerns of the people you’re trying to reach.

For a vaccination campaign, this could mean testing messages that acknowledge parents’ questions. For example, “You want to keep your little one safe. Wondering what vaccinations will mean for your baby?”.

A follow-up study could then examine whether readers understood the information and felt better able to make a decision.

Jooyoung Lee receives funding from the National Intelligence Post-Doctoral Grants.

Emily Booth receives funding from the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA).

Marian-Andrei Rizoiu receives funding from the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA), the Australian Department of Home Affairs, and the Commonwealth of Australia as represented by the Defence Science and Technology Group of the Department of Defence. He is also the Director of the Defence Innovation Network.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/04/a-new-study-finds-that-to-counter-misinformation-online-we-need-to-copy-its-style/

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, one of the first medicines doctors turned to was remdesivir, part of a family of medicines called nucleoside analogues that are also used to treat HIV, hepatitis and some cancers.

These drugs are especially important because there are a surprisingly limited arsenal of drugs that reliably fight viral infections. That’s one of the main reasons why new viral outbreaks cause so much alarm.

For nearly a decade, our chemistry research group — The Britton Lab at Simon Fraser University — has been developing faster ways to build nucleoside analogues. In 2020, we published a method that bypassed most of the traditional steps, reducing the time needed to build these kinds of molecules from months to about a week.

Now, in a new paper published in the journal Science in collaboration with scientists at biopharmaceutical firm Merck, we took this a step further. We have now developed a modular approach that turns one cheap starting material into a wide range of finished drug candidates within weeks. Using this method, we made dozens of new molecules and, in early laboratory tests, identified three with promising anti-HIV activity.

Building nucleosides

Nucleosides are the molecular building blocks of DNA and RNA. Nucleoside analogues are carefully designed lab-made lookalikes that trick cells, or the viruses infecting them, into using these fake building blocks instead of the natural nucleosides they rely on. This disrupts how the virus’s genetic material gets copied, stopping the virus from reproducing. More than 30 approved medicines work in this way.

The problem is that these molecules are notoriously difficult to make.

Traditionally, chemists begin with a naturally occurring sugar molecule, and carry out a long, fixed sequence of chemical reactions — often 15 or more — to produce a single target molecule. If researchers want to test a different version or improve the molecule, it means starting the whole sequence again from the beginning. Early manufacturing of remdesivir was so inefficient that less than two per cent of the starting material ended up as usable drug.

This one-at-a-time approach clashes with how modern drug discovery works. Researchers typically need to screen thousands of related molecules to find a handful of promising leads, then improve on the best ones. The collection of compounds that led to remdesivir contained only around 1,000 candidates, which is tiny by pharmaceutical industry standards.

Even so, assembling that molecular library took many years and the considerable resources of a major pharmaceutical company. Getting ready for the next viral threat means building and testing much larger and more diverse batches of candidate molecules, as quickly as possible.

Making molecules in fewer steps

Our approach turns the traditional synthetic process on its head. Instead of building every final molecule separately from scratch, we use an amino acid catalyst to build a single versatile core piece, containing a chemical connector. This intermediate can be made in large batches and stored until it’s needed.

Then, in a single step, we use a reaction driven by ordinary visible light to join this core piece to many different molecular fragments, creating several brand-new nucleoside analogues in one go. Because this final step is quick, many different molecules can be made in parallel instead of repeating an entire synthesis for each drug candidate.

Using this strategy, we quickly built a library of more than 70 nucleoside analogues. It includes versions with sulfur or nitrogen atoms replacing the usual oxygen atom in the sugar ring, small changes that are normally difficult to make but can have a huge effect on biological activity. We also made versions designed to get inside cells more easily — the same strategy used by remdesivir and another drug used to treat hepatitis. While this is not a large number in terms of drug discovery, it demonstrates that producing larger libraries is now feasible using this process.

While most of these molecules had never been made before, we also made several previously studied molecules in far fewer steps. One compound that had originally required 16 synthetic steps, we made in just six.

We then handed these compounds off to our Simon Fraser University collaborator Ralph Pantophlet, whose laboratory tested them against HIV in a cell-based assay. Three compounds stood out, blocking the virus about as effectively as some of the medications already approved to treat it. While it would still be a long path to clinical trials, being able to identify starting points more quickly is critical to the entire drug discovery process.

With this platform, we can generate collections of drug candidates 10 to 100 times larger than was previously practical, in weeks rather than months or years. That’s no guarantee of discovering a new medicine, but it meaningfully improves the odds of finding one quickly, whether for a virus that emerges tomorrow or one we already struggle to treat.

Simon Fraser University has filed a patent application describing the synthesis of nucleoside analogues with Matthew Anketell and Robert Britton listed inventors (US provisional patent application no. 63/492,977). This technology has been licensed to Cloudburst Biotech and Robert Britton is a cofounder, shareholder, and member of the board of directors of Cloudburst Biotech. Robert Britton was also a paid consultant at Merck & Co., Inc., in 2024.

Matthew Anketell 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/04/heres-how-scientists-aim-to-speed-up-drug-development-for-treating-new-viruses/

At some point, most of us have heard the same advice about work: find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.

The idea of a “dream job” sounds inspiring, even noble; it suggests that work can be a source of meaning, identity and personal fulfillment. But this ideal can also create a significant amount of pressure, especially for those just entering the workforce.

If your career does not feel like a calling — or if your interests change over time and your work no longer feels like a perfect fit — it can feel like a personal failure.

But research on careers and motivation suggests the challenge may not be that we’re struggling to find purpose, but that we’ve been taught to expect one job to provide everything: meaning, identity, financial security and personal fulfillment.

Meaningful work can be an important part of a satisfying life. But the relentless pursuit of a single “dream job” can lead to burnout, financial strain and a fragile sense of identity. A more sustainable approach is to view work as one part of a fulfilling life rather than the whole picture.

No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.

Read more from Quarter Life:

• Getting outside despite your 9‑to‑5 job can improve your mental health – here’s how to spend time in nature during and around working hours

• You have more ways to connect than ever, but deep friendship feels hard to find – here’s how to build better connections

• What everyone gets wrong about the modern job search — and what actually works

When loving your job comes at a cost

One challenge with the dream-job ideal is that passion can sometimes create difficult workplace trade-offs.

Research by psychologist Aaron Kay and colleagues suggests that people are more likely to view it as acceptable to place extra demands on passionate workers — including unpaid work, tasks outside their job description and sacrifices of personal time because they assume the work itself provides a form of reward.

This dynamic may be particularly relevant in fields often associated with passion, such as media, fashion, entertainment and the arts, where workers frequently describe their jobs as closely tied to personal identity and creative fulfillment.

Passion can be a source of motivation and satisfaction, but when work is treated as a calling, it can become easier to justify blurred boundaries and unrealistic expectations.

Tying your identity to work

The second challenge is psychological. The person you are at 22 is unlikely to be the same person you become at 32 or 42. Career development researchers have long argued that occupational identity is not fixed; it develops over time as people’s interests, values and life circumstances change.

But when we build a large part of our identity around a single occupation, career changes can become more difficult. Research on career identity suggests that having a more flexible sense of self can help people navigate transitions, while a narrowly defined professional identity may make change feel more disruptive.

Finally, there is the risk of burnout. When a hobby or personal interest becomes a profession, the activity that once provided relaxation can become tied to deadlines, client and patient feedback, and revenue targets.

When work is also your passion, a difficult day can feel like a personal failure. The pressure to maintain enthusiasm and constantly demonstrate commitment can gradually undermine the motivation that brought someone into the field in the first place.

A new definition of career success

A growing body of research suggests that many workers are rethinking the traditional idea that career success means finding one perfect occupation.

This shift is particularly visible among Generation Z, the cohort currently entering the workforce. While younger workers are sometimes criticized as being “lazy” or “uncommitted,” they may instead be challenging older assumptions about what a successful career should provide.

A 2025 survey found that financial stability and work-life balance rank among the most important factors for Gen Z and millennials, alongside opportunities for growth and meaningful work. It’s a mindset of “peace over promotion.”

Recruiter and career coach Emily Durham argues we should seek work that meets three core needs: validation (feeling seen and appreciated), purpose (finding meaning) and lifestyle (meeting your financial and personal needs).

Crucially, these needs do not all have to be met by one “dream job.” By looking at the entirety of our lives, we can create more stability and resilience, especially in a world of economic uncertainty and AI-driven change.

Build a career that can adapt

If the dream-job model is limiting, what should replace it? One alternative is to focus less on finding the perfect job title and more on developing a portfolio of transferable skills.

Instead of anchoring your identity to being a “marketing director,” for example, you could set a goal to master a portfolio of skills like persuasive writing, data analysis and project management.

A skill portfolio is adaptable, allowing you to apply your toolkit to different industries and roles as your passions evolve. It gives you the freedom to pivot without starting over.

Another important part of career development is mentorship. Mentorship is one of the most effective strategies for navigating career decisions and building confidence. My own research shows effective mentoring helps build awareness of career paths and clarify options.

Psychosocial mentoring, meanwhile, provides emotional support and helps individuals decouple their sense of worth from their job titles. This kind of support is invaluable when you are trying to figure out what you want, not just what you can get.

Work is only one part of a fulfilling life

The relentless pursuit of a “dream job” isn’t the only path to a successful career. In a world where the nature of work is changing faster than ever, the most resilient and fulfilling career path is one that is adaptable.

It starts with building a portfolio of skills, is guided by mentors and is measured not by finding a single perfect job title, but by how well your work fits into a life you are passionate about living.

A fulfilling career does not have to provide every source of purpose and identity. Sometimes, the healthiest relationship with work comes from allowing it to be one meaningful part of a larger, richer life.

Valerie Onyia Babatope 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/04/the-dream-job-myth-why-a-fulfilling-career-does-not-have-to-define-your-life/

One of the hardest challenges in wildlife conservation arises when the habitat of a species in need of protection overlaps with land used by humans. Wolves and bears can kill livestock, elephants can damage homes and properties and wild boar can damage crops.

In such situations, conservation is not only about protecting wildlife. It is also about finding ways to reduce conflict between people and animals. That challenge grows further when the animals involved are highly adaptable and can learn to overcome attempts to keep them away from humans.

This is the case with the Barbary macaque, an endangered primate native to North Africa. In Béjaïa province, northern Algeria, macaques and people share a mountainous landscape where many families engage in small-scale farming.

In our recently published research, colleagues and I surveyed 94 farms to understand the severity of farmer-macaque conflict, the crops most affected, when crop-foraging occurs, the deterrents farmers use and the farm and landscape characteristics associated with frequent crop-foraging.

The Barbary macaque is legally protected in Algeria, and hunting it, or using prohibited methods such as poison, can result in fines and prison sentences. Few farmers reported using poisoned bait or guns.

However, continued crop losses could increase hostility toward the species if farmers lack practical ways to protect their crops. Therefore, it is vital to develop ways of protecting animals that minimize troublesome encounters with humans.

A heavy economic burden

About one-third of the surveyed farms had been abandoned because of crop losses associated with Barbary macaques.

On average, farming contributed about 35 per cent of household income, and for some families it was their only source of income. For these households, crop damage represents a substantial economic burden.

The problem was also frequent. Around 68 per cent of farms experienced daily crop-foraging by the macaques during conflict periods, while over half of farmers reported damage to infrastructure such as roofing materials and drip-irrigation systems.

None reported physical aggression by macaques or concerns about disease transmission. This indicates that the conflict was mainly economic, affecting crops, property and livelihoods.

Respondents told us that some crops were particularly attractive to the macaques. Figs were affected on almost all the farms, closely followed by apples and pears, grapes and tree nuts. These fruits were consumed whole rather than partially.

Timing also mattered. Macaque crop-foraging peaked from July to September, when most local figs ripen, and declined from late fall into winter, as acorns, a key wild food, become abundant in the oak forests. Incursions were especially common at dawn and dusk, when human activity was lower.

Not all farms faced the same level of risk. Larger cultivated areas experienced more frequent crop-foraging, while altitude and proximity to human settlements appeared to matter less.

The farmers we surveyed already used many methods to protect their crops. These include most commonly guarding fields with dogs, traditional fences and using slingshots. But simply using more methods was not associated with less frequent crop-foraging by macaques.

This suggests the macaques alter their behaviour depending on the obstacles they encounter and learn to circumvent them.

A changing landscape

Béjaïa province lost an estimated 50,400 hectares of forest cover between 2001 and 2023, about 40 per cent of its baseline cover.

The largest annual loss came in 2023, a year of deadly wildfires in the region. Agricultural land, meanwhile, showed no sign of expansion between 2014 and 2021.

This indicates that recurrent wildfires in the forests and shrublands that provide natural food for macaques caused the biggest damage to their habitat.

Our study cannot establish that habitat loss has led to the increase in encounters reported by farmers, but the pattern suggests that conservation measures should not focus only on farms.

Making coexistence possible

Almost all of the farmers we surveyed had received no wildlife-conflict management training, indicating a major opportunity for education and technical support.

In addition, more effective deterrents, including electric fencing and motion-activated devices, should be tested under local conditions. Buffer zones planted with crops that are less attractive to macaques, such as citrus, may also help protect high-value orchards.

Financial support is also important. Algeria’s conservation strategy for the Barbary macaque has proposed compensation for losses, but such measures have not been implemented in our study area. Compensation or subsidy programs could reduce the economic burden on farmers while also reducing incentives for killing the animals.

Protecting the Barbary macaque requires more than protecting the animals themselves. It requires safeguarding their habitat, developing safe and effective deterrents, enhancing environmental education and continuing research to better understand and manage encounters with humans.

Mohammed Khalil Mellal, a researcher at the Agrifood Technologies Research Center in Béjaïa, Algeria, co-authored this article.

Rassim Khelifa receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair. He is a member of the Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science and an expert with the IUCN SSC Dragonfly Specialist Group.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/04/protecting-endangered-species-must-include-supporting-habitats-and-nearby-human-settlements/

The formal launch of the Africa Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA) has required considerable institutional commitment. It brings to fruition an effort that has been almost a decade in the making.

In 2017, the African Union gave the African Peer Review Mechanism a mandate to support member states in the field of credit rating agencies. By 2019, African institutions were examining the feasibility of creating an agency of their own. Feasibility and design work followed, then political endorsement of a private-sector-driven model, the selection of Mauritius as its home, and now the launch itself.

There is something worth recognising in that progression. The African Union has spent years examining the role that credit ratings play in its economies. It has committed to building an institution capable of producing creditworthiness assessments itself.

The African Peer Review Mechanism frames the new agency not as a challenger to the world’s big three – Moody’s, S&P Global Ratings or Fitch – but as complementary.

Its mandate is to produce

fair, independent and contextually accurate assessments of African economies.

Whether it succeeds in that mandate is a separate question. Whatever the rating agency eventually becomes, reaching the point of launch is already a significant act of African institution-building. As such it warrants examination, given how difficult it is for new bodies to be built, particularly by 55 nation states.

In this article I will set out the process that brought the countries on the continent to this point.

I will also examine what Africa’s decision to build a credit rating agency tells us about the growing importance of creditworthiness assessment to the financing of development.

African institution-building

The Africa Credit Rating Agency has not appeared from nowhere. Continental institutions have been created or expanded across several domains. In this time period two have moved from agreement into implementation:

• the African Peer Review Mechanism. This was established in 2003 as a voluntary process through which African states assess and strengthen governance across participating countries.

• the African Continental Free Trade Area.

The African Union has also secured a stronger formal voice within global economic governance, becoming a permanent member of the G20 in 2023.

The rating agency belongs to this same period, but its function differs. It does not lend money, as a development bank does, or facilitate payments and trade rules, as the continental trade architecture does. It is being built to evaluate creditworthiness, which raises the real question posed by its creation.

Why has that evaluation become important enough to warrant an institution of its own?

The why

Governments and businesses across Africa have ambitions for infrastructure, industrial capacity, human capital and resilience against shocks. These ambitions outrun what domestic revenue alone can finance. Meeting them typically requires external financing. African governments and businesses have increasingly turned to international capital markets, alongside other sources of finance.

Access to that market, and the price paid for it, depends heavily on how creditworthy a borrower is judged to be.

Sovereign credit ratings exist to supply that judgment. A rating is an opinion, issued by one of a small number of specialist agencies, about the likelihood that a borrower will repay its debts fully and on time. The ratings run on a scale from secure investment grade categories down through progressively riskier “speculative”-grade ones.

Speculative grade ratings are associated with markedly higher borrowing costs than investment grade ones.

The most consequential distinction in this system is the boundary between investment grade and speculative grade. It’s conventionally set at BBB-, or its equivalent Baa3 on Moody’s scale.

Economists at the International Monetary Fund – Laura Jaramillo and Catalina Tejada – examined 35 emerging market economies between 1997 and 2010. They found that crossing into investment grade status reduced borrowing spreads (extra interest a borrower has to pay above a benchmark interest rate) by 36% beyond what macroeconomic fundamentals alone would predict. This compared with only 5%-10% for upgrades within investment grade, and no measurable effect within speculative grade.

The threshold matters because many institutional investors operate under mandates forbidding speculative grade debt entirely or even partially. This means that crossing it can change the pool of buyers willing to lend as well as the price.

Sovereign creditworthiness can also influence financing conditions beyond government itself. Banks, state-owned enterprises and private companies can find their own borrowing conditions affected by changes in sovereign risk. This is particularly true when their credit profiles are closely tied to the state or the domestic financial system. Access to capital markets for entities within a country can be shaped by a judgment made about their government.

A downgrade, in this sense, does not stay contained within sovereign debt markets. It tends to reach into the financing conditions facing the wider economy, often at the moments when governments and businesses most need room to respond – such as external shocks or a pandemic.

Ratings have also become embedded in the rules of finance itself. In the US, financial regulators began formally recognising the ratings of designated agencies in 1975 to help set capital requirements for regulated institutions. That recognition has since multiplied across securities, banking and insurance regulation.

Once ratings are written into rules determining what standard of debt regulated institutions may hold, a rating becomes part of the machinery governing market access, not simply an opinion offered to it.

Taken together, this evidence places creditworthiness assessment at an important junction in development finance. Ratings interact with the availability, eligibility and price of capital, and those financing conditions in turn shape the resources available to governments and businesses for investment.

UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) finds that developing countries paid, on average, around 200 basis points more than developed countries for internationally sourced capital between the start of 2012 and May 2023.

Years of discussion about African development finance, borrowing costs, capital market access, and reform of the international financial architecture have often treated creditworthiness assessment as one input among many, acknowledged and debated but rarely built around directly.

The Africa Credit Rating Agency converts that discussion into an institution with a headquarters, a regulatory process and a launch date.

The real questions

Will it succeed? Will it challenge the big three? What happens if it fails? Is it really needed?

They are all valid questions, but having witnessed the development of the new agency over the years, I see the real questions slightly differently at this point in time.

I am eager to see what this act of institution-building can contribute to African agency within the global financial architecture. I am excited to see African leaders organise around an issue that directly affects their citizens. I am personally humbled by the commitment of those working behind the scenes to build an institution for which there is no obvious blueprint. The answers to the original questions above will be answered in due time.

Reaching the point of launch deserves to be recognised as an important milestone for the credit rating field, and above all for African institution-building.

Daniel Cash 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/04/africas-new-credit-agency-why-its-needed/

The new Africa Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA) has already generated an important debate. Some analysts have portrayed it as a rival to the three established global rating agencies – Fitch, Moody’s and S&P Global. Others have questioned whether Africa needs another rating agency at all.

But, based on my expertise researching African financial markets and the role of credit rating agencies in particular, I would argue that this framing misses the bigger picture.

The Africa Credit Rating Agency (AfCRA) should not be viewed as a challenger attempting to compete head-on with the century old rating agencies. It is rather a new lever for expanding and deepening Africa’s capital markets, broadening credit intelligence and helping redirect capital towards productive investment in infrastructure, energy and manufacturing to create jobs, generate income and grow economic capacity.

The agency’s success should therefore be measured by whether it helps African countries make progress in these areas. In this sense, the Africa Credit Rating Agency is not simply another rating agency. It is a pioneer of a stronger, deeper and more efficient African financing ecosystem.

Africa has a remarkably large pool of domestic capital. These are savings held and controlled by African pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, banks, insurers and other investors.

But most of this capital remains concentrated in short-term 90-day treasury bills and bonds. It cannot generate nor sustain economic growth that way.

Meanwhile, productive sectors such as infrastructure, manufacturing and energy don’t get enough financing.

The problem is that the credit ratings industry in Africa remains very small. Yet its role is vital for two reasons. First, its decisions influence how investors allocate capital. The credit ratings industry provides investors with clearer information about the risks of lending, making them more confident about providing long-term financing to businesses and governments.

Secondly, it sets the price at which capital is deployed. This is because the industry judges the capacity of a borrower to repay in full and on time. A low assessment raises the cost. A higher one lowers it.

The number of entities that have a rating from any of the rating agencies is currently less than 5% of the total estimated capital in Africa.

Africa has an estimated US$4 trillion domestic capital base – the money already available that can be invested in businesses. Yet less than US$500 billion worth of these financial instruments and economic entities are subject to formal credit ratings. Across sovereigns, corporates, financial institutions, municipalities, government-related entities and other issuers, the rated entities and instruments remain tiny relative to the potential market.

Compare this with mature financial markets. At the end of 2025, Africa had fewer than 4,000 ratings assigned by both international and domestic rating agencies. That year there were 823,000 in the European Union and over 2 million credit ratings in the US.

There are nine rating agencies operating in Africa. The US has 10 and the European Union 29 active credit rating agencies.

The aim

The anticipated role of the Africa Credit Rating Agency is fourfold.

Firstly, to provide ratings.

Secondly, to help expand Africa’s ratings industry and bring greater credit intelligence to more than US$3.5 trillion in capital currently invested without formal ratings. Much of this capital remains concentrated in treasury bills, money market funds and fixed-term deposits. These are highly liquid, short term and risk-averse instruments. Investors prefer these short-term investments that are easy to access and convert into cash.

Thirdly, the agency provides an opportunity to expand Africa’s financial markets by creating a larger and deeper information ecosystem. For investors, the value of a rating lies not simply in the rating category, but in the assumptions, evidence, rationale and context behind it. Credible ratings provide greater accuracy and precision in understanding risk.

The value of the Africa Credit Rating Agency will therefore be measured by how effectively its analysis helps investors distinguish genuine credit weaknesses from risks that may be amplified by limited information, inadequate data or insufficient contextual understanding.

This matters because one of Africa’s biggest financing challenge lies in mobilising the capital the continent already has. Pension funds, insurers, banks, sovereign wealth funds, asset managers that control substantial pool of African capital need reliable credit information to assess a wider range of investments beyond traditional short-term and highly liquid instruments.

Fourth, the broader objective is to break the cycle in which perceptions of risk currently keep capital on the sidelines, push it offshore or concentrate it in short-term assets while productive African businesses struggle to secure long-term financing.

The new agency helps narrow this information gap. Africa needs investors to become more informed and analytical about risk, while borrowers need a clearer understanding of what drives their creditworthiness and how it can be strengthened.

Market-building exercise

The ratings industry is evolving. The international rating agencies are recognising the value of contextual risk analysis. This requires having more locally based analysts who understand the economic, political and institutional realities of the markets they assess.

They have begun positioning themselves accordingly.

S&P Global’s acquisition of Nigeria-based Agusto & Co, which operates across several African markets, and Moody’s earlier acquisitions of Middle East Rating & Investors Services, West Africa Rating Agency (WARA) and GCR reflect the growing recognition of the importance of local expertise and context in assessing African risk.

Way forward

The Africa Credit Rating Agency deserves the opportunity to prove itself. Its success will depend on the institution itself, as well as on investors, policymakers, financial institutions and other rating agencies working together to build a more balanced financing architecture.

Criticism and scrutiny are necessary. But they should not become grounds to dismiss the new institution prematurely. The Africa Credit Rating Agency should be given the chance and space to demonstrate the value it can contribute.

Misheck Mutize is affiliated with affiliated with the African Union as a Lead Expert on Credit Ratings

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/04/africas-new-credit-agency-why-its-about-a-lot-more-than-just-ratings/